Step Two: Comfort

I sat there in the grass somewhere near her house with dozens of golden honeysuckles laying listless around me, laughing my head off as she simultaneously chased her dog around the patch of grass and did some kind of contemporary rain dance.

And I can't help but wonder how this had happened.

Not how we had gotten together, but why it had taken us so long to do so.

It turns out only a handful of people take the subway home from our school. Everyone else lives either too far and takes the schoolbus or they live so close they just walk or bike it home.

I don't remember how, but she found out. The next day at a school play during activity hour, she leaned over a couple of students to ask me to walk to the subway station with her.

I'd thought it strange at the time. We barely knew each other, yet here she was asking me to accompany her on a ten-minute walk to the station. Wouldn't it have been more comfortable for both of us just to walk separately? I mean, we barely knew each other.

The last time I'd had anything close to a conversation with her was when we had been introduced in the cafeteria. Ever since then, I'd kind of avoided both her and the friend that introduced us. They tended to talk between them, seemingly without room for me in their conversation, so I had resorted to fleeing to the student lounge to "do homework" most of my lunchtimes with a sandwich I bought from the cafeteria.

It's hard to deal with the fact that your two first --and at that point only-- preferred to spend time with each other rather than with you.

But that's when we started to take the subway together.

And we talked. And we talked, and we talked. And during those ten minutes a day, we had gotten to know each other quite well over the past couple of months.

She had an older sister, a younger brother, over-protective parents, and a leige of rumors flying around about her and some boy.

I also found out that she is the sweetest, most innocent and trustworthy person I've ever met. She's even funny and talkative.

Maybe it's because by nature I'm a quiet person, but I've always had a predilection for talkative people, no matter how anyone others found them.

So we had gotten close. Close enough to meet outside of school frequently and have occassional sleepovers.

"Hey Ana," she wheezed, breathless from leaping around, "I think we should go in."

"Why?" I groaned teasingly. "It's so nice outside."

"But I'm starving," she laughed. "My mom promised to make something good for dinner, so let's hurry up and go in. Besides, don't tell me you're not hungry either." She put her hands on her hips in a reprimanding way, but I could see the smile twitching on her lips.

"NOOoo," I wailed defiantly, but eventually I cracked. "Fine, fine, let's hurry up and get our asses in," I said laughing, and she broke out in laughter, too.

I'd always thought people were ugly when they smile too hard. They bare their teeth, crinkle their eyes, distorting ever feature in their face. If I scrutinized even the most prettiest girl's smile for long enough, I could always find a little ugly in there.

Not with Cathy, though. When she smiled, it was beautiful.

We were close. We were comfortable.

Too comfortable? Maybe that's what wrenched us apart.