January 28, 2018

Eli here. Abigail and I decided to take an impromptu visit to UCLA since we haven't seen it in a while. Besides, Abigail insisted that she needed to get a good "feel" for the campus before starting in the spring. I didn't mind, though. It was nice to revisit the place our relationship began.

Like the best college romances, ours started out as a one-night stand. Unlike most one-night stands, however, this one-night stand was sex-less, so I guess it was more of an adult sleepover. The more I think about it, the lamer it sounds.

Anyways, I was at this bar called Barney's Beanery... a place I came to often during my sophomore year to escape the stress of being a pre-med student and instead of paying attention to my friends debate whether Heather from Econ 305 or Margaret from Expository Writing had bigger boobs, I was watching a girl wildly dancing to "Hot Stuff" towards the back of the bar. This girl was, of course, Abigail and she was clearly drunk of out her mind.

She saw me looking at her and marched herself over towards me in order to confront me about how "staring is rude." I tried apologizing but she was too buzzed to notice and instead she stood up on the table in an attempt to, as I found out later, body slam me. You can imagine what happened when she jumped off the table and found that I was not on the floor to cushion her fall.

Don't worry, I didn't just leave her there. I wasn't that much of an asshole, even back then. I asked the bartender if she came with friends and he shook his head as he gave me a "she's your problem now" look.

With nowhere else to go, I eventually ended up taking her back to my dorm, which was empty for the time being since my roommate hadn't moved in yet. I let her slide off of my back and I dumped her onto the spare bed before immediately crashing on my own. As romantic as it is, carrying another human bridal-style all the way across campus is tiring as fuck.

It was around 7:30 in the morning when I woke up from the sun peeking in through the blinds. As I looked around, I almost shit my pants because I forgot Abigail was still in the room.

As my bowels receded back up my anus, I just sorta stared at her for a moment, hoping she wouldn't suddenly wake up and try to body slam me for being rude again. Her hair was in a messy bun (not the pretty-messy kind but the ugly-messy kind) with bits and pieces of her ratty brown hair sticking out in a bunch of random places. Her arms were sprawled out across the comforter, making her ragged appearance look even more chaotic. Her mouth was parted just slightly, allowing for the muffled sound of her snoring to be heard. I'm not gonna lie: she wasn't a pretty morning person. In fact, she was a pretty damn hideous one, and whether or not I couldn't take my eyes off of her because she was so ugly or because I was falling in love and didn't know it, I couldn't say.

As I continued my scan, I noticed a patch of dried blood on the side of her head that I hadn't the night before. She probably got cut when she fell, or rather, jumped, off of the table. As I finishing up disinfecting the area (and mind you, I am like two inches away from her face right now) Abigail woke up, her calm eyes looking through my petrified ones. Oddly enough, she didn't scream or yell or try to body slam me. She just stared at me for a good seven seconds. (Yes, I counted.) She propped herself up on the bed and took a moment to examine her unfamiliar surroundings.

"Did we have sex?" she eventually asked.

"Um, n-n-no. I just let you sleep here be-because I didn't know where you lived. I swear I didn't—"

"Oh okay." Another pause. "What are you doing now?"

"I'm just cleaning your forehead. You uh...you have a cut."

She laughed. "So let me get this straight: you brought a drunk girl to your bedroom, didn't have sex with her, and woke up early to make sure her cuts didn't get infected?"

"Well—"

"Either you're absolutely stupid, genuinely kind, or gay."

"I'm not gay."

A pause.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Well then. That just leaves stupid or kind. You're probably going to make a great husband one day," she laughed. "Oh boy. Marriage... the one conversation topic that's sure to scare off any guy. Anyways, what's your name Mr. Not-Gay?"

"Eli. And you?"

"Abigail."

I hadn't thought about that story in a while, but maybe I need to more often. Maybe I need to remember how to be the guy who didn't just leave her all alone that night but made sure she felt safe, protected, and cared about. To be completely honest, I'm not sure if I'll succeed in becoming that guy again or not. I don't how I'm going to do it much less where I'm going to start. All I know for sure is that right now, sitting with her at the bar of Barney's Beanery again makes me feel like I'm falling in love all over, and that's enough to make me want to give it a try.

- Eli