drinkerthinker

He likes to remind me that the first time we met (not our first date), I didn't exactly take to him. “You pretty much turned your head away as you were shaking my hand!” The handshake is buried in my memory - I was sitting on a leather couch in the back room of Clery's, out with B & D - but I can't remember him.

A tall hazy blob, described in questionable terms by B: “That's Ethan Marcotte over there, with a girl that's not his girlfriend.” Long after I learned that the girl was in fact his best friend and had a girlfriend of her own. When they left, Ethan sent a scotch (on the rocks? with water?) to our table for B.

And that is all that's left of that evening.

A few months later, the trip to the movies that would eventually come to be known as our first date took place. I can tell you what movie we saw, show you the ticket stub, tell you where we went to drink, name the band that was playing in the bar. I remember walking to his now-long-gone car and being driven home.

Until that point, some nights seemed to count more than others. Now I want to remember them all, good or bad. And tonight, the eleven hundred and second evening of our relationship, I would like to wish him a happy anniversary six days late.