Before I Knew Better
I would love to tell you that I saw it coming.
That I noticed the warning signs, listened to my friends, prayed for discernment, and walked away before my heart got involved. That would make for a very inspiring testimony, wouldn’t it?
Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I met Nathan during the second week of fall semester, when I was running late to a lecture and trying to carry three textbooks and a coffee that had already betrayed me once.
The coffee betrayed me again.
It sloshed over the lid and splashed across my hand just as I reached for the building door.
“Ow!” I yelped, jerking my hand back. I held it out in front of me and blew on the reddening skin, as if that would somehow convince the coffee to reverse its decision.
It didn’t help. That coffee was hot!
A guy appeared beside me and pulled the door open. “Rough morning?”
I glanced at him, then down at the coffee dripping between my fingers. Without bothering to answer, I hurried inside and made a beeline for a nearby table. My textbooks landed with a thud on the surface.
“No, this is how I normally greet people,” I said, setting the coffee down with considerably more caution than it deserved. “With a small offering of bodily harm.”
He laughed. Not a polite, pitying chuckle, either. An actual laugh, which was a little unfair considering I was standing there with coffee on my hand and the general appearance of someone losing a fight with breakfast.
I probably should have kept moving. I had a class to get to, a hand to clean, and a quiz to possibly fail. Instead, I stood there while the stranger dropped his backpack onto the chair beside him, rummaged through it, and pulled out a packet of napkins.
He held them out to me. “Here. Before you lose a finger.”
“Thanks.” I took them and began blotting my hand, trying not to wince as the napkin brushed against the hot skin.
He leaned against the table, watching me with an amused expression. “Nathan.”
I looked up. “Hannah.”
His gaze moved to the pile of books I’d practically abandoned on the table. “You always carry your entire education around with you?”
“Only on days ending in Y.”
“Impressive. I was going to ask if you needed help, but now I’m worried you’d make me carry something heavy.”
I pressed the napkins against my hand and gave him a look. “I’d never ask a stranger to do that.”
He nodded solemnly. “So we’re strangers.”
The way he said it, as though this were a tragic discovery, caught me off guard. A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
His smile widened, and for one ridiculous second, I forgot I was late.
Nathan had the kind of confidence that made a conversation feel effortless. He didn’t stumble over his words or seem to be searching for the right thing to say. He was funny without being obnoxious, comfortable without being arrogant, and attentive in a way that made you feel as though he was genuinely interested in what you had to say.
He also had very nice eyes. I noticed them against my will.
I would have preferred to keep that information to myself, especially since we’d known each other for approximately forty-five seconds, but my brain had apparently decided to start collecting unnecessary details.
“Well, Hannah,” he said, slowly walking away as I gathered my books, “I hope your day improves.”
“Thanks.” I shook my head, smiling as I hurried toward the lecture hall.
I didn’t think much of the encounter afterward. Not at first. College was full of people, and a funny guy handing me napkins was hardly a sign that the Lord had written a romantic subplot into my semester.
Besides, I had other things to worry about. Classes were getting harder, my grocery budget was getting smaller, and I was beginning to suspect that college students survived entirely on caffeine and noodles with a shelf life longer than most relationships.
I had no intention of adding a relationship to the list of things I needed to manage. Not just any relationship, anyway. I was trying to be sensible about dating. I had boundaries for a reason, and I wasn’t interested in getting involved with someone simply because he had a nice smile and knew how to make me laugh.
That sounded straightforward enough in theory. In practice, it became a little harder when the boy with the nice eyes turned out to be in two of my classes.
The next time I saw Nathan, he was sitting near the back of the lecture hall, leaning toward a friend and making him laugh. I was halfway down the aisle when he looked up and spotted me. Recognition flickered across his face. Then he lifted his hand in greeting, as if we’d known each other longer than the length of one coffee-related disaster.
I smiled back before finding a seat. It was a small thing. Barely worth mentioning, really.
The following week, he asked if he could borrow my notes after class. I handed them over, expecting a quick thank-you and the return of my notebook sometime before graduation. Instead, he sat beside me while he copied them, occasionally making comments about the lecture that had me biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
The week after that, he dropped into the seat beside me and glanced at the professor, who was explaining a concept with the enthusiasm of someone reading the ingredients on a cereal box.
“What do you think?” Nathan whispered.
I kept my eyes on the front of the room. “About what?”
“His attempt to make a forty-minute lecture feel like a personal punishment.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Don’t laugh,” he whispered. “He’ll know we’re enjoying ourselves.”
“I’m not enjoying myself.”
“Neither am I. I’m suffering with excellent company.”
That did it. I ducked my head, shoulders shaking as I tried to smother my laughter behind my hand. The professor stopped speaking. Nathan immediately straightened and stared at his notebook with an expression of such intense academic devotion that I nearly lost it all over again.
I spent the rest of the lecture trying not to look at him. It became a pattern. A comment here, a conversation there. Sometimes we talked after class; other times, we’d run into each other on campus and stop for a few minutes. Gradually, our conversations stopped being limited to lectures and professors who seemed offended by the concept of an engaging lesson.
He learned that I preferred coffee with too much cream, that I called my mom when I needed advice, and that I was a Christian.
That last detail came up when he asked what I’d done over the weekend.
“Church, mostly,” I said, sliding my notebook into my bag.
He tilted his head. “Mostly?”
“Well, I also went grocery shopping. Those ramen noodles aren’t going to buy themselves.”
“Let me know if that happens. I’ll invest.”
I snorted, then caught myself. “You would invest in ramen?”
“I’m a businessman.”
“You’re a college student.”
“Same thing, except I’m significantly more broke.”
I laughed as I zipped my bag.
He watched me for a moment, then asked, “So, your faith is a big part of your life?”
I paused, surprised by the question. It wasn’t unusual for people to know I was a Christian. I didn’t hide it, and I wasn’t ashamed of it. But there was a difference between someone knowing I went to church and someone asking why.
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Depends. Is it about the ramen investment?”
“That was a serious business proposal, and I won’t have it mocked.” He smiled. “But no. I was wondering what you believe. I mean, beyond going to church.”
I studied his face, trying to decide whether he was genuinely curious or simply making conversation. He didn’t look impatient. He wasn’t glancing around for someone else to talk to or wearing the expression of someone waiting for me to finish so he could change the subject.
So I answered. I told him about my faith, about how Scripture shaped the way I wanted to live, and about how I was still learning what it meant to follow Jesus in everyday life. I stumbled over a few explanations, backtracked once or twice, and probably said “you know what I mean” more often than was necessary.
He listened without rolling his eyes or making a joke at my expense. When I mentioned wanting a relationship that honored God, he didn’t laugh. When I explained that there were certain boundaries I wasn’t willing to compromise, he didn’t tell me I was old-fashioned or try to talk me out of them.
He just nodded. “I respect that,” he said.
Those three words settled somewhere in my heart. Maybe it was because I’d grown used to the little jokes people made about my beliefs. Maybe it was because I knew how easily a conversation about faith could turn into an argument, even when I wasn’t trying to convince anyone of anything. Or maybe I was simply relieved that I could talk about something important to me without feeling like I needed to defend its existence.
Whatever the reason, I remembered his response.
And he continued, “I was actually wondering if you’d get coffee with me sometime.”
I blinked. It wasn’t as though I had never been asked out before. Still, there was something unsettling about realizing that a conversation you’d been enjoying might have been heading somewhere you hadn’t quite prepared for.
“Coffee?”
He glanced toward the cup in my hand. “That’s generally what people drink at coffee shops.”
“I know what coffee is, Nathan.”
“Excellent. We’re already communicating well.”
I tried not to smile. I failed.
He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and waited, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“I don’t date casually,” I told him.
His expression softened a little. “Okay.”
“I mean it. My faith is important to me, and I’m not looking for something that isn’t going anywhere.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Would you like me to take a quiz? I can prepare a presentation.”
I laughed, but I was watching him carefully. I wanted to make sure he understood that I wasn’t teasing. These were convictions I’d thought about long before he came along, and I wasn’t going to abandon them because a boy had decided I was interesting.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“So am I, Hannah.” For a moment, he didn’t joke. He held my gaze, and the sincerity in his expression made my heart do a little flip...a few actually. “I’m not asking you to decide the rest of your life over coffee,” he said. “I’m asking if you’d like to get to know me.”
It was a reasonable request. A simple one, really. Besides, I liked him. That was the inconvenient part. I liked the way he made me laugh. I liked that he remembered things I’d mentioned in passing. And I liked that, when I told him what mattered to me, he seemed to take it seriously.
“One coffee,” I said.
Nathan’s smile returned. “I’ll try to contain my excitement.”
“Please do.”
“I make no promises.”
And just like that, we had a date. Well, a coffee date.
I walked away with a smile I couldn’t quite shake and a suspicious amount of butterflies in my stomach. Naturally, I blamed the coffee. It was the most logical explanation, and I saw no reason to investigate further.
Looking back, that was the beginning of our love story. But every story has a beginning, and not every beginning tells you how things will end.
