So let me start by saying that I didn’t have the healthiest relationships in college and didn’t always make the best choices when it came to dating and hooking up, and all of this fits squarely into the latter. But it does make for a good story.
I did theater all through high school and continued through my first couple of years at college, mostly getting smaller roles on stage or doing tech every now and then. Tim was two years older than me, a senior when I was a sophomore, and we were on stage together for a couple of shows that year. Emily did tech for both of those performances and happened to be dating Tim, and I got to know both of them pretty well. After rehearsals a small group of us would get together for drinks at someone’s apartment or for late night food at a diner, and Emily and I would talk a lot. Emily was a couple of inches shorter than me, with long, brown, really curly hair. Tanner than I am, and when she wasn’t wearing all black for our shows she usually just went out in jeans and a hoodie. We started hanging out together before rehearsals in my dorm or in the lounge, and I was into her. I had picked up some signals that she might be interested in women, or at least interested in *me*, and those started getting stronger every time we were just hanging out alone with each other. About halfway through the spring semester I was single, and we were hanging out just about every other day. It was a couple of days before spring break and the dorms were already feeling pretty empty. We were sitting on a couch together in my dorm’s lounge, laughing about something and her hand landed near my thigh, just barely touching it. I shifted to sit a little closer to her, and we kept talking. I moved my hand on hers. She gave just the tiniest look of surprise, then leaned closer to me and we started kissing.