My best friend Adam has had the same phone number since we were in grade 9 together - almost 9 years ago. It's amazing that something can last for so long. When I think about it, 9 years is also about the amount of time that I was in love with him for - totally unrequited.
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It started, for me, when we were in elementary school and our moms randomly became friends while attending our respective games at the Calgary Soccer Centre. I was playing, I believe, for McKenzie and he was playing for Midsun (both community teams in city-wide leagues). We would both be moving into the Calgary Celtic Soccer Club the following season. We were both about to be attending the same school for junior high. I looked over at him, and thought that he looked just like Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I smiled. I had a mouth full of braces. He was wearing his track suit. I had a grape slurpee (how do we remember these mundane things?) I was in love.
At first, it started out well for me - after a particularly steamy round of truth or dare at his 12th birthday party, I managed to garner myself a kiss on the cheek. We dated for 2 days - I went to his house and we watched the movie "Clear and Present Danger" together, holding hands on his couch. We would talk on the phone for hours every night. He tried to teach me how to play the guitar. Every time I saw him playing soccer in the neighborhood, I would camp out under a nearby tree and watch the game with just enough disinterest to convince him that I didn't care about him TOO much.
We fought a lot in junior high - he would comment on the fact that I didn't wear a bra. I would make fun of whatever girl he had his sights on, out of jealousy. We started hanging out with different crowds, crossing paths once in a while, maybe for a few weeks, or the occasional game of pick up soccer, but never finding the same friendship that we had started with. I had "boyfriends", a string of awkward adolescent relationships with boys named Colin, Ian, Alistair, Daniel, Justin, Mike. I had my first love and my first heartbreak. All the while, I loved Adam, truly loved him. I would go to sleep thinking about him at night and light up when I saw him at school during the day. I have never loved another human being before, or since, with the same ferocity as I loved him then. I have entire diaries filled with entries about him. Maybe everything is amplified when you're 14. I thought that my life would begin and end on the day that he inevitably realized that I was his sould mate, and he would finally kiss me like I always believed he should desperately want to.
It wasn't until the summer before high school that we found each other again. It was a small change, at first. We started talking on the phone, which led to all-night talks in his backyard tree house, to blueberry pancakes on sunday mornings and renting stupid movies and eventually becoming so close that we pretty much shared everything. He was my rock, and although I dated several guys in high school, my relationships came and went without much fanfare because I was, essentially, still waiting for Adam. I loved him more the closer we grew, and spending the night curled up next to him on the couch when I was too tired to go home was like the most beautiful sort of torture for me. We would do anything for each other, yet he was never able to give me what I really wanted from him. It was hard to hear him say that he wanted to find someone "just like me" one day, without realizing how in love with him I really was.
He was, appropriatly, the one who drove me to the airport when I left for Queens. In first year (though I was dating Marcus at the time) I would drag my phone out into the hallway and talk to him every night, sometimes until we both fell asleep on the phone. Several times he told me that he loved me, but never in the way that I wanted it to be. I continued to long for him desperately all the way into my 3rd year. I never thought I would get over him and be able to love someone else completely.
I don't even know what changed, really. Something was different when we spent an amazing weekend together in Calgary that year. I felt as though we were hugging for longer, spending more time close to each other, finding excuses to touch, to joke around. There was a palatable chemistry, an understood attraction between us. We would lock eyes for seconds at a time and I felt as though something might snap from the intensity. I knew that we would kiss (for the first time!). I knew that he wanted me. And I knew-even three years into a relationship with marcus-that I wanted him too. He planned on driving me to the airport by himself. I was in totally over my head, felt like I couldn't control what was happening. We held hands at the pub, in a way that was different from all ways before. He drove me to the airport and parked the car. He took of his seatbelt and looked at me. I felt like I had been waiting for 10 years for him to look at me that way. He touched the side of my face with his hand. I wanted to kiss him so badly. He pulled me towards him .. and I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it to Marcus, who adored me (and who I adored) I couldn't do it because maybe it wouldn't be everything I hoped it would be. I couldn't do it because the man sitting in front of me was not the boy I had fallen in love with. I couldn't do it because I knew that there was someone out there who could love me more completely. Who wouldn't make me wait for 10 years. Who would find me incredible and irresistable and would chase after me and crave me and want to know every thought and feeling in my head. I got out of the car. For me, it was over.
I've seen him a few times since then, and have never discussed what happened between us. The tension is gone, the attraction vanished. I look back on my 10 years of total devotion and don't even recognize myself - the feelings seem so alien to me now. I called him tonight, just to say "hi", my fingers sliding effortlessly across the keypad in a way that was memorized years ago. His voice makes me smile, but there's nothing more I want or need from him.
I guess people change in ways that they can't imagine. I'm so much happier with myself now that I don't feel incomplete without him - and now that I have someone who is truly crazy about me, for me. I don't have to jump through hoops for Steve or be anything other than exactly what I am. Maybe that's why I love him so much. Or maybe it's because he doesn't look like JTT (what was I thinking???)
