FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #9

It was the thing he'd always loved about her.

 Perhaps he hadn’t realized it right away. He was only thirteen when they first met and she was mercilessly showing him up at the 7^th grade track tryouts. “Why did they have to be co-ed?” he wondered when she came up to him, stuck out her hand and said, “Congratulations, Theodore, I think we’ll have a winning year on the track team together.”

            Perhaps he hadn’t even realized it by the 9^th grade when she was voted freshman class president and he was first runner up. But, by junior year, when his best friend asked her to the prom and he had to ask her best friend, he might have started to figure it out. Watching her dance with him all night stirred up something unfamiliar; he felt real jealousy for the first time. She had asked him, “Theodore, at least dance with me one time tonight, would you?”

Senior year, just as he might have fully realized it, she transferred schools and he didn’t see her again until fall when they wound up in the same Biology 101 class.

            Lucky for him, she was no good at biology. He was. Each tutoring session on the 4^th floor of the university library he would think about asking her out. Soon, the semester ended and the following semester they didn’t end up in a single class together. They had some mutual friends, so he had plenty of occasions to attempt the friend to dating step. He just never took them. “Theodore,” she’d say when she saw him, “I’ve been thinking about you.” Yet, still he hesitated.

            During summer he never saw her, but thought about her all the time. He knew she’d be back at school in August, and this time he’d take a shot. What he didn’t realize is that she’d come back to school with a boyfriend, and conversations at random parties was all he was able to see of her. He’d dated enough to forget her for a while, but he was never fully over her.

Finally, a year or so later, when they were both uncommitted to anyone else, or so he thought, he decided, “It is now or never.” One day he grabbed keys and checked his mail on the way out the door to go see her. As he randomly flipped through the junk, a large envelope with feminine handwriting caught his attention. When he opened it all he felt was regret.

To everyone had always been Teddy, or most often Ted, but to her, he’d always been Theodore, ever since she shook his thirteen-year old hand at track tryouts. She had always used his full name. It was the thing he’d always loved about her. Too bad he never told her.  

back to Contest #9