Disclaimer: This is about a boy.

I got off work a few days ago and had a voicemail from Sister Baughan.
Sister Baughan is one of my favorite young women’s leaders from my NC days… she’s been tryin to set me up with her nephew for a while now. Apparently the famous nephew has moved back to NC because the big city wasn’t for him. “When are you comin back here?” she asks me. She thinks its time I met him.

In my head, I start to plan out my reply. One particular word seals-the-deal for why I’m not going out with her nephew. This word is “boyfriend.”

My general reaction to this title is
“I know, weird for me. But cool, huh?”
His name is Wayne. Sometimes he freaks out about all of it too, and that’s good to know.
For example: The other night he was real tired, and something like this fell out of his mouth:
“I’m layin here with you and thinking:
I’m dating Lyndsi Shae. This actually happened. Woah.”

“I know, weird. But cool, huh?” I'm not sure what I said outloud, but that of course, was my mind’s profound reply.

* * *
Jeff sat behind me in Creative Writing this week.
“So who’s that boy you were with on Sunday?” he asks me.
I tell him.
“But Lyndsi Shae, what will happen to your emo poems?”
Bahahaha.
I make him take back his choice of adjective, but then just laugh some more.

When I write about Wayne, it does not ache. I am not full of questions, I am not left anticipating. I am calm. This is new, relieving, comforting.

* * *
Wednesday night, we had a big talk about how we’re different from each other.
The weird part is that I’m not going to tell you about this talk at all. Nope. It’s ours.

I will tell you about the next Tuesday, when a great five minutes was spent rollin around, crackin up about together about the word “hash”. "Haaaaaaash. Corn beef HASh. Haaaaashbrowns." Ahahaha.

I will tell you that its great to label something ours.
There is no inhibition, no clamor of denunciations.
We are outloud.
The first time I realized this was in Salt Lake:
We were walkin down the street, and he held my hand.
I thought:
Does he realize that they can see him?! This means he’s with me. Like, the real-real way. It means all his other girlfriends will see, and on top of that, all of his potential girlfriends will see. Does he know what he’s doing? He’s ruining his chances with everyone else.
Oh my gosh. He does. He knows what he’s doing.
And he’s doing it anyway.
Right here in front of the whole city.

Outloud.

So then there's the weather of course, which is obviously relevant.
The night after Salt Lake we were in the livin room. It was quiet, and outside, the rain started comin down. It came soft, and was maybe a little embarrassed of itself.
“I know we haven’t had a lot of moments yet,” I said. “But I can tell this is going to be one of my favorite ones—me you and the rain.”
And then, a few nights later—there was the wind.
Howling. Violent. Crashing outside of us.

(Then Wayne went to Oregon for a little while, and I went to work.)

All over the road home, there was rain.
Deep grey clouds set low over the mountains.
But the sun also shone throughout the rainy haze, and the wind combined.
I drove home under the incongruent sky, remembering us and the wind, us and the rain, us and the sun—and now, all of them were present.
The earth is speaking, I thought.
Howling, contradicting.
I have no idea what it is saying to me, but I'm not scared.
I am curious, ready, calm.