Jesse was my first love, or at least the first boy I can remember feeling like I loved first. 

“We are all going to go around the circle and say who we like, no skipping and you can’t say no one,” two months into boarding school and I was having my first sleepover with other 10 year old girls whose names I’d barely learned. 

“What about you?” The question panned towards me, “Who do you like?” I blanked for a second “uhh..maybe…Jesse,” I blurted. 

“Jesse? Really?” They all looked at me horrified, like I’d grown horns in the middle of my forehead. “Yeah, there’s just something about him,” I smiled and they all nodded and moved to the next girl. 

I thought about it all through the night, after everyone cleared up and went to bed. Why did I pick Jesse? Why Jesse? Was it because he was short, with small shoulders, or the large head? Or was it his beautiful skin and the way he smiled at me like he understood exactly what I was feeling. I can’t decide. Either way at first glance, Jesse was not the cutest, at least not for a girl my age. 

Jesse was a mature kind of beautiful. He had the most gorgeous dark skin, baby pink lips that formed into a beautiful smile, that shaped his ivory pearlies. I liked Jesse, I liked talking to him, he was funny. Not clown funny, but actually funny. His witty sense of humor kept me interested in conversations. But at the same time, Jesse was a boy. I liked Jesse, but I didn’t like Jesse. I realized, I only said Jesse because no one else said Jesse. I figured saying Jesse was safe.

I knew Jesse for approximately three years, then he fell off the face of the earth. I tried asking his friends, but they knew nothing. Neither did his cousin, I dropped it.

I thought I forgot about him. It’s safe to say 15 years later, I still find myself asking, “What the fuck happened to Jesse?”