To understand what I’m talking about you might want to read the previous posts about my relationship: the first part of the first date, the second part of the first date, the third part of the first date, another post about it here, then this one here, and the most recent here. I don’t really want to write this. I don’t know how to write this. It’s all new and surprising and unfinished. There’s an elipsis where my heart should be.

Since the week before Easter I’d noticed a change in the way C was acting. I received fewer phone calls, and when we talked it was absent of feeling, just fulfilling routine. C declined that anything was wrong but I felt the lie in the pit of my stomach, occasionally making its presence known with jolts of anxiety. On Sunday I made him an easter basket, I decorated an egg, gathered candies and arranged them on a bed of pastel grass. He came over later that night, we sat together on the couch and watched television but C still seemed distant, playing it off as sleepiness. He left somewhat early, with his Easter loot in tow, and I was left, once again, to contemplate what was wrong. Was it me? Was it work? Was there someone else?


The next day was a hard one. I arrived to the DMV at 3:45 in hopes of obtaining my learner’s permit (if I get it done now I’ll be able to drive legally only three months after my seventeenth birthday) only to find that all testing ended at 3:30. Fuck. On the ride home, I felt tears brimming in my eyes, I’d forgotten my zoloft. I called C, hoping for the comfort of his voice, but get no response. Ten minutes later he calls me, says he wants to come over and see me. I’m just aching for his presence, knowing a big hug will lend me some relief.

As soon as we settle in on my bed, I again feel that unrest in him. I show him a few videos on YouTube, attempting to lighten the mood. He says he’s tired.

“Is that all you had to show me?” he asks quite abruptly.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I close the computer, “why?” I study his profile. He’s lying on my bed, legs hanging over the side, hands rubbing his eyes and forehead as if he has a migrane.
“Do you think we’re good together?”
“W-what?” I stutter, I don’t understand what in the world he is asking.
“Do you think we’re a good fit?”
“Y-yes…” My bottom lip quivers, I know what is coming and I want to run in the opposite direction, “C just say it, don’t beat around the bush.”

To make a long story short, he told me that he wasn’t sure we should be together, since he wasn’t ever going to feel the same way I feel about him. This revelation, came about in a week’s time, he explained when I asked why he didn’t tell me this sooner, like on Valentine’s Day. It was the day of our big “discussion” in which I professed my love for him and how frustrating it was that he didn’t express the way he felt about me. Instead of telling me he didn’t feel the same, and that he never would, he had told me a long speech of why he didn’t like the phrase “I Love You”. I began to believe him, and I realized he did love me and he showed me how he did, by all the little things he did, like the abrupt reaching for my hand to give it a kiss and say, “I miss you,” they way he’d make me milkshakes when I felt ill, or when I’d want to go to sleep he’d tuck the blankets tightly around me, with a kiss on the forehead before I nodded off. I decided I could live without the verbal expression of his feelings, as long as I still had the sweet things he did to express them.

He told me he wanted to be my boyfriend, but didn’t want to render me hurt in the future, when I realize he doesn’t and never has loved me. He felt I deserved better, someone to reciprocate what I felt for him. After hearing him talk for a few minutes, and with tears brimming in my eyes, I told him he should just go. “If it’s over, you need to leave.” He hesitated, I felt his eyes resting on my face but couldn’t muster a glance at his face, knowing I’d start to bawl if I did. Once he stood and started towards the door I looked up at his figure leaving the room. I couldn’t tell if he looked back at me through the half open door or not, I hoped that he did. A second look meant he was unconvinced, that part of him knew this wasn’t right.

I shed a lot of tears over the next forty-eight hours. I wish I had never mentioned the “L” word. I’m not sure if what I feel for him is love or not. I labeled the feelings I do have for him, such as; adoration, attraction, devotion and comradery, as love. Maybe he thought I expected something serious from him, a promise of a future together, when all I wanted was what we had, so many deep belly laughs, knowing glances, warm naps cuddling, tight hands clasped together, long phone calls of little importance, and those intense moments with so much heat between our bodies and mouths.

I don’t know if this story has ended, but I do know how great the beginning was, and how much C has given to me in the nine months we’ve spent together.