Years later, sitting on a twin bed at Westwood College, I shared this story with my roommate. Kira was from Boston; sharp-witted and stunning, and she had rolled her eyes. “They are the absolute worst.” I thought she meant guys like Adam, but she shook her head. “No, silly. There’s an Adam on every corner. I mean girls like Julia.”
I didn’t tell Kira the rest of the story. That I had spent all of July and part of August drifting through town like a leaf on the wind. Every time I thought it was over, Julia would appear, and we would spend the afternoon together, sipping iced tea, swinging on the old tire swing in the park. One day we went to the town pool, another we biked down to the old lake and tossed rocks into the water. Anyone watching would have assumed we were just good friends, passing the long summer days together. They didn’t see what happened when no one was around. Before Julia left for her family trip in mid-August, she kissed me deeply and said I was the most beautiful girl she had ever been with.
In the fall, she started dating the captain of the soccer team, a match that felt predictable and unsatisfying. I didn’t take it well; Adam’s sedan wasn’t the last backseat I found myself in, and his fuzzy blankets weren’t the only ones I shared. By the time Julia and her jock boyfriend won homecoming queen and king that spring (she wore a sparkly red gown with a thigh-high slit) I had already built a bit of a reputation.
Julia graduated and moved to a college upstate. That summer, before my junior year, I worked at a summer camp by the lake, where I met a cute dance instructor. (Her name was Clara, not Ethan.) Clara was sweet, with soft auburn hair and dimples that showed when she smiled. We had three weeks of innocent, completely consensual fun. On the last day, she got teary-eyed and told me I was the first girl she’d ever been with. I lied and told her the same.
After college, I followed the well-trodden path of many girls from New Jersey and moved into a small one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with a roommate I found on Craigslist. When she decided three years later that the city life was too much and moved out, I opted to keep the apartment on my own.
The girls I met on dating apps liked to reminisce about their pasts high school, when the biggest concerns were midterms and what to wear in the morning. Or college, when you could drink too much, pass out, and stumble into class the next day without anyone batting an eyelash. They complained about the harsh realities of the job market and high-maintenance women with impossible expectations. When they asked about my past, I would always reply, “Small town New Jersey,” as if that said everything. Maybe it did.
All I knew was that I was happy to be grown up, happy to no longer be a lost teenager chasing any adventure that came my way. You couldn’t pay me enough to be 14 again.
Adam eventually became a quiet celebrity, gaining a large following for his woodworking tutorials on YouTube. The last video I saw had over a million views.
Julia married a banker, and the last I heard, she was living in a large white house in the suburbs with two toddlers and a golden retriever. I don’t know if that was the life she wanted. Sometimes, late at night, when I can’t sleep, I like to imagine that it wasn’t—that deep down, she still thinks of me as the one that got away.
Your past is a funny thing. It mostly fades, drifting farther and farther away like the entrance to a tunnel you’re driving through, until it’s barely a memory. But occasionally, something stubborn and sharp sticks with you, like a barnacle clinging to a boat, and it can take years to shake it off.
On the final night of my honeymoon in Mexico, I was sipping champagne by the beach when my beautiful new wife turned to me and asked, “Tell me your deepest, darkest secret.”
I paused, listening to the soft rhythm of the waves. There were plenty of embarrassing moments from my younger years I could share, but instead, I pushed my hair out of my face and said, “It took me twenty years to figure out what kind of person I want to be.”
Caitlin raised an eyebrow, clearly expecting something else.
“And what kind is that?” she asked.
“Someone worthy of love,” I answered.
She kissed me then, and it wasn’t anything like the feeling of being 14 in the backseat of a car, or the taste of iced tea on a warm summer day. It wasn’t like those times in the woods at camp, with the smell of bug spray on everyone’s skin. It wasn’t like the dorms in college or the damp, musky air at that bar in the city. It wasn’t like any of those moments.
This time, this kiss, was like coming home.