First Love (Said)
It was pouring out, we had lawn tickets to see our favorite band in concert, and we were lost. Ali had run down the street from her house and hopped into my car about an hour ago, and what had then been light, summer drizzle, was now a sudden and torrential downpour. I squinted through the blurry windshield, struggling to see the sign for our exit in the brief moments of clarity provided by my wipers. “Is that…?” Ali asked pointing out of the window at an unclear, red form that had to be the same tractor on the side of the road we’d seen about 20 minutes earlier. “Dammit. I think we just went in a circle.”
The stereo was up so loud that the car was vibrating with bass and Ali turned down the music, still bouncing in her seat, to stare a little harder at the directions we’d printed out. “Exit 17 B,” she said to herself, as we entered a roundabout to get back onto the freeway. “Let’s look on the left. Maybe it’s one of those weird left exits,” she said stretching her eyes, looking suddenly inspired. We tore down the wet asphalt, our wheels making tiny waves, and scanned the other side of the highway.
“Oh!” Ali shouted, stretching her arm in front my face to point through my impossibly blurred window. “Ali, I can’t see!” I said as we swerved a little and she yanked her arm away.
“Iseeit!Iseeit!Iseeit!” she said, bouncing more violently in her seat and staring beyond me. “Where?” I still couldn’t see a thing; the rain was coming down in waves making my windshield resemble the shore at high tide. “There!” she shouted. “You’re going to miss it!” She grabbed the steering wheel, yanked it to the left, and my car glided across 3 lanes in about 5 seconds. “Ali!” I yelled, grabbing the wheel back from her. I navigated the curvy exit in silence waiting for my heart to return to its normal rhythm. “Are you crazy?” I whispered, when I spotted the sign for the venue a few miles later. “Maybe,” she said smiling, looking a little too pleased with herself.
We pulled into the already packed lot, and in the distance we could see the last few people streaming into the open gates of the pavilion. It was still raining so I hopped out and ran to my trunk to look for the ponchos I usually kept back there. I dug through milk crates and shoved around tools, mildewed blankets, and old ratty t-shirts, but I couldn’t find them. “Shit shit shit.” I didn’t have them. This was bad.
I hopped back into the car, completely soaked after being outside for those five minutes and told Ali the bad news. “Ok, well whatever. Let’s just go. They’re going to start playing soon.” I looked at her then, and gave her a quick kiss. I was so happy that I was dating Ali and not some high-maintenance girl who would be worried about getting her hair wet. “Alright. Let’s do this.” I said. We took a deep breath, opened our doors and ran for the gate.
By the time we’d found the stand selling ponchos, we could hear the first few notes rising from the speakers overhead. The line at the stand was enormous and it took us about three seconds to decide we weren’t waiting. The lawn was a sea of ponchos; almost everyone was cloaked in yellow. We were completely drenched by the time we found an empty spot on the lawn, but we didn’t care. She bounced in time with the music and smiled and sang along loudly, while I just listened. The grass was quickly turning to mud, and puddles were appearing out of nowhere. Open cups of beer were watered down by the rain, but that didn’t stop the drunken patrons from slipping and sliding and crashing into everyone around them. We yelled as the song ended and laughed as we surveyed the scene; people falling, laughing, and singing in the rain, all within a few feet of where we stood.
Ali’s hair was ruined. It hung limp and dripping, stuck to her forehead and neck in some places; her frizzy curls were now nothing more than thick, fuzzy waves. Her makeup ran down her face too, eyeliner falling like black tears out of eyes that were too bright with excitement to be crying. She was a complete mess but she didn’t care at all. She saw me watching her and did a quick air guitar impression, swinging her hair, dropping to her knees and jumping back up in an AC/DC-esque flourish. I laughed then, because she was so ridiculous and so beautiful at the same time.
As the next song started, Ali grabbed my hand and just held it as she watched the action on stage. It was a small gesture, but Ali knew how much I loved it. How much it made me feel like I was hers and she was mine. I wiped the rain away from my eyelashes so I could see our hands more clearly, and I smiled at the way her slender fingers curled around my big knuckles. Our hands were made to fit together this way. I stretched my other hand toward her, through the fabric of rain and sound, to tuck a bit of her hair behind the curve of her ear.
She looked at me and smiled again, and in that moment I both realized that I loved her and I said it out loud. “WHAT?” she yelled, looking a little confused, but mostly amused. “Oh shit.” I whispered. I couldn’t have possibly just said that out loud. I shook my head as if to say “nothing”, dropped her hand and looked away. Ali wasn’t giving up that easily though. She squared her shoulders, and turned toward me with the biggest grin on her face. “DID YOU SAY WHAT I THINK YOU JUST SAID?” she shouted in my direction. “WHAT DO YOU THINK I SAID?” I asked her, “AND WHAT ARE YOU SMILING LIKE AN IDIOT ABOUT?” She came really close to me then, close enough to kiss me, and really softly she said, “Jon,” and looked down to grab my hand again. She kissed my cheek. “I love you, too,” she said. “I think I’ve loved you since I was 10.”
By the end of the concert, it was still raining. Her hair hung like a weighted curtain as we walked back to the car and she was shivering since the sun had set, but positively buzzing about the music we’d just heard. As we inched along the crowded ramp and onto the highway, I turned the heat on high for her, and put in a CD with some softer music to attempt to calm the ringing in my ears from being so close to the speaker at the concert.
Ali’s voice got softer and softer as she talked about school and our friends and how awesome the concert was. I contributed my usual “uh-huh’s” and “yeah’s” and, as usual, she carried the conversation all on her own. I peeked over at her as she leaned her seat back and started to yawn. She fell asleep before we’d broken through the concert traffic, her eyes dancing behind her thin eyelids so that I knew she was dreaming.
About a half-hour later, I saw the glow of our city’s lights as we approached a tunnel, signaling that we were almost home. Ali was still sleeping. The golden flash of the tunnel’s lights rhythmically passed over her body revealing tiny pieces of her at brief, brilliant intervals: Hair-face-torso-legs. Hair-face-torso-legs. Even in the harsh, spastic light of the tunnel, she was beautiful. I really did love her. I wondered why it had taken me so long to say it out loud.
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