singles
by Aspen Sylvia Kay

first love, part II (what keeps us apart)

PART II
So we’re sitting there, me and my first love, in our Chinese restaurant, and I want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and shout, “I believed you when you said we’d end up together!” But instead I just sit there and listen to him read the headlines of his life since high school. All I can think about is how I want him to love me.

Before the mao pao tofu and the sound of angels rejoicing in his breakup, I told myself that what was keeping us apart was his girlfriend. Before that, it was geography, and before that, it was college with the need to have our own experiences. Now, we were not only in the same city, but we were sitting across the table from one another, unattached. Nothing was stopping us… nothing but us.
“Are you dating?” No. “Are you?” I asked. No, he wasn’t. Why when he said “no” did
it seem cool, and when I said “no” it seemed pathetic? “It’s too early,” he added. “I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else right now.” And then he said that he was enjoying bachelor-hood, maybe a little too much.

Send the strippers home, I jibed. He allowed a fracture of amusement and said no. It was more like golf and skiing and probably alcohol. I was a bachelorette… where was my golf? Was it more acceptable for guys to be single? He seemed to enjoy singledom more than I did. I was getting off track wondering if I wanted to date him or be him, when he offered me more tea and I was won over.

I wanted to marry him. I’d have said yes right then if he dropped to a knee and pronounced that he had missed me and didn’t want another moment to go by without me in his life.

But, the evening was not following the flight of my musings. He forgot to laugh when I was funny. He was slow to catch my sarcasm. This guy who used to “get” me, missed almost everything I was throwin’ down. I felt like a jester entertaining a distracted prince. If he’d been a stranger, I would not have wanted him. I would have thought he was cute (I’m not a moron). I would have thought he was nice and chivalrous. But it would have been apparent that there were no scintillating sparks between us, even with our black-belt level chopstick-ing.

As strange as we were to one another now, he was not a stranger. He was the one who snuck up behind me each morning at school and whispered in my ear, “Hey, you.” He was the one who stroked my hair during a lightening storm, and claimed the thunder was God bowling strikes. He was the one—he was the one.

What was it about then that clicked and now that was like forcing a round peg into a square hole? Did our tastes simply mature? Did one of us grow up and the other stay the same? Was it the fact that we were not strangers – that there was familiarity between us – that kept us at a distance?

Technically, on a chemical level, we were the same. So, where was the chemistry?
Where were the sparks? I still looked at him with the same brown eyes that he used to stare into just before a take-my-breath-away-kiss. I still laughed the same pattern-less laugh that he’d hear when I did something stupid. My morals and values and ethics and integrity and ethos…and morals remained steadfast. While hopefully at least a bit improved, I am still the girl he once loved.

Every once in a while, when something reminds us of that first love, we begin to believe again. I had taken ownership of my adolescence dream by doing the only honest thing I could do: I tried it out in the real world, knowingly facing the possibility that it would not end happily-ever-after-ish.

But, I wouldn’t be that girl if I didn’t try.

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