The Girl That Got Away
Listen to Your Heart
There are moments in life that change you forever. For me, it was September 15, 1989. That was the beginning of the story of the girl who got away.
The photo above? Hold on to it. It matters more than you think.
I had seen her two days earlier on a Wednesday evening in the wet lounge at the university. In those days, if you were over 21, you could drink in the wet lounge, and I came prepared with two beers. (Granted, they were two 40-ounce Colt45s, which may or may not have had anything to do with it. You be the judge.)
We were watching MTV in the wet lounge. I was sitting on a couch in the back, nursing my beer when she appeared with a group of friends who congregated on a couch in front of me and to my left.
I noticed her immediately. She was beautiful.
And then I saw her smile.
And then I saw her laugh.
She was radiant. Ethereal. Unbelievable.
I could not stop looking at her.
I sat in the back, drinking my beer, and trying to concentrate on anything but her. But I completely failed. All I could see was her. She was a full moon on a dark night, or a sunrise over mountain ridges, flooding the shadows with her glorious light.
I watched her for two hours, barely seeing anything on the television. She distracted me so much, and I was just living for it, and wishing I could be one of her friends that sat close by, laughing, joking, enjoying her company.
You must understand that I was a shy guy. I did not often approach girls. I felt myself unworthy of them. But when she left the wet lounge, I followed her, spurred on by liquid courage.
She went out the back door, on her way to her own dorm. I caught up to her in a dimly lit parking lot. How was I to know that she had just, hours earlier, watched a Geraldo Rivera special on college sexual assault, and was immediately frightened of me?
“Hey! Do you want to go do something?”
“Um. No. Thanks.” She was nervous.
“My car’s right there. We could go get some pizza or something. Hang out?”
"It’s midnight. Nothing’s open,” she said. Her spider senses were already going off.
There I was, trying to keep it light, unaware of the storm under the surface.
“We could-”
“No, thanks,” she said, stepping away from me.
All I could see was the sparkle of the street lights in her eyes. All she saw was a stranger following her in the dark.
“I’m going back to my room. To bed.”
I started to say something.
“Alone!” she asserted, and then she took off running and somehow disappeared as if a deer fading into nothing, leaving the wolf wondering what just happened.
From my perspective, it was a moment of the shy guy, who never has courage to ask, failing the one time he tried. I blew it. Badly.
I went back to my apartment, sad, and thought about her for two days.
On Friday, the 15th of September, I was back on campus visiting my friend Tom (I did not know at the time that he would die in a drunk driving accident three years later). He was teaching me to play Dungeons & Dragons. The girl who disappeared into the night was still on my mind.
I left his room to go to the restroom and walked by an open-door party, music thumping, laughter and chaos spilling out into the hallways. They had a trash can, lined with a black plastic trash bag filled with some kind of purple concoction with Everclear in it. I walked on by and went to the restroom.
As I walked by, heading down the hallway, unbeknownst to me, the girl walked into the rear door of the dorm, looking for something to do. She walked by the same room, turned her head to look in at the spiked punch party and saw a friend, Joey, who she had known since kindergarten. It was a good excuse to go into the party uninvited, so she went in to talk to her childhood friend.
I returned from the restroom, glanced into the party again, and then stopped in my tracks. There was Joey, a guy I had played D&D with a couple of times. It was a good excuse to go into the party uninvited, so I went into the room to talk to Joey.
I walked up to him, but before I even said a word, I saw her standing there. She was looking at me, and I was looking at her. I could see in her eyes that she remembered me from two nights before in the parking lot.
Joey glanced at both of us, grinned, and said, “Jeannie, this is my friend Stephen. Stephen, meet Jeannie.”
She took my breath away. Again. Dangit.
I can’t remember how long Joey was there. Not long, I think. He found a way to make himself scarce. She and I wound up sitting on a bed together, talking. For hours. Neither of us was drinking. The chaos blurred into the background. We were the only ones in focus, the only ones in the moment.
We talked about everything. Life, our families, our holiday traditions, our goals, our beliefs, the things that made us laugh, the things that made us cry.
She was awesome.
For the first time in my life, there was no pretense. No performance. No armor. No defense. It was just real.
It was one of those moments where you beg the universe to slow down for you, so you can live calmly and drink it all in at an easy pace. And for once, the universe cooperated.
But, she was out of my league, and I knew it. I was sure we both knew it.
Still, she graciously stayed and talked with me until about midnight. And as she had two nights before, she slipped out the back door into the dark parking lot, on the way to her dorm room. But this time she wasn’t running from me. We walked together.
Slowly.
We stopped at my car and talked for another hour, just standing there. I was enthralled again, as the streetlamps lit up her eyes. She was so full of life. She was so beautiful. Every movement of her lips made me tremble. Every time she blinked and opened her large eyes, I was mesmerized. Every breath she took captivated me.
I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know who initiated it. But I was shocked to find myself tasting her lips, feeling the slight graze of her tongue on mine, and her body pressed against me.
It wasn’t just a kiss. It was the kiss. The one that upends all understanding of everything that came before it. Alarm bells went off in my head. It was an “Oh shit!” moment.
We broke apart, she smiled, and then disappeared into the night again. This time, not running away, but fading away from me into the darkness. She looked over her shoulder at me one last time, and then she was gone.
I got in my car and drove to the hospital, my fingers touching my lips, preserving the memory, trying to hold on to that kiss for just a little longer. My mom was an MT and worked nights there in the lab. I had a habit of being a night owl, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to show up at the lab and keep her company while she worked.
When she opened the door to let me in, I said, “Mom, I just met the most beautiful girl in the world.”
Jeannie and I dated for a while. She really was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. But I knew it wasn’t going to last. I knew from the first moment that she was out of my league. I knew we were just hanging out for fun and it would be over soon.
I didn’t want it to be over. But I knew it would be. I knew she would figure me out sooner or later. She’d realize I was as worthless as I felt. My mind told me, This isn’t yours to keep. I knew I wasn’t enough. I knew I didn’t deserve her.
We went to dinner with her parents within the first week. I brought flowers for her mom.
“Are you trying to butter me up?” her mom asked.
“Yes I am,” I said.
She gave me an odd look when I said that, and I didn’t know how to take her response. But, I was twenty-two and wouldn’t have understood. Today I know that my honesty was like a breath of fresh air to her. Jeannie had been through a hard relationship that was all about pretense and performance. But I wasn’t that kind of guy. I mean, I was nothing special, but at least I was honest. When you have nothing else going for you, you can at least have that. I learned that from my very unassuming dad.
A few weeks later, we were still dating, much to my surprise. There’s a lot more story to those intervening weeks, but the point is that we were walking on campus together, and we were holding hands. It’s nothing I thought I would ever do with a girl like her.
She looked over at me and asked, “Why do you always look at your feet when you walk?”
“I dunno,” I said.
We walked on in silence for a while. I felt her thumb caress mine. “You know what?” she said, stopping. “This is your world too.”
I turned to stare at her. She smiled.
“You deserve to be here as much as anyone else. Look up. See the world. You belong here.”
And in that moment, I believed her.
I cannot even describe how much that changed me as a person. I was a totally different guy after that. I never believed in myself, but she did. She believed in me.
That afternoon, I took her to visit my family for the first time. They liked her as much as I did. I could tell. Especially my dad. He gave me a great big smile when we left.
As I backed out of my parents’ driveway, I heard Roxette’s Listen to Your Heart play on the radio. I think it’s the first time I heard it. When it came on, she grabbed my hand and sang it to me.
I’ll never forget that moment.
I remember thinking, Who is this girl? And why am I so captivated?
She sang “listen to your heart” and it was over for me. I was hopelessly lost in her. That was it. I was done. I knew that when she left, it would utterly break me.
But I didn’t care.
It was going to be worth it. I was all in. I was going to live every second that she gave me, no matter the cost in the end.
So, how did it end? How did the girl get away?
Well, she got married.
But it’s not what you think.
First, let’s go back to that beautiful girl from the top.
I need to tell you something.
That’s not the girl I met that night.
That’s our daughter.
Thirty-five years have passed. In that time, we’ve had four children and welcomed three grandchildren.
And that girl I met?
She’s still everything. She’s still out of my league. And she’s still with me.
And I no longer feel worthless.
So, the girl who got away wasn’t the one I met that night.
It was our daughter.
She grew up, got married, and started a life of her own.
And we miss her every single day.
This is a picture of the girl I met that night. She's 48 here, holding our first grandbaby for the first time. The look in her eyes is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I have seen many beautiful things. In her eyes, you can see everything—the love, the years, the life we built together.
It was a precious moment—one that began the night the radiant girl kissed the shy guy in a dark parking lot.
—Stephen B. Anthony
Stephen is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.
Stephen also writes short stories: science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and retold fairy tale with a twist, available for free HERE.
OH my gosh this is the most beautiful story ever!! I was preparing myself for heartbreak but instead I got a burst of joy. I'm so glad for you...
You had no right to make me cry!!!!!!!!!!