nf, an exercise in writing

It was nothing.

It was a game of tennis (he handed my ass to me), some pool, a little golf at the driving range with some time in the batting cages and board games on uncomfortable plastic benches late at night. It was a day of hanging out at a museum followed by Thai dinner that ended with me realizing he didn’t fit with my friends at all. We watched lots of movies and I almost fell asleep on his floor once. I later told him I wished I’d taken his offer to stay that night. Sometimes he’d lean over and touch my arm as he pointed something out in the film, and, where his fingers brushed against my hoodie sleeve, I felt a tingle I thought was made up for movies and stupid romance books. We tried a second night of pool, but the more people from our graduating class I saw at the bar, the more uncomfortable I felt until we finally left and walked far across town in the sticky July darkness. He offered me his hand to step gingerly over a muddy patch, and I was surprised to find myself disappointed when he let go. We jumped a pool fence one night and went swimming, both strangely quiet the entire evening. I splashed him playfully once, but he didn’t retaliate, just shook the water out of his eyes. None of it added up; none of it should have meant much at all.

But then he told me I was ‘the whole package,’ that I was well-spoken, attractive, smart, funny, ambitious. A few nights later, as we sat on the bedroom floor of a heavy metal-type girl from high school at a house party, he said he had wanted to kiss me since the first night we hung out. I don’t want to take advantage of you, though, because you’re drunk, he said. I asked if he was still drunk and he laughed gently, then said no, not really.

I’ve thought about this sober and I’m okay with it, I replied with the confidence of too much beer and an unknown number of Rumple Minze shots. I want to. So he slid toward me on, held my cheek gently with one hand and covered my lips firmly with his. He was a great kisser, and I spent days after that wanting to ring him up and ask if we could hang out just to kiss. I’d never been so physically drawn to someone.

He said I was perfect, and I begged him not to put me on a pedestal, because he’d be let down. I don’t want a relationship, I said, And I’ve never just dated. I don’t really know how that would work, or if I’d be any good at it. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I rambled on drunkenly, stumbling over topics far too advanced for our tentative, middle-of-the-night prodding and exploration into feelings.

We’re so different, I said. We had entirely different lives in high school.

Should that matter? he asked. Are you the same person you were in high school? I shook my head. I can’t remember much else from that conversation, save for me saying too much and small bits of his thoughts that make little sense out of context.

And they were lines, I suppose. The kind used so much it’s a wonder I believed them. But I’ve always been a little naive, a little slow, a little too trusting. He kept asking to see me, even though I was shy and sarcastic around him. I thought perhaps it meant something. A guy friend told me that really, while much time was put in, to the male in the equation it might have just been investment hopeful of a pay out – but then I told him I wasn’t like that, so if that’s what he wanted it wasn’t happening. He teased me about it, and when I didn’t laugh but instead fell silent, he said he liked that about me, that I have morals and I stick to them. Not many people are like that anymore, he said. Regardless, it can’t be too much of a coincidence that he dropped off shortly after that.

With him, all the old rules slipped. The habits and vices that have always made me say, ‘Absolutely not,’ were okay. I saw the shift, and didn’t try to justify it even to myself. He was different, and that was all.

It could have also been the girl he met the last night I hung out with him. We sat outside at a Westport bar in a mismatched clash of Liberty grads, playing kickball and all but me smoking cigarettes. She had dark hair and wore a sassy newsboy hat. I bit my tongue when he traded numbers with her at the end of the night, saying nothing when he told me she’d challenged him to tennis, but he was sure she’d be no match for me. She flirted easily, worked at a liquor store and rolled cigarettes with him, laughing when he spilled the loose tobacco on the white wire table. At 3 AM, we walked to his car and talked and he kissed me and then I drove everyone home, nervous I’d wreck his nice car, but not comfortable with any of the three intoxicated guys driving. He hugged me goodnight in my driveway, awkwardly – he was too tall and too skinny to hold the right way. I didn’t see him anymore after that.

But I can’t argue with any of this – she’s probably a better match. And I’m leaving, anyway.

I thought I’d outgrown the need for labels and definitions. I thought I could just spend time with someone, enjoy the company, and roll with things if they got physical. I felt so emotionally detached from everything in the world at the beginning of our communication. I could never have foreseen that as we saw one another more, I would begin to feel again, and he would be the first touches of life in what had been dead for months.

Early on, my friends asked if I could handle being with a guy like him. There was concern that we were too far apart, with different goals and in completely unmatched places in life. I said it was okay, because he was just a friend and I didn’t want to date anyone anyway. But they could always see it in my face, the way I flushed bright red when they asked what was going on with him, or the way I smiled when my phone lit up with a text. They knew long before I admitted it to myself that I was somehow, inexplicably, falling for someone who was my perfect opposite.

When I said I wanted a summer romance, he wasn’t at all what I pictured.

—
Written a couple weeks ago.