Nimbus
Without fail, when I think of rain, I think of one small moment in time, one that ends with a kiss, outside a restaurant.
This isn’t going to be a story of foreign lands and far off places, of heroes and heroines slaying dragons, of magic or science, though maybe there will be one next week. This isn’t grand enough to be in the history books, or even, perhaps, recorded in a journal somewhere, though maybe it is, because there is one other person that played a part in this story.
This is simply a memory, one that I’d like to share, of a boy and a girl.
-
The memory starts on a night with a boy - about seventeen, I think, waiting for a girl, in front of a restaurant.
Now this, in and of itself, is hardly special. But their relationship was different - it wasn’t one like the ones the others in his school was having, certainly, and this made it slightly awkward to explain how they had met.
You see, there was an 18 hour drive (about 1,100 miles, according to Google Maps) between the two of them. They had met in on a website for a series of books that they were both interested in, a few months back, and had struck it off. The website, you see, had a chatroom, and he was often on it, as was she, and it wasn’t long before they discovered that they had things in common. Everyone does, of course, but perhaps they had a little bit more than most. With the help of her friend, they started dating each other.
Well, sort of dating - how many dates can you really go on when you’re literally a thousand miles away? But they spent time together, and called each other, and talked online as much as they can. It was a relationship by any measure of it, even if they had never met.
Until now - she had told him a few weeks ago, with no small amount of excitement, that her parents were taking a trip to the east coast, and it would be conveniently be by him. A chance to meet, to spend time together, for at least a weekend, and actually see each other, hold hands, and go on an actual date.
It was ‘taking the next step’.
And it was frightening. Because the difference between talking - or even webcamming - online and seeing each other in person was incredibly different. What if there wasn’t attraction? What if the jokes that worked over text fell flat? How was he supposed to show emotion without emoticons?
But here she was, in his town, about to be dropped off by her parents for a date, just the two of them. And he, of course, could not have been more nervous in his life. Unflappable was what he aimed for, but the waves of energy that he couldn’t contain were making him physically tremble.
And then she showed up, and...well, I think he realized that it was going to be alright. He cracked a joke, and she laughed, and they stared at each other across the table, and it seemed like everything they had been online was the same way it was in person. They talked, they joked, and I don’t know if either of them remember what they said now. It didn’t matter; it never does.
She taught him something, though I don’t know if either of them realized it at the time. It was that long distance relationships were possible, that there were people on the other side of the country, or the world, that had the same interests, that a person didn’t have to be stuck in a five mile radius of where he lived or worked to find someone that he could be with. They had met online, and then in person, and it wasn’t awkward, or tense, or wrong; it could work - it had worked.
The food came and went, and eventually, they realized that they couldn’t spend too many hours there, that she had to go outside to get picked up. And so they made their way outside, closer now than they’d ever been, and, of course, it had started raining. Her parents weren’t there yet, and he met her eyes...
And whenever he think of rain, he thinks of that moment where he leaned down and kissed her, the girl who lived a thousand miles away, who came and visited him for a weekend and proved that anything was possible.
This isn’t going to be a story of foreign lands and far off places, of heroes and heroines slaying dragons, of magic or science, though maybe there will be one next week. This isn’t grand enough to be in the history books, or even, perhaps, recorded in a journal somewhere, though maybe it is, because there is one other person that played a part in this story.
This is simply a memory, one that I’d like to share, of a boy and a girl.
-
The memory starts on a night with a boy - about seventeen, I think, waiting for a girl, in front of a restaurant.
Now this, in and of itself, is hardly special. But their relationship was different - it wasn’t one like the ones the others in his school was having, certainly, and this made it slightly awkward to explain how they had met.
You see, there was an 18 hour drive (about 1,100 miles, according to Google Maps) between the two of them. They had met in on a website for a series of books that they were both interested in, a few months back, and had struck it off. The website, you see, had a chatroom, and he was often on it, as was she, and it wasn’t long before they discovered that they had things in common. Everyone does, of course, but perhaps they had a little bit more than most. With the help of her friend, they started dating each other.
Well, sort of dating - how many dates can you really go on when you’re literally a thousand miles away? But they spent time together, and called each other, and talked online as much as they can. It was a relationship by any measure of it, even if they had never met.
Until now - she had told him a few weeks ago, with no small amount of excitement, that her parents were taking a trip to the east coast, and it would be conveniently be by him. A chance to meet, to spend time together, for at least a weekend, and actually see each other, hold hands, and go on an actual date.
It was ‘taking the next step’.
And it was frightening. Because the difference between talking - or even webcamming - online and seeing each other in person was incredibly different. What if there wasn’t attraction? What if the jokes that worked over text fell flat? How was he supposed to show emotion without emoticons?
But here she was, in his town, about to be dropped off by her parents for a date, just the two of them. And he, of course, could not have been more nervous in his life. Unflappable was what he aimed for, but the waves of energy that he couldn’t contain were making him physically tremble.
And then she showed up, and...well, I think he realized that it was going to be alright. He cracked a joke, and she laughed, and they stared at each other across the table, and it seemed like everything they had been online was the same way it was in person. They talked, they joked, and I don’t know if either of them remember what they said now. It didn’t matter; it never does.
She taught him something, though I don’t know if either of them realized it at the time. It was that long distance relationships were possible, that there were people on the other side of the country, or the world, that had the same interests, that a person didn’t have to be stuck in a five mile radius of where he lived or worked to find someone that he could be with. They had met online, and then in person, and it wasn’t awkward, or tense, or wrong; it could work - it had worked.
The food came and went, and eventually, they realized that they couldn’t spend too many hours there, that she had to go outside to get picked up. And so they made their way outside, closer now than they’d ever been, and, of course, it had started raining. Her parents weren’t there yet, and he met her eyes...
And whenever he think of rain, he thinks of that moment where he leaned down and kissed her, the girl who lived a thousand miles away, who came and visited him for a weekend and proved that anything was possible.