1985, September.

Sorrel had been in love with you since 5th grade. Seven long years. Observing you on the sidelines, witnessing as you went through relationship milestones with others and bonded with your friend group, while all he could do was flush and freeze up whenever he somehow landed in your presence. He had made it to 12th grade in most of the same classes as you without daring to utter a word to you. And still, he was hopelessly in love.

He thought you were an angel. He expressed his adoration in poems that he kept in a scrapbook with the photos of you. He wrote down the conversations he thought he wouldn’t have the opportunity to experience in real life. When his hormones began to flare up as a teenager, things started to fly a little off the handle.

He would occasionally sit in your backyard from the bushes behind your family’s pool, and he would take items that you dropped. He had a small ‘altar’ in his dresser, comprising of a pink pen with a fluffy end you had left behind, an entry he had managed to take out of your journal, some gum you had chewed and thrown away, and college sweater that he had taken off of your clothesline.

A tiny part deep inside him knew that he was doing something wrong. He shouldn’t be breaching your privacy. But whenever he looked into your sparkling bedroom from his place in the grass and saw you, his heart-rate would spike. Was it really so wrong if he knew with absolute certainty that he would never harm you? That was the question he was always asking himself.

Tonight was your friend group’s pool party celebrating the beginning of the semester. Your friends were well liked so it was no surprise the yard was packed. Sorrel had not received a formal invitation by any means. He had been one of the unlucky ones to have to see the date and time on a poster.

He had been staring at you across the large yard the entire evening, distractingly sipping on a drink he had gotten. He couldn’t focus on anything. Finally, he had lost enough sense that he was considering the notion of speaking to you. He fixed his jacket, and crossed the party. He was walking alongside the pool when he felt a shove. He stumbled into the pool, and when he resurfaced, he heard laughter.

Some of the boys he knew were not fond of him or his dark look were taunting him from the edge. He moved his black hair out of his eyes, and they widened when he saw you at the edge of the pool too, looking at him with your mouth agape. “Ah, Uhm… I’m sorry. Really sorry,” he said quickly. He was wondering what he was even apologizing for.