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OneBefore

I KNEW ITfrom the very first moment I saw him. He walked into the classroom, and I swear he wore a golden halo around his head. It could have been the absolutely ridiculous, yet somehow completely charming bleached-blond mop of hair he wore and the sun illuminating it from behind him, but I’m going with halo.

Because he was perfect.

I twisted around, fully turned in my seat at the front of the classroom as I watched his every move. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. His fingers as they tightened around the straps of his backpack, the muscles in his arms tensing from the grip. The way his jawline moved as he licked his lips. The way he ran his fingers through his hair, as if it were purely out of habit and he had no idea that it made his hair settle across his forehead in just the right way.

When his green eyes finally stopped on mine, my stomach swarmed with butterflies. I felt time slow down. I felt the world around me shift and fade out. My heart beat faster, my lungs closed in on me, my mouth dried up like the desert—all of it—because those moments they talk about, where your eyes meet across a room and you just know that that very moment has changed everything you ever knew? Those moments are real. I felt it in those few short seconds he was looking at me. I felt it in the way I could already feel my walls begin to crumble with just that one encounter.

That alone should have had me running for my life in the opposite direction, but by the time he had smiled at me and ducked his head as he lowered into his seat, I had already dreamt up a hundred different lifetimes with him. It didn’t matter who he was. It didn’t matter that I’d never seen him before, that I didn’t know his name, where he came from, how old he was, that I really didn’t know anything about him at all. It didn’t matter that I was all wrong for him, that I was broken.

I wanted him.

I wanted his love; I wanted it desperately.

Two Before

WE WERE WORLDSapart. Lightyears, universes. He was so far out of my reach, there was no way he could ever actually be mine. He was the sun and I was the moon. He was the light, and I was the dark. I knew this, but I didn’t care.

He had that crazy, bleached-blond hair, expensive clothes and clean, white Converses, and that smile. That smile that turned up slightly more on the right side than on the left. I’d noticed because he threw at least a half a dozen of them my way that morning. And I’d even smiled back a few times—okay, every time. And this was something I was immediately suspicious of. Nobody made me smile like that, like I could feel its warmth from the inside out.

Besides, who smiled that much? And was happy about it? Because he did seem happy.Happy, happy, happy.It radiated off of him like sunshine. I’d even caught him smiling at himself a few times. At something he was reading, and again at some joke he must have been telling himself inside his head. Who did that? It wasn’t normal.

And then I found myself smiling again at how weird he was.What the hell was wrong with me?

I forced myself to stay still and stare straight ahead for the rest of the class period. I couldn’t keep looking back there at him; I was being so obvious. But it was torture,pure torture,not to turn around and steal another look at him. It’s like when you walk into a room and someone screams, “Don’t look!”—and it feels literally, physically impossiblenotto look. That’s how it felt keeping still even though I could feel his eyes burning holes into the back of my head.

It excited me, and at the same time, it terrified me.

So much, that when the bell rang, I jumped from my seat and booked it out the door without a backward glance. I’d suck up the courage to talk to him another day, because one more look at him and I’d beg him to let me have his babies someday, or something equally embarrassing. I needed to get it together first.

“Jess!” Sara yelled for me across the grassy quad between school buildings. Sara was one of my best friends, my only girl friend, and while we didn’t know too much about each other beyond the surface of our friendship, choosing not to dig too deep and ask about all the dirty and dark we immediately recognized in each other, we were still super close. As close as two people like us could be. And we had fun together; we knew when to shut up and make life disappear for each other in the moments that we could.

I ran over to her and straight into her arms, squeezing her tight. “Sara. Sara, I’m in love.”

She laughed; it wasn’t the first time I’d said this, or the hundredth. But usually, I was only talking about some dark and brooding, hot and barely famous new band member I’d discovered. Rarely did I swoon over some guy I’d actually come across in real life. But this was different.

“No, I mean it this time.” I pulled away, looking her in the eyes. “I’m dead serious. The hottest guy is in my class, and I mean,the hottest guy I have ever seen in my lifeis in my first period, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to marry him one day.”

She smiled and looped her arm through mine as we walked to second period. It was the only class we had together that semester, which totally sucked. “Hottest guy you’ve ever seen in all your sixteen years, huh?”

“Yeesss,” I whined. “He’s beautiful. Too beautiful. And he smiles way too much, butGod,Sare, I couldn’t stop staring at him.”

She snorted, flipping her wavy blond hair over her shoulder. “So, you’re playing hard to get?”

“From now on I am.”

She laughed again. “Good luck with that.”

“Shut up.” I shoved her halfheartedly.

We walked into photography and found two seats next to each other.

“So, what does he look like?” she asked.

I thought it over for a minute, images of this morning tumbling through my mind: the clear green of his eyes, rimmed by a deep, forest green; the perfect, pouty shape of his lips. “Nope. No way. I’m not even going to try. I won’t do him justice. You’ll just have to see him for yourself.”

“Oh, it’s like that?!” She poked me.