"Anna, come downstairs, the lesson's about to start!" Bree shouted.
I rushed downstairs because if you didn't get seats early, you were stuck standing for hours. Bree and I managed to secure ours, and only then did I notice we were sitting next to Stephen.
That alone surprised me. Stephen never attended these lessons. I wanted to ask, but I kept quiet. I didn't want trouble or attention.
After the first two periods, Bree and I were already starving, so we went out to get food. By the time we came back, our seats were taken.
"Let's just go into an empty class and eat," I said.
Bree nodded immediately. "I could literally eat a whole person right now."
I laughed because she always said things like that but never actually ate that much. We found an empty classroom and went in, but then we saw Debbie, one of our classmates, and Stephen.
Stephen was lying down with his head on Debbie's lap, sleeping. I paused for a second because it wasn't something I expected to see. Debbie looked at us and said she needed to leave and asked one of us to take her place. Before I could even think about it, Bree pushed me forward.
As usual, I didn't argue. I just sat where Debbie was sitting.
Stephen didn't wake up immediately. But when he did, he noticed he was no longer on Debbie's lap. He was on mine. He looked at me for a moment, then stood up and left without saying anything.
Bree looked at me and said, "Seems like you made him angry."
I just shrugged. "He's always angry anyway."
I didn't think much of it at first, but after that day, things started changing slowly. Stephen began talking to me more, teasing me, showing up around me more often. At first it was random, but then it became consistent enough for me to notice.
People already had things to say about him. They said he was dangerous with girls, that he didn't care, that he played people. I heard all of it, but I didn't really pay attention. I wanted to understand him myself.
Over time, we stopped talking only in school. We started going to his house sometimes. It wasn't planned, it just happened naturally.
And one day, it was just the two of us there.
We talked a lot that day. More than I expected. Stephen wasn't what people thought he was. The "bad guy" image everyone had of him wasn't entirely real. It was something he built, not because he wanted to be feared, but because he didn't want to be seen as weak or less.
That was the first time I saw him differently.
At some point, he asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said no, which was true. Then he asked if I had ever been kissed before. I hesitated, then said yes. I don't know why I lied. Maybe I didn't want him to see me as inexperienced.
A few days later, he kissed me. And that was my first kiss. I didn't expect it to feel the way it did. It felt warm, and my heart reacted before my mind even understood what was happening.
I hugged him after that, mostly to hide how flustered I was.
After that, we started dating, and things moved faster than I realized at the time. I didn't even notice when talking turned into something more serious, or when "us" became something I couldn't really define anymore.
Later on, we ended up at his house again, just the two of us. But this time, it felt different. He was quieter, more open than before, like something in him had softened.
And I listened, like I always did. I listened even when I didn't know what it would lead to.
At some point, everything became a blur. And only much later did I realize how much that period changed everything for me, and how something that started so simply became something I would carry for a long time.