She was seven and he was eight. They'd grown up near each other, or rather, he grew up near her nana's who she spent all of her time with. They climbed trees together, caught bugs together, went fishing together. They were attached at the hip. It'd been this way since the day they met when he saw her fall off her tricycle at age four. He took her back to her grandma's house as she pretended the big scrape on her knee that was bleeding didn't hurt. "I'm too strong!" She told him, fighting back tears. On her seventh birthday, he kissed her. He told her he liked her and he wanted to be her boyfriend. Neither knew what it really meant but Corey and Topanga were boyfriend and girlfriend, so why couldn't they be? They told each other everything, like how he was afraid of the dark and how she wished she looked different so she wouldn't get teased. He punched the kids that teased her for her red hair and after that, their family's decided it was best they stopped hanging out.

There were no rose petals sprawled across the bed or candles lit. They weren't in love, they weren't even dating. They were lab partners in Freshman Honors Biology and spent many days after school studying, becoming friends after finding out they both had a love for hiking.
"Are you a virgin?"
The topic was brought up after they overheard one of their classmates recalling the story of her boyfriend deflowering her. They both realized they were which lead to her turning to him to proposition something big.
"I don't know if you're saving yourself for that one person. But if you aren't, what if we just do it. I mean.. at least we'll be experienced when the time comes for us to really have sex."
He agreed to what she was saying, both taking the scientific approach of trial and error into consideration when it came to sex. After managing to locate a condom, the pair returned to her bed and on top of their Biology text books, started to try to figure their way around each others body's. The embrace followed clumsy groping as the two nervous kids tried to figure out what the other liked, while she tried to reference things she saw in adult movies, no one which seemed to work out well for her. It lasted no more than a minute from the time he was inside her and left her anything but satisfied. They agreed to try again, more trial and error until they had a better idea of what they were doing and he promised he'd last longer. She promised to not do what she saw in the movies and he laughed.

Love was a strange thing, something the scientific side of her tried to break down. It had to with hormones, with dopamine matching the right levels of serotonin, but it couldn't be thought of that way. And when it was something she experienced for the first time, she realized it was much more than that. It was the fluttering in her stomach she got when he held her hand, or the way her cheeks lit up when he looked at her. How she wanted to spend time with him, which was hard since they went to different High Schools. They met through a summer Science program and while she thought he was cute, he was also her biggest competition at camp. In the end, he out shined her but asked for her number when the program was over. In August, when school started, both told each other that if they were only sixteen (and seventeen) and there was no need to make it serious.
"I can't stand when people act like relationships in High School are going to last forever. I know it's not, so let's just keep it casual."
She told him and he echoed her remarks. They tried to keep it casual but soon enough they realized that there was more there then they were realizing and made it official but October. Toward the end of the year, he invited her to his prom where he told her those three big words, something she wasn't expecting. Without hesitation, she repeated them back. They were together for another year, until he went off MIT after his Senior year.