The Story of Us, part 1
She was feeling braver every day. Even though she hadn’t yet broken off that chain of youth called the first long-term relationship with a high school sweetheart, she knew she wanted to, and that was all that mattered. Life seemed full of possibilities, and for once, Charlotte didn’t write off the curly-haired gentlemen sitting quietly at the end of the second row, hands folded in his lap, mouth set firmly in quiet fortitude.
All the students in the literacy class had been asked to introduce themselves. After doing her part on her side of the room, she beelined to his, where he was speaking softly with another boy. “Hi,” she spoke a tad too cheerfully. “I’m Charlotte.”
The other boy, the unimportant boy, spoke his name; just two years later, she couldn’t remember it if she tried. Then He spoke. “Keith.” His voice was higher than she expected. It reminded her of her first love, a boy named Kyle, who, after months of subtle flirting and mixed messages finally wooed her at 15. The voice was unexpectedly soft. Keith and the other boy seemed awkward, as Charlotte meant them to feel at the presence of a pretty young girl in a green sundress.
She was right to interpret his long brown curls as a musician’s curls, his battered t-shirt as a musician’s t-shirt. He played the guitar, the bass, the viola, the piano. He jammed in an Indonesian gamelan. He knew music and felt it strongly. He was exactly what she wanted.
