dark corners

III

i remember our first i love you.

i say i love you to a lot of people, in a platonic way of course. but when i said it to you, it was different.

the details of the day are a bit blurry. i specifically remember we had been friends for about a month. it was april first, and we both saw each other at Maggie's Cafe. it was a funny moment, our eyes met, we looked each other up and down, then we look ourselves up and down and we broke out into insane laughter.we were wearing almost the same thing. A red flannel, navy blue jeans, and air force ones. i had a black tank top on and the flannel was around my waist. i remember later that night all we talked about were our clothes.  you were with your friends, two of them. bryan and charles, if i remember correctly. they looked at us as if we were rabid baboons. after all, the noises we were making were less than human. i couldn't exactly blame them, i doubt you could either. 

you introduced me to your friends and they seemed uneasy about me. once again, to be fair, i wasn't exactly the type of person you'd associate yourself with back then. i had never seen you around anyone like me before, at least. well, i'm still not sure. i didn't exactly zero in on who you hung out with. not that it matters. you were always quiet, almost invisible. i, on the other hand, was on the varsity volleyball team and i cheered for a while. i quit junior year. d you remember why? i doubt it.  but i don't think your friends liked me at first, or maybe they were just being dicks to you for hanging out with the star volleyball player.

im not sure what exactly happened but, i had gotten up to order another latte. when i returned everyone was beet red with tears coming out of their eyes. bryan was wheezing and charles obviously couldn't breathe and you were doubled over.

charles was nicer than bryan so he explained the story.

by the end of it i was laughing harder than all three of you combined. it had gotten so bad maggie herself came to our table and kicked us out. that, of course, only fueled our fire. we all must've looked batshit insane. we laughed a lot at the beginning, don't you think? sometimes when i go into the darker corners, i wonder when we stopped laughing. maybe i'll get that question answered one day, but as of now, back to april first.

bryan and charles had left by now and we were in the gazebo from the first day. by now my coffee was lukewarm and absolutely disgusting. you had told me maggie's has the best coffee in town it can't be disgusting no matter what!   you obviously had to prove that point so you took the cup right out of my hands and took a long sip. i swear i saw the confidence drain out of your eyes. i'm not sure if words cannot describe what you did next or if i cannot find the right words to describe what you did next but god, was it extravagant!  you spit out the coffee as any person would do, but as you were doing so, you made a noise. i cannot describe that noise as anything other than an atomic fart. gross, i know, but thats exactly what it sounded like. you were viciously wiping your tongue with you hand and you dropped to your knees trying to spit the taste out of your mouth. you eventually rolled right out of the gazebo onto the grass. mid spasm, you got some grass in your mouth. it was the funniest thing i had ever seen and these words slipped out gosh, i love you. you stopped what you were doing and got up, grass stains covering your shoes. thinking about it now, you had stopped that performance rather easily. i know now that it was partially forced, i'm just not sure why you did it. were you being hyperbolic just make me smile? you had told me you loved watching me smile... but that comes later in the story. you looked me straight in the eyes and said i love a lot of things, you make that list, but cold coffee from maggie's does not.

i burst out laughing again. the smile on my face that day seemed to be permanent. maybe your intention wasn't to constantly make me happy. maybe it wasn't to make me laugh. you told me that day at my doorstep you liked seeing me smile, and even though i now know you've lied about  a lot of things but i really hope that was the truth.

granted, i like seeing you smile too.

hey, maybe i remember more about that day than i thought.

or maybe i just dont like thinking about it.