The Wanderer and His Shadow

she was for me the single probable "what-if" left in my life. but after tonight, i wouldn't even have that.

i was practically crushing on her since i was twelve. back then i didn't really think she knew i existed. i was one of her groupies (albeit the silent one that never admits). she had an adorable face and she was justifiably adored by the everyone who God blessed with early puberty, while i was still wearing boy's tees and an incredibly school boyish facade. so i gave her up to some other person early in life.

a decade later she comes back with the same adorable face and also with an inkling of interest in moi. hmmm...

but sometimes interests never really get people anywhere until they have enough passion (okay, hormones) to get the friendship moving to the next level. so our love story was pretty much phone calls, emails and then the dubious mushy quote which used to keep me awake thinking of its subtext.

then add about a dozen other boys running after her at the time and her perpetual mumness about her lovelife. there: you've got the perfect formula for a love tragedy by stagnancy.
after all the gathered information, i came up with this tentative hypothesis that she had a thing for me. only, she never really said so...and her word was the single most significant data for a conclusion.

up until the month i hooked up with my present love interest, she was texting me mushy quotes. to hell with mushy quotes, if you've got something to say, say it. mushy quotes only complicate matters.

after several months, she texts me out of nowhere and asks me if i'm busy. a few hours after, we're talking about our present lovelives over rootbeer floats in a mini mart. Then of all times, of all places, she tells me she is over me and she has moved on. what the f?! where did that come from?! anyway, i wanted to ask her what exactly she was moving on from when nothing really happened. but i thought, who was i to say nothing happened? her version of the story might be more eventful for all i know. but i never will know because we talked about the "thing" for a whole two minutes.

...and that was that.

i guess it's just something we brushed off as trivial even if we knew that this closure was more monumental than we would ever care to admit.

posted by Pat @ 3:27 PM