Husband Material

Luke

We've all heard of the friend-zone. That point between two people where one would like to be more than friends, but the other wants nothing more than to be friends. But in Christian circles we have this thing called being brother/sister-in-Christ-zoned. It's when a person you like pulls out the infamous saying, "I see you like a sister (or brother) in Christ". At that point, you should probably say something nonchalant like "oh yeah, me too, praise ye the Lord!" even though you feel like you're being stabbed inside.

I had met him a couple times at church functions, but he went to a different denomination so he wasn't around as often as he might have been. I didn't spend any lengthy amount of time around him until the summer before high school. We both ended up going to the same summer camp, one that I had gone to with Mia since early childhood. We both met him there, and we both became friends with him from there.

Who is this "he" we speak of? He's Luke Howard, the ideal boy that every Christian girl wants: he's good-looking, can harmonize to Oceans by Hillsong, and is spiritual. Even his name screams "Christian", with the biblical "Luke" and the common blue-blood last name. Besides that, he's intelligent and on his way to a successful career following in his father's footsteps as an engineer.

Flash forward to my first year of highschool. I was a shy, timid grade nine, constantly getting lost in my new, much larger school. Mia was coming to a public school for the first time in her life, coming to the same high school as me, but our class schedules were completely separate. That's why it was a relief when in my homeroom, academic English, I saw someone I knew: Luke. We were friendly, a little aloof considering our closest interaction had lasted one week. But as the semester progressed, it became clear that Luke and I were cut from the same cloth. Both of us attained top marks in our classes. This made it apparent that if we wanted to do well in school projects, we should pair up. We were together for English, Science, Math and Art. In math, I constantly struggled, so he offered to tutor me. Art was a mandatory credit for him, and he was terrible at it, but I was pretty handy, so sometimes (don't tell anyone) I would do the shading and blending for him after school. We were the perfect partnership.

As we rolled into grade ten, I found out that I wasn't just fond of Luke as a fellow student and Christian. I really, really liked him. I noticed and appreciated all sorts of things about him. I liked the way that his penmanship got really messy when he got excited about an idea, how it would jump off the lines of the paper and the blue ink would smudge on the side of his hand. I liked the way he bit his bottom lip when he was reading something. I liked the fact that he kept his hair short and neat, unlike the shaggy swoop most boys went for at that age. I liked how when we did presentations in class, he would obtain this very full booming voice and take on this very intellectual tone.

Even after our schedules evened out and became less conjoined, we continued to sit together with mutual friends at our lunch table. We would talk about random things: school, TV shows, recent world news, even the weather. And I found that, no matter the subject, whether it was boring or serious, I enjoyed talking with him. I think I could have talked with him for hours and hours and never would have gotten fed up with his tone of voice or his opinions.

It was the summer before grade twelve that I think my love for him was clinched. We were both working at the camp as counsellors. The kids chose our counsellor names, the category being superheros: I was Black Widow, he was Hawkeye. Like I said, we were the perfect partnership. Anyway, one of the little boys in his cabin fell down and scraped his knee while doing typical risky little boy things. He began bawling his eyes out. I was watching, about to rush up and use my womanly-mothering touch to comfort him in his pain. Before I could get there though, Luke had arrived at the scene. He crouched down and began speaking to the boy in soft tones, taking him by the hand to help him walk to the nurse's station. I came with them, since a singular counsellor was never supposed to be alone with a camper. All the way there I watched as Luke convinced the boy to stop crying and got him to actually begin giggling. At the nurse's station, Luke lifted the boy up unto the countertop. I helped him clean the boy's knee and put a bandage on it. His hands worked so delicately, gently pressing the band-aid on. At the end, the boy jumped down, feeling good as new, gave up both high-fives, and ran off to go get into more trouble.

At this point you can probably guess what was running through my mind: He would make a great dad.

When we got back to school in the fall, I was absolutely smitten. I couldn't go through a single school day without wondering what he was doing, what class he was in, what he thought of me. We still partnered up for every school project, and talked all the time.

Now, let's screech! This story to a halt because you're probably saying to yourself, "How is this going to go wrong? Every other story has gone wrong, this one has to too!". What if I told you that you were wrong? What if I told you this does have a happy ending?

Well, sike: I'm going to crush all hopes that you had just like all my hopes were crushed. Second semester, senior year. I've been crushing hard on Luke Howard for 3 years and counting. I've planned out our wedding down to how my infant nephew Joshua is going to be the ringbearer and how our cake is going to be a cheesecake. I've calculated at what point before or after we graduate from university that he should propose. We're still only friends. But I have a plan to change all that: I'm going to come out of my comfort zone, I'll be the one to make the first move. I thought that at this point he should also feel the attraction, we spend so much time together and we get along so well after all. I thought it was finally time.

I skipped up to his locker, which was only a few down from mine. He turns and sends me his perfectly straight smile, "Hey, did you hear about the youth conference in Toronto in two weeks?"

"Yeah, I was thinking of maybe going," I replied. My heart was beating so loudly in my chest, I was sure he would hear it.

"Oh, cool, maybe we can ride down together," he said, shoving his textbook up unto the shelf.

"Hey, Luke," I began, swallowing the butterflies that were flitting about in the pit of my stomach, "did you have any plans for prom?"

He hesitated, then straightened, a stiff smile on his face. Gently he said, "yeah, I already asked Mia if she wanted to go with me..."

It felt like I had been hit over the head. I was dazed. I hadn't expected this at all. When had Mia and him ever spent time together? Of course, we were all friendly, but I had never noticed anything between them. I just sort of nodded. Then he began talking, and that's when it really began to hurt.

"You know, Jo," he said carefully, "I just wanted to let you know, you've been the greatest sister in Christ throughout high school." There it was. I had been sister-in-Christ zoned. And like I said, it felt like I was being stabbed. In the gut. With a jagged knife.

He continued, "You've been such an encouragement to me spiritually." He just twisted the knife a little bit. Encouragement is another word you never want to hear if you have romantic designs. It means they think you're being nice and that's where it ends.

"I'm so happy that we became friends," he finished finally. It was like he had pulled out the knife to let me bleed out. I nodded, slowly, considering my options. How does one respond to the fact that the person they've liked for years thinks of them only as a friend, and is actually taking their best friend to prom instead of them?

"I'm happy we're friends too," I said sweetly, and as casually as possible. "I was just wondering if you wanted to go stag with me. But you're going with Mia, so that's...great."

"Oh, thank goodness," he said, sighing in relief. "I thought you actually liked me. I was worried I would hurt your feelings." You have to admire how much my composure had improved since my failed childhood crushes. I managed to keep my face neutral, and laugh it off.

Of course, when I got home, I binged netflix, ate a pint of Ben & Jerry's, and cried myself to sleep.

I never went to prom. Mia did. She wore this gorgeous strapless blue dress and Luke wore a matching tie. They got cute prom photos. Mia told me about her whole night. It sounded amazing. The two of them tried dating for a bit after that, but ultimately they decided to just be friends. And I did actually stay friends with Luke. Friends is really a subjective term though: I interacted with him in class when I had to, I still sat at the same lunch table. I still crushed on him, but it was tainted. I wasn't blown over every time I saw him. Instead, I just got very sad and quiet. I don't think he ever knew. Maybe he guessed. I don't know. I see him occasionally at bible conferences. We don't really run in the same circles anymore though. I guess I just saw things going a very different way than he did. We had mixed signals, that's it.