"I love you Venetia" the tall boy said. Funny how much a simple phrase can mean so much.  I breathe into these words, relishing each syllable in a sweet sight of relief. He steps towards me, and takes my hand while the other tenderly rests on the side of my cheek. His hands are warm, somehow managing to feel rugged but soft at the same time.

He was amazing, I loved him so much in that moment. I was shivering with shock and awe. Still, I couldn't help but say "I love you too!" with an almost exasperated sigh of relief. It was about time he said the line. 

He smiled, one of those coy guy smiles that seemed to suggest we had all the time in the world. But we didn't. Our time was slowly thinning away, second by second. But we were too innocent, too innocent of the effects of time that in that sparkling bowling alley right next to the garbage bag, we were in a sort of transfixed and mesmerized paradise; the greatest of ignorant bliss. A moment later he was leaning forward, the sight of his dimples blurring into a chaotic mesh of desire. We were kissing - simple kissing  - but my thoughts were far from simple. My mind was alive with some kind of manic party where every cell of my body seemed to be participating in completely wild and heavy rave as if my body had somehow returned to its primitive state and forgotten every single it ha meticulously learned about modern society. Ahh, simple complexity. We kept kissing, and I didn't care if around ten or so people could see.

When we broke apart, a thin trail of saliva (his or mine?) still kept us connected. It was both disgusting and cute, I remember thinking in my intense recollection of the kiss only a few hours after the event had occurred. 

And yes, a few hours because our night wasn't over just yet. Not with Luke Hargreaves, a simple boy who liked to run, liked The Great Gatsby, and had 28 sets of trainers. Oh, and he liked kissing. He didn't like cheese, and girls who wore lipstick, for another strange reason. That was fine with me. I had never worn make-up in my life. I guess I was lucky, back then. Lucky enough to not need to change my face to attract the dudes.  Or maybe I just knew something many other girls simply did not. I'm saying 'simple' a lot. But the world was simple back then. It was an appropriate word: simple and carefree. 

I noticed my friend (should I say former? I don't know) hanging out with Troy, the guy she had had a crush on for years. Finally, a success for her. Well done Jessica, and well done Troy too. We started out as a double date, but our romantic bubbles seemed to have grown so distant that the double date had turned into two individual dates with as much ease as waves sliding gently up the beach. But waves don't slide up forever, they are dragged agonizingly back by the power of seeming infinite ocean beyond. 

Lucky for me though, the night was perfect. Or at least as perfect as you could expect within a dirty city such as Southbrooke. The agony began on the morrow. I was 16 years old at the time, give me a break. No? Fine. Actually, that's to be expected because the harsh indifference for life doesn't understand the definition of break. Waves never stop pushing back and forth, the tide doesn't take breaks. Time obliviously carries on, endlessly keeping the clock ticking, and whilst the waves may ride up and down the beach, they can never deviate until there is no more shore left to crash upon. 

But now I'm rambling endless drivel... and this isn't productive. We said our goodbyes to our friends, as best we could. They were making out too, like a mirror copy of us. We share 99% of our DNA with them. It makes sense. Then we walked across the sticky carpet that was littered with the residue of popcorn, sweets and even a condom I think before arriving at the pitch blackness of the outside. 

It was so cold, and I shivered in my blouse, watching as thick tendrils of condensed mist curled and spiraled from my mouth. We lived far into the north of Lepto, our country, far too near the Arctic circle for my liking. He was in a T-shirt, but didn't appear cold. Perhaps he wanted to emphasize that we was some fearsome warrior who didn't flinch at the tiniest bother of cold and would fight off an army of frozen zombie mammoths if he had to. Possibly.

 I had my car there: the real hero of the evening with its heating system and comfortable leather chairs. I had worked so hard at the gardening store to earn a car like this. But cars drive, as they are expected to, and  I drove it home to my house, while he sat silently in the front seat, looking out at the dots of light outside.