It started on the second day of college.
But to talk about the second day of college, I need to talk about the first. My first 24 hours at school I spent with my roommate and some girls I met at orientation. They are nice, and I am still friends with them now. However, even though we got along, I knew we would never be the best of friends.
So I set out to find someone I could click with. At four in the afternoon, on the second day of college, I was sitting in my bed alone, scrolling through my phone. I looked through a group chat for the very building I was living in and stumbled across a boy I had already spoken to a couple of times over the summer.
I thought, based on a video he had posted over the summer, that we might have had similar music taste. So I texted him.
"Hey, I don't have any friends here, and you seem cool. Wanna hang out?" Send text.
"Yeah sure, I gotta do some music stuff, so want to meet in like 15 minutes?" the stranger replied.
I agreed to meet him at his room in fifteen minutes. We lived in the same building, so I traveled four floors down, where I saw a six foot four man in front of the room where I was supposed to meet this stranger.
"Josh?" I asked hesitantly, not even 100 percent certain that was the name of the person I came to meet. It was, in fact, Josh, but I was not mentally prepared to hang out with a person about a foot taller than myself.
I immediately informed him of my fake discomfort. "You're too tall, we can't be friends," I told him, jokingly. But I turned out to be right. Josh and I could not be friends for very long.
Josh cracked the tiniest smile and said "You're right," and turned to go back inside his room. We shared a laugh, the first of many, and agreed that we should try to be friends anyway. So we headed out to explore our new campus together.
Josh and I talked for hours. We had a lot in common. We grew up only an hour away from each other, we were both Jewish, and I was right--we did share similar music taste. Later that day, I would sit on his bedroom floor and listen to My Chemical Romance's "Welcome to the Black Parade," like I was 13 again. We talked about everything, and we shared a similar sense of humor. Josh was someone I had clicked with instantly, and I was grateful to have my first close friend in college.
We had to split off for our respective floor meetings but agreed to meet up later. Now might be a good time to mention that I was in no way looking for a relationship--in fact, I was trying to avoid one.
College was supposed to be the time for me to focus on myself. And I was not flirting with Josh, and he was not flirting with me, so I was under the impression that we were simply two people who clicked as good friends.
Later on, Josh and I met again in the lobby of our building and headed out to get some dinner. We settled on a pizza place in front of our building. Once inside, I picked up a menu.
Josh looked at me, extremely perplexed. "Why are you looking at the menu?"
"There's always something great hidden on these, trust me." My eyes scanned the menu for a minute. "Pizza fries!" I exclaimed.
Josh's eyes lit up with excitement for this newfound discovery. I was just excited that I had just proven myself right about always finding something great on the menu. We ordered some slices, and our pizza fries, which were delicious, by the way. We sat down at a table and quizzed each other on music.
"Favorite Beatles album?" he asked me.
"Abbey Road. Favorite Beatles song?" I replied.
We continued for 45 minutes before Josh asked if I wanted to head to his room and keep hanging out up there. I agreed.
Upstairs, Josh and I sat next to each other, watching youtube videos, taking breaks to talk and laugh about them. At some point, his arm was around me, and I thought nothing of it. I looked down at my phone for a brief moment, and when I looked back up, Josh's face was closer to mine than I had expected.
He was staring at me, just a second too long. I went to ask what was wrong, but before I could even open my mouth, his lips were on mine.
Well, I was not expecting THAT, I thought to myself. Just as quickly as he kissed me, he stopped.
"Thanks," Josh said.
"Thanks?" I replied. I still had not processed what had just happened. I thought everything was platonic, I thought we were on the same page, I thought even if we were subconsciously flirting we would not end up in this situation. But just as I had impulsively texted Josh, he had impulsively kissed me.
So I went with the situation. Josh was attractive and we had already developed a great rapport in the six hours we knew each other. Josh and I continued talking, talking for so long, in fact, we did not stop until 4 a.m. We had spent twelve hours together, talking until we talked ourselves to sleep.
Eight months since that day, Josh and I still spend hours talking. He is probably the only person who could listen to me ramble nonstop about history for an hour. And my eyes still light up when I hear him talk about audio engineering because he is so passionate about it.
I could go on and on about everything that brought Josh and me together, but what it all it comes down to is that despite how much work relationships can be, being happy together feels effortless.
And yeah, I was apprehensive about dating in college, and I refused to call Josh my boyfriend for some time. In reality, I was just afraid of losing my independence and stunting my personal growth in college. But that's the beautiful thing about my relationship with Josh: over the past eight months, we have both gone through so much as individuals, and we have grown together.
And Josh and I bring out the best in each other. Not only do I love him, but I love the person I am becoming alongside him. So, thanks, pizza fries. I don't think Josh would have kissed me without them.