Tag: crushed

Over My Head

I didn’t believe him. I feel like he would say something like that just to be nice. He’s so intelligent, yet so often, the guy who doesn’t get it. I was saying we have a problem, and he responded like it was a casual compliment with the equivalent of back atcha.

As much as I cared about him, I wasn’t a slave to fate. I could choose to ignore my feelings, strong as they were. It would be painful, but no more so than letting myself pine for my friend.

J.M. Richards
Tall, Dark Streak of Lightning

The Work Bestie and I became friends the night I got really drunk on hot buttered rum, and he kept all of my secrets. He became my best friend the semester we spent four days a week, often twelve or more hours a day together. Every time I turned around, it seemed like he was there.

The work required some of that, but we also enjoyed each other’s company. He was there all the time. Not just on campus but coming into the office, finding me wherever I was, summoning me to wherever he was. He’d call me out from the office to the build for what seemed like no real reason, and I’d stick around anyway. I liked being part of the group. He’d take me with him on errands that he said I was necessary for, but then I really wasn’t. 

This was compounded by the fact that his pulling me out of my work, for things he didn’t really need, made it take longer to get my actual work done, so I ended up spending longer days at work than I used to. I work on deadlines, not a time clock, so no one at my work minded my extra hours. I didn’t mind either. My work was a place I often hid from my home life. Separate from the Work Bestie, I counted on that campus for sanctuary. It’s just that this is when I started staying in my safe place after hours, more often than not.

Even after I was done working for the day, I would stay. We’d all (students, Work Bestie, and I) usually have dinner together, and then I’d work on my physiology homework. That class was brutal, and I could never get much schoolwork done at home. It was late for loitering at Starbucks by the time I was done at work, so I was handling my schoolwork in the living room of the student housing most nights. Honestly, I think I would have dropped out that semester if it weren’t for the Work Bestie and our Pirate Friend (she used to live on Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, she didn’t loot gold doubloons or anything, but  I like to call her a pirate) giving me so much encouragement.

Sometimes when you spend too much time with someone, you start to get sick of each other.  Sometimes the more time you spend with a person, the more time you want to spend with them. It got to where it felt like something was missing when he wasn’t there. Good things or bad things, if I had a thing that I wanted to tell someone, the Work Bestie was the first person I wanted to tell. We exchanged eye contact like  passing notes in class, like “you see it too, right?” Making friends as an adult is often challenging, but this was effortless. We just fit.

After that semester’s graduation, the whole group of us, students, instructors, and admin staff, went out for a celebratory dinner. After dinner, most of the grownups went home, but the Work Bestie, one other instructor, and I joined the students for a quiet after-party. One by one, everyone else excused themselves for the night until only the Work Bestie and I remained. We sat on the couch in the living room of student housing and talked and talked and talked. We talked about our loved ones, the projects and workshops of the past, and about things we wanted to do in the future. We talked until I fell asleep.

I vaguely remember resting my eyes just a moment with my head against his shoulder, just until they were less dry. I unexpectedly woke up (unexpectedly in that I don’t remember falling asleep and in that I don’t know how we ended up like that) with my head against the Work Bestie’s chest and his arm around me. And for a moment, I felt so completely at home that I never wanted to be anywhere else again. And then the panic hit me. He was not my home. He was someone else’s boyfriend.

That night we’d become friends, I’d talked him back into his relationship. I’m a romantic at heart and hate to see years of building something lost for no good reason. Having been friends since then, I was always supportive of his relationship, as friends should be. I mean, nothing had happened, really. I’d fallen asleep, fully clothed, sitting side by side on a small couch on a cold night. It just wasn’t an appropriate way to feel. I had already arranged to stay the night in a room in the student housing and it was definitely time to say goodnight.

The Work Bestie walked me to my room, which seemed an odd gesture even at the time. It was one thing when he walked me to the building I was staying in, protecting me from coyotes, el cucuy, and whatever else goes bump in the night. It even made some sense to tuck me in when I was very drunk, but I wasn’t this night. We’d had some red wine, when The Italian was still awake and pouring, but that had been hours earlier. It made for an awkward situation, saying goodnight in the living room and then a few feet away in the hallway. I was a little flustered even just going in for the goodnight hug.

The Work Bestie gives great hugs. This was different, though. This was the moment lightning struck. Not that I could do anything about it. He was in a relationship. I said goodnight and entered the bedroom alone. I hoped that a goodnight hug was all he wanted. I hoped that he didn’t feel what I felt, that he didn’t know what I’d felt. I hoped that it would all evaporate in the light of day. 

Catch flights, not feelings.

The next morning was fine. That hug had just been a glitch in an otherwise comfortable friendship. We got through the day’s work and went out as a group in the evening. I wasn’t planning to stay the night at work again. Still, once again, he and I stayed up late into the night talking about all the things, only we were on a couch on the other side of campus because apparently our late-night talking and laughing had made it hard for others to sleep when we were in student housing. December in the high desert is very cold at night, and once again, we cuddled up on the couch just to keep from shivering.

I began to feel that uncomfortable pull again. When our conversation finally ended, I confessed that I was attracted to him. He said he was attracted to me too. I didn’t believe him. I feel like he would say something like that just to be nice. He’s so intelligent, yet so often, the guy who doesn’t get it. I was saying we have a problem, and he responded like it was a casual compliment with the equivalent of back atcha. 

I’d stayed too late to drive home and too late to go into student housing. Our Pirate Friend had already left the campus, and her room was separate from the regular student housing and seemed the easiest to set up for the night. The Work Bestie hooked me up with a space heater, but it kept tripping the circuit breaker. He’d tuck me in and leave, and then I’d call him on his phone a minute later, saying it’d gone out. He’d change the configuration again. Eventually he worked it out so it finally stuck. He called me from bed, his voice sleepy and deep, to ensure it was still working. The way he said my name when he said goodnight killed me. Besties are not supposed to sound that sexy.

I knew then that I wasn’t going to go back to the way it was before the lightning strike. I wanted so badly to leave my makeshift lodging and find him in his bed that night. I lay awake pondering how things might have gone differently if I’d known that drunken night that I would end up wanting him. What if I hadn’t lamented the loss of a long relationship in such a way that he chose to make things work after all? We’ll never know how that semester could have ended differently if he was single because he wasn’t single. 

I needed to keep a respectful distance after that. I believe that people can be friends with people of a gender they are attracted to. Otherwise, bisexuals would be the loneliest people on the planet. I don’t believe you can be friends with people when one or both of you want to be something more. Not even if you don’t want to want more. I didn’t want to want more, but all of a sudden I wanted him in ways that weren’t appropriate. Thus began the year we weren’t friends. 

You’re important to me
(You’re important to me)
Night and day and day and night
If I can, I will make things right
I… I wanna be your friend again
I’m sorry (sorry)
For the things I wish I hadn’t said
I’m sorry (sorry)
For the things I wish I hadn’t done
I’m sorry (sorry)
For the way I wish I hadn’t been
I’m sorry
(sorry)

Concrete Blonde
I Wanna Be Your Friend Again
Concrete Blonde – I Wanna be Your Friend Again
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Drought, Deluge, and Desire

There are different levels of separation. Sometimes it feels like only miles between us, but by the end of his busy summers, it feels like we’re standing on different planets. I begin to wonder if I’d made him up entirely.

The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.

Shannon L. Alder

The rain comes to the Mojave Desert all at once. It lands on earth so dry that it has forgotten how to drink. The entire desert is like a dried-out sponge, so thirsty that water beads and rolls off of it instead of soaking in. The soil can only drink in water if it’s already damp. I think my heart is a desert. It is so desperate for love that it has forgotten how to let any in. He appears the same way the sky breaks open in monsoon rain, and then, just as suddenly, he is gone. 

The Work Bestie and I have worked together for many years now. He lives far from our work, about a hundred miles. I lived close, about four hundred feet. So he would frequently travel to where I was. Which is to say, commute. Then I moved far from our work, about four hundred miles in the opposite direction. So he seemed relatively close to work, at only one hundred miles. So I would travel to where he was, which is to say, commute. Instead of seeing each other every month, we only saw each other a couple of times a year because most of my job became remote when I moved away for school. 

When I first moved to the Mojave Desert, you could still see the milky way most nights, and the monsoons came every summer. Neither of those things is true now. The nonprofit where the Work Bestie and I work together is still small and underfunded, though. We all have side hustles. To be honest, we all have main hustles except for the executive director. The Work Bestie has an important STEM job doing his part to save the planet. Smart boys are sexy. It also makes him disappear at the beginning of every summer, almost exactly when my school slows down enough that I’m more available to him.

The summer before my summer abroad, I was really frustrated by his inaccessibility. There are different levels of separation. Sometimes it feels like only miles between us, but by the end of his busy summers, it feels like we’re standing on different planets. I begin to wonder if I’d made him up entirely. I don’t know that there is anyone else I would wait for so long or so often, but he has a way of making things up to me. So I was really looking forward to working together in September. I needed our weekend together that September. 

I had bought my round-trip plane tickets to where he lives, one hundred miles further than our shared work. He was going to pick me up at the airport, and we would have the long commute together to talk while keeping our hands mostly to ourselves. I need that after the cold disconnect of our summers. We would have the long drive, both ways, and two nights, for him to remind me that he’s real, that I didn’t just imagine him.

He flaked on me. He canceled at the last minute, screwing me over personally and professionally. He had a family obligation in another state. It was right for him to be there instead of with me, but that doesn’t make it suck any less on my end. I had to change my flights, pay for a shuttle and spend the weekend sleeping alone, in the friggin’ Mojave Desert, not to mention moving the whole workshop schedule around so that we had qualified instructors for all the modules. I’m not convinced that even the Work Bestie was worth all this. 

I was lowkey done, but how do you break up with a ghost? A ghost who I wasn’t even officially a thing with. Whatevs. Besides, he was supposed to be my plus-one for my cousin’s wedding in October. I don’t like going to weddings alone since my own marriage failed. It’s one of the rare occasions on which being single depresses me. Besides, he’s a good dancer, and I wanted someone to dance with. So I wasn’t going to make waves until after he stood me up for that too. To my surprise, he did not.

Don't go. I'll eat you up. I love you so. (Where the Wild Things Are)
I’ll eat you up I love you so

This is the problem with the Work Bestie. When he shows up, he is perfect. It’s impossible to stay angry with him. We had the long BART ride from SFO to the East Bay to reconnect. He wasn’t imaginary. He was very real. He’s my favorite. Favorite what? I don’t know, but he’s my favorite. That weekend was the first time I ever believed he might love me. I mean, we were friends for years before we ever fooled around; of course, we love each other as friends. 

There was a moment when we were alone in my room, and he bit my arm. We weren’t fooling around right then. It wasn’t a sex thing. It was more like when a toddler’s emotions are so much bigger than their vocabulary, and they don’t know how to express themselves other than to bite someone. It was like when my kids were little; I’d look at them and feel like I could just eat them up because I loved them so much.

That was the first time I felt he could love me beyond friendship. I have trouble trusting what people say. Words are slippery. This was something that made sense to me. Days later, I was still rubbing the bruise (I bruise ridiculously easily) and smiling, thinking, “he likes me; he really likes me.” I had proof that he was real, and maybe he even loved me.

He never told me he loved me
He never told me he cared for me
He never told me he didn’t
So I believed

Sofia Talvik
Beautiful Naked