A boy I loved, entry #13, the illusive "A"

Here you will see Rusty (see earlier post), "M," "A," "A's funny wife," and me.  Luckily, the players written about in this entry are masked and hiding their identities.

If I had one word to use to describe my short time with A. would be “regret.”  I regret at eighteen not being mature enough or emotionally capable of understanding who he really was and what I felt for him. If I could see him now, I would apologize.  Sometimes I pretend to have this conversation with him now, despite both of us turning 42 this month. 

He would say, “Wow, you look different. Why are you knocking on my door?”

“Surprise! I can’t believe you still recognize me. A., would your wife mind if we went on a walk for a few minutes?”

“No.  You two are old friends. Let me grab a sweater.”  and then we would turn down the street that is covered with tree branches, sidewalks, and 1970 ramblers.

I look down at my cowboy boots.  I think I should remember to not step on the cracks and then I wonder how I’m going to start this conversation and then I think I wish I’d never come and what an idiot I am.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you for the last twenty years or so.”

“You always were a procrastinator.”

“No, really, A., I wanted to say I’m sorry for everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were like a best friend for so long.  Remember when we met? You sat behind me when we were fifteen in driver’s ed.. You were so dang funny. We would drive the school’s Pinto cars around the parking lot and laugh and laugh. Then, after graduation, when things got romantic, I just didn’t handle things well.  I got a bit possessive and then I’d push you away and then I’d get jealous and pull you back.”  I glance at him and then look the other way.  I see a stray dog sniffing some flowers. 

“Yeah.  I remember you were a bit crazy.”

“I think it was the first time I felt real love.  I didn’t know how to handle it.  I thought you were my soulmate, but I didn’t know how to deal with it. ”

“It’s okay.”  He doesn’t know what to say, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Then, I made all those mistakes while you were gone for two years and when you came back, I wasn’t what you were looking for anymore.  I’d changed.  I wasn’t worthy of you.  I’m so sorry!”

“Melonie, don’t say that.  You made your choices.  I had to make mine.  It all worked out how it was supposed to be.”

I think I’m going to cry, but I don’t.  I need to focus. “Yes.  But sometimes I think if I’d been a better person, things might have worked out differently.  I regret it. ”

“Don’t.  You are happy now and I’m happy.”

“Are you?”  I ask, having the courage to face him now.  Most of me wants him to say he is happy, but that awful, little part of me wants me to say he isn't and that he's pined for me for 24 years.  

“Yes.”

“Will you forgive me for being a fool?”

He puts his arms around me in a hug.  I remember for a quick moment something he wrote in a letter about missing me.  He wrote that when he looks down where my eyes should be, he sees her neck instead. I push that thought quickly out of my mind.

“Of course.  I forgive you, Melonie, ” he graciously answers.  A satisfied smile comes to his face. “Now, walk me home.” and with each step comes a memory.

We laugh about the time I knocked on his bedroom window and the Chinese exchange student came to the glass instead of him and how the student went and got his mother and she came out the door and yelled at me. 

We laugh about the graduation swimming party and how I was wearing all white and he picked me up to throw me in the pool and I yelled something about my contact lenses and how at that exact moment when he touched me I knew something glorious had begun.

We laugh about how he asked if he could kiss me while we were watching a movie in his basement and I said yes and he moved across the four feet that divided us and kissed me on my cheek.

We laugh about our late night hike and then climbing the fence into O.C. Tanner’s estate and him giving me a piggy back ride and then sitting me on a log and then I hold him, hold him, hold him until we move under the trees and it is a perfect summer night and he kisses me so magically that I can’t believe that the stars framed above him are further away than a hand reach.

We laugh about the night we kiss on the back of my parked moped in the church parking lot.  I am turned around to face him and I can’t understand what I’m feeling.  We decide that it is getting late and I am driving home with his arms around my waist and he leans over in my ear and says, “I love you” in a voice so, so small that I don’t think he meant for me to hear over the roar of the engine, but I do hear and my heart literally fills with so much joy that it feels like a firework went off in my chest and I can’t control the moped and we swerve and almost crash before I recover and drive on.  It’s the first time anyone besides my family has ever said they loved me and I cannot bear the full joyous burden of it.

We laugh at the evening spent in the empty apartment, me playing house and how I want to tell him he was the best kisser I have ever known

and then suddenly we get to his front door and I’m not laughing anymore.  I keep thinking about all the dreams I’ve had, night after night, where he is there and I know I’m supposed to tell him something important, but can’t remember the words.

“Thanks for the walk,” he says.

and I smirk and try to think of something funny, but nothing comes to mind, so I get in my minivan to drive back to my present life and he waves while I drive away and I say in my head, “Thanks for all of it.”