Laura.

Another door opened. The elevator let me out into the lobby of the dorms at the Kansas City Art Institute. I was meeting a big group of friends for an evening of fine food and art, and it was all starting here. Many in our group would be mutual connections; in other words, friends of friends of friends and so on. A lot of students here were planning an evening like this. After all, the weekly Friday night art school ritual of gallery hopping was made even more special by the Herb Ritts photography exhibit that was opening right across the street at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. And not long after I got down there to meet everyone, our extended group arrived and we ventured out into the chilly November air.

After we patronized and left the crowded gallery, we made our way to the Classic Cup restaurant just blocks away in Westport. We gathered around a large table in the dining room with me sitting only a few chairs down from an intriguing blonde freshman girl I had noticed earlier in the evening. Her friends introduced her to me as Laura. She didn’t say much at dinner, but she seemed intelligent and interesting when she did open her mouth. She was just probably just not one for conversation, but to me that just made me want to get to know her better.

Our server then came to the table to take our orders, and I recognized her as Angel. What was she doing here? She was a girl I had spoken to earlier in the year when I came up to Kansas City to visit Molly and K.C.A.I. There was something strange about her though. During our first encounter, she spontaneously appeared next to me when I was waiting for Molly, but now she was working at the Classic Cup? That just didn’t seem to make any sense, yet she was there anyway…interacting with all of us.

“Are you ready to order?” she asked me, to which I courteously did without mentioning our previous meeting. “And something to drink?” she continued.

“Just some iced tea please,” I said.

“Sir, could I recommend a tall glass of water?” she said to me, motioning to Laura.

“I’m sorry,” I said, confused.

Suddenly, every activity in the restaurant ceased, even the other people in my group. It felt as though Angel and I were the only two people in the room.

“Laura, Evan,” she explicitly stated. “You remember me, don’t you?”

“Yeah. But how do you—

“Concentrate,” she insisted, “you know Laura too. Think about it.”

I looked over to her again as she remained in her petrified state, and it all came over me like a flood of rushing water. Things about her popped up in my head immediately, the first of which was a close encounter in my dorm room we had not long after this moment where we first met.

We were socializing late one night in my room with out friends, Will and Cristina. As games go, Truth or Dare was an old cheesy game that none of us were beyond, and it quickly descended into a situation that found all four of us lying in bed – me on the outside edge, just about to fall off my high-bunked dorm room furniture as I nestled close to Laura. At one point, I leaned in and blew on the back of her neck, brushing her long, beautiful blonde hair out of the way to expose her tender nape. At that exact moment, I could sense that this was the start of something more. Laura and I had grown closer that night. She was no longer a “friend of a friend.” She was mine.

Weeks later, about mid-November, I tried to get another group of friends together to head north of town to watch the Leonid meteor shower put on an amazing nighttime sky show. In an occurrence that would define our activities together, all of our friends ditched us on the idea, leaving only Laura and me as the only two making the trip.

We parked my car along a levee at Smithville Lake with a few other spectators’ vehicles. At first it was typical conversation, interrupted by a brief moment of me having to relieve myself in the dark a few feet away from the car. I hated doing that out there, but nature called, and I couldn’t wait. And if confessing that to her didn’t bring us closer, the words we shared as the night went on certainly would. Laura opened up to me about her lack of experience in the area of love – how she’d never even been kissed or intimately close to anyone, and I was honest about how I was ready to abandon all hope of ever finding true love. We were two people without expectations for ourselves in that area. Naturally, we were made for each other. At one point, I even mustered up the courage to ask her if she wanted me to kiss her. She declined. To me, it was just one more nail in the romance coffin, but little did I know that would be the end of it.

We sat back and watched the falling stars until the early morning, eventually running the juice out of the battery from our constant use of the radio. When I finally flagged down a Good Samaritan to help us get my car started, we made it back to campus just in time for that morning’s classes. We were both so focused on our upcoming day by then, but our memories of that night would last with us forever.

Thinking about that brought me to our most special moment. In early December, Laura and I went south to a small building on the outskirts of Kansas City for an event billed as “Wravelmania I,” a night of pulse-pounding beats and some of the areas hottest D.J.s. I had already been a raver for a while, even attending one in Kansas City during one of my frequent trips from Houston. So I knew a few people in the scene already. However, this was Laura’s first experience. She was curious, and I was more than happy to bring her into my world.

We got in the door of Gee Coffee in Olathe, where the party was already moving at full speed. People were dancing in the middle, hanging out along the sides and even a few were rolling on “E” in the back. However, the social animal that I was, I made my way around with Laura, introducing her to people that I knew as I came to them.

“Is she your girlfriend,” many would ask me.

Oh, how I wanted to say yes over and over. I hesitated and even looked to Laura for the answer. Noticing that it was a topic we hadn’t discussed much, my rave friends dropped it quickly. Eventually, I started feeling bad though. I could see Laura wasn’t really enjoying herself as much as I thought she hoped she would. After all, this was my world, not hers. We moved around the building some more, dancing and stopping, dancing and stopping. Soon we found an empty chair off to the side next to the drug-induced haze of the love pile.

Laura sat on the floor in front of me. “Lean your head back,” I told her. With her blonde-scalped skull resting in my lap, I gently caressed her hair for a while. I wanted to just do it right them and there – kiss her, but I couldn’t bring myself to…not after being shot down at the lake. Still, I persisted with little flirting games: playing with her hands and other innocent body parts. Eventually, I remembered a quote that had stayed with me. On the final episode of the sitcom, Mad About You, Paul and Jamie’s grown daughter, Mabel, espoused that “There’s no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first.” So with those words of wisdom repeating continuously in my head, I looked back at Laura’s beautiful face.

“Close your eyes,” I said softly.

I think Laura even expected what my next move would be. I leaned forward and kissed her, deep and long and more passionately than I thought a kiss between two people could be. Now that that barrier was broken, we kissed each other again…and again. Each time, I could feel time and the rhythmic beats of Gee Coffee slow to a low hum. The dancers and everything else around us blurred to an ethereal, surreal nothing.

Upon that moment, we built our relationship. We got back to the dorms early the next morning as the first snow of the season was beginning to fall. It felt familiar to me, like I had seen it before, but from another angle. Maybe the experience of that night just left me feel like I was floating outside of myself. We stepped into the elevator and headed up to my room where we watched the snow continue to accumulate through the dawn. Only a few days later, after returning my visiting mother to the airport, we decided to make our relationship official. I finally had the girlfriend I always desired, and Laura had her boyfriend. I was him.

* * * * *

I waited outside the Moulin Rouge theatre at Worlds of Fun under the sweltering sun of the summer of ’91, patiently counting down the minutes until the doors would fly open and welcome the crowd into its air-conditioned comfort. The experience was just as vivid now as I remembered it the first time. I sat on the ground under the theatre’s shady overhang and looked up. There was Molly, standing just a few feet away from me. She didn’t know me yet. In fact, this was about to be the moment where we met. I considered, though, all the things I had been through with her – bad things that I’d much rather not have in my future’s past, things that would drive a wedge between me and Laura. I didn’t want them. Just as I did during my last visit with her before our friendship came to a close, I knew I could change things. I had the willpower, and I could do it just as I had before. I just wouldn’t say anything to her this time. If I didn’t make the first move, we would never meet.

As I turned my attention away from her for a moment, I saw Angel leaning back against a fence, watching me. Was she testing me or just waiting to see what I would do? I couldn’t tell. However, as the time came and went for me to comment to Molly about the weather, I looked back to Angel to see her shaking her head in disappointment. What did I do wrong? I thought this was the way it was supposed to be.

Then I realized…she was there to make sure I did speak to Molly. I suddenly realized why. If I had never introduced myself to her, our relationship would never get to the point that it did, eventually causing me to return to Kansas City for school and subsequently allow me the opportunity of meeting my wife, Laura. I needed this friendship to lead me where it did.

I stopped Molly as she was heading inside. “Could it be any hotter out here?”

“Not really,” she replied, just as she did the first time.

“Are you here by yourself?” I asked.

She nodded, and I knew we’d be hanging out together for the rest of the day. As we continued out conversation, Angel walked by us and paused.

“Is it starting?” she asked me.

“In about five minutes,” Molly interjected, but I knew what Angel was referring to. I smiled back at her as I replied.

“Yes, it’s starting,” I said.

“Good,” she answered. I asked Molly if she could go on inside and save me a seat, which she did. I stayed at the door with Angel a little longer.

“I was worried about you for a while,” she admitted.

“You’re kidding,” I said sardonically.

“Well, you made me afraid that you’ve forgotten that Molly was responsible for leading you to your life with Laura.”

“I almost did.” She smiled back at me with a look of pride. It was the first time I’d seen Angel smile. I knew it was because I did something right. “What now?” I asked.

“Close your eyes,” she said softly.

I obliged, and she held her hands over them. One by one, I could sense things around me stop. The warm summer breezes stopped. The sound of the crowd stopped. Even the touch of Angel’s hands on my face disappeared.

“Now wake up,” she told me.

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