Forever and Always

Jeffrey

12th of September, 2010

Jamie,

I'm just going to cut to the chase and say it: please don't leave. I don't want you to go, I want us to see each other every day and to have sleepovers, and I want you and your Dad to go to my house on Sundays for brunch. I don't want things to change, I don't want to miss you every single day of my life. I hate having to think about every single thing you're doing every minute of the day, I hate having to wonder who you're hanging out with. I don't think I'll be able to resist the thought of you being with other blokes. And I might be jealous and immature and awfully selfish here, but that's who I am.

I want us to try and see if we're as good a couple as we're friends, because the way I see it, Jamie, we're perfect for each other. I mean, we've known each other since we were five, we both came out to each other and we've been playing this stupid game ever since. And I'm done playing games, not when it means that I might be losing you. I'm done pretending that I love you like a brother because what I feel for you has nothing to do with what I feel for Rick and Thomas.

I've never really seen you as "just a friend". You're Jamie, my best friend, my only true friend for that matter. I've told you things I couldn't even see myself telling someone else, I've slept on your bed countless times and you've slept in mine. And I've dreamt about you so many times if I were to write each dream down I'd need a notebook the size of a dictionary. It wouldn't be enough, though, because sixteen years of loving you don't fit in a thousand pages; they wouldn't even fit in a million, and yet I'm trying to sum it all up in a few paragraphs.

Maybe I am a coward, for having kept all this inside of me until I saw my chances of being with you in jeopardy. Maybe I took you for granted, thought you'd always be by my side. Maybe I was foolish for thinking you'd be the one to make the first move, as if I were some sort of a prize you had to reclaim.

I never fought for you because I never felt the need. Even when we were seeing other people we knew we had each other, we knew it would always come to the two of us against the world. We felt, and I'm sorry but I believe we both share the guilt in this one, that it was enough, being friends, not doing anything to try and be something else. We were stuck in this comfort zone and you decided to shift everything in our perfect little world.

I must say, I'm thankful for what you did because you sort of woke me up and made me realize that something between us had to change. But at first I thought you weren't being serious about leaving, I mean, you've lived your whole life in Cambridge, your Dad lives here, I live here, and you know I've got no plans of leaving.

We used to talk about our friends who left, remember? Used to call them traitors because we knew that as soon as they stepped on another city, they'd never want to be back. We made thousands of promises to each other and to ourselves that we would never be like them, that we would stay, forever, and that we would grow up to live in a flat, just the two of us, and we would be uni professors and we'd draw portraits of each other and place them at a little art gallery we loved.

Even if it wasn't official, we knew that we would end up together, we made plans, long term plans, Jamie, but you wouldn't stick to them. And yes, I understand you want to see your Mum again; if it were me, I wouldn't go look for the woman who walked out on me and my Dad, but it's not my decision to make. I was there all the nights you cried for her because you were afraid that she didn't remember you, I even helped you Google her on several occasions until you found her Facebook profile. I saw her pictures with you, and told you how pretty she was and how you had the same eyes.

It hurt when you told me you were leaving, obviously because I love you. I am in love with you, I have always been in love with you and something tells me I will always be. But it's not the fact that you're leaving what hurt the most, it was the fact that you didn't even try to ask me to come along, again, not that I would've said yes, at least not immediately, but you didn't count on me to keep on with the search for your Mum and that made me feel completely left out from your life. As if you felt like moving on from me was as easy as moving away from town. And that made me think that maybe you don't love me as much as I love you, but I guess that's one of the things in life I'll never get to fully know or understand.

Tomorrow morning you'll wake up on my bed for the last time, and we'll say goodbye at my doorstep and it'll be over. I'll put this inside the back pocket of your jeans, hoping you'll be able to see it before you leave for good. And then I'll sit and wait for you to come back.

x.

Jeffrey