There are countless ways to describe love.
Powerful. Passionate. Consuming. Painful.
People spend years trying to define it, as if giving something a name makes it easier to understand. I've never been particularly good at understanding things I can't control, and love has always seemed like the ultimate loss of control.
At the time, I didn't know much about it.
I thought love was something that happened gradually. Something you could recognize before it happened. Something you could prepare yourself for.
I was wrong. But I didn't know that yet.
At the time, I was seventeen, standing at the beginning of my senior year and convinced that nothing particularly interesting was going to happen. That was probably my first mistake.
High school had never been especially remarkable for me. Freshman year was mostly an exercise in survival—learning new hallways, new teachers, new expectations, and pretending I wasn't overwhelmed by any of it. Sophomore year was quieter. That was the year I met the people who would eventually become my closest friends.
It happened at prom. Which, admittedly, is not where I'd expect to meet anyone important.
I was wearing a long black strapless dress covered in sequins and a pair of heels I'd already begun regretting. Across the gym, someone had decided that forming a dance circle was the best possible use of a Friday night.
A group of girls occupied the center, dancing without the slightest concern for who was watching. A few guys stood around them, taking turns attempting increasingly unnecessary stunts.
One of them did a backflip. The crowd erupted. I watched him land, stumble, recover, and immediately raise his arms like he'd just won an Olympic medal.
I looked away.
That's when I noticed them. Three people sitting against the far wall, completely detached from the chaos. One girl. Two guys.
The girl was the first thing I noticed. She wore a short blue dress with chunky silver heels, and her short, wavy brown hair rested just above her shoulders. There was something soft about her expression, even from across the room.
The guy sitting beside her looked like the type who apologized when someone else bumped into him. Dark green suit. Black bow tie. Doc Martens. Messy black hair.
The other guy looked like he'd probably be the reason someone needed an apology in the first place. White button-up. Black pants. Black Converse. Blonde mullet. His shirt was partially unbuttoned, and he wore the kind of expression that suggested he was permanently amused by everyone around him.
Then he looked at me. I looked back. He didn't look away and neither did I. I wasn't sure why. Eventually, the girl noticed where he was looking. She said something to him, then stood and walked toward me.
I suddenly became very interested in the dance floor.
"Hey."
I looked up and she smiled.
"My friends and I couldn't help but notice you're sitting by yourself."
I glanced toward the dance circle. "I was going to join them, but I'm still trying to recover from that incredible backflip."
She laughed and I couldn't help smiling.
"I'm Alice."
"Onyca."
"We're getting some food and heading to the park. You want to come?" I looked past her toward the two guys.
"Your friends won't mind?"
She glanced over her shoulder.
"They'll survive."
I laughed.
"Okay."
She held out her hand and I took it following her away from the noise.
When we got up, we walked outside. The boys were already out there standing next to a black, 2016 Camaro.
"Who's ride"I asked.
"Mine", the blondie with mullet replied.
We lock eyes.
"That's Lucas", Alice implied. She whispered, "He can be a bit much sometimes". He started to look me up and down.
"The other one is Jesse".
"Hi, it's nice to meet you", he said.
"It's nice to meet you as well", i replied.
Still staring, Lucas says, "Is she riding with us or what"?
"Is that a problem?", I asked.
"Not at all" he replied.
I didn't know it then, but that simple decision would give me three of the most important people in my life. Alice became my best friend. Jesse became the person I could always count on. And Lucas unfortunately became—Well. Lucas. Three years later, we were still together. Everyone talked about senior year like it was the beginning of something new.
For me, it felt like the end.
The end of routines. The end of friendships that had survived four years of changing people. The end of pretending that the things we'd experienced in high school wouldn't follow us into whatever came next.
I thought everything would stay relatively simple.
Alice and Jesse were closer than they'd ever been, although neither of them had managed to admit what everyone else could already see.
Lucas was still irritating.
I was still writing music whenever I couldn't make sense of my thoughts.
And life at home was quiet enough that I could pretend everything was fine. For the first two weeks, it was.
Then a moving truck showed up two houses down and everything changed.