Unrequited Love

Missing Pieces

It got closer to the performance weeks, and I hadn't seen Conan in about a week. I missed him. However, I threw myself into my work and concentrated on what I had to do, and not him. After a while, I thought I was slowly getting over him. That is, until he came in one day to help touch with the sets crew. I saw him, and it felt like my heart stopped for a second. 

I didn't talk to him that day, and just busied getting ready for the performance that night. I was in the bathroom touching up my hair and makeup and talking with my director. We were having some good, fun, conversations, and I was really enjoying myself. Then Celina - as I will call her - came in to talk with us. 

I had talked to Celina a little earlier in the day, and she was actually going to the college I wanted to go to, and was in the major I wanted to do as well. She was funny, and gorgeous and so so talented. I just admired her for her at first.  Then, she started telling me and my director about this guy she was trying to nicely turn down, but hadn't been getting the hint. Apparently Celina and some guy from her college were going to an show together at his request, and generally when people go together to these shows it means that they're a couple. However, the guy told Celina that they would only go as friends. Turns out that Conan was going to pick her up because it was her birthday, and there was all this drama between Conan and the guy. Conan is a perfect gentleman, and he wasn't unkind, but he was kind of asserting dominance over the guy and it was just a huge mess and Celina was just trying to keep the peace the whole time. Anyway, I was a hilarious story, and she told it brilliantly. 

Then I just had to ask what I'd been thinking: were she and Conan together?

Not officially she told me. And my director said that they might as well, and that they were so cute together, and that Conan had liked her since they were juniors in high school. I smiled and said that I thought they were cute, but inside I just wanted to go sit somewhere quiet where I could allow myself to be miserable for a moment and just let it out. 

The production went well, and I kept seeing glimpses of Conan while I was running around backstage, and it broke my heart every time. My hope was gone. Dramatic, I know, but love often is that way, and it's not a soft or consolatory thing. 

Although, I suppose it's unfair to myself to say that my hope was 'gone'; of course I had some little sliver of hope, and I was hanging onto it as hard as I could while telling myself to let go.