Me and Isabella met in high school, it was her last semester at a new high school miles away from her home turf in Louisiana, she was finishing out the semester there before going to college. Meanwhile I was hardly at school, thinking of any reason not to go to that place, I just wanted to finish so I could get on with joining the military and not worrying about showing my work for a math question I’ve seen a thousand times. We were quite the opposites in that regard, I just wanted to skirt responsibility while she never missed a class, an assignment, test, or even day of school and yet here we are 10 years later.

Isabella met a very good friend of mine in a class, they hit it off talking about longboarding and so he pops the question, “hey want to swing by later and go longboarding with me and my friends?” she agrees and that’s where it starts. She comes over to longboard at with Rance and his friends, which just happened to be where Rance and I were currently living, mom’s house. He had told me he was inviting a girl over to longboard and me only having a collective 2 brain cells at any given time asks him “but bro is she hot?” He never really answered he just said “you can tell me when you meet her”

She shows up, and I was right, she’s gorgeous, which left me no time to stare slack jawed because she was here to longboard not look at a walking stick with a staring problem. I talked with her, introduced myself, and off we went. Rance and I have been longboarding for awhile so the first hill we come too wasn’t a big deal, we had bombed it every day for the past year so I think nothing of it, we’re cruising down it when I look around and realize “wait weren’t we skating with a hot girl?” And turned back in disbelief to see her longboard screaming down at me with no one on it, in fact 5 feet away is Isabella rolling in a perfect “on all fours” position tumbling like the back of a concrete truck. I stop. Everyone else had skated past and I stopped to help her and see if she was okay, she’s from Louisiana so she didn’t even notice the dirt from this escapade. She’s ok, not banged up, walks it off like a trooper but she wasn’t bombing any more hills. So I took it slow and hung out while our friends stayed ahead, talking to her about music, where she’s from, if she wants knee and elbow pads next time, and learned a lot about her on that trip. (Or fall I guess?)

After that I was hooked