Before I Knew

2013 — Junior Year

He always found me.

It didn’t matter that we never had the same classes. Every day, right before lunch, I’d feel his hands cover my eyes from behind and hear his low voice say, “Guess who?”

I pretended not to know. But I always knew.

I was sixteen, quiet, a little awkward. Always in my books. And he? He was everything I didn’t expect to fall for. Tall, funny, a senior with too much confidence and just enough softness behind those blue eyes to make me forget how to breathe.

We sat at the same lunch table every day. Same group. Same spot. But it was always him I waited for.

At the time, I didn’t know it was love. Not yet. It started small. A shared look. A longer laugh. A warmth in my chest when he leaned a little too close. But like all dangerous things, it snuck up on me.

It started here — in the cafeteria, the day he offered me his cookie and said, “You look like you need something sweet.”

He had no idea what he was starting.

That moment shouldn’t have meant anything. It was just a cookie. But the way he said it — like he saw something in me no one else did — it made me pause. That was the thing about Anthony. He didn’t say much that sounded serious, but when he looked at you, it was like he was studying your soul.

He always smelled like Old Spice and graphite. Always had a pencil tucked behind his ear. Wore his hoodie with the sleeves pushed up, even in early fall, like he didn’t feel the cold. Sometimes I think he liked the mystery of looking tired. Like he was dreaming about a world we couldn’t see.

We met the year before, through friends. And at first, he was just… Anthony. The funny guy who quoted The Hobbit and doodled dragons in the margins of his notes. But somehow, between shared laughter and late-night texts, he became the one I looked for in every hallway. The one I wanted to sit closer to. The one I trusted before I even understood what that meant.

I didn’t have a lot of close friends. I was the type to keep my head down and do my homework. Teachers liked me. Classmates mostly ignored me. But he didn’t.

He made me feel seen.

I remember one afternoon in the library — the day I first caught myself staring. We were sitting across from each other, pretending to study. He was sketching something with that same half-focused look he always got when he was lost in thought.

I asked, “What are you drawing?”

He turned his notebook around to show me. It was a messy inked version of a girl in armor, holding a lily.

I blinked. “That’s… me?”

He shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “Felt like you needed a sword.”

I laughed, but inside, something cracked open. No one had ever drawn me before. No one had ever imagined me as anything other than ordinary.

After that, something shifted.

He started walking me to class, even when it meant being late to his. Waited outside the auditorium during my theater rehearsals, claiming he was just “bored and had nothing better to do.” But I knew better. He hated sitting still.

Then came the notes.

Folded pieces of paper tucked into the spine of my books, or slid across the table at lunch. Stupid, sweet things like “If you were a spell, you’d be the kind that knocks me on my ass.” And once, “You have sad eyes sometimes. I like them anyway.”

I kept every one.

It wasn’t love, not yet. But it was something. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff with my toes curling over the drop — and wanting to fall.

One Friday, it all nearly spilled over.

We were sitting alone after school in the auditorium. Everyone else had left rehearsal early, and the sun was bleeding orange through the high windows. I was sitting on the stage, legs dangling, while he paced below, tossing an apple in the air.

“You ever think about college?” I asked.

He caught the apple and grinned. “Yeah. Mostly how I don’t want to go.”

I laughed. “What, and stay here forever?”

“Maybe.” He looked up at me then, his face going quiet. “You ever wish you could just… pause time? Like, freeze it right when everything still feels good?”

I nodded. “All the time.”

He walked over and leaned against the edge of the stage beside my legs. Close. Too close. My heart was already pounding, but I didn’t move. Not even when his fingers brushed against my ankle.

We didn’t kiss that day. But we both knew it was coming.

I went home that night and wrote his name fifteen times in my journal. Practiced my signature with his last name. Silly, hopeless, full-of-dreams kinds of things. The way girls do when they don’t know yet how much a heart can break.

That was the beginning.