Meeting Stephen

I first met Stephen in 2nd period Algebra as a freshman. I remember him standing over a friends desk and jumping around excitedly when he got an answer right. He had a spirit about him that just made me smile. But we lost touch when he moved to North Carolina with his mom for a year or so.


Stephen came back to NoVa for Senior year and we bumped into each other in the hallway one rainy day after school. He was standing by the back doors that went out to the student parking lot, cussing and banging on the doors about the rain. I asked him what was wrong and he said he had to walk home because his ride had already left. I figured if he was walking it must not be too far away, so I offered to drive him home. Once we got to his house I saw that it was very close to the school and offered to drive him every morning so he wouldn’t have to walk. Being the cocky, good-looking teenager that he was, Stephen said he would let me drive him to school if I would pick up his friend just down the street too. It was agreed that anyone at Stephen’s house when I came to pick him up was welcome to a ride.
We still argue about how this really happened. Stephen is convinced that I wanted him so badly that I went WAY out of my way every morning to pick him up. And I continue to insist that, while I did want him, it was a slight detour...turn down this road instead of that one in a direction I had to go anyways. Either way I stopped by Stephen’s house every morning with my friend whom I also drove to school. Sometimes he would be ready to go to school and others his little brother would have to poke his little head out the front door in his under ware and wave us on.
The days when Stephen and his friend were ready to go to school they would sit in the back seat and talk about the girls they were seeing and the different 'tricks' they were pulling or games they were playing with these girls. You see Stephen and I came from very different places. Stephen went to school to find people to skip with; where I stayed late to sing in the Show Choir. The boys would talk about other girls because I was not someone they would date or even fool around with. I was a nerd or a dork and they were far too cool for me. But I took mental notes on all of the tricks Stephen was pulling on these other girls and saved them for another rainy day.
He was very good looking, and he knew it. Short brown hair and blue-green eyes, he had a smile that could just melt your heart. Then you were putty in his hands, and you wouldn't mind a bit. He had this power to either make you feel like the most beautiful girl in the room, like all eyes were on you, or like a leprous outcast. Being around him made you feel like anything was possible and you knew something exciting or fun was always going to happen. I knew he had no interest in me romantically but I always liked a challenge. Plus there was something about him that I couldn't figure out. I could see in his eyes these walls that he had built protecting who he really was with a hard, untouchable exterior. I wanted to know what was behind that wall, and why it had been built.
Later in the year Stephen was struggling with geometry, a class that he needed to pass in order to graduate. I've always been good at math and offered to help Stephen with some math homework. He agreed because the idea of not graduating terrified him; so we started to spend more time together. He started to see that maybe I wasn’t such a dork. Or maybe he thought I was someone he could pull those old tricks on. Stephen didn't have girlfriends, he just fooled around with whomever whenever, no commitments.
One night we were in the basement at my parents house studying. In the basement we had a pool table and air hockey, it was a teenagers playground. Studying slowly went by the wayside and a Madonna song came on the radio with the line “If I can melt your heart, we’ll never be apart”. By this time we had stopped studying all together and were dancing and playing around just having some fun. As we danced to the song I told Stephen that’s how I felt about him. I told him that I would melt his heart and break through all of the walls he had built up. By the end of the year we spent every possible moment together; and continued the same throughout the summer.
That summer we went to Luray Caverns, had picnics downtown, went to all kinds of parties and had an incredible summer. We had a lot of very emotional encounters with Stephen trying to push me away and then breaking down another piece of the wall and letting me in father. I remember sitting on the bed in his room. He was yelling at me, I don't remember why, he was just in a rant. I kept saying "I love you". He got madder and madder and then finally literally just broke down crying falling into my lap. On his knees, his head on my legs, crying. I told him again that I loved him. Another time I'd done something to piss him off. We were outside his house standing by my white '88 Integra and he kept yelling at me to go home. I refused to leave and took all of the anger and hurt that he had to give rid of. He broke down again crying. This was the process of those walls coming down. They had taken a long time to build and breaking them down was a hard and painful process for both of us.
But summer came and went and it was time for me to head off to College. A week after I went to school, boot camp was going to begin for Stephen. He came to see me at school the weekend before he was shipped out. He told me that he had cheated on me with a girl he was friends with, someone I knew. They had slept together. It was only a week, and he couldn't wait or be faithful for one week. I was devastated but knew that this was his way of trying to push me away before he left for boot camp. If he ended things and broke my heart then I wouldn't be able to hurt him while he was gone. We talked about it and I forgave him. I made him promise that it would never happen again. He never cheated on me with another woman after that.
I wrote him a letter every one of the 90 days he was in boot camp and we spoke on the phone once. Well we didn’t really speak as much as listen to each other cry. Boot camp ended in November and I wanted to go see Stephen’s Pass and Review or graduation from boot camp. I was at school in Virginia and the ceremony would be in Great Lakes, IL where the boot camp was. Mom and Dad did not want me to go; in fact my father forbid it. Being as independent or stubborn as I was even then, that was only fuel to my fire. I explained to my father that I was not asking his permission, I was 18 years old and I would do as I pleased. I borrowed money from my roommate for the plane ticket and hotel and then had to get a job on campus at Chick-fil-a to pay her back. You see I knew even then that Stephen would always be in my life, and I wasn't going to miss this landmark event in his life for anything.