(A warning: This is long. and really quite sappy. If love stories or the mere thought of fated lovers make you queasy stop reading now.)

The first time I ever really noticed Brent, he was setting up to play music for the evening crowd at the draught house where I worked in college. He had shaggy hair and was walking around the stage barefoot, his shoes placed off to the side of the stage. I watched him, more interested in his process than anything else at the time.

He soon began to play on a biweekly basis and I found myself thinking about him constantly.  I made sure I worked on the nights he was going to perform and I picked the section that would put me front and center to watch him play.

He would sing “Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straights and I would turn my back to him, facing the drink well. I’d singing along, my heart bursting out my chest and before I knew it, I was full on smitten with him. His voice resonated through me. Shook my bones. I drove home every night singing the songs I’d heard come from his mouth that night.

I didn’t know how to approach a boy like Brent. He was cool, quiet, friendly but not flirty. His smile would take up his entire face when he flashed it, and I was blinded by my infatuation for him. I would bring him a glass of water before his set as an excuse to talk to him. He would accept it gratefully but never generously responded to my prolonged presence or nervous small talk.

I once asked him if he knew how to play “Sweet Melissa”, the song my dad named me for and he said he did not. Two weeks later, at his next gig, he played it in its entirety. SURELY this was a sign that he might be interested in me. I got his number from a mutual friend and called him later in the week to thank him for taking the time to learn it. “Hey, no problem” he said, “It’s a good song. I’ve gotta go, we’re playing FIFA World Cup right now.”  I sat there listening to the dial tone completely confused and disappointed.

For a few months I pined for him quietly. I wrote disgustingly sappy poems for my creative writing class about this one boy who I couldn’t get to notice me. If I ran into him at a football game or out with friends, I would just bubble over. It was kind of pathetic, actually.

A few month later I overheard that he had just started dating someone and that they had gotten serious fast. I remember my heart sinking. Brent was the only honest crush I had ever had in college, and I wasn’t ever going to see it turn into anything more. That day, I put my desire for him down and tried to let it go.

A year went by. I started dating a handsome, English major who spent the summers fly fishing in Alaska and wooed me by leaving small love notes on post-its in my Shakespeare Anthology book. I occasionally passed Brent in the hallway. We never stopped walking in opposite directions as we said hello.

He’d taken a hiatus from playing at the draught house, so those hallway passings were all I saw of him for a long time.

Then one day I went to work and the bartender threw a napkin at me. “Brent was in here earlier” he said, “and he wanted me to give you this”  On it he had written:

I came here hoping you would be working. I really hate I missed you.  Brent

What? Brent Jordan? He meant this for me??  Are you sure?

I couldn’t even make sense of it. I tried unsuccessfully to tuck the upturned corners of my smile away for the rest of the day. Where did he come from? Why me? Why now?

Two days later he showed up at the bar and proceeded to drink way too much. That must have taken away his inhibitions because the boy who had never so much as lingered on me for even a second was staring straight at me over the top of his guinness pint. I remember trying so hard not to like the attention. I had a boyfriend, didn’t he have a girlfriend? Why was he coming around after all of this time?

By the end of the week he was there again, this time to tell me that he and his girlfriend had broken up. And maybe, would I possibly want to go out with him, sometime..or whenever. Sorry,I have a boyfriend, I told him. and I was. I was truly truly sorry to be saying those words.

Afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. There had always been something there for him. Something obvious and intense. I couldn’t ignore it.  So against the advice and approval of everyone I knew… my friends, my family, my roommate… I called my boyfriend and ended things abruptly. It was completely out of left field and I broke his heart. But I could deny what I was feeling and for some reason and I must have said this a thousand times to inquiring friends ” I know this doesn’t make any sense… but there is just something about Brent. I have to go on this date. I can’t explain it but everything inside of me is saying to go”

I texted Brent and told him I was single and yes, I’d like to go on a date with him. He texted back with “this Friday then. :)”

“Melissa, what are you doing? This makes no sense! You are making a mistake”  Everyone had every right to tell me those things. I was ending a great relationship with a kind boy for a guy I barely knew anything about. And it was only one date. What if this was just a rebound for his relationship? What if you don’t even end up liking him in the long run?

I didn’t have answers to any of that. All I knew was I had to at least give it a chance. It was the best risk I ever took. You hear people say all of the time “When you know, you just know” and I never could make sense of that until Brent.  I just always knew. I was pulled to him by some magnetic force that I had never before experienced. Even before I loved him, I loved him. There always was a spot inside of me, just waiting to be filled by him. And I’ve never needed anything else since.

M

Read about that very first date here.