We watched her progress towards the bar, a steady succession of male heads swiveling to note her passage as she walked by them. I shook my head silently and smiled humorlessly.
“No one watches me that way when I walk across the room.”
Matt’s eyes held mine steadily, not a trace of mockery in his reply. “How do you know?”
I never considered myself particularly adventurous – I didn’t itch for adrenaline, I didn’t have a need to trek up the side of a mountain or plummet thousands of feet towards Earth after jumping from the belly of a plane. Some people make lists of things like this, determined to complete every item on their list before they kick the proverbial bucket.
I, on the other hand, tended towards lists of the more attainable kind – the less adventurous kind. The kind usually classified under the heading of “To Do.” It was safe, it was controllable (at least, to some extent), and it was satisfying enough to stave off any niggling need I had for something more. It kept me distracted, kind of like chewing gum to keep your mind off the cigarette you really want.
What I really wanted wasn’t adventurous.
At least, not in most people’s minds.
What I really wanted was to get married, to wake up every morning and know that someone loved me and wanted to share their life with me. To know that my toothbrush wasn’t the only one in the holder.
Not exactly a harrowing, exhilarating existence; but it was what I’d been dreaming of, what was on my list.
It was what seemed so impossibly unattainable, what I tried so hard not to think about.
Sometimes I stood in line at the checkout of a store, my eyes roving aimlessly over the magazines that flanked either side like paper sentrymen. The bridal magazines mixed in with the tabloids and fashion glossies seemed as irrelevant to me as an issue of Men’s Health or Forbes, touting inapplicable advice. I may have been young for such a jaded perspective, but I’d had enough frustrations with dating, with laying my heart on the line, for the sentiment to seem reasonable. After all, in every situation I’d encountered so far, the guys had all presented themselves in such a way that made them seem far more interested in settling down to start a family than they actually were – especially after a few weeks with me, a girl who left no doubt that my own personal convictions would allow nothing more than a bit of making out. The sentiment of, “Wow, that’s so great, that must take a lot of self-control,” were replaced by attempts to get me to cross my own line, to give in to their particular brand of magic and my own human tendencies. And when I didn’t… the boredom crept in, and they let me see just how immature they could be.
It was a pattern I had grown to expect, one that made dating lose its allure. Still, it kept me from wasting my time with dead-end relationships, since it seemed to weed out the players; so in its own way, my self-imposed celibacy was insurance. But it definitely left me struggling to see why anyone would truly consider the dating scene “fun”. For me, all it seemed to produce was stress.
Little wonder, then, that I had basically resigned myself to the idea that I would never have my own chance to walk down the aisle in the frothy white dress towards Happily Ever After. Somewhere along the way, the sharp-edged pain of that realization had become like the dull arthritic ache that warns of impending rainstorms.
Which was why, when I met Matt, I never seriously considered the possibility of anything more than flirtatious friendship with him. I was so used to my dating life hitting dead ends that I’d lost any hint of the spark of anticipation that usually accompanies a first date. I was more in the “let’s just get this over with” school of thought. Matt seemed to be just another guy I could add to the buddy list – not that I hadn’t ever noticed how handsome or charming or perfect he was.
Quite the contrary, actually. I noticed with regular frequency, but it wasn’t an observation I allowed to go any farther than that. I was too afraid – too afraid that the feelings I had for such a great friend would catapult me into dangerous territory. I wasn’t ready for that kind of vulnerability, not after the rough relationships I’d been through in the past. While I’d never done more than date, I’d certainly invested my whole heart in a few guys who had never come to see me as anything more than a friend. Unrequited love that lasted for years, so loyal was I. And, in that compromised position, I had allowed myself to be hurt, to go out of my way, above and beyond the call of duty, in the slim hope that they would finally, finally see the light and realize that I was their soulmate.
No, it was better this way, to remain friends with Matt. Better to test the waters with other people I wasn’t emotionally involved with, in case the waters turned out to be unfavorable. It was less messy that way.
None of this was anything we actually ever discussed, of course. It was an implied knowledge, a silent agreement under which we seemed to operate, and one that seemed to satisfy us both.
After our meeting that first night in the bar, there was an easy rapport between us. Matt and I ran into each other with an increasing regularity that went from serendipitous to intentional, with the occasional midnight rendezvous in the cereal aisle of Wal-Mart thrown in. After a few months of the intermittent meetings, we slid into a comfortable routine.
Regular trips to Starbucks to sip coffee and talk as people walked by, movie dates that turned into marathon premiere parties. A weekly table at Marinara, a small Italian restaurant that was a few miles from each of our apartments that became our place. We killed countless hours talking about anything and everything – misspent youths and relationships, both past and present.
But as much time as we spent together, as intimately as we knew each other, as much as we loved one another, we’d never explored anything beyond friendship.
Some people might have wondered at that, but we both considered it to be the wisest move.
It kept things simple – until it didn’t.
After a year of the non-dating-dating and an emotional intimacy so deep we could finish each other’s sentences, there was an unconscious shift in our relationship.
On my end, at least.
Sometimes it was easy to forget, to lose myself in the comfortable familiarity we shared, and think of us as a couple. And then reality would come crashing down on my head when he relayed the events of a date he’d had the night before or asked my advice about what a certain woman might be thinking.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t know how I felt – how much I loved him and wanted to try, to give us a shot.
I’d told him once, one night when I was sufficiently emboldened by the frustration of a particularly bad blind date. I had come home to find a message from Matt on my machine, eagerly awaiting details on the meeting, and just the sound of his voice had calmed me down enough to make me realize that I wasn’t simply tired of the madness of the dating game. I was tired of wasting my time with guys I knew I would never connect with the way I did with Matt.
Guys I would never love the way I loved Matt.
I had needed to see him, to talk to him face to face. I rushed back out of my apartment, fueled by the immediacy of my need, the urgency I had for him to know.
I screeched into a parking spot in front of Matt’s place, never giving thought
