Here’s how it went down.
So, a lot of things had to happen for us to get to this point.
I was in a ladybug costume, and you were dressed like some video game character that no one but you had ever heard of. We were thirteen, at our first real halloween party, and people were joking about playing spin the bottle. I kind of wanted to, because I knew that there was a one-in-fourteen chance that if we played, I'd be paired up with you. All of my friends had already had their first kisses.
Two years later we're in high school. You're a grade up, and my friend sees you in the cafeteria. She thinks you're cute. I've forgotten that fleeting thirteen-year-old crush, and I offer to go introduce you.
I lose courage when you ask me what my name is. I act like this is a first impression. I am flippant, sarcastic. I invite you over to sit with us.
You do end up joining us.
I realize that I am in trouble when I find myself going out of my way to make you laugh.
When a guy who seems to powerful to turn down and wears ties to school every day asks me out, I say yes. I didn't want to get in my friend's way. He's smart, confident, tall. I don't notice I am in danger until the water around me is already boiling.
You and my friend don't date. She finds a girlfriend she loves, and suddenly our friend group is a rotating mix of highschool sweethearts.
Everytime I see you, he's with me. Whenever he sees you, he snakes an arm around my waist, or sits his hand high on my thigh, as if to remind us all that only he gets that privilege. It embarasses me when he does this, that he doesn't trust me, that maybe he shouldn't trust me. I don't know if you ever noticed him doing that.
There's a park in our hometown, walking distance away. My friend and her girlfriend go on a walk, leaving the three of us on a dock. My boyfriend stands, mutters something about finding a water fountain. He tries to get me to come with. When I deny him, his eyes slide from you to me, and I can tell that he will be furious later.
Again, I am fighting to make you smile. The jokes stack up like jenga, as we both go as far as we can to keep the bit going. Your face does the funniest thing when you think of the next gag, like you want to build suspense, but you're already laughing too hard to speak.
It would have been so easy. We were alone, we were happy.
A beat even passed when the laughter had died down and we found ourselves less than an arms length apart on that pic-nic blanket, your grey eyes meeting mine. It might have been my imagination, but I thought you even leaned forward a little bit, your gaze soft. My hand twitched forward, and I imagined myself running it over the curve of your jawline. You looked up at that last second, before everything would have changed, startled by the sound of rustling leaves.
He stepped through the trees, plopped down on the blanket by us, resting his head in my lap in a way that was so overtly territorial that I felt as if he'd leashed me in front of you.
The whole rest of the day I'm thinking over and over how I should have kissed you, how badly I wish I had kissed you.
The rest goes by pretty quickly.
The long and short of it is, I thought about it every day. Every time I saw you, I remembered how close we were to something electric, something that couldn't be taken back. I've never stood along a cliff's edge, but it must be something like seeing your face only a few inches away from mine.
The problem was him. He was quicksand.
He proposed on my twenty-first birthday (so I could drink at the wedding), in the middle of the party, with everyone I had ever met staring at me, him, and a ring. I said yes, because no was a guillotine blade--ugly, sharp, and bloody. It was always clear that my consent was more of a preference than a requirement in our life together.
He didn't want to invite you. I honestly don't think he knew that I sent you a Save-the-Date. It surprised me when you RSVP'd.
I didn't mean for us to get rooms in the same hotel the week of the wedding.
It really was an accident. I had to run back to my room to get something for one of my bridesmaids. I got turned around in the hotel, knocked on the wrong door. You opened up to me in a facemask, hair half-curled, and wearing one of those cheap hotel robe and slipper sets. Your laugh was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it being years ago.
Then I did something that I think most engaged people in a six year relationship would frown upon. I ended it.
I asked if you remembered the park. You did.
I asked if I could come in your room, if we could talk.
You said yes.
Everyone was shocked that I left him. No one really thought that I could do better.
You were better.
Me.
I like me. It's something to do with how well I fit into my body, or how my voice belongs to just me and no one else. I may not sing or write or paint as good as Tori Amos or Neil Gaiman or Georgia O'Keefe, but I'm the only one who sings and writes and paints like me. Also I've been told my eyes change color which I guess is pretty cool.