I feel like the average love story nowadays has to be extraordinary. Grand gestures are easy to come by and #promposal is constantly trending between March and May to boast the elaborate way someone loves them. These people, the classic romantics who watch Audrey Hepburn movies on Netflix and memorize romantic poems, are annoying. Even more annoying are the tragic romantics, the ones who pine after someone completely unattainable and are crushed when the objects of their affection don’t love them back. Granted, I am a realist (read pessimist according to my older sister who yells it, often followed by long strings of expletives, after we get in fights about money) and the type of person who nauseates at the sugary sweet expectations of teenage romance.
I am telling you this because I want to make something perfectly clear, I know how cliche romance is. I absolutely abhor it, but my romance wasn’t one of epic proportions. It doesn’t deserve a poem or painting, it shouldn’t be immortalized in any way. It lasted 7 hours, and there is no chance that I will ever see him again. But still, he was my first love which has to count for something.
I met Christian when I hit him with my car. No joke, he was jay-walking and I was more focused on skipping ahead to my favorite track on Vampire Weekend’s first album then, you know, looking. To be fair, I was going about 7 miles per hour because I hadn’t left my pathetically small street in the pathetically small suburb I live in and there are always hordes of children playing some weird game that could pass as a Satanic cult ritual. There are masks and sticks, I kid you not. Suddenly, I felt a thump on the hood of my car.
“Jesus Christ!” I screamed ( a fact I regretted deeply when he introduced himself as Christian). I opened my door ferociously, desperately going through all of the people I could call if I, gulp, killed a person. I tried to help him up, but he just laughed a little bit.
“I’m fine!” He drawled a little bit. I think that is when I fell in love with him, but I could fall in love with anyone with that voice.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, taking out one of his earbuds. His screen flashed in my direction and I saw that he was listening to my favorite Vampire Weekend song, which was blaring from my then open car. He gave a little smile and tapped the remaining earbud.
“I love this song!” He said and I noticed a tiny scar on his too thin cheek. That was when I realized that his entire body was like a stick, 5 foot 11 and probably 120 pounds. I noticed his smile start to wobble as he retched forward. I tried to dodge it, but it was no use.
“Oh crap!” He said after he unfurled. His face was pale. “Now I’m the one who’s sorry!”
“I’m fine,” I protested, openly flirting with him, trying to gauge his reaction.
He smiled again until I made my next request. “I’m going to drive you to the hospital.”
“No!” he protested a little too quickly.
“Nope,” I said. I’d like to pretend that it was all because I wanted to save his life or whatever, but honestly? I didn’t want our interaction to end and there was no reason for it to go on.
“There is obviously something wrong,” I elaborated, ” AND my insurance is going to spike if you end up having, like, a broken ankle that you ignore for months and ends up having to be amputated. So please go with me to the hospital so I don’t have to explain to my parents why they have to pay $600 dollars a month for our insurance because I hit a guy with our car and he wouldn’t go to the hospital with me!”
He gives a little smile. “I definitely won’t die because you hit me with your car.”
“Please?” I asked again.
“No…” he said, pausing, “But, I will get coffee with you to prove the absence of life altering injuries caused by the collision between your car and my body.” He blushed a little bit as he waited for me to answer.
“Uh, yeah! Sure. I can, uh, give you a ride.”
So, he got in my car and we turned the Vampire Weekend all the way up as we drove slowly ( because another accident would not be welcome) to my favorite coffee place on Main Street. We ordered lattes and he introduced himself.
“I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Christian.”
“Huh, I’ve just been referring to you as Guy-I-Almost-Killed in my head.” I replied with a smile. Then, after a beat, “I’m Eli.”
“Well, hey,” he said, stirring his coffee.
We drank in silence for a couple of seconds until he said, “So, Vampire Weekend?”
“Oh yeah, I love them.”
“They’re pretty good!” He agreed and we launched into discussion over the pros and cons of various indie pop bands. I checked my watch and realized that it was almost an hour since I hit him and remembered the previously forgotten reason I left my house in the first place.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m going to be a little bit forward. You are awesome and I am having an awesome time, but we finished our coffees and I’m pretty sure that barista is going to kill us. Also, I’m supposed to go buy groceries and my mother is going to be home in like,” I checked my watch again, ” 30 minutes and she’s going to be really upset if I skipped the one errand she’s given me this week. But, maybe we can trade numbers and we can hang out sometime?”
He nodded, and entered my number in his phone.
“I’ll call you,” he told me.
“Can I drop you off anywhere?” I asked, still a little bit worriedd for his health.
“That’s fine,” he said, “I’m just going to walk.”
“Okay,” I replied, “So, I’ll talk to you later?”
“Definitely,” he said.
I left the cafe smiling and the entire time I was buying my groceries, I hummed the song we were listening to. I went home and made dinner while texting with Christian and felt myself falling uncontrollably in love with him. This was four and a half hours into our romance.
Five hours in, my phone rang. I checked the screen and saw it was him, so I did that cheesy thing where I waited three rings before picking up.
“Hey,” I said, expecting to hear his southern drawl ‘hey’ back.
“Excuse me sir, are you Eli?” The voice on the other end asked. It was not Christian.
“Uh, yeah,” I replied, “Who is this?”
“Christian Jones is in the hospital and you were his most recent contact on his phone. normally, we call a parent, but he doesn’t appear to have their cell phone numbers. He is unconscious in the ambulance now. “
I listened stunned and took down the hospital information.
“Mom!” I called to her, “I have to, uh, run an errand!”
Five hours twenty three minutes in, I arrived in his hospital room.
He smiled his crooked smile at me, but it was more labored then before.
“I’m fine,” he said, with a hint of irony.
“What happened?” I asked, ignoring his attempt at a joke. “Are you okay?’
“Not really,’ he replied, trailing off.
“Oh my God! Is this from when I hit you with my car? I told you we should have gone to the hospital!”
“Eli,” he said, trying to calm me down.
“Christian! What happened? I am so sorry.”
“Eli…” he trailed off again, probably expecting me to resume my frantic pacing and rapid fire condolences. When I didn’t he continued, “I have stage IV brain cancer, and I am definitely not going to live. When they told me I was terminal four weeks ago, I decided to travel. I’m from South Carolina, and I’ve been driving up the East Coast. I only made it to here, though.”
I looked at him in disbelief. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope,” he replied, his face obviously in pain. “And I know that you don’t have to be here, but will you stay, please?”
I nodded and walked over by the side of his bed and pulled up the tragically uncomfortable hospital chair and held his hand and talked to him. He dictated a letter to his parents and thanked me profusely. In retrospect, I should have thanked him. I know how hard it must have been and he put on a brave face.
I paged the nurse when he needed oxygen, when his words became slurred, when he finally closed his eyes. It felt surreal. I was convinced that it was a joke even though I held his lifeless hand, heard his EKG machine flatline. It couldn’t be happening! This was a guy who I could see a future with and he was dead. He is dead. And I’m still trying to move past it, six months later.
So, even though we were never “official” and he never met my parents, even though there were no proms or awkward double dates, he was my first love.
It still feels surreal.