When Cody Bennett Austrie began his freshman year of high school in 2007, an older classmate caught his eye. Stephanie Winifred Brooks was a junior, and as the alphabet gods would have it, her locker was a few spaces over from his.
“I don’t know whether it was just the way she dressed, how pretty she was, but coming in every day in the morning and seeing her standing there, I decided to get to know her,” said Mr. Austrie, 31. “She was nice enough to get to know me as well, even though I was a tiny underclassman at the time.”
They were students at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College, a specialized school in the Bronx. They struck up a friendship, talking in the hallway, instant messaging at night and hanging out after school. They took the same route home and shared many “stolen moments,” as Mr. Austrie now calls them, on the bus and at a Dunkin’ Donuts that was a kind of midpoint where their paths home diverged.
“I feel like you would go out of your way a little bit, ’cause you didn’t have to go home that way,” Ms. Brooks, 33, said with a laugh.
“I had like three or four different ways to get home,” Mr. Austrie replied. “I chose one of the ones that you were on, yeah.”
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Though they didn’t date in high school — Ms. Brooks had an upperclassman boyfriend — they were good friends for the two years they overlapped. Once, he gave her a Valentine’s Day card, which she held onto.
