I was sitting with my friend Jessica as I watched Leah tell her tale. Jess and I met the second week of school when she approached me and asked what I was always writing during class. I told her about my journal thing, and everything just blossomed from there. To use a popular junior high term, I’d have to say that Jess and I were best friends, which was unusual because I’d never had a female best friend before. Her gender didn’t seem to matter much to me, as I talked to her about everything I used to talk to my guy friends about back home.

That night at the party we were discussing how much we’d each like to have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Most people assumed that Jess and I were shaking the bed, but our relationship was purely platonic. Not that there wasn’t ever that occasional sexual tension and joking, we just knew it would mess things up.

So there we sat, one semester into college, single as Kate Upton at a NAMBLA convention, scouting the room for romantic potential. We had both hooked up with people at the bars downtown on several occasions over the past four months but now we were looking for something more. Winter always brings a seriousness that the other seasons lack. Summer is ritualistically carefree and loose, while spring and autumn are simply transitions between shoveling the sand out of the car and shoveling the snow out of the driveway. It was December’s dawning seriousness that made us both reach out for romance, and if we were lucky, maybe even love.

“Why don’t you go over and introduce yourself,” Jess suddenly said, awakening me from my daze.

“Good read Jess. Did my staring give it away?”

“Actually, Jake, it was your drooling. Now get on over there and say hello.”

Easy for Jess to say, she was cute and outgoing, and never had problems meeting anybody. On the other hand, I lacked that inner-confidence that made these foolish things so easy for everybody else. I remember wishing I knew a middle person who could break the ice for me. I was in the middle of explaining to Jess how blind she was to my flaws, however few, when the next thing I knew, she walking over towards Leah and her friends.