It was an ordinary Saturday morning in November when my phone buzzed. Half awake, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my dorm room, I was eating leftover pizza straight from the box—the kind of questionable meal choice only a college freshman could justify. I glanced at my phone and nearly choked on the stale pepperoni: it was a text from Adnan.
“Do you want to go to a bonfire tonight?”
That was it. No emoji, no explanation, no hint of what this meant. But to me, the message hit like a religious revelation. A real invite, during the daylight hours, to do something that took place in public? With other people present? That was practically the Navy Sailor equivalent of a marriage proposal.
Adnan was everything I shouldn’t have wanted. At 19, I had developed an unshakable crush on him—a tall, devastatingly handsome, reckless Navy kid who looked like he could ruin your life (and was probably proud of it). We had met earlier that semester during one of my late-night workout phases. A chance encounter had ended with a sweaty, impulsive hookup outside the gym, and ever since, I’d been hooked. Or more accurately, addicted.
Over the next two months, I turned into a complete cliché. I’d wait by the phone, rereading his sporadic, two-sentence texts like they were secret sonnets written just for me. Half the time, he vanished into the abyss—ignoring my calls, ghosting on plans. The other half, he’d show up at 11:45 p.m. with a two-word text that said something like, “You up?” and I’d transform instantly—hair flat-ironed, makeup retouched, perfume spritzed—and run down to his car like he was doing me the honor of a royal summoning.
I’d rant to friends about how I was done with him, change his name in my phone to things like “DO NOT RESPOND” or “TRASH BOY,” and then happily climb right back into his passenger seat the next time he appeared. It was obsession, mixed with desperation, shaken into a very messy cocktail of teenage infatuation.
So that bonfire text? It felt cosmic. Clearly, the universe—and maybe God himself—was telling me this was my chance. I typed a reply that I thought was breezy and unbothered, though I’m sure it came out unhinged, and agreed without even asking the basics. Where was it? Who would be there? Didn’t matter. My crush wanted me there, so I was in.
When Adnan pulled up outside my dorm a few hours later, I practically floated down the stairs. He wasn’t alone—his roommate, a guy named Mark with a crooked smile and quiet eyes, was behind the wheel. I slid into the backseat, trying to play it cool while my stomach buzzed with the panic-excitement blend that only comes from chasing someone who makes you feel both special and disposable.
We drove out of town to the edge of nowhere. By the time we reached a cluster of fields, the night air had dropped to the kind of cold that makes every breath taste sharp. The bonfire itself was already alive—orange sparks floating into the black sky, kids passing bottles of cheap liquor, music blaring from a speaker that kept cutting out. It was chaos wrapped in firelight.
The night blurred the way nights with him always did. We drank, we laughed. He spent more time talking with Mark than with me, but every so often he’d brush his hand against mine or lean too close, and my teenage heart would launch into orbit.
Eventually, the fire was dying down. People piled back into cars, scattering into the night. Somehow, I ended up following Adnan and Mark into a stranger’s house nearby—someone they vaguely knew who had offered a basement for people to crash in. It wasn’t glamorous. Just an old, musty space with a mattress tossed on the floor, graffiti sketches on the cement walls, and a string of Christmas lights sputtering above.
But here’s the thing. When Adnan kissed me there in that dim basement—the music muffled upstairs, his hand tangled in my hair, Mark passed out across the room—it felt like something sacred. I don’t think it was love. It was reckless and sloppy, carried on the fumes of alcohol and youthful stupidity. Yet, in that exact moment, nothing had ever felt more romantic. He didn’t just want me in the backseat of his car. He wanted me there, in the messy reality of a stranger’s basement, choosing me despite all the distractions.
I know now that it wasn’t a grand love story. We fizzled not long after, because of course we did. But sometimes, when I think back on my freshman year, that night feels like a gleaming snapshot—two kids lost in the chaos of youth, finding something that felt infinite in the most unexpected place.
Because sometimes romance isn’t candlelight or roses. Sometimes it’s pizza for breakfast, a half-drunk bonfire, and your crush kissing you like you belong to nobody else in a basement that smells vaguely of mold.
