EVAN

If you asked me today if I would go back and change what happened I'd tell you no. Back then I would have given my kidney to not have had gone through what I did. At times my heart hurt so bad I thought I was dying. I would have done anything to make the pain stop except be patient and wait for it to subside. I recognize now that I learned something from the whole experience of being broken not once, not twice, but three times. I had to make sure it was dead and over and the only way to do that was to keep twisting the knife he placed so sadistically into my heart. In the end, it showed more of what kind of person he actually was; not the kind of person I thought he was. It's amazing how intensely you can feel in such a short amount of time. The following events I'm about to share happened in the span of 3 months. As soon as it started, it ended. Like a tornado, leaving a mess of a human being behind in it's wake.

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Sitting in that diner booth, there was a tense feeling shooting back and forth between us. I had always felt this, from the first time he had begged me to let him take me out on a date. I was still wearing my third shift uniform and he had met me at work at 7am on the dot to take me to breakfast.

A plate of uneaten pancakes sat between us for hours as we talked each other to death, like we had never spoken to one another before in the 10 months we had known each other before this. I could feel everything in the environment, yet nothing but his eyes on me at the same time. He had deep sapphire eyes that always stayed on me, never breaking eye contact the way that mine always had a habit of doing. It was nervous habit that I should have learned to break by the time I was 22 years old, but here I was staring at the cold pancakes on the table while he was staring at me. The waitress flitted around us, waiting for us to leave so she could turn over the table and get more paying customers.

At long last, when I could barely keep my eyes open anymore despite the sun being at full blaze, I heard him suggest going home and going to bed. I agreed quickly, needing to crawl into bed sooner rather than later. He walked me to my car and I turned around with my back to my door to say good-bye.

I don't know what I expected. This was the first real date I'd ever been on. We had known each other before the date. My breath stopped in my throat as he put a hand on my car and leaned into me, towering over my 4'10" frame with his 6' frame, his other hand in his pocket casually like some cheesy old LMN movie. The intensity was at an all time high. My world shrank to that 2x2 foot square surrounding us. I don't know how long I went without breathing. It felt like forever. I was seeing spots as the electric sparks flew out of my chest. He smiled at me, looked down and back up, then he pushed off the car and away from me. The breath I was holding burst out of my lungs and my stomach unknotted itself.

"We'll have to do this again," he smirked. It was then that I knew he felt that intensity too, he was just a lot better at hiding his reaction from it than I was. My face always gave every emotion away. There was never any hiding it. Which is why I'm sure he could also see the disappointment and longing in my lips that remained unkissed.

He kept that all-knowing smirk as he dropped into the drivers' side of his silver Volvo. Those sapphire eyes never left me as I drove out of the parking lot with butterflies still fluttering around in my stomach and shivers waving down my spine. God I couldn't wait for the second date.