Actually, she hadn't made the greatest first impression on him. Oh, sure, one could reconstruct the meeting as though she had. It's true that the first thought he remembered thinking when she raced into his cubicle was something incredibly banal, something like, "Nice legs." He had caught himself in this superficial thought, though, and had looked up quickly. Anyway, later he would remember how nice and friendly and normal she had seemed, not like a MODE employee at all. He had made some comment about it, which had been stupid, and he remembered stammering all over himself trying to explain that he didn't mean that in a bad way. He either remembered, or thought he remembered, that she had smiled her dazzling smile at him then...the smile that made his heart beat faster and made it hard to breathe.
Well. That was all reconstruction and hindsight. He hadn't known her then, so if she had smiled, the smile wouldn't have tugged at his heartstrings or probably even registered. It hadn't been a "meet cute" from a movie; it had just been two employees meeting for the first time. Then she had promptly turned in a report that was already late at the last minute, made some lame excuse about not getting the memo, and stole his breakfast.
Oh yeah, on top of all that, the report listed $20,000 worth of undetailed miscellaneous expenses.
Yeah. Great first impression. It definitely wasn't love at first sight.
They became friends their third meeting, although he couldn't really remember the details of it very well.
He knew by the time she came into his cubicle with coffee and a bagel to make up with him that she hadn't intentionally falsified the expense report. He even understood how she could have been stressed about getting her boss a bagel and coffee. He had sat through the lecture she had received the day of the infamous bagel caper. While obviously well meaning, the editor-in-chief of the magazine had seemed pretty tightly wound. Her job seemed stressful.
When she had whipped out the magazine and showed him the spread, she gained his respect. They immediately set about making a plan and putting it into action to expose the fraud.
She was nice. He liked her. Between the two of them, they saved the day. Justice was served.
So they met, they parted, they met again. They were on separate floors, so there wasn't too much interaction at first. Somewhere in there, he couldn't pinpoint a day or hour, he began to feel something more. She seemed to understand him on a level most people didn't even bother to try.
So, he mustered up his courage and asked her out. She said, no. Then yes. Yes. They went out to lunch. In the middle of it, her boyfriend turned up...a boyfriend he hadn't even known existed. Later, she told him she wasn't like that. Somehow, he knew she wasn't, but it didn't make him feel any better.
He had thought they could have had a chance at something more, but these things happened. Such is life.
He didn't know then, couldn't have known then, that this was just the beginning of a long journey. For them, it seemed that the timing was often wrong.
She was constantly surprising him. The more he got to know her, the more he liked her. She was smart, good looking, extremely funny. She made him laugh more than anyone else he had ever known.
That whole thing that happened in movies about the rest of the room blurring and you only being able to see one person? Previously, he had thought that was some sort of cinematic trick, but now he discovered it was based on real life. A few times he thought she might return his feelings, but then she would mention her boyfriend again, and he would come crashing down to reality.
He never should have taken back his ex-girlfriend. She had just shown up in New York wanting to make it work, and he had thought, well why not? We get along well, and she came all the way here for me. I need to move on and stop pining for someone I can't have.
It was a poor decision, one of a number of poor decisions that he had made that year. He had taken her back for all the wrong reasons, and didn't break up with her early enough.
Oh, he had reasons for his mistakes--misplaced loyalty, his own denial of the situation he had put himself in, a sense of obligation. You know you're in the wrong relationship when your main reason for staying in it is a sense of obligation.
He had been so sure of himself when he broke up with her. He didn't love her.
In the perfect world, that would have been the end of it. Needless to say, the world wasn't perfect.
Now he swayed unsteadily at her doorway and looked through the window into her sad eyes, the eyes of a woman who was both his friend and his fantasy. He had been wrong about many things, but he had never been wrong about her. He wanted to be with her, every day and in every way. He wanted to be able to kiss her without walking away, to hold her without feeling guilty, to share in her life. And sure, he knew he was way ahead of himself. They hadn't even had a real date or sat down to talk about the way they felt. She had even told him today they could just be buddies, but they had gone that route before, and it didn't work. There was that something else, that something that they couldn't deny anymore.
She opened the door. Yes, he had been drinking. What man wouldn't be in this situation? Even her best friend had recommended it as an option. He took another swig from the bottle. His head was fuzzy, so he just told her what was on his mind. She needed to know where he stood. She had such beautiful eyes.
All he could think was that she was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. She had been from the very first.
He remembered it now; he remembered how it had been. He told himself that part of him must have known, from the first moment he saw her. It had been an instant connection, love at first sight: Tony and Maria, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella at the ball. And so what if this was make believe, a fantasy, a revisionist history of the facts?
Nevertheless, it was true. This feeling, this ache, this beating of his heart. It was strong enough that it swept backwards over their time together and changed the very facts he knew. He fell in love with her again and again every time he saw her now; he may as well have felt it that first time, too. It might as well have been love at first sight.
Later, this would be a story they would tell each other, about another time when their paths collided. About how he came to her door and she comforted him, but she didn't take him back that time. About how when they looked through the window at each other, they fell in love with each other again, as if it was that first time.