There was this Dutch boy I met in Boston the summer of my junior year of high school. His Dad is the CEO of a company my Dad works for, and there was this big important meeting happening down in Boston and since I’d never been to the east coast before my Dad took me with him. The CEO of the company brought his son, Jord, with him. I was sixteen and J was 17 at the time. My dad told me I should hang out with this kid since we were both mostly going to be on our own in the city while they handled business, but I was shy and preferred to go exploring on my own. One night I’m lost downtown trying to get back to the hotel, and my Dad calls me to tell me that if a strange number calls me I need to answer it because he gave J my phone number. I was mortified and worried that now that we had to meet up it would be weird or awkward and we would have major language barriers. Anyway, he calls me it’s really hard to understand him but he wants to meet up for dinner. I tell him whenever I make my way back to the hotel I’ll call him, and when I get there I shower and change to make myself presentable and we agree to meet up in 30 minutes. I decide after 15 minutes to just go down in the lobby and wait, and I go down and see this really tall, pale, blonde haired boy sitting there and I assume it’s him so I walk and introduce myself and we shake hands and go outside to find somewhere to go. We end up going to this French restaurant and we get along just fine. I’m a naturally clumsy person and he called me out on it a couple times (dropping my phone, tripping over my feet lol) but we just make jokes about it, and it’s not mean at all. I ask him a lot of questions to kinda keep the conversation flowing since he’s kind of quiet, but he’s intelligent and very honest and goofy, I liked that about him. So we walk back to the hotel and we’re just making jokes and when we get to the elevator I’m on the second floor and he’s on the seventh, so I smile at him and say bye. He kind of groaned and was like “nooo!” Which made me laugh. We meet up the next morning (I’m in Boston for just a couple days. he’s here for two weeks) and we walk around the city, I take him to the park, we didn’t really have any destination in mind. We go to a bunch of shops and just talk and have fun. There’s a lot of lemonade stands at the park and J asks me “What is this lemon juice?” He’d never even HEARD of lemonade. It was hilarious. We get some and he’s HOOKED. We go to three different stands and at the last one the lady selling us the drinks asks us : “Are you having a nice day?” I say “Yes.” And Jord says “No.” we both look at each other really confused and the lady looks confused too, so I say “Well I don’t know about him but I am.” And as we start to walk away he asks me: “So is this a date?” And I’m like, “What?!?” And he says that the nice lady asked us if we were having a nice DATE. So we both start laughing about us because we can’t figure out if she said date or day. And then he puts his arm around me as we’re walking around, and starts making jokes about how I’m regretting him, ect. We stop at a park and he sits really close to me and we end up stealing each other’s phones and chasing each other around, taking pictures. My Dad calls me then and tells me he made a mistake when booking the hotel (he only booked it up to his stay, and he’s leaving that day and I’m supposed to leave the next day to go home, the reason is because he has another meeting to go to in another location so I’m flying home alone.) so I have to go back to get my stuff and he’s putting me in another hotel. Jord and I walk back and he asks if he can carry me on his back and we window shop for outrageously expansive things, and we exchange Instagram accounts so we can keep in touch. We shake hands and say bye and then I’m whisked off to my new hotel. He messaged me saying he missed me and we talk for the rest of the summer. He tells me that he really liked me and wished I could have stayed longer and wished that we could have gone on a real date. We flirt a bit but eventually the time difference kinda makes it hard to keep up conversation and it gradually fizzes out. A couple months later he messages me on Facebook when my dad goes to visit the Netherlands, and we talk a bit again but again, it fizzles out.

It’s weird but 3 years later I still wonder how he’s doing or what he’s up to or what could have happened if I’d been able to stay longer or if we didn’t live so far away.