Years ago, a kid bearing a striking resemblance to myself would awake from a hangover-avoiding mid-afternoon nap, layer himself up beyond the ability to look cool, and plod for about ten or fifteen minutes down Brown Street, where he’d meet a girl waiting for him at her apartment. Together they would walk back up the hill, passing his dorm and continuing on towards the opposite end of campus, their breath uneven from the trudging and talking.

“So I think I’m going to bring legwarmers back,” she says with a sniffle, her face painted red by the cold, which really brings out her eyes.

“Yeah?” he asks with a melt to his voice, the kind that only comes out with her. ”You should attach it to some sort of cause…causes are trendy these days.”

“Save the Manatee legwarmers? They could be teal.”

“Very nice.”

“Or grey…for the wolves.”

The walk happened every Tuesday and Thursday and usually took about a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes if they had to waddle like penguins in the high snow. It was his favorite time of the week, although he didn’t think much of it, having plenty of other distractions to bide his time, other avenues for dispersing affection, a future to pursue. He wouldn’t know that it would be his last feeling of innocence, nor was he aware that it was the last time he wouldn’t have to fight himself to be hopeful. Hope, he would come to learn, was a bad thing.

“So let’s make a pact,” she says, stomping off her feet as they come to a more manageable strip of sidewalk, only thin wisps of snow dancing and curling across the concrete. “If neither one of us is married when we’re fifty, we’ll marry each other.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be alive at fifty,” he answers, slipping a cigarette into his mouth.

“Forty-five then.”

“Forty.”

“At forty you’re still going be a hip and famous writer with tons of groupies,” she says, grabbing his outstretched arm in order to leap across the puddle of slush nestled near the curb. “Don’t you want to enjoy that for awhile?”

“Writers don’t have groupies.”

“Sure they do…I know plenty of girls who would fuck Dan Brown.”

“Would you fuck Dan Brown?”

“Absolutely not,” she quips, the breath from her laugh exploding into the grey sky.

The kid thought to himself that he might take that deal, although would be frightened to learn that this opinion wouldn’t change much in the coming years. Two weeks after this conversation takes place, the companions would separate – her spending the break in Key West, and him snowed in with Nick-at-Nite reruns. On a Friday night she will call him from her hotel room, and in the course of inebriated dialogue he will admit that he never learned to multiply numbers of two digits. He had been sick with the flu the week they taught it and never caught up, instead relying on calculators or multiplying by ten and doing the rest of the math in his head. She will guide him through the process over the phone, the lack of sobriety and paper causing the lesson to take some time, and the memory of this event will remain to this day a candidate for a slide in the mental flash reel that has been promised to him before his death.

Before that moment takes place, while he’s still here in the freezing cold, strolling past the student union while she explains why vegans can’t eat Skittles, he doesn’t know. Years after it all happens he still won’t know, but at this point he still believes. He can still enjoy himself in a moment, and not have it spoiled by the ills of the world around him. He still juggles potential sexual partners for the thrill of it and looks into the Peace Corps and thinks there’s something more. When he’s sees himself dancing in their eyes, it’s a pleasant view. He still writes stories with plots, because he still believes life has one. He still votes Democrat, because he believes it can be different. He still thinks he himself might be capable of becoming content or, even loftier, changing the world. He still doesn’t believe they can knock the earnest idealism out of him.

And perhaps this isn’t all destroyed by a drunken multiplication lesson, but in the long run it helps him to see that perhaps that’s as good as it’s going to get. There might not be more. They might all be leading you along to a dead end. He doesn’t know yet that it doesn’t matter whether you use proper turn signals or take your hands off the wheel…you never really seem to be going anywhere. He doesn’t see that the only thing he wouldn’t do for her or the world is save himself. He doesn’t know that this is about as happy as it gets.

“Do you have plans with South Main Girl tonight?” she asks, winded as they climb the steps of the building.

“No, I don’t.” He does. “Have you talked to Boy From the Gym?”

“Not recently.” They’ve texted back and forth all morning. “Maybe we could drink wine and watch Conan?”

“I’d love to.”

They enter the building, stomping and brushing themselves off before kissing quickly and hugging for an extended period of time. She heads off for class while he sits in the lobby, his ears burning as he awaits the bus that will take him back to his dorm in four minutes. On the ride home, she will text him with ‘What color best represents lupus?’, and he will beam to himself.

I really miss those kids.