Part one of this story can be found here.

The Kris Story, Part II
or...Sunizona, AZ
4.3.8

Things went great in the beginning.

We constantly marveled at how much we had in common. We liked a ton of the same things, including the ever important road. Often after I would say something, she would exclaim that she had been thinking the exact same thing. We always joked that we were "in each other's heads." Most importantly, she had one of the qualities I really look for in a woman: Awareness. If I saw something funny or odd, I never needed mention it. I could just exchange glances with her and we would both know that we had each seen it.

We continued hanging out and leading our friends on random road trips. By the time we attended the school dance together, I had already begun falling in love with her. It was the kind of puppy-love that only stupid teenagers are capable of feeling without apprehension. During long breaks in our late night phone conversations, I would mouth the words to myself, just trying to find the courage to say them out loud.

She was the one that finally broke the silence. "I love you," she said casually one evening as we were saying goodbye. I returned the sentiment and we hung up. It was as if we has said it a thousand times before then. She immediately called her best friend to tell her, of course.

Unfortunately, we found ourselves in a spot of trouble soon thereafter.

It was late one night, and we had just dropped a friend off at his house. It was time for me to take her home as well, but neither of us wanted the night to end. Instead, we drove into a construction area in her neighborhood and parked the car. Talking turned to kissing, of course, and pretty soon we had moved to the back seat. I opened her shirt button by button, kissing her body the whole way down, and was in the process of fumbling with her bra when we were interrupted. A bright light suddenly flooded the car, followed by flashing red and blue. "Put your shirt on," I muttered, as if it even needed to be said.

The officer worked for Arapahoe county, the same sheriff's office that my stepdad worked for. As we waited for her mom to come pick her up, he commented with a smirk, "The next time you guys do something like this...at least make sure you're out of the county first." I'm sure that Mike got his fair share of shit from the other cops about that incident.

After that, we were both on lockdown. Both of our parents assumed that the other was a bad influence. Her mom thought that I was corrupting her little daughter, while my mom blamed Kris for my steadily dropping grades. They made it harder and harder for us to see each other, and even began talking and conspiring to keep us apart (although, they didn't really like one another that much either). Eventually, Kris and I grew tired of having to sneak around to see each other all the time.

Through secret phone calls and passed notes at school, we developed a plan. We were going to run away. I brought my maps to school and we decided on our new home. We knew we wanted to be somewhere warm. We also felt that we should find a small town where we figured no one would look for us (in retrospect, an idiotic idea). The rest was just misguided romanticism. We finally narrowed it down to a winner by picking the town with the nicest sounding name:

Sunizona, AZ

It was settled. The night of our escape, I lay awake in bed just watching the clock until almost 3 in the morning. When the time came I quietly got ready and left the house. She was waiting for me behind the mailboxes at the end of her street, just as planned. She got in the car and we kissed passionately before I began to drive. I stared at her for a few moments as we drove away...and almost immediately drifted to the right, slamming into the curb.

At least we were awake after that.

We drove south, thinking about how wonderful our new lives were going to be. Each time we crossed over into a new county, we joked to ourselves, "Hey! At least we're out of the county!" As we neared the New Mexican border, I began to get very nervous, though. Before we left I had asked Kris, over the phone, if she would marry me. She had said yes, but that was obviously not the proposal I had always envisioned for us. An awkward question over the phone simply would not do. Accordingly, I had planned to do it properly. At the border, just before leaving Colorado, I would pull over. We would get out, and as we stood there in the first light of a new day, I would give her my speech.

"I know we don't really have a whole lot right now. Hell...I can't even give you a ring. But past this border, there's an entire world waiting for us. So in a way, that's what I want to give you: The world. Will you marry me?"

Somewhat poetic, if not melodramatic, words from a very naïve young me. I had been practicing them in my head for hours by the time we reached mile marker 1. During that last stretch of Colorado highway, I looked around at the blackness which still enveloped the landscape. I obviously hadn't timed this properly.

I pulled off to the side of the road as we reached the edges of the Land of Enchantment. I turned the car off, and we sat there in darkness and silence for a few moments. "What are we doing?" she asked. I turned my gaze from the stars ahead of us, and looked at her. I could barely even see her. Surely, this wasn't going to work. I wanted to be able to look her in the eyes while I proposed.

"Nothing," I told her, "Not yet."

I started the car and began driving again. The Arizona border wouldn't be quite as symbolic, but it would have to suffice. Of course, I would regret that decision in the months to come, because we never actually made it to that border.