It wasn’t, for instance, the way he held her hands, firm and cold. It wasn’t the way he spoke to her, like a child. It wasn’t even the way he opened every door for her, even the refrigerator door. He was, however, wonderfully tall. His legs loomed over her like columns, a doric belt buckle adorned by fingertips. After a short time, she became acquainted with the perfect way he shaded her vision, cooled her from the sun on hot days, and generally hid her from wide view on a campus crawling with creepers.
“He’s tall,” she told her mother, who she did not, as a rule, tell things to.
“Well what else? You can’t love someone because they’re tall.”
“Wow. I don’t love him.”
“But what else can you tell me about him?”
She didn’t even have the energy to try and say what else there could possibly be. They met in her Astronomy class on the first day. They took the back row. She thought he sat back there out of courtesy, sure that a boy of such stature would go out of his way to prevent his head from blocking the views of everyone else in the world who was shorter than him. When the Professor asked them to share what they knew about constellations with a partner, she turned to him, looked up, climbing over that square chin, past the holes of his nose, and to his eyes, where she found them rolling towards her.
“I know about the Big Dipper,” she said. He laughed.
“I do too.” His voice did not boom, as she thought it would. It was as high pitched as the roof of his head, casting wonder over and about her. From that moment, she began to show herself in the only way she knew how. She put ribbons in her hair. She dangled her shoes from her feet. She gently tossed her hair when he asked her a question. And she laughed at everything she could possibly laugh at.
