Memory Lane

Part 13: Two Hours

"I'm sorry."

You were crying again and this time, I wanted to cry with you. It was getting harder for me to see you like this. You were a fragile shell of your former self and I was stuck with the responsibility of holding the leftover pieces of you together.

Not that I minded. I would have done anything to have a place in your life again. But your misery stuck by you like a shadow and no matter what I did, I couldn't completely chase it away.

"You have no reason to be sorry," I said.

"I know what I do to you. We don't have to pretend," you replied.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

You cracked a smile and the world seemed lighter. "Do you like it when I ignore you at school?"

Your tears dried at this point so your words didn't hurt as much as they should.

"I'm lonely without you," I admitted. Lonely was an understatement. I was utterly untethered from everything good the world had to offer in your absence.

"I'm here." You grabbed my hand. "I haven't left you. Things have been so crazy at school and home. I barely get the chance to see you."

Screams from the house across the street filtered into the conversation. You winced at the familiar voices. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but you understood every word.

"My boyfriend has also been having a rough time," you added. "He's been struggling with precalc and basketball tryouts are coming up."

In my room, he was always "the boyfriend," never Harry. A constant reminder of what I couldn't have with you. It made him sacred, never speaking his name.

I thought it made you feel less guilty when you kissed me. Because wasn't that what you really came to my room for? To do those things that made us more than friends?

It certainly wasn't to crowd around my beat-up laptop watching movies, but you liked doing that too. Swaddled in my spare gray blanket and munching on imported mochi-covered strawberries, you were soothed. We watched marathons of mermaid movies and sea life documentaries, anything that made you smile.

You planned to join the swim team, becoming an athletic power couple with Michael. Your dreams unfolded before me like a slick brochure, a gleaming vision board of the future. A full sports scholarship to a big-named UC, college sweethearts in Greek life invited to every social event, a high-paying job you didn't hate, and two-and-a-half kids behind a white picket fence.

I didn't see myself in any of these life events beyond being your long-distance best friend and maid of honor. And that was if I remained your best friend after all of this.

The thought of you getting married made me uneasy. I doubt your husband would sit back while you dragged me to bed. Whatever we had here, I knew deep in my heart that we couldn't do this forever.

At some point in the night when the movies were finished and the snacks were gone, you were yourself again. Which meant you dropped all pretenses, every reason you gave for visiting me dissolving in the dark. Everything that mattered happened in the dark.

I switched off the lamp and whispered "goodnight," but that was also an act, my contribution to the theatrics. As soon as the world was bathed in shadow, your mouth found mine. It was instinctual, absent of the usual teenage fumbling. I hardly had time to settle into the blankets before you reached for me.

Low-hanging fruit wasn't the right term for it. I was worse than that because I already fell from the tree, fresh and begging to be picked. I was a windfall, waiting for the farmer to judge if I was too bruised for eating.