[A/N: I'm setting this blog to private for a little while. I might delete this later but I had to write it down. It's four o'clock in the morning, and I can't sleep.]
I didn't know exactly when I started to love him. I didn't know there were "whens" in love. But at first this was something I had kept secret during our short friendship- one lasting from November to June. I didn't want to risk it, him knowing. It would make him unhappy, and that, in term would make my own life miserable.
But there comes a time, when loving someone is too painful to withstand and this was one of those times.
And that time, for me, was when he was standing by the wall at school, the one we used to sit at, looking over the railing in that foreboding, ominous, yet beautiful, black graduation gown. He had discarded his cap along with the rest of the graduating class, and he hadn't even unrolled his diploma. I stood there, in my simple sundress feeling bare, freezing, and weak before him, and he couldn't even see me. Often, I felt he didn't notice me at all, always going through his life, sifting through various circles of friends, but never truely tied down.
There were, I suppose, reasons why I never told him.
One, and mostly, I was a freshman, a baby, a neophyte. He was graduating that year. Any relationship beyond friendship would be taboo, strange, and forbidden. Two, I had a horrible fear of rejection, especially if it came from his lips. In these past months, I had tried so hard to get him to notice, to care about, or perhaps even love me. But you can't make someone love you. I've now learned this. Three, If I ever did begin a relationship with him, I wasn't exactly sure where in that relationship I would be able to stop.
Perhaps the worst thing that has come out of my love for this man, is the destruction - deliberate or not - which I so inflicted upon two men, who probably loved me as much as I loved the man who was standing alone by the wall in that ghostly and towards me, in my scintillating outfit. I had led them on, I had built them, and then, I tore them down out of guilt. In a way, I was repulsed by them simply because they weren't him. But the thoughts of those whom I have hurt drifted out of my mind, as I saw the man, and yes, he was a man now, that I loved, making a motion to leave. I shouted his name, and he turned around.
I ran to him, and I felt tears make their way down my cheeks. I realized this would be the last time that I ever saw him. I flew into his surprised arms, gripping him tightly, crying softly into his chest. I didn't want to look in his eyes, because I was sure, if I did, I would see only repulsion. I felt his arms, weighed down by the heavy gown wrap around me.
"Don't cry." he said softly, with a hint of pain in his voice. I pulled back and nodded, wiping my tearstained cheeks. I couldn't get enough of his warmth, and I shamelessly pulled him into another embrace. I needed to tell him. He needed to know.
"It's not supposed to be sad like this." he said, telling himself more than me. Often, I felt that he disliked me, was repelled by me even. But I've never seen this soft, paternal side of him before. Normally, he was a boy, just like every other boy in this God-forsaken place.
I tried to conjure up all of my strength in order to tell him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, holding on for dear life. And then, I said it.
"I love you. I know you probably dislike me, and find me a needy, awful person. But I needed to tell you, before you left. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry for anything I have ever done, but please, I beg of you- don't hate me!"
Tears had slowly began to fall down my cheeks, and surprised was etched into the finest lines on his.
"I had a feeling, that there was something. I don't hate you. Actually, I find you a better person than me, but I have to ask- why? Why me of all the people in this place, why did you choose me? Why do you love me?"
I smiled sadly at him. "Why do I love you? That is a question I can't answer. There are plenty of things I love about you, but we'd be here until next year if I named them all. I suppose, if it's not strange of me to say this, it's because I think you are beautiful. Everything about you. The way you talk, the way you smile, the way you play music, the way you laugh and when you do, your eyes sparkle. It's cheezy I know. But believe me, it's true. And...it hurts."
He looked as if he was about to cry. I didn't blame him. He probably has never had something so passionate thrown at him before. Much less the speech I had run over and over in my head from that fateful November weekend when I first met him.
"I have lost so much sleep, thought, devotion, love, time, and emotion to you, that I'm afraid when you leave, I won't have any left." This final part of my speech came out more vehemently than I would have liked, but it still had its desired effect.
He looked at me with strangled, sorry eyes, tears welling within them, fogging up his petite, horn-rimmed glasses. Yes, you stupid, insolent man. You whom I love so dearly, yet have put me through such sorry, lonely things. It's time for you to feel what I have felt: Regret, loss, and longing.
"I'm sorry." he said. What an understatement. He didn't know the very definition of sorry.
"Don't say that. I don't need pity." I said caustically. His face, upon this seemed to break, just like he has broken me.
"Oh my God, what have I done? All this time...dear God..."
Yes. Begin to feel what I have felt. Let the reality hit you on the head. For eight months I have loved you devotedly. And I begged God every night, for you to love me, even if it was just for eight minutes.
"I...did, at a time, have feelings for you," he started.
WHAT?!
He continued. "But at that time, you were in the hands of someone else, not to mention a friend of mine. So I pushed my thoughts away...but some sort of an echo of those feelings comes back each time I see you. It seems minute compared to what you've told me." He looked down.
More bitter tears rolled down my cheeks. "If you are lying, so help me, I will never, ever, forgive you." My voice was shaky, and I sunk against the person I craved once more. He slowly put his arms around my shoulders, running his hands, which were lovingly calloused with years of playing the same instrument I loved so much, through my hair. I kept mumbling the three words I held within me for so very long into his shoulder, not caring how stupid or weak I looked. And after one time I had said it, he choked out "I...think that somehow, I have always loved you too."
I felt my heart stop. This was a dream. This was another one of those painful dreams that left me replaying their events throughout my mind during the day as a sad, pathetic form of escapism. I was going to wake up and sip a cup of tea and brood.
But his hands on my back, running through my tangled hair...they were real. He bore into my eyes for the longest time, before reaching up to caress my face softly, brushing away some stray tears.
"Please. Don't cry. It's not sad anymore, is it?"
The man I had so longed for, brought my face towards his...
and kissed me.
His lips tasted like sweet raspberries and coffee, a scent I have always associated with him. He was soft, and I felt everything I had ever wanted fall into place. Was he really kissing me? Was he really cupping my face with his hands? Were my hands really wrapping around his shoulders and tangling in his hair? I didn't matter. If this was a dream...upon waking I would bitterly cry.
But it wasn't a dream. Here was he, tenderly kissing me, his hands sprawled around my neck, supporting my face. He pulled back, and looked at me with an equivalent look of devotion as was upon my face, and as if he could hold back any longer, crashed his lips to mine. The heated, passionate kisses left me short of breath and reason, and they only diminished when his lips wandered to my jawline, neck and shoulder, which was clothed only in the small strap of my sundress. I felt my knees go weak as he tasted me, and nuzzled his nose into the crook of my neck like a crying child.
We stayed like that for a while.
But like all fairy tales, this one had to come to an end. A bittersweet end. He had to leave for college. He left me crying tears of happiness and extreme sorrow, holding my hands in his, promising to remember and find me when he could. He told me he loved me, and that he was sorry I had suffered for so long. I pleged my devotion to him a few, rapid times before his mother, whom I have never met nor wanted to meet (she was a stoney, caustic woman) led him away and out of my life.
I collapsed to my knees. I could have held him longer, all I needed to do was tell him. In those eight months I...could have had what I wanted. But damn me, I was so melodramatic, I had to wait for the tragic storybook ending. While it ended in passion, it ended in tragedy. The first kiss I have ever shared with someone would also be my last from that someone. My skin heated up where he kissed me. But I had to face reality.
He was gone, and he was never coming back. For this, I wept bitterly, my tears eroding the road to recovery.
I can't be ungrateful; God gave me my wish.
For eight whole minutes, I was his, and he was mine.
And while the road to recovery is eroded by tears...
it is still not impassable.
END.
[A/N: There. It's Six thirty in the morning, and I'm done with it. God, romance is impossible to those without experience. I swear I've watched the movie Impromptu far to many times! It makes me sad, this story really. When I read back over it, it makes me cry.]
