The Real LJ Idol - Week 2
This is my entry for Week 2 of LJ Idol (
therealljidol).
Prompt: "That One Friend."
“I’m not even supposed to be here.” You sigh, unceremoniously tossing your backpack onto the lab desk and sliding into the seat next to me. It isn’t a hostile declaration and your tone isn’t unkind, but I’m unsure if it was meant for me and so I simply offer you a small smile and flip open my notebook. You twist around to face the group of students still lined up at the back of the classroom, waiting to be randomly paired up and assigned to lab desks of their own. You toss a pointed half smile to a tall, slightly disheveled boy who returns a thumbs up and then turn back towards me, as I’m unsuccessfully fishing around the bottom of my bag for a writing instrument.
“I’m Alex,” you offer, though the teacher has already said as much. I introduce myself again as well and smile warmly. It’s the first day of my freshman year in a very large, very promising high school, after all, and my first order of business is making as many friends as possible. You return my smile with an equally friendly grin of your own and then blink expectantly.
“Oh, um, so, Alex, where are you supposed to be?”
“Fork Union,” you answer. “It’s a military high school. I got in and everything, but my parents didn’t want to pay the tuition.” You shrug and then pause, staring at me in a way that makes me feel slightly antsy, but not particularly uncomfortable. “But, I guess it’s not so bad here.” You pluck a pen out from behind your ear and slide it across the black table top to me with a wink.
* * *
We fall into a friendship effortlessly. Our relationship during freshman year is, of course, the mere ripple of a wave that will eventually swell and crest and then crash, but we don’t know it yet.
You’re pessimistic and sarcastic and, quite frankly, a bit of an asshole. Not mean-spirited, per say, nor malicious, but crude and somewhat abrasive. You read people well and know the right buttons to push to illicit a response. Somehow, though, you’re softer with me and much more gentle. Your friends consider you the grumpy, old man of the group and often remark on how you’ll likely be the perpetual bachelor. Eventually, they become my friends too, independant of you, and they sometimes comment on how you seem to treat me differently. They tease you about it, but you brush them off, unbothered.
Your parents are divorced. Your dad owns a couple of Hooters restaurants in the area and looks like Billy Bob Thorton. He isn’t around a lot and I can count on one hand the number of times I ever see him, which is fine by me because he makes me feel uncomfortable. Your mom is nice enough, but she lives a few towns over with her partner Theresa and they’re often busy and distracted. Theresa is a psychologist that likes to pry and I can tell you like to avoid her.
You enjoy hockey and football and video games and movies. You listen to rock music and your bookshelves are filled with history texts and books about the military. You’re smart and you don’t shy away from deep, intellectual conversation. You also don’t shy away from conflict.
Slowly and organically, we learn about each other. We’re highly compatible and complementary, filling in the empty areas where the other is lacking. I like that you challenge me and you like that I don’t back down. I take on the role of manager for the school hockey team on which you play and we spend even more time together. Our friendship grows and we nurture it to the best of our ability. Eventually it begins to blossom.
* * *
Your birthday is in early October. You fail your first attempt at your driving test when you hit the curb during the parallel parking assessment. You blame your instructor for being a hard ass and I, of course, mercilessly tease you about it in the weeks leading up to your next attempt. The second time, you nail it and even after the delay you’re still one of the first in our class to have your licence. Your dad buys you a silver Mazda 3 and the passenger seat is mine. We go out to lunch together most days and you drive me home from school even though it’s in the opposite direction from yours. One day, when the weather's still warm, we cut school and you just drive. At every intersection, you let me choose a direction, and we see where it takes us, listening to Green Day and talking about all the very important things that plague the lives of high schoolers. The newfound freedom awarded to us means we can now spend even more time together, and we do. We go on all kinds of adventures, and sometimes you just drag me along for the more monotonous of errands. We've become a recognized duo, a team, and it's comforting to have you in my corner.
* * *
Jessica loves you, but I love you more. Not in the same way of course, but I am completely sure of it. I do whatever I can to pull you away from her and make my dissatisfaction known. I tell us both that she’s not good enough for you, that she’s more trouble than she’s worth, that you’re too incompatible. I effortlessly plant and cultivate seeds of doubt. You agree with me, like you usually do, and rebuff her advances. You take the credit, convinced you’re making the decision on your own, and I let you because it makes me feel less selfish. I’ve placed myself firmly between you and her, blocking her from reaching you. I make a show of whispering to you and hanging on you in Italian class, flexing and preening as I draw your attention onto me as she watches from across the room. As soon as the bell rings, I'm dragging you into the hallway, limiting her window of opportunity. She isn’t the first nor the last I bare my teeth at, staking my claim. It's a partial claim of course because I don't want you in that way, but I also can't bear the idea of letting anyone else have you.
I know it sounds horrible, but my immature brain is having trouble properly sorting my feelings. These actions come naturally and in some twisted way, I've convinced myself that I'm protecting you. I trivialize your possible relationships because I want you for my own, without the burden of having to actually make you mine or slapping a complicated label on it. In my defense, you do the same in your own way. I date and you're partially sidelined, but you find unique ways to pull rank. We argue sometimes about how you're tormenting my boyfriends and you shoot back that they're just too insecure to handle our friendship. We never actually acknowledge what's happening here or the real conflict that's weighing on our minds. Somehow, though, it lessens, or maybe we come to an understanding. I back off a bit and you become slightly more sneaky in how you attempt to undermine my relationships.
* * *
“Give me your phone,” you demand, holding your hand out expectantly.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor of your bathroom with my back against the cool tub, tears rolling down my red cheeks and dripping into my lap. I shake my head.
You sigh and lean against the doorframe, rubbing the heels of your palms against your eyes. “Kel, stop being so stubborn. Give me the phone. And then get up. I have to piss.”
I sniffle and roll my eyes, but push myself up off the floor anyway. As always, I know which fights are worth picking with you and this one would take far too much effort. I hand you my phone and you slide it into your back pocket before letting me pass.
You see, Paul and I have broken up. It signifies the birth and the death of my first real, bonafide, romantic love and my heart is absolutely shattered, the sharp pieces stabbing my soft insides every time I breathe. My world is melting into an endless sea of darkness, sucking the joy and the life from my surroundings. There will never be a wholly consuming love like this again. I’m spent and destroyed, cursed to roam the Earth as a depleted shell of my former full and vibrant self. At least, that’s how it feels to a very dramatic seventeen year old me.
I’ve taken up a habit of doing things I wish I wouldn’t, things I’m not proud of once the dust has settled and my head has cleared. You do your best to thwart me and save me the embarrassment of begging on Paul’s doorstep or leaving yet another unreturned voicemail. You protect me in the only ways you know how, stepping out of your own comfort zone to try and guide me back to mine.
It ends up being the best and worst summer of my life. There are more tears, of course, more than I sometimes even know what to do with, but you do your best to help shoulder the burden of my broken heart. We are inseparable. You take me to the driving range and we play endless games of Madden on your Playstation 2 where I beat you just often enough to keep you on your toes. We begin a Friday night ritual of seeing a movie and then going to a restaurant, tucking into a booth and ordering only appetizers, talking for hours and hours about everything and nothing. On one particularly tear-filled afternoon, you challenge me to inflict onto you the chick flickiest of chick flicks that Blockbuster has to offer. We walk there and you let me rent Win a Date with Tad Hamilton. You complain the entire time, but we watch the whole thing, my head resting on your lap.
I’m hurting so much, but you are too. Deep down I know, but I never acknowledge it or speak of it outloud. It’s cruel, how easily I take comfort in you, leaning on you both physically and emotionally without ever pausing to wonder if you’re buckling under the weight of it. I wrap myself up in you, in your affections and your warmth and in the countless hoodies of yours I claim as my own. Only once that summer does your pain ever bubble to the surface and even then you can’t bring yourself to pressure me in any kind of meaningful or necessary way. We’re play fighting over something in your dining room, almost certainly initiated by me, and for the quickest of moments, I catch you off guard. We tumble to the floor and I land on top of you in the most cliche fashion. There’s a pause and I feel my stomach lurch. I’m afraid you might kiss me and it’s a legitimate fear because somehow I know you’re considering it. What I’m most afraid of is changing us or losing you or ruining this incredible friendship, especially now, and so I never acknowledge that I’m also afraid that I might actually want you to kiss me. I roll away from you, laughing nervously, but you gently grab my arm. Your expression is serious when you tell me that if I ever want to try to take things further with us, you’d be game. And then the moment is over and your mouth is pulled into your signature boyish grin and you’re playfully pushing me away, a gesture too heavy with symbolism for me to ignore. I can’t even recall your exact words from this day because I shoved them out of my head so quickly, panicked, never to be acknowledged or spoken of again.
Years later, I find out you and Paul got into a fist fight in the locker room after a hockey practice. It’s only just now, as I write this, that I realize this brawl would have happened months before our eventual break up.
* * *
The tall, slightly disheveled boy from the back of the freshman year biology classroom has grown up and filled out. And, when prom rolls around, we’ve been dating for awhile. Some time during my Summer of Heartbreak, you and I had agreed to go to prom together, and I know one day I might regret it, but there’s just no way I can bring myself to follow through and tell him I’m going with you. You don’t see the issue with keeping our arrangement and I know you’re annoyed. You’re distant and cold towards me that Spring and I do my best to appear unaffected. Still, we gravitate towards each other and by the time prom rolls around, our friendship has begun to stabilize and level back out.
We share the same limo and you help me in and out, always a step ahead of my date even after first seeing to yours. Still, you’re slightly distant. This persists through most of the night, until, in the midst of my dancing, the jeweled, decorative pin that holds the gathers of my gown at my hip pops open, poking me painfully in the side. I think you notice the panic in my face as I move away from the dance floor, and you follow, tucking us into a dark corner of the venue. The pin is placed awkwardly and hard to close around the fabric.
“I didn’t even know it was a real pin!” I exclaim. “Why would they design it like this? Ow!” Every time I move the pointy end jabs into my skin.
You laugh and shake your head, slipping your arms out from the sleeves of your tuxedo jacket. “Only you. Here, hold this up. I’ll fix it.”
I nod and do as you say, holding your jacket up and out in front of my body, shielding us. And then there you are, knelt down in front of me with your hand under my dress, pushing the pointly sliver of the pin back under it’s clasp within seconds.
“Oh my God, thank you!” I squeal, throwing my arms around your neck and hugging you with such force that it almost sends you toppling backwards. A very precarious prom night has just been saved as far as I’m concerned and you, as usual, are my hero.
“Well.” You gesture towards the dancefloor where our classmates are moving about to the classic sounds of Sean Paul. “Get back out there.”
“Come with me!” I hand you back your jacket and then try to pull you along by your arm, but you brush me off.
“I don’t dance. Go. Have fun!”
I hesitate, but I know you more than well enough by now to recognize a futile battle. I thank you again and then scurry off to the dancefloor. Later that night, as the last few songs are being played, you ask me for a slow dance and I gladly oblige.
* * *
Before I know it, we’ve graduated, and what seemed like a final summer full of possibility and promise is drawing to a close. We didn’t spend as much time together as I’d hoped, but I wonder if we’ve subconsciously started separating from each other, relearning after four comfortable years how to survive without the other to lean on. I’m headed to Rutgers, you to Rowan, and while they’re only a few hours apart, I know that our lives are moving away from each other in a way that surpasses physical distance.
“I hate this,” I say, half laughing, half crying. “I wish you were coming with me.”
“We’ll visit each other. I know I can’t get rid of you that easily.” You’re leaning into the passenger side window of my car, smiling that cheeky half grin of yours.
“I won’t have a car…”
“I will. I’ll come visit you.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
I sigh and run my palms along the outside of my steering wheel, blinking away hot, prickling tears. My chest is tight and full of sentiments I’ll never find the proper words to articulate. In this moment, I know there’s going to be so much left unsaid, and the cold reality of it squeezes my heart like a vice.
“I can’t believe this is it,” I whisper.
You come around to the other side of the car and open my door. I stand and we embrace and I’m hoping you understand just how much you’ve helped to shape the girl before you, how many times you’ve pulled her back from the edge and given her somewhere soft to land, how utterly thankful she is to have been blessed with such a selfless and kind friend.
“This isn’t it.” You release me and ruffle my hair. “Besides, I want to get my hoodies back.”
As I drive away, hiccuping back sobs as I watch you toss me a small wave in my rearview mirror, I feel very much like this is goodbye. In retrospect, I suppose I was right. Things never would be quite the same.
* * *
You do keep your promise and visit a few times. You’re more bulky and your hair is shorter, but your smile is the same and your humor is just as crass. You still find small, thoughtful ways to put me first and your eyes always find mine, checking in on me and making sure I’m okay. I show you around and introduce you to my friends and you fit in so seamlessly that it makes me long for an alternate universe where you had joined me here for college. The visits, however, begin to sharply taper off. You’ve joined Rowan’s ROTC program and I’m juggling my own set of academic and social responsibilities. We’re growing up and growing apart and soon months are slipping by in between our conversations.
You join the military, like you’d always planned. I get my teaching certification, like I’d always wanted. More time slides by, slipping like grains of sand between our fingers, and the space between us is filled with new and unique experiences, ones we don’t share. I miss you, of course, but it’s a fleeting, ghost of a feeling, itching the back of my brain, like a familiar song I can’t quite place.
A couple years pass. I log into an old AIM screen name on a whim and yours unexpectedly pops up on my friends list. My chest swells with nostalgia and guilt for not having kept in touch better, but before I can even swallow these feelings down, your message blinks to life on my screen.
You’ve been deployed. In fact, you’re messaging me from a trailer on top of a hill less than a mile away from a town that doesn’t even have the luxury of running water. We muse over the incredible state of technology for awhile before you vault the conversation forward. You’re getting married. Your fiance is pregnant. Being in the military has changed you and there’s subconscious pressure to settle down and plant your roots quickly. Plus, there are benefits. You can live on base, in a nicer house. It’s all working out for the best.
Behind the computer screen, in the comfort and safety of my bedroom, the news hits me like a ton of bricks. I’m crying. I reach up and touch my wet cheek, genuinely surprised. I’m keenly aware of the fact that you’re not here to comfort me or tell me to buck up, that you haven’t been for quite some time now. I’m neither happy nor sad, but rather a complicated tangle of the two, my feelings woven together in a tight knot that has lodged itself in the middle of my throat.
We say goodbye and promise to talk again soon. I hesitate to close my laptop, even after you’ve already logged off, my entire body frozen, feeling the weight of this moment. Memories of you, of us as a team, as a duo - precious, invaluable memories wash over me. I click the laptop lid closed and slide it off my lap, then crawl across the carpet to my dresser. I pull the deep, bottom drawer open and rifle through it, pushing clothes out of the way until I’m almost at the bottom. There, tucked away, I find one of your sweatshirts, an oversized, grey Penn State Hockey hoodie, that I so long ago claimed as mine. I pull it over my head and slip my arms into the sleeves before climbing into bed, my heart feeling full and heavy; wistful and content. I wish so desperately that I could remember what we talked about during all of those freshman year Biology periods, snickering behind our textbooks; the countless movies we watched together curled up on your living room sofa; the afternoons spent walking around the park or driving around aimlessly in your car with no destination to speak of. I wish I had said more, thanked you more, been more diligent about keeping in touch. I wish I had been less selfish and less afraid. I wonder if you know that I did love you, perhaps in different ways than you loved me, but truly, all the same. I wonder if the things unspoken between us will ever find their way to the surface.
We never talk again.