After Three and a Half Years
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We had known each other for three and a half years before I told her that I wanted something more than friendship.
I had imagined several possible answers. Surprise, silence, perhaps even a careful refusal. I did not imagine the answer she actually gave.
“You fell for my looks.”
For a moment, I could not say anything.
This was especially confusing because she had often complained about her own appearance. She had listed things she disliked and repeated the list often enough for me to remember it. I had listened, disagreed when I thought she was being unfair to herself, and assumed that three and a half years of knowing each other had made my reasons obvious.
Apparently not.
A cruel answer came immediately to mind. I could have repeated her own complaints back to her and asked how appearance could possibly be my explanation.
I did not say it.
That may have been the best part of the conversation.
Embarrassment often wants company. When pride is hurt, the fastest solution is to hurt the other person back. For a few seconds, sarcasm looked like dignity.
Then the moment passed.
What stayed with me was not the rejection itself but the distance between our two versions of the same friendship. I thought the years proved that my feelings had grown from knowing her. She heard the proposal and found another explanation.
Perhaps she was joking. Perhaps she was nervous. Perhaps she truly believed it. I never learned enough to say.
That is the uncomfortable thing about long friendships. Two people can share hundreds of conversations and still understand the relationship differently.
One person thinks the history makes a change natural.
The other thinks the history proves that nothing should change.
Three and a half years did not make the answer easier. They only gave the question more weight.
Years later, I am glad I do not remember what I said next.
I remember only what I almost said.
Sometimes the sentence you swallow tells the story better than the one that leaves your mouth.