There's A Big Difference
Two kids sitting in the back of a red pickup truck in the penetrating chill of a late autumn midnight, talking to each other about nothing and everything under a faintly buzzing halogen bulb in the parking lot behind Krispy Kreme. She’s wearing a pair of classy black heels and his large black overcoat, a strand of pearls around her neck and 1940’s hair-and-makeup to match. He’s wearing a snappy black vest and other dapper evening attire. His hair is an absolute mess.
Two kids sitting together, drinking coffee and sharing a Camel Light, talking to each other about ADD and drug addiction and chickens. She didn’t know until that night, sitting and talking on the folded-down tailgate of that red Ford pickup, how much she liked him. She didn’t realize when she invited him to that dance what a mistake it was; she couldn’t have known it would be the start of something, the beginning point of a line of emotion that would draw itself out seven months and longer.
It suddenly occurred to her while driving home through the night how much she would have liked to kiss him on the cheek in light accompaniment to that entirely innocent goodnight hug. She couldn’t have realized then how much she was beginning to care about him. There was no way she could have known how much she would worry about him in the weeks and months to come; and hope that he was taking the right turns in life; and wish that he would find a good girlfriend who saw who he really was, and how great he really was, and with whom he would be truly happy, even though that last one meant that it wouldn’t be her.
She knows now. And she regrets that it ever began - not because of the quiet suffering of unrequited love, but rather for the suffering of unrequited care. She knows the feelings she has are not love; she laughs at the thought of being in love with this boy, or at least at the thought of being in love with him or anyone else, for that matter, right now. But she does not laugh at her feelings toward him in general, for they are not feelings to be laughed at - smiled at, perhaps, with just the outer corners of the lips upturned in a conflicted expression of sympathy and amusement - but not laughed at.
She cares about him.
Two kids sitting together, drinking coffee and sharing a Camel Light, talking to each other about ADD and drug addiction and chickens. She didn’t know until that night, sitting and talking on the folded-down tailgate of that red Ford pickup, how much she liked him. She didn’t realize when she invited him to that dance what a mistake it was; she couldn’t have known it would be the start of something, the beginning point of a line of emotion that would draw itself out seven months and longer.
It suddenly occurred to her while driving home through the night how much she would have liked to kiss him on the cheek in light accompaniment to that entirely innocent goodnight hug. She couldn’t have realized then how much she was beginning to care about him. There was no way she could have known how much she would worry about him in the weeks and months to come; and hope that he was taking the right turns in life; and wish that he would find a good girlfriend who saw who he really was, and how great he really was, and with whom he would be truly happy, even though that last one meant that it wouldn’t be her.
She knows now. And she regrets that it ever began - not because of the quiet suffering of unrequited love, but rather for the suffering of unrequited care. She knows the feelings she has are not love; she laughs at the thought of being in love with this boy, or at least at the thought of being in love with him or anyone else, for that matter, right now. But she does not laugh at her feelings toward him in general, for they are not feelings to be laughed at - smiled at, perhaps, with just the outer corners of the lips upturned in a conflicted expression of sympathy and amusement - but not laughed at.
She cares about him.