I had a relationship once that progressed really quickly, but we had a long time to get to know each other first. When I was 15, I was really serious about getting into art college, so I started taking advanced art classes after school. One of my instructors was a 23-year-old MFA student, and I developed a huge crush on him but didn’t say anything about it. A lot of the time the students would go out for dinner or coffee after class, and sometimes the teachers would go along. So I made friends with a lot of the students and got to know more about the teachers.
I turned 16 after that and took another class with the teacher I had a crush on. We all kept up the habit of going out after class, but sometimes I would hang out with him one-on-one as well. We’d usually just get coffee or have a smoke together and talk about art and life. Our personalities were pretty different, because I was shy and serious and he was witty and goofy, but we shared the same values and deeper thoughts, and we were both very private people. My class with him ended, but I was taking other classes and we’d stop by to visit each other sometimes. That was about it for the next few months.
When I was a month or two away from my 17th birthday, I was almost done with art classes. I happened to run into him on the way out of the building, and he offered to walk me home. I realized it was a now or never moment, but I was too chickenshit to tell him that I had a major crush on him for nearly two years. So I just said it was too bad that I wasn’t 18, because I might have asked him out if I were. He said he might have done the same. The walk home turned into a series of long talks over the next few days, and we finally told each other that we had both liked one another the whole time. He didn’t know what to do about this, if anything, but I convinced him that you only live once and that we should just go for it. Since we had spent two years getting to know each other already, things unfolded very quickly after that. The next day he told me that he was in love, and I said awkwardly that it might possibly be mutual, but inside I felt completely fucking euphoric.
Nowadays, I think that it might have been true, but when I was a teenager I had a very dramatic inner life and a Romeo and Juliet romance might have been just what I was looking for. We stayed together for about a year, but people started getting suspicious that we might be together, so I stopped talking to him because I didn’t want him getting in any trouble over this. Still, being with him is a very fond memory, and I’m glad that I had this experience.