Skinny Love
I guess you could say out story began in August of
7th grade. That year I was the new dork, and by the time I
got to 6th period geometry I could tell that I wasn’t gaining any popularity
with my two tight braids and braces.
Our teacher that year was Mr. Wilderson, a strict no-nonsense
kind of guy who decided on the first day that we shouldn’t have seating freedom.
I was stuck at a cluster of desks with a pale girl with her nose in the clouds,
whom I dubbed Snotty; a boy with floppier hair than my sister, whom was known as
Flippy from that point on; and you were Samuel-call-me-Sam, the kid with a
calculator the size of my head and a red button-down to set off his black hair.
It wasn’t a magical start, no shooting stars or double
rainbows, but there was something quietly charismatic about you that not a lot
of other middle school dweebs noticed. Maybe it was that way you always knew the
answer but never showed off about it, or the fact that you read all the Harry
Potter books so many times you memorized them. Whatever it was, I found it
fascinating enough to strike a conversation, and an unlikely friendship bloomed.
In May of that year I was invited to your birthday party as
the only girl besides your cousin, who made jokes all through the movie about
how you were such a cool guy, inviting the girl with her hair in the braids you
claimed to love. I even remember how you got her to shut up;
"At least I’m not the girl jealous of me and Liz’s
friendship."
Blushing kept me from correcting your grammar, and for the
first time my aorta started to flutter around you.
On the Fourth of July that summer afterwards we went to the
amusement park way out of town and you won me a stuffed animal dog we christened
Scooter. I had planned all summer to give you my first kiss until you revealed
your crush on my best friend Lily so I gave you petty advice and cried my eyes
out when I got home. For the rest of that hellish season I fell asleep clutching
Scooter with nightmares of my first crush holding hands with my best friend.
Throughout all of eighth grade you dated Lily MacNamara and I
was constantly reminded of your relationship, Sily, until you two broke up on
June 3rd. That was the first time I saw you cry, remember? Lily MacNamara
languished too that summer, but not as much of course. Bashing you behind your
back was all she did as I smiled flakily and nodded with ill-contrived
sympathy.
In ninth grade I started dating Steven Brady, who you
threatened to beat up if he ever hurt me. Which he did a few months later when I
refused to tell him why I was sad, coincidentally. When you saw the greenish
purple bruises on my arms and wrists you calmly went up to him and told him
never to see me again. He laughed at that of course, because why should a jock
feel threatened by such a short nerd like you? I believe his words were "go
stick your nose in a textbook and out of our life," to which you responded by
nodding understandingly before punching him in the nose, hard. That was the day
you walked over to my house, only a few blocks from yours, sporting a black eye
and a chipped-tooth grin saying, "It was worth it, to get that bastard off your
tail."
And I cried and cried because I was scared for you and I was
scared for me, and your favorite purple t-shirt was soaked through by the time
you walked back home.
When sophomore year started you began seeing one of the
prettiest girls in your physics class, claiming you loved the way she wore her
jet-black hair in two right braids every day. I still don’t know her name even
after you told me it over and over, like how you refused to learn the names of
any of my boyfriends in high school besides Steven. On the first day you were
able to drive anywhere exciting you took me out for ice cream, much to Physics
Girl’s utter dismay.
Junior year brought the break-up worse than with Lily
MacNamara, who had gotten her nose, bellybutton, tongue, and cartilage pierced
before moving to New York. You had been so convinced that Physics Girl was the
one for you that you had even applied to all the same colleges’ early-admission
just for her. And yet it was only a month later that I finally bit my lip and
told you how I had felt for the four long years, and maybe it was the half
bottle of champagne you had ingested, or maybe the New Year’s vibe, but I
finally got that seventh grade wish when the ball dropped, along with another
for good measure before you shook your head with a puppy grin and walked home.
The next day you avoided me at every cost, and as if to add salt to the wound,
you only spoke in quiet, polite sentences around me. So I got Scooter out of the
closet, blew the dust off, and I cried and cried.
Finally in senior year we became amicable again. You
surprised me on the first day by wearing a red button-down just like the one you
had in seventh grade. Later that year on October 9th you made your way over to
my house for the first time since junior year and laughed about the scuffed up
Scooter on my bed. That same day was our third kiss when you touched my wrist as
I turned away. Remember how I stared at you breathlessly afterwards, my eyes
asking you "what the hell?!" as my heart did figure eights on thin ice.
You stared back at me, your alarmingly green-grey eyes boring
holes into the corneas of my Plain-Jane blue ones, "Just be patient, Liz, be
patient and it’ll be fine."
Thus began the black magic. Late nights turned into blinding
dawns with you, and every kiss brought the unrequited feelings of seventh grade
me painful satisfaction I couldn’t get enough of.
But despite what I had thought, I remember dating you was a
constant feeling of miscalculation, like despite how strong my feelings were it
was just wrong. I must have subconsciously asked myself six times a day if this
was right or just a horrible mistake doomed to fail, every morning feeling less
like a girlfriend and more like the poor friend caught up in the wrong storm.
The thin line keeping me balanced between friend and lover was in extremes. I
loved you so much by that point that I was terrified to show it, but did you
ever truly love me back?
Apparently not, because May 4th was when we broke up. Who
knows how or why the fight started, but I screamed as you yelled, your words
slicing into my skin cells like they were tissues. I remember them even
today:
"All my love wasted on a girl I thought loved me back. What
the hell happened here?"
Through my tears I had sobbed out "You bastard, saying you
wasted precious love on me?! Who the hell was I this year Sam, your damn
toy?!"
We fought with clashing arms until finally my voice went
hoarse at my broken tricuspid valve, and you and my favorite purple shirt
vanished for three days.
After that we didn’t speak in the hall, and I sat with
Not-So-Snotty-Anymore (who, by the way, was named Whitney and practically
predestined to turn out a snot ball) at lunch instead of you, when I didn’t just
drive home. You never wore that red polo again, and a few weeks later I found
your purple shirt at Goodwill with the two tear stains splotching the
shoulder.
Graduation was the last time I thought I would ever see you.
We purposely had gone to different graduation parties, remember? After all, a
drunken hook up would have been the end of the world to me. And yet right after
the ceremony I could have sworn you flicked me a smile as a final good bye
before we set off to our separate colleges and apart for good.
So I guess now you can understand why, ten years after
graduation, running into you in the stairwell at my walk-up in Brooklyn would
result in a dry gasp and a stare, my eyes reading "What the hell?!"
I guess you could say out story began in August of
7th grade. That year I was the new dork, and by the time I
got to 6th period geometry I could tell that I wasn’t gaining any popularity
with my two tight braids and braces.
Our teacher that year was Mr. Wilderson, a strict no-nonsense
kind of guy who decided on the first day that we shouldn’t have seating freedom.
I was stuck at a cluster of desks with a pale girl with her nose in the clouds,
whom I dubbed Snotty; a boy with floppier hair than my sister, whom was known as
Flippy from that point on; and you were Samuel-call-me-Sam, the kid with a
calculator the size of my head and a red button-down to set off his black hair.
It wasn’t a magical start, no shooting stars or double
rainbows, but there was something quietly charismatic about you that not a lot
of other middle school dweebs noticed. Maybe it was that way you always knew the
answer but never showed off about it, or the fact that you read all the Harry
Potter books so many times you memorized them. Whatever it was, I found it
fascinating enough to strike a conversation, and an unlikely friendship bloomed.
In May of that year I was invited to your birthday party as
the only girl besides your cousin, who made jokes all through the movie about
how you were such a cool guy, inviting the girl with her hair in the braids you
claimed to love. I even remember how you got her to shut up;
"At least I’m not the girl jealous of me and Liz’s
friendship."
Blushing kept me from correcting your grammar, and for the
first time my aorta started to flutter around you.
On the Fourth of July that summer afterwards we went to the
amusement park way out of town and you won me a stuffed animal dog we christened
Scooter. I had planned all summer to give you my first kiss until you revealed
your crush on my best friend Lily so I gave you petty advice and cried my eyes
out when I got home. For the rest of that hellish season I fell asleep clutching
Scooter with nightmares of my first crush holding hands with my best friend.
Throughout all of eighth grade you dated Lily MacNamara and I
was constantly reminded of your relationship, Sily, until you two broke up on
June 3rd. That was the first time I saw you cry, remember? Lily MacNamara
languished too that summer, but not as much of course. Bashing you behind your
back was all she did as I smiled flakily and nodded with ill-contrived
sympathy.
In ninth grade I started dating Steven Brady, who you
threatened to beat up if he ever hurt me. Which he did a few months later when I
refused to tell him why I was sad, coincidentally. When you saw the greenish
purple bruises on my arms and wrists you calmly went up to him and told him
never to see me again. He laughed at that of course, because why should a jock
feel threatened by such a short nerd like you? I believe his words were "go
stick your nose in a textbook and out of our life," to which you responded by
nodding understandingly before punching him in the nose, hard. That was the day
you walked over to my house, only a few blocks from yours, sporting a black eye
and a chipped-tooth grin saying, "It was worth it, to get that bastard off your
tail."
And I cried and cried because I was scared for you and I was
scared for me, and your favorite purple t-shirt was soaked through by the time
you walked back home.
When sophomore year started you began seeing one of the
prettiest girls in your physics class, claiming you loved the way she wore her
jet-black hair in two right braids every day. I still don’t know her name even
after you told me it over and over, like how you refused to learn the names of
any of my boyfriends in high school besides Steven. On the first day you were
able to drive anywhere exciting you took me out for ice cream, much to Physics
Girl’s utter dismay.
Junior year brought the break-up worse than with Lily
MacNamara, who had gotten her nose, bellybutton, tongue, and cartilage pierced
before moving to New York. You had been so convinced that Physics Girl was the
one for you that you had even applied to all the same colleges’ early-admission
just for her. And yet it was only a month later that I finally bit my lip and
told you how I had felt for the four long years, and maybe it was the half
bottle of champagne you had ingested, or maybe the New Year’s vibe, but I
finally got that seventh grade wish when the ball dropped, along with another
for good measure before you shook your head with a puppy grin and walked home.
The next day you avoided me at every cost, and as if to add salt to the wound,
you only spoke in quiet, polite sentences around me. So I got Scooter out of the
closet, blew the dust off, and I cried and cried.
Finally in senior year we became amicable again. You
surprised me on the first day by wearing a red button-down just like the one you
had in seventh grade. Later that year on October 9th you made your way over to
my house for the first time since junior year and laughed about the scuffed up
Scooter on my bed. That same day was our third kiss when you touched my wrist as
I turned away. Remember how I stared at you breathlessly afterwards, my eyes
asking you "what the hell?!" as my heart did figure eights on thin ice.
You stared back at me, your alarmingly green-grey eyes boring
holes into the corneas of my Plain-Jane blue ones, "Just be patient, Liz, be
patient and it’ll be fine."
Thus began the black magic. Late nights turned into blinding
dawns with you, and every kiss brought the unrequited feelings of seventh grade
me painful satisfaction I couldn’t get enough of.
But despite what I had thought, I remember dating you was a
constant feeling of miscalculation, like despite how strong my feelings were it
was just wrong. I must have subconsciously asked myself six times a day if this
was right or just a horrible mistake doomed to fail, every morning feeling less
like a girlfriend and more like the poor friend caught up in the wrong storm.
The thin line keeping me balanced between friend and lover was in extremes. I
loved you so much by that point that I was terrified to show it, but did you
ever truly love me back?
Apparently not, because May 4th was when we broke up. Who
knows how or why the fight started, but I screamed as you yelled, your words
slicing into my skin cells like they were tissues. I remember them even
today:
"All my love wasted on a girl I thought loved me back. What
the hell happened here?"
Through my tears I had sobbed out "You bastard, saying you
wasted precious love on me?! Who the hell was I this year Sam, your damn
toy?!"
We fought with clashing arms until finally my voice went
hoarse at my broken tricuspid valve, and you and my favorite purple shirt
vanished for three days.
After that we didn’t speak in the hall, and I sat with
Not-So-Snotty-Anymore (who, by the way, was named Whitney and practically
predestined to turn out a snot ball) at lunch instead of you, when I didn’t just
drive home. You never wore that red polo again, and a few weeks later I found
your purple shirt at Goodwill with the two tear stains splotching the
shoulder.
Graduation was the last time I thought I would ever see you.
We purposely had gone to different graduation parties, remember? After all, a
drunken hook up would have been the end of the world to me. And yet right after
the ceremony I could have sworn you flicked me a smile as a final good bye
before we set off to our separate colleges and apart for good.
So I guess now you can understand why, ten years after
graduation, running into you in the stairwell at my walk-up in Brooklyn would
result in a dry gasp and a stare, my eyes reading "What the hell?!"