My favorite quote has always been, “Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you.” I guess the experiences we’ve had affects what we love and hate in life. This experience made me love and cherish this quote.
At thirteen years old, I never thought I would love someone as much as I loved him. Everyone always tells you when you’re young that what you feel is puppy love. It’s not real. It’s not actual love. If love isn’t actual love the what is it? If love isn’t pain, happiness, excitement and fear, then what is it? That day, I wasn’t looking for love. I was looking for some ice cold water.
It was the hottest day in July in the Southern most part of Florida. I was visiting the privileged part of my family, and they had dragged me to a swim meet for my cousins. I begged and pleaded them to let me stay at the house to sleep like a tired little toddler after a long day at the park. Of course, they forced me out of bed and bribed me into the car with frozen yogurt and my choice of music in the long car ride there.
I hopped into the pretentious minivan they owned, and we started down the long path to a long day of sitting in the hot sun with absolutely nothing to do but watch children swim across the pool. Once we finally got there, children in speedo swimming suits were running everywhere, their frantic parents yelling after them. My face showed absolute torcher from ear to ear.
We got a spot next to the pool where all of the swimmers sat their things on giant blue tarps underneath canopies and tents to block their fragile skin from the harsh sun. I walked around searching for people I only merely recognized. I spotted my friend Sam who I’d known since I began coming to visit my family in 2008.
“Oh my Gosh! I cannot believe you’re here! Tell me EVERYTHING. I want to know how school is, how your family is…”
“Okay Sam, Calm down! It’s amazing to see you too!”
It was great to see a familiar face in an unknown place with unrecognizable people surrounding me. Samantha and I had a long conversation about what we have been doing in the past year almost 450 miles from each other. In the middle of our conversation my aunt interrupted with an emergency regarding my immature and exasperating cousins. Her task; round all four of them up for their races.
I looked around the entire pool, parking lot and courtyard and none of them were to be found. As I was walking aimlessly, distracted from everything around me, I ran into a boy. This boy wasn’t like any other boy. He was tall, but not that tall. His hair long and dark, but not too long and certainly not too dark. His eyes a deep brown and his smile a happy smile.
“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry, did I step on your toe?” I nervously exclaimed.
“No you’re fine. But I may just have to fight you for messing up my hair!” he jokingly said to me, chuckling softly.
“I’m sorry I was just in a rush. I really hope I didn’t hurt you too bad. I can’t find my obnoxious cousins, they keep running away from me.” I said frantically.
“Anything I can do to help? wouldn’t want a beautiful girl like you running around here alone.”
“No, thank you though. I’m very sorry for running into you.” I said while bolting the other direction.
The moment I looked into his eyes its like I could feel my entire life shifting. I didn’t know how, but he was about to change my life. My aunt called me over near the pool when she found my cousins and kept them all in the same general area. She stopped for a second and looked at me.
“Why are you smiling so big? What happened?” she asked me.
“I ran into a boy, and I swear something just changed me” I replied. She looked very confused.
“Alright well your cousins are about to swim let’s go sit down” she said to me as she started to walk towards our seats.
As we were walking back, I saw him again. He walked towards me while I was walking the other direction.
“Did you find them?” he asked me. I could tell he was flirting with me.
“I did, thank you… I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name.”
He chuckled and looked down, “Wes”.
“Hi Wes, I’m Katheryn” I said to him as he smiled. He had a wonderful and contagious smile. “I do have to go though, so I’ll talk to you later hopefully.”
“Can I just get your phone number? It’d be a lot easier to talk to you” he asked.
“Of course you can” I said. I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from my bag and wrote my phone number down. I handed him the paper and that smile popped up on his face again. It was hard to resist smiling back at him.
Shortly after my cousins finished swimming we piled back into the pretentious minivan and sailed away for home. The next day I woke up to a text from Wes. It felt like my heart sunk into my stomach seeing his name pop up on my screen.
“Hey it’s Wes! Would you want to go to a movie today? My dad and I can pick you up. Let me know as soon as you wake up!”
I texted him back about five seconds later. I couldn’t wait another second to see him again.
“Why don’t you come over here and swim with me? It’s way too beautiful to be in a movie theater.”
Twenty minutes later Wes was standing at my doorstep with a bag full of strawberries and orange juice, wearing a royal blue bathing suit that brought out his tan skin. I showed him to the back of the house where my aunt was laying out in the gorgeous and bright Florida sun. My cousins were splashing around in the chlorine filled pool, cooling off after playing a game of football in the backyard. My aunt looked at him and smiled a big smile.
As soon as he dropped the bag full of strawberries off in the kitchen, we jumped right in the pool to cool off from the blazing hot sun. Him and my cousins played pool basketball and did underwater handstands. Wes was not very good at them. As soon as it started getting dark, Wes started to head home.
“So when can I see you again?” he asked cautiously.
“Well I leave tomorrow, so I’d like to see you before that happens…” I said to him, my voice becoming softer with every word.
“Then I will see you tomorrow” he told me with sadness in his voice. He kissed me very softly goodbye.
The next day I woke up early, along with my family, to go to one more swim meet before my family vacation was over. Only a few more hours to spend with Wes until next summer. We arrived at the pool once again, and I saw Wes standing at the entrance waiting for me. I jumped out of the minivan one more time, to find myself in Wes’s arms. My aunt laughed at us and walked into the pool area, Wes and I following. I watched as my cousins swam across the pool for the very last time.
As the boys were finishing up getting their first place medals, I walked to the car with Wes, preparing for a hard goodbye that was ultimately inevitable. I barely said a word. The only sentence my brain could form was “until next summer”. He and I both cried as I climbed in the car. As we drove away I watched his body grow smaller and smaller by the second. Tears came flooding out of my eyes like a river into a waterfall. I sat in silence as my family and I made our way to South Carolina where my home was placed, hundreds of miles from Wes.
I came home to tell my mother all about how I fell in love with a boy I would never see. She called it ‘puppy love’, but there is no such thing. For every mile Wes and I were apart, my love for him grew stronger and stronger.
A few months after I got back from the trip, Wes and I found ourselves sad, miserable and lonely without each other. The day we decided it would be best for us to end, was the day a piece of my heart had been ripped out of my chest and burned in a fire. It has been three years since I met Wes, and the love I felt for him still burns in my chest.