Brewing my first cup of coffee

At about age 14, I was still dating my first boyfriend, Bill, after at least one or two breakups since we met at age 12. One summer, we found ourselves at my parents' house alone for a little while. As any hormone-ridden teens home alone would do, we decided to make coffee. Scandalous!
Always precocious, Bill was already a coffee drinker at 14, or so he led me to believe. Despite my protestations that I had no clue how to work the coffee maker, he insisted that I make coffee so I gave it a shot. All during the exercise I remember chastising him for chauvinism. Needless to say, the coffee was terrible. He immediately spit it out and said, "When we get married, I will make the coffee". I still can't make a decent cup of coffee, and have never learned to drink it.

Bill came and went in and out of my life during high school, including occasional bouts of proposing on a weekly basis. He'd get all silly and give me a rose, go down on one knee and propose like a goof. He often said "Marry me; but I will make the coffee". I'd always retort "No way!" or "Don't be ridiculous". Prone to romantic gestures, he'd leave notes on my car while I was working in the library that simply said "I will make the coffee" and I knew he'd been by.

We fell out of each others lives in college and our twenties, but as my first love, he was present in my stories as I made new friends. He settled in our home town area, soI'd see him when visiting home for the holidays; it was always nice to connect. Eventually, he fell in love and proposed for real to a lovely woman. I was happy for him. That summer, I was headed to Tokyo, so would have to miss the wedding. To make up for missing it, I spent days assembling the perfect gift: a big box full of everything he would need to make coffee for about a year. It had beans, cups, a few kitchen towels with coffee beans on them- a whole bunch of stuff. I sealed it up and sent it off with a sort of sentimental smile. It wasn't until after I'd sent it that I panicked and hoped that his new wife wouldn't be upset! It was, for me, a great way to close a formative chapter, to tell him I hadn't forgotten the magic of our first love, and to wish him the best.