part III

I think Stephen was kind of in shock when I told him I was leaving 4 months earlier than planned. What I didn't know was the he had kind of started to change his mind about me, and was waiting at this point for the opportune moment. He figured he had all summer. Now he had to decide again if he really wanted to date me now that I was leaving. I invited him to come see General Conference with me since I had tickets. I tried as hard as I could to make it not a date, but it still kind of felt like one. Anyone who saw us together that day could easily assume we were at least dating, even though we weren't even holding hands. He told me on the drive up that he was going to miss me, and I said the same, though I was pretty sure I meant it differently. If we hadn't had to give a ride home to two other girls, I think something might have happened on the way home. But it didn't.

That same week, I had a concert. At dinner group I was all dressed up for our dress rehearsal, and Stephen walked in and told me in front of everyone that I was gorgeous. Then he offered to drive me up to campus, since I was running late. Then he came and picked me up, and dropped off my friend, and we went to the grocery store together. This is all in my car. The next day I decided to invite him to the concert. Miraculously there were tickets left, and I got him a pretty good seat. Elder Oaks was sitting right behind him. After the concert I was on stage for a long time doing clean-up recordings, but when I finally made it upstairs, I found Stephen waiting for me. We walked to my car and he asked if he could buy me a frosty. I was thinking about the last time he bought me a frosty, but I agreed anyway. But then he asked if I wanted to go see a movie, and I started to get suspicious. There were no good movies, so he suggested we find a nice "spot" to eat our frosties. We ended up on a grassy hill by some apartments on Y mountain. We just sat there and talked like usual, and I started to think again that he really just brought me here to talk like regular friends and eat our frosties. And once again I was wrong. Eventually he said something about how he was really going to miss me, and he'd become rather attached to me lately. He knew it could be one of the stupidest things he'd ever done, but he thought maybe we should date for the next 2 weeks until I left. I surprised, and I don't even remember what I said. Or if I said anything. He put his arm around me and held my hand. It was really sweet. He also kissed me that night on the hill, before we went back to my apartment. I was still in my women's chorus outfit. Back at my apartment, we had about 20 minutes before curfew, so we sat on the couch and watched the end of a movie with my room mates. It was great to watch their faces when they noticed we were holding hands. When he left, they waited about 20 seconds to make sure he was out of earshot, and then started grilling me. I did not sleep much that night. Or at all really, during the next 2 weeks.

It was strange at first, trying to figure out what exactly it meant to be a girlfriend. I also had to figure out how to live through the last two days of school, when all my projects were due, and get through finals without failing miserably. Stephen tried hard to distract me as soon as he realized I would have to stay if I failed. We said "I love you" two days after we started dating. If I wasn't doing schoolwork that next week, I was with Stephen. Then my family came to town for graduation. They met him on graduation day, and he spent some time with all of us. My family left for Henderson on Saturday morning, and I stayed behind to go to dinner and one last Singers concert with Stephen. It was the best date ever. I'd been dreaming years of having a date to a singers concert.

I had to drive to Henderson the next morning, but once again I did not get much sleep because I had to finish my check out cleaning and last minute packing. Before 8am, Stephen was at my door and he packed the rest of my stuff into the car. I was not ready. When we finally walked downstairs, it took at least 20 minutes to say goodbye. I cried. It was hard, because I had no idea what was going to happen to us. Moving back to Provo was not in my plans...