I’ve been thinking about Beau a lot lately.Â
Beau Edward Hart was my first real semi requited love. He wasn’t my first kiss or even my first date, but I walked into English class the first day of senior year and *boom*. I instantly became a cliche-ridden teenager. The only way he could have been more attractive to me is if his name had happened to be Rhett.
Newspaper assignments threw us together, as I was one of the reporters and he was the photographer. A drama club trip to Memphis during which we stayed up all night half watching Heathers and half pretending not to be as sleepy as we actually were led to an entire semester of antics worthy of outakes from Grease. And Graduation Day, during which he didn’t speak to me at all, broke my heart.
In a year of playing Scarlett O’Hara, Beau was my hero. Quirky, rebellious, edgy and sarcastic, he was ripe for a starring role in my seventeen year old dreams.
Almost fifteen years later, I find myself thinking of high school again. There will never be another year of Beauty and the Beast, of Nikki playing “Open Arms” on the piano, of putting a bowling ball between my legs and rolling it down the lane for a strike. There will never be another year of watching football players dress in tights and prance around as faries in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There will never be another year of making up word searches for the Children’s page, of wearing blue and gold ribbons in my hair, of picking up The Once and Future King and actually discussing Lancelot and Guinevere in class.
And there will never be another Beau.
Seventeen feels like another life ago.  A week after graduation, I met the man who is now my husband. We have a slightly messy house and a slightly chaotic life in a wonderful little town that I love very much. And when Kenny hands me a dark chocolate candy bar that he bought just because he knew I would like it or one of my church kids stands up from circle time and embraces me, I know I really am where I belong.
But somewhere, a tiny corner of my heart is still in a Memphis hotel room watching a very weird movie in the middle of the night with a boy who was the first person to call me “beautiful”.
And every now and then, I go back to seventeen.