Moment(um) 1

It is mid-November, the fall of my first year in grad school. I am walking across the railroad tracks from her apartment to mine. I'm in a long sleeved shirt, hands dug into my jeans pockets. Walking in the cold has a sort of macho appeal. The weight of the semester is finally off me. I blow out a long breath for the sheer joy of seeing in billow out in a cloud in front of me. It is snowing the first snow of the year, a thin coat of heavy, wet stuff. Snow like buttercream. I am wearing Chuck Taylors and even the hundred yard walk from her place to mine is enough to soak the soles through. My feet are freezing.

I still have yet to learn to wear boots in the winter.

I do not yet know that she's been seeing her boyfriend back home all along.

I can't guess that I'm about to see her for the last time.

I can hear her little Ford Escort pull out into the street behind me. She's driving home to Kentucky for Christmas. She catches up to me just as I'm crossing the tracks and I wave for her to stop. I walk around to the drivers side, there in the middle of the street. There is no traffic, the whole town has gone home for Christmas. She rolls down the window, looks up at me with those impossible green eyes.

"What?" she asks, exasperated.

I lean in, and kiss her, just once, snow melting between us and the cold smell of winter cutting the floral laundry detergent on her coat.

"Just that," I say, and then I keep walking. I am sure that this is the coolest thing I have ever done.

I might just have been right.

I never see her again.