I left the house in the evening. I was reluctant to walk away from the little get together my friends were at, but I had made a promise and I was going to keep it. I left my girlfriend in the care of the friend I trusted the most. The one most like me. The one who, years later would place the same trust in me. In retrospect it seems more than coincidental. Fate conspired against me from day one.
Even though my friend watched out for my girlfriend, my mind still thought of the things that could happen while I was gone. There was alcohol involved, and people I didn’t trust as much as I did him. And he couldn’t watch her every moment. And deep down I didn’t trust her. But it took more than that night to know why that particular girlfriend and I didn’t work out. The trust thing was just one of many issues, and in High School teenage boys aren’t as introspective as they would need to be to truly understand their feelings.
As I arrived at the theatre my mind was no longer with my girlfriend or the party. It was now on the task at hand and a different set of friends. A set of friends that I had to be different around. A set of friends that would never suspect where I had just come from. There was no room in my head to be thinking about what could be going on at the party. Especially knowing the intricacies of the stage that had been built, and the faith that the director had placed in me to run it. He had never worked with me before. He had only heard of me and needed someone with more experience than he had available to make the show work. It was the first time he had done this production on such a big stage, and the first time he had worked with anything resembling a proper set at this school. I wasn’t going to let him down.
I did the pre show work that needed to get done and then sat in the wings waiting for the show to start. The actors came in. Many of them were people I had never met before. These were choir people, singers, in the past we had never worked with them. Some of the faces were familiar and some I knew. I didn’t run with the same pack of friends all day every day, so everywhere I went there was someone I knew and could talk to. It went mostly as it always does, mostly. The faces I knew said hello and went about their business knowing they would have time to talk to me all night. The familiar faces saw me, saw the hint of recognition in my eyes and either nodded or looked bewildered and moved on. The faces that I didn’t know just passed by sometimes giving a quizzical look wondering who this guy that that didn’t belong was, and wondering why I looked so confident that I did.
Then something unexpected happened. She came in. Electricity shot straight out of her eyes and hit me square in the chest. My heart started beating faster and then she smiled. All of a sudden my guard was down. My confidence left me. Things were not right. There was no way a girl, who I had never talked to before, could cut through me with a simple smile. I fought to regain my composure, but it wasn’t working. Her perfect lips, her beautiful eyes, the lines of her face, her skin, her hair, it all called to me. I had never felt this before. From a young age I worked to define myself through my Grandfather. Smart, loving, and loyal. Loyalty then, as it is now, was paramount to me due to the nature of my parents’ divorce. So how could this beautiful creature make me go against my nature? I had met plenty of other attractive girls, some who had blatantly hit on me, but they had never elicited a look even feigned curiosity or interest from me. Even to this day I have never had someone be able to evoke any kind of reaction from me while in a relationship. But this girl, who had just given me the briefest of smiles, had turned my world upside down.
I steeled myself and occupied myself with something that didn’t need to get done. I knew I had to close myself off and become stoic. I don’t know what her reaction was to me. I don’t know how she felt that night. I don’t know that she had any motives or desires. I do know that the next time I saw her she bounded up to me and started to talk. Talking in the wings of stage has always seemed intimate to me. It’s dark, you have to whisper, and you have to get close. None of these things were what I wanted…and at the same time, I wanted nothing more than these things with her. She approached and it seemed that she was overflowing with exuberance to talk with me. She leaned in and began to speak. I could feel the warmness of her breath and I could smell the fragrance of her skin. I was both in heaven and hell. Or at least I thought I might be solidly on my way to the latter. She talked about the standard things one talks about to know another person. I hung on every word.
The entire night went the same. Every time she saw me she would bound up to me with an eager smile and engage me in conversation. And each time my heart would stop only to be shocked back into working order by the electricity that shot into me from her. The night finished and we parted ways, her never knowing how I felt, and me feeling guilty but very much alive. The air seemed crisper and my step seemed lighter. But I resigned myself into believing that my feelings spawned from something other than a girl that could capture my complete adoration with a simple smile. Possibly the things I knew were wrong between me and my girlfriend. Possibly something I didn‘t fully comprehend yet. I didn’t know, but I refused to let myself fall for a girl I had just met, especially since I had a great girl waiting for me back at my friend’s house.
The rest of High School was interesting anytime She was around. I enjoyed her company and got excited every time I saw her. We became friends. I buried my feelings for her and took pleasure in our platonic relationship. Although, every time she bound to me the way she did that first night lightning tried to thunder out of my stomach and into my chest. But I would stop it, loving the fact that I could have her in my life as a friend.
As the months rolled on she found herself a boyfriend. I was happy for her, she deserved someone nice and she could pull pretty much whoever she wanted. We both started moving our separate ways, staying relatively close until I left for college. I started my own adventures there and she found my friend. The one who I trust most and is so much like me. I was sincerely happy for the two of them. She deserved a wonderful guy like him and he, her. I knew he would treat her well. She told me later that he had a strong role in making her the person she is today. I will be indebted to him forever because of this.
I had my own girlfriends and interests that I pursued. As each new year began I took a step closer to the man I am today, and as each year faded, so did the girl who could cut though my defenses with a look from her beautiful eyes and send me reeling with a smile. Every now and again my mind would wander back to her and I fondly described her in stories as the only girl to ever make me consider being un-faithful.
I found someone who I thought would be my partner, I found someone who would I thought be my wife. And through all the trials and tribulations that I endured with her, I learned about what it was to genuinely be someone’s partner… and what it was like to lose one.
I went to war. I found myself talking with people I hadn’t talked to in years. Old memories flooded forward. I talked to the friend who I had taken to senior prom. I talked to my cousin who moved out to California to become a hippie as I left to do everything hippies abhor. I talked to friends I had met in other countries. And then one day, I saw Her. It was just a picture but I started to remember. I remembered her eagerly wanting me to dip her as if we were elegant ball room dancers. I remembered our friendship. And I remembered our first night. I started talking to her as a friend. The connection that I remembered was still there. We could still be wonderful friends. I wasn’t going to let the opportunity for such a good friend to pass up. I found out that she had been through similar hard times as I had and my heart cried out to sooth her.
After many years and many different lives, we met again as friends instead of strangers. Though I didn’t know how she had changed over her life, and she didn’t know me for who I was, we were still old friends. I walked though the door excited to see Her and talk about everything that had happened since we had lost touch. And at that moment Fate not so gently reminded me that it had a plan. She looked up at me with her green eyes, and cut through not only the defenses I keep up, but also the ten years it had been since we first met. I was back to that first night. Heart thudding in my chest, breathless, tossed about like a ship without a rudder in a storm. Neither of us knew it just then, but I was hers.
There is no fairy tale ending. For there to be an ending the story must stop. This story lives on and will continue to live. We know now that my heart no longer serves the function of pumping blood, but rather to carry my love for her to every cell of my body. What happens next is another chapter.
I can’t wait to find out!
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