After Germany

A/N: This is something of an experiment for me, as you will see in later chapters. There aren\'t actually really chapters, more like four larger sections. But, for length\'s sake, I am splitting up the longer sections. So, please, please review--let me know if you have suggestions, or that you like it, or that you think it just stinks. And, for the record, I do reserve all rights on this original piece of fiction. Love and kisses!

Dane DeFryske

Part One: I Should Have Seen It Coming

When he swept me into his arms, under the overhang of the gas station, to do a little dance to “Material Girl” playing from the speakers above us, I knew I was in love. He was a terrible dancer; all his movements exaggerated to the point of being absurd, and other drivers and passengers and customers were all staring at us, this crazy pair laughing and dancing—or maybe having seizures in tandem—like they wondered if they should be looking for the men armed with white jackets who must be looking for us. And I didn’t care that we were acting completely stupid in public, so happy just that his hand was on my waist, the other in my own, and he was smiling at me like I mattered.

I should have seen it coming. You see, it’s like this: he’s a bowler. Not exactly a stereotypically sexy sport, right? But every time he approached the lane, he moved with a simple confidence that comes from expertise. He may have swaggered once or twice on his way, but that was just to elicit a laugh; it really seemed he didn’t have any arrogance in his talent. And every time, he did this little hop afterward to help him keep his balance, and there was a little exhalation into my heart, which everyone but me saw as swelling my heart like a balloon. Or maybe it was the dippy grin on my face.

Out friends had been hinting at it for a while. A long while. For example: I, being the obnoxious snot that I am, would start another tickle war. Tommy was always a willing victim, though. I don’t know which of us was more embarrassed when our friend Luke said we were acting just like middle schoolers with a crush. In my defense, though, I did have about as much dating experience as your average middle schooler. Or sometimes he would snitch my keys, or my book, of whatever I had in my hand, holding it high above my head. What’s a girl to do?

I did what any intelligent young woman would do: I gave him a titty twister. I had deadly aim from lots of practice, but I never pinched hard. I’m not completely heartless, after all. He yelped, mostly faking it, and swooped down, throwing one arm around my middle and the other under my knee, scooping me up over his shoulder, where I would hang, laughing and gasping for breath, half-heartedly slapping his back and begging him to put me down. And this kind of thing had been happening for--god, it\'s embarrassing now, to think I never knew--a few months.

So, I should have realized I was falling in love with him. But maybe, judging from the look in his eyes, as if he were just as surprised as I was, there under the overhang, the rain thumping steadily all around us, but not on us, as if God Himself saw something wonderful here that nothing could dampen.

He didn’t ask me to be his girlfriend then. He never had the words, I think. He never did, actually. I think it was better that way. It’s like in second grade, when you ask someone if they’ll be your best friend on the first day of school, and that makes it official and forever. But I was in college now, and couldn’t remember that girl’s last name. These days, I just bumped into people until it became habit, and gradually, I just knew that so-and-so was my friend because we had shared so many jokes and experiences and meals—but no explicit words. And these friendships went deeper, somehow, simply because the words had never been necessary. That’s how it always was with Tommy, only bigger, suffusing my entire self, and even zipping over to him, too, every time we touched.

So, after our little road trip to the gas station—what had we gone to get?—our friendship was something more in a very quiet way. And even though we didn’t say anything to our friends, they knew. After all, they really had seen it coming.

And just as we had become something a little more than friends gradually, we became a lot more than friends, more even than just lovers, very gradually:over the year, over the summer. And suddenly it was fall again, and I was afraid. He was going to study abroad in Germany second semester, and he had arranged an internship for the summer there, too. I wouldn’t see him for seven months. By the time he got back to the States, I would have started my senior year, and he would be going to grad school. I was so proud of him, getting his masters in secondary education. He wanted to teach history back in his hometown eventually. And I was terrified that we would drift apart after winter break. That’s what I got for loving a man who lived halfway across the country part of the year. After college stopped gluing us together, we wouldn’t spend the kind of time together that we were now. I didn’t want to forget Tommy’s last name like I had forgotten the name of my friend from second grade.

As always, though, he intercepted my brainwaves, internalized them. But this time, he interpreted incorrectly.

“You know it’s okay if you don’t love me forever, right Lissy?” he said in bed one night. He had a room in a dorm across campus, but mine was closer to the dining hall and academic buildings. It was the given, but not actual reason he stayed nearly every night in my single. Whatever the real reason, I was grateful. I missed him during the day, while we were both in class and working, and I was so happy to get to sleep in his warmth, to smell him first thing in the morning. At this moment, though, I was not so happy.

“Excuse me?” I was completely taken aback and drew away from him a little. Anger heated my cheeks. Was he accusing me of not loving him enough? Was he making this into some kind of contest, “Who can love better?”

“No, no, don’t get mad at me. I just mean, I’m going to be gone for a long time. And—and I don’t want you to feel obligated—I mean, if time changes the way you feel, yeah. If time changes the way you feel, that’s okay. I love you; you know that. But that doesn’t mean I think you belong to me, or anything, just that you, like, share yourself with me or something. So you don’t have to be in love with me forever, if you don’t want to.”

I propped myself up one forearm, the tension it took to hold my weight up and away from him nothing compared to the tension within me.

“What are you saying, exactly?” I took a deep breath. “Are you saying that the way you feel about me is changing?”

Sympathy rushed into his eyes, causing tears to rush into mine. But he pulled me immediately close to him, enclosing me in his arms, one bulkier than the other from hours of bowling practice.

“I change every day; the way I feel about you changes too. God, Lissy, of course I love you. More every day. So don’t be dumb.”

I pressed my face into that spot between his chest, his neck, and his shoulder. I never knew before that moment that you can relief so much you can’t breath.

“If you still love me after Germany. Marry me then, if you still love me after Germany.”

I pulled away from him again, this time to read his eyes, asking in our silent way if he meant it, telling him with my lips on his that I would have married him yesterday if he had asked. Only a year!

Minutes and hours flew stealthily by, hiding in the shadows of class work, exams, jobs, club meetings, bowling, and, yes, I’ll admit it, loving. Time conspired behind our backs, escaping us long before we were ready to let each other go. Christmas was surprisingly wonderful—we spent it with my family, and they didn’t embarrass me as much as I had feared they would. Yet there was an undertow of desperation to the festivities. New Year’s was bittersweet, since Tommy was leaving in just a few days. The ring helped soothe, at least. He had presented it at Christmas, as well as a half-joking subscription to a bridal magazine. It was very simple, just a diamond on a gold band, but it was perfect. He said it had been his grandmother’s. I was pretty shocked when he told me that—his grandmother was still alive! But he rushed to assure me that she had really wanted me to have it. I was touched that she would be so generous, and that Tommy had asked his granny for advice. It really made me feel that he was making me part of his family. It was as if the ring were a tangible bond between us—as long as I had the ring, I was secure in his love.

I clutched my fist around it as we waited for his plane. I restrained myself from praying that the flight would be cancelled—this semester abroad was so important to him, and it was selfish of me to want him to stay. I couldn’t help the feeling, but I could at least refrain from actively wishing something would happen to prevent his departure.

I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry when he boarded—so I had gushed like a geyser at Yellowstone pretty much all the way to the airport. I think he believed me when I said I was more than okay with him going, that I would miss him, but that I wanted him to go. He never had to know it was a lie.

They called him to board, and we hugged so hard for one last long moment before he had to turn away. I spent that time trying to memorize exactly how he felt against me, and I knew he smelled my hair for the same reason.

“You won’t forget my last name now, will you?” he teased gently, smiling.

“Hell no,” I said, all forced bravado. “It’s gonna be mine before we know it.”

“You know, right? Now, and after Germany, and forever,” he vowed.

“Now, and after Germany, and forever.”

And then he walked away from me.