A head lift. Eyes meeting eyes, teeth running ragged on lower lips. “Hey.” A strand of imaginary hair in front of my face tucked behind my ears that led to this shy smile out of nowhere. “Hi.” And that was it. No pretending you weren’t staring. Laughing about everything and nothing at the same time. No feigning ignorance of the fact that you were as into this person as they were into you. Acting like you’ve known somebody for your entire life even though you’ve known each other for moments. No more awkwardness after that first utterance. It feels stupid to say this out loud, but there was this feeling in me that day I met him...it told me that this guy was going to be a part of my life in some shape or form. It was probably the strangest thing that had ever happened to me. For the record, I kissed him first. It was something that happened when you think it won’t and you think it couldn’t. With him…I was reckless. I had walked in on someone else’s arm, and he was there with somebody that wasn’t me. We had come separately, yet somehow, we ended up leaving that party together. And I couldn't and wouldn't stop kissing him. The whole thing was insane. That night I would have gone anywhere with him, done anything, just run away from everything that said this wasn’t going to work. I just let go. I lived. No reservations, no maybes, just impulses of spontaneity. I can only describe it as a kind of euphoric peace. You forgot where you were and what you were supposed to be doing. I just wanted more of whatever this was...the urge to be close, to feel. If he’d asked me that night to marry him I would have seriously said yes. And I know deep within me that I would have done it with no regrets. It was beautiful. And it was crazy. It was then, and it still is now, one of the hardest things I’d ever done. He said we'd be fine. I was the one that said it was better this way. I pushed aside my feelings, the notions, the possibility that this was it, and embraced the reality of what it was. We lived in a reality that dictated that even if we wanted this, we both realized we couldn’t give each other what we needed. Simply stated reasoning: Dreams over love. Yes, love. Such a strong word for such a small amount of time, but I knew that's what it was. I loved him enough to know that it wasn’t enough for us, as much as a cliché of a sappy love song that it sounded like, it just wasn't...not now. His career was in this transitioning phase. He was finally going to make it out on his own. And mine…well it was just starting, taking off to who knows where. We had to keep our heads straight, we needed to concentrate and prioritize. Our lives were hectic, it was non-stop, and there wasn’t any room for anything else...or anyone else. Blunt cold hard fact: No time for the kind of relationship we deserved. I consciously made the decision with him to choose friendship over heartache. And I made myself believe him when he told me that this was the smart thing to do. And it was… But then a couple of months down the line I wasn’t so sure… I mean I knew we were right. But sometimes… I wondered how right was it really? Because here we were sporadically dating other people, and I couldn’t deny that in the back of my mind it bothered me that we were. Especially around the time I realized that I was working on this friendship much harder than any relationship. The visits that I would make in my off days, flying to wherever he was, just so I could be in the same room with him even if we couldn’t talk. The calls I'd make for no reason at all, but to just say hi for five seconds before he had to dash off for promotions. The letters. The e-mails. Everything. We were friends, yeah. But it was only because we had resigned ourselves to the title. And for a pair of friends, I was spending way too much energy thinking about if he’d like this, if he’d think that. It shouldn’t have mattered so much. But his opinions mattered a lot. He always seemed to show up at the top of my list. First. First. First. First. And the biggest thing about it all was that it hurt more than anything that we were here. I knew what I had gotten myself into. It wasn’t emptiness. It wasn’t loneliness. It wasn’t unrequited. Not bitterness. My heart just felt so big sometimes, and other times it felt like it was shattered into pieces and torn. All because he couldn’t give me all of him, and I couldn’t give him all of me. And I wouldn’t settle for less. I hate regrets. I look back on it and think…so much time wasted. But then I realize that I still would have made the same choices now back then. I wouldn’t change it. You see...It gave me time to grow up. Room to think. It made realizations that much clearer. I figured out who I was, what I wanted, what I needed. It only proved to me that much more that this was real. And in the end it still led me to where I started. The only place I wanted to be…screwing over reality. Where eyes meet. “Hey.” Where that grin I adore graces his features when I smile back. “Hi.” And where I embraced being spontaneous. We’d been so cautious up until then, not wanting to ruin anything that it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that three months, twelve days, and four hours into “us”, on a strand of beach that someone called a backyard, with less than fifteen people in attendance we made it official and legally binding. Personally, three months should have been considered a feat. Like I said…with him…it was impulsive. |