Part 2: Summer

The school year came to a close a few weeks after Prom, and Chantal graduated high school, unsure of where she wanted to go to college. Her Grad party came, and went long into the night, for us kids anyway, sitting around the bonfire in shorts and sweatshirts in proper Michigan fashion. Chantal and I had agreed to just kind of keep things low key, and sat next to each other around the fire, snuck in a held hand here or there, that kind of thing. For her actual grad party she had a very T-Swift outfit, white spaghetti strap dress and cowboy boots with pony tail, and she had changed into shorts and one of my sweatshirts I had left over at her place. (Pretty explicitly for that purpose, It's an awesome feeling as a 16 year old to see a really hot girl wearing your hoodie) Around 1 when everyone was getting in their cars to leave, she came out with me to mine, and I held back a bit as everyone else headed down her ¾ mile driveway. We sat on the hood of my car for a bit, staring at the stars, and, total teenage romance move, I turned my head towards her, she turned towards me, hair falling across her face. I moved to brush it away and we kissed for the first time. I had a girlfriend before Chantal, and she was great, at first, but a terrible kisser, and a psycho too. Chantal was not a psycho, and didn't attempt to separate my lips from my face. We broke apart slowly, and kind of just looked at each other. I walked her back to her house and finally drove home, only to lay in bed pretty much until the sun came up just thinking about that moment in the field. That was pretty much our pattern for summer, bonfires, movies, cutesy picnic dates in a state park like an hour away, more than a few hours in the mall, just watching her try on outfits for her modeling gig, which I was totally fine with. She tried to teach me how to ride a horse, something that just never quite got the hang of. I like animals, a lot, but me and horses just don't gel. As far as teenagers go we fooled around a bit, but not as much as teenage OftenBen would have liked, or as far. But the real turn on for me was just how close we were, how effortless it all seemed. One day sticks in my mind, we had spent the better part of the afternoon at the state park, swam a bit, and had just laid on the small beach listening to the wind and the waves. She was having a bonfire that night so we got back and put the cases of pop cooling, ran into town for snacks, smores stuff, hamburger, and basically just felt like adults, doing all of this prep to have a few friends around. And she had only invited, without my knowing, only couples and one 'basically couple' like us, making it a 10 person, 5 couple thing. Honestly, I think that night I felt what being married is like. Sitting around a fire cracking bad jokes, eating smores and occasionally tickling your SO because hormones. People throw around the words 'contentment' and 'euphoria' but they can't feel better than I did that night. For once in my life, I felt like I had done everything right, that this is how things should be, as easy as breathing. We had a few more nights like this, and if my cardinal sin of the first post was not putting my arm around her in a pic, my major fault here, was never once asking her to be my girlfriend. If I had to guess, I would assume that I was afraid of messing up a good thing, that I just wanted to take that one feeling and keep it going for as long as I could. The thing too, about my time with Chantal, is that we never really fought. About anything. One of us would make a suggestion, we'd evaluate, and proceed. A conversation would go something like Me: “I'm working Saturday morning, I get off at 11, how does the lake sound?” Her: “Awesome! I'll pack lunch.” or Her: “So I'm going to Cincinnati for a horse show this week, we'll have to postpone dinner.” Me: “Ok, I'll move the reservation to Saturday, so you can get take a day to get the girls settled in and get some sleep.” We never got into any disagreement more serious than “Are you sure you want Salt & Vinegar chips?” I look at this period of my life as a very important lesson, after all, everyone has something they can teach you, and Chantal taught me how to be a good boyfriend, which I think is something a lot of guys tell themselves, but few can actually put words to it, few can really name things that they would do for their SO just because they enjoy doing it. Even looking back on it, I will forever reference the summer of 2009 as my explanation for why people say that high school is some of the best years of your life. It wasn't, but it felt like it was at the time.

I'm going into class in a bit, I may write Part 3 in class, depending of my professors energy level, if I actually need to take notes or not.