Little Lovin

It was the winter of 2015. It was a brisk February morning, Grace furiously scrolling through her Instagram feed. It was winter break, and she could not be more bored. Her best friends were all out spending Valentine's Day with their boyfriends, so she decided to dedicate her very available self to music. She had experienced a traumatizing breakup in the middle of October, and she was not interested in men anytime soon. As she scrolled and scrolled through the numerous cheesy "happy valentines' day, i love you" posts, she recieved a notification that a beautiful boy from North Royalton High School would like to follow her. She had never let a boy she did not know follow her on social media before, but the boy was particularly cute, so she hit accept. Seconds later, he carefully placed comments on every "selfie" and likes on every other picture. Clearly, he had followed her with an agenda.

That, right there, was the background of my story. Well, the beginning to my story. Yes, this is a true story. Yes, these are real names. Basically, this is my tell-all exposee on my boyfriendish person and our relationship for the past year. SO, let's start from the beginning.

Days after the mysterious following on Instagram, Noah Kelly had "slid into my DMs". He said all the basic fuckboy shit. "You're so pretty, it blows my mind." "Down to chill?" "I could see myself falling in love with you." I responded to each of these ridiculous comments with "You're an idiot," or "Please stop it you're gonna make me puke." I wasn't the type of girl to respond as smoothly as I would have liked to to his unusual interest in me. It wasn't until mid-February that he managed to get my Kik. Kik was the app that you downloaded to ensure that the person wasn't a creep before you gave out your real information, such as phone number and sometimes even your real name. A month passed, and I found myself falling in love with the infamous DM boy, the boy I thought I would resent the entire male population for.

We had our first date at Strongsville Mall. I remember it quite well, actually. I brought my two best friends from my volleyball team, Brooke and Natalie, and we walked around the mall for twenty minutes before we could actually find him. When we finally found him, Noah was standing with a 4 foot tall Asian boy, talking to a group of girls. Figures, a boy who looked the way Noah looked would be talking to a flock of females before A DATE. I already hated him. Until he saw me. Noah looked at me with such emotion and happiness, he looked so happy to see me that I could actually feel real saltwater tears welling in my eyes. Before I could filter out my actions, I ran to him. I was running to embrace a boy I was meeting for the first time; I felt silly. I felt like I was on a cloud when I finally reached him, he wrapped his arms around my tiny waist, and looked me right in the eyes and said, wait for it, "Hi." I know, pretty earth shattering, mind blowing, Nicholas Sparks romantic shit right? Well, if you like that, it gets even better from here. As soon as the hug of the century broke, a girl standing behind me, wearing half a shirt and paint for pants, tapped me on the shoulder. Behold, it was Layla; a ratchet eighth grader from North Royalton; also known as the school Noah came from. She wrapped her arms around me, squealing with delight. No, she wasn't crazy, I go to Walsh Jesuit. She shadowed me during the beginning of my freshman year of high school. She fell in love with the cool freshman she was shadowing, and was obviously extremely excited to see me. After engaging in brief, but painful, conversation with Layla, I turned to an exasperated Noah. I was ready to get this show on the road.

Natalie had this really weird relationship with a boy she went to school with. The boy's name was Taylor. He was extremely good looking, with milk chocolate flippy hair, and deep sea green eyes. She would always get so angry with me whenever I brought up their relationship, but I never left it alone because I knew she didn't want me to. We had to run into Forever 21, but I told her we would on the way out of the mall, since that's where we were parked. Honestly, I really just wanted to have an actual conversation with the handsome guy I was with without any interruptions. We continued to walk around the mall, not making any definite choices to go into any stores that weren't co-ed so the boys didn't get uncomfortable. Brooke was the opposite of Natalie; Natalie was extremely shy, and Brooke was extremely high strung and crazy all the time. We experienced much awkward silence during the first twenty minutes of our date, I was so nervous I couldn't spit any words out. Natalie wanted to go into H&M, so I agreed. I thought if I picked out a slutty outfit maybe then he'd perk up and actually become interesting. Instead, we stood in the lingerie department, talking about exes, and looking at Instagram while Brooke and Natalie abandoned me to try and push me out of the nest. As a desperate attempt to get away from me, Noah and his friend disappeared to "the bathroom." To this day, I'm still not sure if he really went to the bathroom or if he was compelled to leave. If I were him, it would've been the second one.