I Loved You, Too
The way we met will always make me a little too happy, really, and I think about it anytime I need a smile. When the girl next to me in our 10th-grade math class dropped a lighter out of her pocket, so you threw your pencil across the classroom as an excuse to come pick it up. I hadn’t even noticed her lighter fall, so I was very confused as to why you needed to come all the way over to us. You picked up the lighter and pencil at the same time and came around the desks to hug me, sliding the lighter into my pocket, thinking it was mine. I instinctively moved away from your embrace, but you managed to make it look less awkward than we both felt, and I can never thank you enough for saving me that day. If that lighter had been found under my desk by anybody else, my friend would have either been suspended under our zero-tolerance policies or would have blamed me, and I would have faced suspension. You really saved my academic career, but I didn’t think much of it then, and neither did you.