My First Love

The morning was the kind that only exists in early September in Boston — crisp at the edges, the sky a clean, uninterrupted blue, the trees on campus just beginning to think about turning gold. It felt like the kind of morning that was supposed to mean something. My name is Daniel Reeves. Twenty-one years old, junior year at Harlow University, and as of that morning, completely and entirely unacquainted with love. Not for lack of opportunity. There had been girls. Brief, uncomplicated things that burned fast and left no real mark. The closest I had come was sophomore year — a girl named Ashley who laughed at everything and made everything feel lighter. But when summer separated us, I realized within two weeks that I had stopped missing her. And that felt like an answer. Real love, I had decided, would not let you stop missing it. I just had not found it yet. --- Peter was waiting outside the registrar's building when I arrived, one earbud in, scrolling his phone like a man with urgent business. He looked up and grinned. "Three minutes late," he said. "It's the first week of semester." "A crime is a crime, Daniel." Peter Calloway — tall, perpetually restless, the kind of person who made friends in elevator rides. We had known each other since freshman orientation and had been inseparable in the uncomplicated way that some friendships just settle into without any real effort. Abdullahi was already inside. Of course he was. Abdullahi Hassan did not believe in arriving anywhere at anything less than fifteen minutes early. He was seated near the far wall, tablet out, completely unbothered by the controlled chaos of first-week registration. He lifted two fingers when he saw us. His version of a warm welcome. Peter and I joined the nearest queue. --- It was somewhere between boredom and mild irritation at how slowly the line was moving that I first saw her. She was standing by the window on the far side of the room. Not doing anything extraordinary. She was not laughing or performing for anyone. She was simply standing with a manila folder held loosely against her chest, looking out the window with a quiet, faraway expression — like her mind had stepped outside while her body waited in line. She wore a pale blue sweater and dark jeans, her dark hair pulled back with a few strands loose around her face. She had the kind of face that did not hit you immediately. It crept up on you. And then it stayed. I realized after a moment that I had completely stopped paying attention to the queue. "You're staring," Peter said beside me, eyes still on his phone. "I'm observing." "You haven't moved in forty seconds. That's staring." He glanced up, followed my line of sight, and the corner of his mouth lifted. "Go talk to her." "We're in the middle of registration." "We're in the middle of a building where she also exists. That's all you need." I looked back at the queue. Then, despite myself, back at the window. She had shifted slightly, tucking the folder under her arm, and for one brief second her eyes moved across the room — and I looked away fast, like I had been caught doing something embarrassing. Because I had. --- I did not speak to her that day. I told myself the moment was never right. Too crowded. Too rushed. I am not the kind of person who approaches strangers without reason. I built a convincing case and mostly believed it. The honest version was simpler: she made me nervous. Which was a strange thing to admit about someone whose name I did not even know. Peter thought it was hilarious. "Nervous," he said over lunch, drawing the word out slowly, like he was tasting it. "You. Nervous." "I wasn't nervous." "You looked away so fast I thought you pulled something." Abdullahi looked up from his food briefly. "Did you get her name?" "No." He held my gaze for one flat second. "Then go back tomorrow," he said, and returned to eating. Simple. Logical. Utterly Abdullahi. --- That night I sat at my desk in my apartment and did not study. I kept thinking about the way she had stood by that window. Still and unbothered, like the noise of the room had nothing to do with her. There was something in it that I could not quite name — a quality of being completely present inside herself while the world moved around her. I wanted to know what she had been looking at outside that window. I wanted to know her name. I picked up my pen and opened my notebook to a blank page. I'm not sure what I intended to write. What ended up on the page were just two words. *Then tomorrow.* Outside, Boston hummed quietly into evening. Somewhere down the street, music drifted from an open window. The semester was just beginning, carrying with it that particular feeling — the one that arrives every September without fail — that something is about to change. I lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow.