He was predisposed to fall in love, quickly and violently, and he despised this about himself. He had always felt a deep and shameful connection with the British Romantics; their words blitzed his mind and any that he was unable to evade sank deep into his brain, became a part of his being. Sarah was her name, he thought he remembered a friend telling him, though his concentration was held effortlessly by her movements in the kitchen at the party, laughing and pouring drinks. They met again on the porch; she was idly smoking a cigarette and he immediately and mindlessly reached in his right front pocket for his own. He hated cigarettes, but there he was, chain smoking and not minding the buzzing in his head, the pulse in his eyes, the dizziness. He guessed he would be feeling these things anyway.
As it is wont to do late in the evening, especially at these sorts of parties, faux high-brow affairs, conversation lulled occasionally as the students milling on the porch stopped to admire themselves – these quiet moments were the most divine, the way she pursed her lips, stylishly and possibly uncomfortably, presumably for the benefit of the friends and would-be suitors who might glance in her direction. What other reason is there? Headlights from a car on the road that bowed in front of the house washed the porch in light for a fleeting moment; he noticed the way the light seemed to burst from her dress in refracted beams, though it was so brilliant that no individual ray could be isolated by the eye, giving her a golden aura not unlike that of a cheesy Hollywood depiction of a person deeply irradiated. She did not blink her eyes at the sudden light, but stared out at the car dully, willing it to speed off around the corner; he took this as a sign of her courage, her steady hand. Would he jump into traffic to save her? Yes, he decided, he probably would.
Taking a drag of a cigarette, feeling both very sated and very starved, he left the porch, leaving her to brood coolly and sliding back into the lightly pulsing living room. Because he loved her and others before her so intensely, often before catching a name or hearing a voice, he had learned to distrust his swelling chest and his mind’s elation. This, of course, made the feelings even stronger.
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