"I really, really like you, Molly. Maybe even verging on love if I could see you and spend time with you. Well, thanks for bearing with me while I got all sappy," he wrote on July 22, 1998.
I stared at the letter, horrified.
By the end of August, he was telling me he loved me in every e-mail and signing them "All My Love, Jeff." He was a slick 16-year-old, and I was pretty sure I loved him back. Well, as sure as I could be at age 13.
I mean, I'd loved boys before -- Andrew Keegan, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, my elementary school janitor. But not the kind of love Jeff was talking about. This was the adult kind of love.
By the time I met Jeff I'd had a few middle-school relationships, and even been involved in a spite-filled love triangle that cost me a childhood friend. But those hadn't really counted, I felt, since love had never been mentioned, let alone a French kiss.
It was the summer after eighth grade, and my family was vacationing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Jeff and his family were staying in the cabin next to ours for the week, and he was pretty much the coolest guy I'd ever seen. Shaggy hair, sideways smile, 6'4" frame, skater pants with a chain dangling and, best of all, a black and white electric guitar. He'd sit outside on the balcony twanging away while I was inside, melting. In retrospect, he was probably the only cool guy I've ever dated.
Granted, our dates, if you could even call them that, were pretty lame. One afternoon we went for a long walk along the water, me in my black one-piece Speedo -- it complemented my flat chest beautifully -- and him in corduroy shorts that nearly grazed his ankles. Though he complained that his "tootsies" (feet) hurt, we persevered and probably walked close to a few miles, with my mom -- always the involved parent -- snapping pictures from the patio until we were out of sight.
Another day we found a piece of a broken surfboard and spent the afternoon floating around the bay on it while Mom finished off the roll of film.
When the week came to a close and it was time to load the car, Jeff came out to bid me farewell. While my mom distracted my dad, Jeff kissed me on the cheek.
Based on his e-mails, somewhere along the line I swallowed my doubt and said I loved him back -- or at least gave him some sort of encouragement -- since he started talking about moving from Massachussetts to New Jersey to be with me, the girl who he loved.
But even though I kept expecting him to show up at the big high school pep rally and subsequently ask me to the dance contest … la Grease, to my dad's delight, Jeff and I never saw each other again. We lost touch when he stopped responding to my e-mails and I stopped sending them. Maybe it also had something to do with his fear of my dad (a fear that every one of my boyfriends has shared). As he wrote in the last e-mail I ever got from him: "I'm sorry that your dad won't accept the fact that you're a very mature 13-year-old and that you can handle a relationship."
It probably wasn't just my dad, though. The time our e-mails stopped was the same time I started high school and met a senior who wore cool sunglasses and drove a red Jeep Cherokee.
Every so often, a wave of nostalgia will wash over me and I'll send Jeff an e-mail at his old account. He never responds, so I like to pretend he doesn't use that account anymore.
