Best Friends and Unrequited Love

Michael threw a love note across the room during pre-algebra class and it landed on my notebook. It was folded down tight and on the front the word, "HI" had been drawn in outline, with the background shaded. I turned the note over; he had shaded the back as well. I slowly opened it:

"Carol, I'm sorry if I'm bothering you, but I love you. You are more precious to me now than ever. The only thing that surpasses your beauty is your mind.
Love, Michael"

This was seventh grade. I was wearing a back brace and had yet to get contact lenses. Nevertheless, I wasn't interested in Michael. Not that way. Not then. He was my best friend and I wanted nothing more. He had black hair that grew straight and fell in his eyes sometimes, dark blue eyes, a smattering of light freckles, his front two teeth angled slightly and his lips made a perfect smirk that he used often, especially whenever I said anything I thought was deep. While he adored me, he also refused to let me get away with being pretentious or flighty and taunted me mercilessly when I was at my worst.

Michael loved me from seventh grade through tenth. All the while we were best friends. We went to movies, passed notes in class, talked for hours at night on the phone, and when we found ourselves hanging out with nothing else to do, he would rub my shoulders and neck, alternating between using his considerable strength and lightly rubbing his fingertips over my bones. I always had a boyfriend at another school so Michael and I never dated. But we wound each other up horribly.

One day between classes we were sitting in the AV booth of our high school auditorium. The lights were off and I was sitting with my back to him, my eyes closed while he ran his hands over my back. I realized that while he was doing this he was moving closer to me and I froze. I couldn't see him but I could feel his black t-shirt touch my button down and I imagined that he also had his eyes closed, hoping that the spinning axis of the earth would accidentally move us together. I heard his breath first, then felt it on the side of my neck just under my ear. A moment later I could feel the warmth of his lips, millimeters from my skin.

And then the fourth period bell rang. We both had Coach Oldham's history class next and he loved to torment students who showed up late. Michael collapsed with his forehead on my shoulder upon hearing the bell and sighed deeply. Years later I pondered over how many blowjobs must have taken place in that booth, how many teen pregnancies began over the sound board, and I lamented that Michael and I were so incapable of enjoying our first kiss. I think it must have meant too much to us. We were romantics: he in love with me for years, me falling for him glacially, bit by bit every day. We couldn't just fool around like everyone else. We had to make each other feel something specific, something we could only feel for each other.

Sometime after that, Michael got over me. He was becoming a man and tired of pining for someone who never seemed to be able to make up her mind about how she felt. He didn't know that my love for him had grown so deep it terrified me. I wanted everything from him. Love, friendship, sex. I still didn't believe in pre-marital sex, but I wanted it from him. I had kept him at arm's length for years because to me, he was an eternity of tenderness and affection and I was as afraid of eternity as I was of death. In seventh grade I imagined having Michael as my boyfriend and I knew I would never have another in school. I didn't want that.

By eleventh grade, I was ready to handle what I felt for him and what I imagined it would be like to be with him physically. I wanted him back in my car driving to the movies, listening to the radio, rolling his eyes at me as I spoke rapturously about R.E.M. and graphic novels. I wanted him to take me home -- his mom was never there -- and undress me on the floor of his room. I wanted to fall asleep in his arms and wake up and rush home frantically, then call him to say goodnight and fall asleep again listening to each other breath. I wanted him to pick me up and swing me around, because he could. I wanted to lie on top of him and run my fingers through his black hair and close his blue eyes with my lips.

None of that ever happened. I found the nerve to tell him how I felt one day and he said, without any maliciousness whatsoever, that he didn't care. He had moved on. My boyfriend Jeff and I had just broken up and I was on the verge of dating Kirk. We were about to graduate high school and I knew this was pretty much the last chance we had. I tried everything. Flirting relentlessly, pouring my heart out, acting like I was cool and didn't care. He didn't fall for any of it.

A few weeks later we were at rehearsal for the Spring play and I had to leave early. Our drama teacher asked Michael to walk me to my car since it was late. Michael and I had both independently taken up smoking, so we decided to share a cigarette since it was a side of each other we'd never seen. We stood by the car and laughed at who we had become. He looked more beautiful than I had ever seen him. He was tall, confident and had lost all of the baby fat that had once made him look less dashing. And for a moment, I saw the glint of giddy nervousness in his eye, something I used to see all the time when we talked. We finished our cigarettes and stood there in silence next to my car. It was cool out but not cold. I hugged him goodbye and he held me for another few minutes. I felt his hands move up to my shoulders as he pushed me back slightly and said, "Ok. I'm going to kiss you like a friend now."

There are people who take part of you with them when they disappear from your life. There are others who leave things behind that you can't shake. I'm not sure what I lost or gained in that kiss, but I know that the boundaries of it stretch for miles. Even now, at 32, after all of the other lips that have touched mine, I can still feel his clearly. I remember how I held back, terrified of what I felt and knowing full well that he didn't want anymore than that one moment. He was conquering what was left of the monkey on his back, and in the process he hollowed out a part of me that now lets in as much bad as good. All love from that moment on could only be bittersweet because it's future no longer seemed uncertain. The beginnings of things betray the endings, and I had to relearn how to enjoy everything in between.

That kiss, though...that stayed with me.