At the very beginning, in that undefined time of first kisses and first sleep overs, he appears to have eyes only for you. Yet, at that same undefined time it also appears (at least to you) that every pair of female eyes are on him.
You can’t really blame them. (You’re a woman. You have eyes. And they’re only on him too.)
Flecks of gray intersperse between his dirty, dirty blond hair. The late afternoon rays falls on each one of them separately and the light dances off each one of them and for a moment you wonder if the color of a diamond shines as brightly as those flecks of gray. His usually dull blue eyes have brilliantly lit up and now easily match the colour of the tips of the crests of waves; the kind of sea that you’ve only ever seen in photos. He squints in the sun and the sun seemingly bored with his hair falls into his eyes and you notice yellow specks of gold dust that look like story book stars that have lost their way in the dark and found themselves in the irises of a mere mortal man. His firm body is accentuated by the wet suit he is wearing. There are lines; lines that you have run your hands across in darkness. There are hard muscles in his arms that jut out as he walks and you blush because you have seen those exact muscles– rigid–keeping your own arms down. And then you smile–your secret smile– because you know a truth that he doesn’t know yet. Desire can never be restrained. Even by the strongest of men. Adding fuel to this fire, he is wet. Drops of water drip. Some fast. Others slow. Both creating puddles of connect the dot puzzles on the scorching cement beneath his feet. Even his eyelashes are wet. His ears. The tip of his nose. His lips.
His lips are cold.
It is only then that it occurs to you that the only reason you know his lips are cold is because they are on yours. While your eyes have been darting back and forth from him to those roaming female eyes on him, his eyes have never left your face. It is then that you realize that this man has chosen you. You! And that the most exciting realization of all is that you chose him too.
(But could those women seriously stop checking him out? Especially that one, the one with the long legs.)
As he walks away from you and happily shouts: “Please don’t go. Stay. Wait for me” you shrug your shoulders and yell right back, “We’ll see. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.” You want to keep him guessing because certainty, you have been told, will turn him from the man you hope he is to the type of man you have always known. So you withhold, you appear less eager than you feel and you say “No” when every fiber of your being is screaming yes. You wonder how it is possible that the truest, purest, most instinctual feeling you have right at this moment could be the feeling that will inevitably drive him away?
Later as you catch sight of his sail, his legs balancing his board, as you watch him manouvre his way out of the safety of the bay and toward what appears to you to be the deepest, darkest, most turbulent end of the ocean you feel the stirrings of a knot in your stomach.
How long does it stay like this? At this undefined time where you are so taken by a man that you genuinely believe that every single pair of female eyes are on him? How long does this last? This time where he appears to have eyes only for you? How long does it last? This effortless time where you want to write bad poetry about the colour of his hair or an ode on his one chipped tooth? How long does this feeling last?
So you try to come up of ways to collect it, keep it in a jar and open it–years from now–to remind yourself that that one summer, that summer of 2009, you chose a man.
And, while you weren’t looking, he chose you too.