Speaker 1: Stevie Lane. Hello, it's fair to say that you know
Speaker 1: me as something of a storyteller.
Speaker 2: I would say that's fair.
Speaker 1: No, I spin yarns. But you know, I have to
Speaker 1: say sometimes I get a little tired of it.
Speaker 2: What gets tired? Is it just your mouth?
Speaker 1: Sometimes this storyteller longs to be a story listener. Now
Speaker 1: I understand you have a story for me to listen to.
Speaker 2: I do you just have to open up those years?
Speaker 1: I shut my big fat yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're going to give your mouth a rest.
Speaker 2: Today's have you wait?
Speaker 3: Short Jesse and Tory right after the break, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 3: Our story today begins with a man, a man named
Speaker 3: Jesse James.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is he.
Speaker 3: Right off the bat, Jesse James and I have something
Speaker 3: in common.
Speaker 2: I appreciate this is he.
Speaker 3: But every time I say it, like to my friends,
Speaker 3: like this is she, they're always like, you're an asshole?
Speaker 2: Yeah, which you know.
Speaker 3: I hope you don't think I'm calling you an asshole.
Speaker 4: No, of course not. But I am an attorney, so
Speaker 4: I am, in fact an asshole.
Speaker 3: Jesse, not in fact an asshole? Is here to tell
Speaker 3: me the story of his first love. He was in
Speaker 3: middle school twenty two years ago in West Virginia. As
Speaker 3: a kid, Jesse had a big personality, was always kind
Speaker 3: of the class clown. But in sixth grade he was
Speaker 3: going through a hard time.
Speaker 4: My dad he had got deployed in Afghanistan in the
Speaker 4: wake of nine to eleven, and my best friend Keith
Speaker 4: had moved away. I was kind of looking for stuff
Speaker 4: to grab onto. I was kind of rootless, didn't have
Speaker 4: any real close friends.
Speaker 3: Then one December day, a new girl showed up in
Speaker 3: his science class.
Speaker 4: She had a particular smile that was really great. It
Speaker 4: was more like a smirk, like she knew something that
Speaker 4: you didn't.
Speaker 3: Her name was Torri. She was from Ohio, Tall, with long,
Speaker 3: dark hair. Jesse had a crush immediately, so to get
Speaker 3: her attention, he devised an elaborate plan. Since his best
Speaker 3: friend Keith had just moved away.
Speaker 4: I declare that I need a new best friend, so
Speaker 4: I hold a contest. I ask for written applications.
Speaker 2: Okay, but not really.
Speaker 4: No, I did. I'll set up a contest. I'll rig
Speaker 4: it so she wins, and we'll right off into the sunset. Wow,
Speaker 4: are you impressed with the brilliance of this plan?
Speaker 2: Brilliance wasn't necessarily the word I would have chosen.
Speaker 4: But uh, I think there may have been a talent portion.
Speaker 4: Now I'm certain there was a talent portion. There's no
Speaker 4: way there wouldn't have been.
Speaker 3: Jesse made a questionnaire, Tory took one home and filled
Speaker 3: it out. Jesse says she really aced one particular question.
Speaker 4: If I was hanging off the side of a cliff
Speaker 4: with one hand, you know, slipping, what would you do?
Speaker 2: Wow? High stakes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I remember that she wrote nothing. It was
Speaker 4: like she saw through the ridiculousness of it and it
Speaker 4: was like a wink.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 4: So it's like you can do better than that.
Speaker 3: Jesse's plan worked. He and Tory became best friends for
Speaker 3: the next few years. They sat together every day at
Speaker 3: lunch and on the bus ride home after school from
Speaker 3: their separate houses. They call each other up on the
Speaker 3: phone and watch movies like Misery and Sixteen Candles all
Speaker 3: night long. Jesse would show off for Tory, play piano,
Speaker 3: entertain her with his impression of Sean Connery. Tory didn't
Speaker 3: even know who Sean Connery was, but she laughed anyway.
Speaker 2: Jesse was in love.
Speaker 3: On the day of Tory's thirteenth birthday, Jesse decided to
Speaker 3: make his big move. They were going to the movies
Speaker 3: to celebrate.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the movie? Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I could never forget. It was The Day after Tomorrow.
Speaker 4: There's bad movies, but it's bad in a special way.
Speaker 4: But whatever. I wasn't even watching the movie half the time.
Speaker 4: I was more looking at Tory, thinking about what do
Speaker 4: I need to do to be able to put my
Speaker 4: arm around her. I did the old classic yawn, but.
Speaker 3: To a surprise, Tory shrugged me off, and I thought, hmm,
Speaker 3: maybe I've miss read some of this.
Speaker 2: Jesse was confused.
Speaker 3: He'd been trying to show Toy in many small ways
Speaker 3: how he felt about her, and she seemed to like him,
Speaker 3: but she kept shooting him down. Jesse recalls one day
Speaker 3: in school when he saw Tory carrying a big bouquet
Speaker 3: of balloons, balloons from some other admirer. He thought of
Speaker 3: all the other guys who might actually be putting their
Speaker 3: arms around her at the movies. He was jealous, wounded,
Speaker 3: and afraid of being hurt, so he pulled away. No
Speaker 3: more watching movies over the phone, no more sitting on
Speaker 3: the bus together. Jesse began treating Tory like any other
Speaker 3: girl in his science class. To fill the Tory sized
Speaker 3: hole in his life, Jesse, now in eighth grade, threw
Speaker 3: himself into the school musical. He was playing the lead
Speaker 3: in the music Man, and rehearsals were a welcome distraction
Speaker 3: from Tory with a capital T and that rhymed with
Speaker 3: B and that stood for broken hearted. On the night
Speaker 3: of the show, everything went great and Jesse was riding
Speaker 3: high until he came out to take his bow from
Speaker 3: center stage. Jesse saw Tory sitting smack in the middle
Speaker 3: of the front row, beaming at him, and then she
Speaker 3: held something up for him and all the school to see.
Speaker 4: She had made a sign on a large piece of
Speaker 4: poster paper, and it said, Jesse, will you go out
Speaker 4: with me?
Speaker 3: In the romantic comedy version of his life, this would
Speaker 3: be the moment when Jesse would leap from the stage
Speaker 3: and swoop Tory into his arms. But instead, I was
Speaker 3: so embarrassed, Jesse froze. It was everything he'd wanted, but
Speaker 3: all he felt was fear. Everyone in the art auditorium
Speaker 3: was looking at him expectantly, and he had no idea
Speaker 3: what to say. He was just thirteen years old, an
Speaker 3: age when even a kiss on the cheek from.
Speaker 2: Your aunt might make you blush?
Speaker 3: Was he really supposed to profess his love for Tory
Speaker 3: for all his friends, family, and classmates to see. The
Speaker 3: applause died down and the lights came up. The audience
Speaker 3: filed out, and the rest of the cast went backstage.
Speaker 3: In Jesse's memory, it felt like he and Tory were
Speaker 3: the last two people left in the auditorium, all alone.
Speaker 3: Tory was still holding the sign, Jesse, will you go
Speaker 3: out with me? But Jesse couldn't even meet her gaze.
Speaker 2: He walked off stage and left.
Speaker 4: I couldn't face my fear. I can be honest with
Speaker 4: myself about how I fell the I very very very
Speaker 4: much loved her. I didn't even understand the full shit scope.
Speaker 3: After the music man, Jesse and Tory didn't talk about
Speaker 3: the sign.
Speaker 2: In fact, through the end of middle.
Speaker 3: School then high school, they didn't talk at all. They
Speaker 3: were in separate classes and avoided each other in the
Speaker 3: halls until four years later, at the end of senior year.
Speaker 3: Jesse recalls it was right around graduation. Tory's younger sister
Speaker 3: was a friend of a friend of Jesse's, and so
Speaker 3: one day, by chance, he found himself hanging out with
Speaker 3: a bunch of people at Tory's house. He walked by
Speaker 3: Tory's room and, seeing her, stopped in the doorway to
Speaker 3: say hi. They began chatting casually, and Jesse sat down
Speaker 3: on the carpet. It was bizarre, after years of no
Speaker 3: contact to suddenly find himself right outside her bedroom. They
Speaker 3: weren't talking about anything serious, but to Jesse it felt sacred.
Speaker 3: It suddenly hit him he was still in love with Tory.
Speaker 4: It didn't really make any sense to me. Why because
Speaker 4: it's over and you shouldn't still feel anything like that,
Speaker 4: But I did.
Speaker 3: Jesse resolved to tell Tory how he felt, to finally
Speaker 3: rectify the mistake he made in ignoring her. After the
Speaker 3: music man and with high school coming to a close,
Speaker 3: it was now or never. The night of graduation, he
Speaker 3: went over to her house, but before he even got
Speaker 3: to the front steps, he saw Tory and her boyfriend
Speaker 3: at the time standing outside on the lawn yelling in
Speaker 3: the middle of a big fight. There was no opening.
Speaker 3: For the second time. Jesse said nothing and left. It's
Speaker 3: not unusual for your first love to make an impact,
Speaker 3: but for Jesse, his first love left a crater. It's
Speaker 3: been twenty years since The Music Man. Jesse's dated other people,
Speaker 3: was even engaged for a while, but he's never stopped
Speaker 3: thinking about Tory.
Speaker 4: I tried to convince myself that kids think that they're
Speaker 4: in love all the time, it's no big deal, But
Speaker 4: subsequently I never felt the same.
Speaker 3: Jesse has a scar in his palm that Tory gave
Speaker 3: him with her fingernail by accident. He looks at it sometimes,
Speaker 3: grateful to have proof. He says that he and Tory
Speaker 3: were ever close.
Speaker 4: In twenty nineteen, I was in West Virginia talking to
Speaker 4: my best friend over a can of cors Light or two,
Speaker 4: and I had narrowed down exactly one regret, only one.
Speaker 4: If you could go back in time and change one thing,
Speaker 4: I knew what it was, don't freeze. After the music
Speaker 4: Man performance, tell Tory, I felt, yes, just tell her something.
Speaker 5: He was so dear to me.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 5: My best friend.
Speaker 3: This is Tory, she's an artist now living out West.
Speaker 3: I call her to ask how she felt about Jesse.
Speaker 5: But he meant more to me than that. Also, he
Speaker 5: was really my first love.
Speaker 3: And so Tory remembers all the same moments of their
Speaker 3: relationship that Jesse does science class, the long late night
Speaker 3: phone calls, the balloons, which, as it turns out, were
Speaker 3: not from some middle school casanova, but from her dad,
Speaker 3: and of course she remembers going to see the day
Speaker 3: after tomorrow.
Speaker 5: For the record, I did not hate it.
Speaker 3: Tory says that when Jesse put his arm around her,
Speaker 3: she might have shruckd him off, but secretly she was thrilled.
Speaker 5: In my mind, it was like I was going to
Speaker 5: have more chances somehow, like he had made a move,
Speaker 5: and I confirmed that he liked me, and then we
Speaker 5: could go forward from here.
Speaker 3: It never occurred to Tory that she was sending Jesse
Speaker 3: mixed signals until it was too late.
Speaker 5: I had been too reserved with my feelings. I had
Speaker 5: held them too close, and I lost him. And I
Speaker 5: felt like, if only I could show him the extent
Speaker 5: of my feelings, he would come right back. And I
Speaker 5: think to myself, this needs a grand gesture.
Speaker 2: And so Tory made a sign.
Speaker 5: It was all caps in black sharpie on a white
Speaker 5: poster board. You know, I had to catch attention.
Speaker 3: Which it did from everyone, it seemed, except the person
Speaker 3: she wanted it to.
Speaker 5: Other students. All my classmates see me and Jesse won't
Speaker 5: look at me. I thought, wow, I fucked up. And
Speaker 5: from that day Jesse and I did not speak.
Speaker 3: Tory moved on, She made other friends, dated other people,
Speaker 3: like her boyfriend. Senior year, Tory remembers the argument they
Speaker 3: were having on her front lawn the night of graduation,
Speaker 3: and who.
Speaker 5: Shows up with Jesse And he's standing there on the driveway.
Speaker 5: I don't know what he wanted to say. After graduation,
Speaker 5: I move all over the United States and I get married.
Speaker 4: It is devastating I find out that she was married.
Speaker 3: Why is it because on some level you still had hope.
Speaker 4: It was even more complicated than that. It was that
Speaker 4: I didn't feel like I was good enough for her,
Speaker 4: but this guy definitely wasn't.
Speaker 3: Over the years, Jesse and Tory would occasionally exchange messages
Speaker 3: on social media. They talk about jobs and moves and relationships.
Speaker 3: Two old friends catching up. Jesse tried not to think
Speaker 3: about what might have been. Are you confident that if
Speaker 3: you had had the chance that night, graduation night to
Speaker 3: talk with her things would have been different?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Timing is everything. When Tory was ready to declare her
Speaker 3: love for Jesse, Jesse felt ambushed. When Jesse was ready
Speaker 3: to be honest with Tory. She had moved on. It's
Speaker 3: like Tory and Jesse have been playing a decades long
Speaker 3: game of phone tag. Last December, Jesse and Tory were
Speaker 3: both home in West Virginia at the same time. By
Speaker 3: this point, they were in in their early thirties. Tory
Speaker 3: was divorced and Jesse's engagement had ended. Jesse suggested they
Speaker 3: meet up. They spent the whole evening together, Jesse playing
Speaker 3: songs for Toy on his guitar, making her laugh the
Speaker 3: way he used to. There was a feeling of expectation
Speaker 3: in the air, a subtext to everything said, and yet
Speaker 3: still the whole night, Jesse couldn't bring himself to confess
Speaker 3: his feelings, never mention the music man. When it got late,
Speaker 3: Tory went home. Once again, they'd missed their moment. This
Speaker 3: is the point in a normal heavyweight story where I'd
Speaker 3: step in to create that moment. I'd get Tory and
Speaker 3: Jesse together and awkwardly nudge them into a conversation twenty
Speaker 3: years overdue. They'd say the things they didn't have the
Speaker 3: words for when they were kids, and I'd say something
Speaker 3: stupid like, Jesse, can you do your Sean Connery impression
Speaker 3: for us. But in this story I don't have to
Speaker 3: do any of that because at midnight that night back
Speaker 3: in December, after Torri got home her cellphone, rang.
Speaker 4: I told her everything that I had meant to for
Speaker 4: the past twenty two.
Speaker 2: Years, which was what.
Speaker 4: That was really shitty of me to do what I
Speaker 4: did to you in eighth grade. I apologize for that.
Speaker 4: I don't know if this is obvious, but I love you.
Speaker 5: It was one of the best moments of my life
Speaker 5: to catch you up to speed for what's happening now.
Speaker 5: We are getting married in December this year. It will
Speaker 5: be our twentieth anniversary of when we met.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, is there something that's almost frustrating that
Speaker 3: it had to take this long.
Speaker 5: Yes, we had many conversations about why did we why
Speaker 5: did we play this game? And I think we both
Speaker 5: had a lot of growing to do. And I think
Speaker 5: if we hit stay together, I think we would have
Speaker 5: had a whirlwind relationship. It would have been crazy highs
Speaker 5: and lows. Maybe, but I don't think we could have
Speaker 5: stood the test of time. This is our time.
Speaker 3: The wedding data set, but there's not yet been an
Speaker 3: official proposal Tori says she's going to make Jesse a
Speaker 3: sign on white poster board with big black letters written
Speaker 3: in black sharpie that says Jesse, will you marry me?
Speaker 3: And this time Jesse won't freeze. This time He's going
Speaker 3: to tell her Yes, Jesse, can you do your Sean
Speaker 3: Connery impression for us?
Speaker 4: Well, let's clear it up.
Speaker 2: Much rain at the moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's quite lovely.
Speaker 2: Did you eat anything for breakfast?
Speaker 5: French toast?
Speaker 3: This Heavyweight short was produced by Moheemy mcgouger and me
Speaker 3: Stevie Lane, along with Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is
Speaker 3: Khalila Holt. Production help from Domiana Marqutti. Special thanks to
Speaker 3: Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, and Sonya Desani. Bobby Lord mixed
Speaker 3: the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K.
Speaker 2: Sampson, Ben Elleman and Bobby Lord.
Speaker 3: Additional music credits can be found on our website gimlipmedia
Speaker 3: dot com slash Heavyweight, Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight
Speaker 3: or email us at Heavyweight at gimlipmedia dot com.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with a new episode next week.
Speaker 3: This Heavyweight short was produced by Mohemy mcgowker and Me Jonathan,
Speaker 3: oh my god,