"Remember when you first met me?" Olivia asked. She was sitting next to me on my bed and we had just watched "Stardust," one of our favorites. Saturday movie nights were one of our weekly rituals in this last summer before heading off to college.
Of course I remembered ...
Olivia and I had been best friends forever. When her family moved to our little suburb outside of Milwaukee, she was the only Hispanic kid in my private middle school. On our first day, I stepped in when I saw Olivia crying because some of the other kids were teasing her.
Children can be cruel and, back then, Olivia was an easy target. Her skin was a few shades darker than that of the other kids and she had a slight accent back then because she had grown up speaking only Spanish before her parents moved to the US with her. Olivia's family came to Wisconsin from Houston, where she had fit in much better than in my lily white neighborhood.
I don't know exactly why I protected her on that first day. I was no angel as a kid and I can't say that I never teased anybody about being chubby or bad at sports or something. But seeing her standing in the hallway, completely defenseless with tears slowly trickling from dark brown eyes down her cheeks, triggered something in me.
"Knock it off," I said, putting myself between Olivia and the three kids who had been calling her names. I'm not sure what would have happened if they had challenged me but I'm quite certain I wouldn't have backed down. Maybe they had realized that, too, and were just as happy as I was when the bell rang and they hurried to their classrooms.
I turned to Olivia.
"Hi, I'm Nicolas. Are you ok?"
She just nodded, wiping the tears from her face with the sleeve of her shirt.
"Are you new here? Do you know where you are going?" I asked, not ready to end our brief encounter.
"I think so," she said in a small voice and held out a piece of paper that she had been clutching in her hand. I took it and looked at her schedule.
"History," I said. "You can walk with me, I'm in the same class."
Olivia looked at me and the apprehension in her eyes was replaced with genuine gratitude.
"Thank you," she said. "I'm Olivia."
"Hey Olivia," I responded with a smile. "We better get going. Old Man McDaniels won't like it if we're late on the first day."
That's how we met.
Olivia and I ended up having a few classes together and it turned out that her family had moved into a house only a couple of blocks away from mine. On that first day, I walked her home and this became a daily routine. We kept spending more and more time together and were inseparable by the end of the fall. Being around her just made me happy and she was the best friend any guy could want.
I helped Olivia through her first Wisconsin winter. Ironically, she hated the cold but loved snow. She got a lot of that in the first year and I spent our first Christmas break together teaching her how to ski. One day she made it down the hill without falling down. For some reason, I can remember every detail of that moment. Olivia was wearing a white ski suit with a hood and goggles, her cheeks were flushed and she had a big smile on her face.
"I made it," she shrieked and gave me a hug. Then she gave me a kiss on the cheek. Her lips were so warm against my skin, probably because of the excitement of her first successful run. "Thank you!"
"I knew you could do it!" I said, somewhat embarrassed and wiggled out of her embrace. "Want to go again?"
The triumphant look and the glow had left her face. She looked almost sad but that didn't make any sense because she had just done her first clean run.
"No, let's just head home," Olivia said.
***
By the time we got to high school, our friendship had also brought our families together. Every Sunday, our families had brunch -- alternating between our house and that of the Fuentes. While Olivia had still been teased a bit in middle school (on those increasingly rare occasions when I wasn't around), by the time we got to high school, nobody would dream of doing so again.
Even then, it was clear that Olivia would grow up to be a stunningly pretty woman. While she was a bit chubby when I met her, a small growth spurt at the end of the 8th grade had taken care of that. For those of our classmates who had not seen her during that summer, the change was staggering.
Olivia had always had a pretty face, framed by thick, black hair. Her eyes were large and dark brown, so much so that they almost appeared black when she was angry. Her smile was gorgeous and she had a cute pair of dimples accentuating her cheeks.
As a freshman, her body was beginning to match the beauty of her face, slowly filling in in all the right places as she slowly began her transformation from a cute girl into a beautiful young woman.
One day, my buddy Jeff stopped me in the hallway.
"Hey, Nick. I have a question for you." He looked a bit embarrassed and paused for a couple seconds before continuing. "I was thinking about asking out Olivia ..."
Jeff paused again.
"That's not really a question," I said, with a knot unexpectedly forming in my stomach. I forced a smile.
"Well, do you mind?" he asked.
"Um, you know I'm not her brother, right?" I said, trying to defuse the awkwardness. "We're just friends."
"Right," Jeff said. "So you're cool with me asking then?"
"I guess. But if you don't treat her well, I'll probably kick your ass."
"Ok," he said and shuffled away.
I had never thought about the possibility of Olivia having a boyfriend. For some reason, I didn't like it, probably because that would mean that I'd get to spend less time with her and she was my best friend.
When we walked home that day, I asked her if she had spoken to Jeff.
"Yeah, funny that you'd bring that up. I was just gonna tell you that he asked me out."
"I thought he might. The weirdest thing happened today. He stopped me in the hall and asked if I minded if he did that. How odd is that?"
Olivia stopped and looked at me with her big eyes.
"What did you say?"
"What was I gonna say?"
I recall there being a frown on Olivia's face.
"I mean, it's silly that he would ask me, right?"
Olivia still didn't say anything.
"Well, I told him I'd kick his ass if he didn't treat you well."
Finally, there was a reaction as Olivia was unable to conceal a smile.
"Well," she said. "I told him 'no'."
For some reason, hearing her say that made me happy.
"What about you?" she asked. "Are you asking anybody out?"
"Dunno," I said and paused while thinking about the question. "I don't think so."
"Let's get some ice cream, Nick. My treat," Olivia said, already skipping ahead.
***
There were a few more times when one of my friends asked me if I minded if they asked out Olivia. I always gave pretty much the same answer.
When we were kidding around about something one day, I asked her in jest if her friends were doing the same with me.
"Don't be silly," she said, turning serious. "They know better."
