a walk to remember

It always started with waiting for the lights to go out in the kitchen. The stillness of the air after my father’s footsteps drifted towards the bedroom. I would give it an extra 5 minutes just to be sure before I make my approach from my above-the-garage bedroom. I was already dressed, jeans and a t-shirt I knew my girlfriend liked but were still able to get sweaty, bloody, and dirty in that wouldn’t make me upset by the time the morning sun came up.

I begin my descent down the stairs towards the kitchen and start my escape through the door leading towards the garage. Once in the garage, I go towards the window, knowing the actual garage door would be too loud for a sneaky escape. I open the dusty window blind and gently lift the hardly ever-used window as gracefully as a bull in a china shop *could*. The sweat has already begun to flow down my back, but with the window open, I feel the cool night air and begin working the screen, and by working, I mean pushing it to the ground. I then leaped out head first, trying to hold myself up as I crawled until I was entirely outside. Now the real journey has begun.

Two and a half miles to her house, one neighborhood, and more than a mile of straight road with the chance of running into cops, thorn bushes, or worse, getting the text… I’m pretty tired; maybe another night. Luckily I was determined, and now on my journey, the neighborhood I was walking in was pretty quiet and a kid at midnight walking around wasn’t as suspicious as when I hit the main road. However, the main road had obstacles, thorn bushes, high grass, and ditches. I never intended to come away spotless but the following day, still bleeding scratches on my body were always a painful reminder of what young love would make someone do.

Teeing this story up for a natural transition to the person I am seeing. She’s beyond beautiful, way out of my league type looking, the kind that makes you think a five-mile walk in the dark is the least you can do to keep this relationship afloat. However, almost to make it worse for the two dating, the obvious ten is that she’s funny, intelligent, and caring. The kind of person you can talk to for hours about anything and feel like you could die there happy or laugh so hard about the darkest things thinking the two of you are the funniest evil shits in the world.

It wasn’t fair, so walking nearly a 10k to show your worth was my way of making up for it.

Now that I’m on the main road, it's a mixture of a jog, walk, and hide-and-go-seek with every headlight in case it’s the cops. I would be joking if this walk didn’t feel like diffusing a bomb, making 30 minutes into hours of anticipation. Getting closer to her neighborhood, the thornbushes and hitting the ground like a bomb would blow up in my face had left me bloody and bruised, but I was ready to see her.

The last obstacle is at hand, jump the chicken wire (of course, she lives in a gated community) to the neighborhood and evade the security. I make my way over the fence, cutting myself on the way up, deeper than the usual thorn bush cuts, but hopefully, she will think it makes me more attractive. As I walk in the neighborhood, the nerves kick in that are expected for the most part. I think of her and what we usually do on these late-night adventures. Our sneaking around the golf course, talking while staring at the night sky, and sneaking into her strict parent's basement with the copious amounts of animal heads her dad killed, wondering if I would find myself up there.

I hear the faint footsteps coming down the road, and I see her, and I know as dumb as everything I did to make it here, she made it worth it. And eventually, the walk back home before school started, in about 5 hours.