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Did you know I fell in love with you under those leaves? Yellowed and frayed by the late autumn breeze, they’d float to the ground in a peaceful flurry and underneath you shiny, black shoes they crunched loudly. You looked up at the almost bare tree branches and, tossing aside the brown fringe that covered part of your face, you told me that your favourite season was spring because autumn reminded you too much of emptiness. Then you smiled at me.

I didn’t ask you why. I didn’t speak at all until you felt the need to introduce yourself, your smile never faltering. I smiled back. That was the start.

From then on, we had regular meetings under those leaves. You never failed to look up at the tree during autumn and remind me of your dislike for the season. I never asked why. I found out the answer to my unspoken question later. I never told you about that because I loved to see you smile at me beneath those leaves. I was always afraid you’d stop but you never did.

It was me who eventually stopped meeting you below those leaves. Not because I wanted to – no, I’ve never not wanted to meet you there, to see you smile – but rather because my parents split up and my dad remarried and moved cities, with me in tow.

I never stopped thinking of you. I’d look up at the trees every autumn and try to smile and frown at the same time. Frown because of your blatant dislike for the season and smile because that was the season I met you. I felt compelled to resent autumn, but I could never quite bring myself to do so. After all, autumn was the month of our first meeting.

We wrote to each other and stayed in touch, but it wasn’t the same as standing under those leaves and watching a smile form on your lips. We both knew that things were different now, but we never acknowledged it.

When we grew up we tried to close off the distance that had formed between us. We succeeded and before long we had the friendship we had had as kids.

Do you know how I knew that you loved me too? When you looked up at the bare branches of a tree during autumn and smiled “You know, I’m growing to like autumn”.