Our Love Story—The Day He Held My Hand

As we were wrapping up our conversation and getting ready to plop the movie in, I felt like Rob was in the midst of some inner turmoil. He had an interest for me for a while that he was trying to ignore until after the summer since we’d be going our separate ways for several months. When J swooped in however, Rob was forced to play his hand and because of that we started spending time together.

And we both realized that we enjoyed spending time together, so much so that we purposed to do as much of it as possible during these last few weeks of school. Never in my life had I so badly wanted the school year not to end!

Though we were both trying to take it slow (okay, he was trying to take it slower than I was for sure!), something unexpected was happening between us. Like it or not, we were falling head over heels for each other. What we both thought would be a few innocent weeks of getting to know each other had quickly turned into the realization that day by day we were more and more convinced that something very significant was brewing between us.

I knew that Rob wanted to protect our purity. I could sense that on one hand he was looking forward to a two hour excuse to be near each other as much as I was. On the other hand I assumed he was a little bit uncomfortable with us being out at his barn alone together late at night.

He put The Truman Show into the DVD player and made his way toward the couch. Suddenly he stopped and walked a few steps in the opposite direction. Sensing a strange mix of excitement and discomfort by the look on his face I was really curious what he was up to.

Rob looked over and me and in no uncertain terms told me that he wanted to hold my hand. I couldn’t help but grin and giggle a little. I thought it was a little funny that he was telling me this instead of just grabbing my hand… since it was always by my side readily available for the taking!

But the words that followed made it clear why he felt the need to declare his intentions before acting on them.

“I want to hold your hand, but I want to be clear about the fact that I don’t want to kiss you,” he stated.

In any other situation I might have been bothered by that statement. I knew however, that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to kiss me. He just wanted to protect our purity and didn’t want to go down that road just yet.

He didn’t want me to assume that our sitting on the couch holding hands watching a movie together would somehow lead to a smooch fest. I honestly appreciated the clarification. It helped take the pressure off, and it helped me feel the freedom to just enjoy the moment we were in.

Rob pushed play, turned the lights down and sat close to me where he flashed me a little smile and finally grabbed my hand.

*Side note, if you’re waiting for the juicy details of the first kiss, you might have to wait awhile. Rob told me I can write about the kiss if I ever publish this story in book form. But until then, despite my pleas otherwise, Rob has asked that I refrain from writing about our first kiss. Maybe it’ll prompt me to actually attempt getting this story published someday? 

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