The first birthday I’d spent at NYU, he’d had an electric-guitar-playing clown show up at my dorm, singing Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen”. It was scary on a lot of levels.
I’d paid him back the following March, however, when I mailed him a video of Stephen King’s It for his nineteenth birthday. He still hasn’t forgiven me.
Our exchanges became much tamer over the years, but being back in touch with Trip around the time of my birthday got me thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have let my guard down.
He dropped his hands from my waist and dug around in his jacket pocket, procuring a rainbow of Sharpie markers in his cast hand. “Hey. This thing is coming off in a couple weeks, but it’s starting to look kinda nasty. You want to pretty it up for me?”
I laughed and invited him to sit on the couch, so he took off his jacket and made himself at home.
On my futon.
I threw some music on the stereo before joining him on the couch, then uncapped the black marker and started doodling a unicorn on his left arm, which was propped up on a pillow between us.
“A unicorn?” he questioned, shaking his head at the emasculation. But then he only watched in fascination for a few minutes before asking, “Hey. You remember that card you sent for my birthday? The one with all the confetti shaped like dicks?”
I cracked up, thinking about the leftover decorations from Lisa’s bachelorette party that I had stuffed in his birthday card that year. “Yes.”
Only Trip wasn’t laughing. “How come that was the last one I got?”
“What?”
“Was it because of what I wrote back? Did that scare you?”
I didn’t remember anything he’d written in some letter all those years ago that would have scared me, but I was sure shaking in my boots right then by what he’d just said. I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle the details. And the fact was, I wrote the last letter, not him. His timeline must’ve been skewed.
“Trip? I only remember one scary letter.” He looked at me then, confusion on his face. I colored in some grass so I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. “The first one. The day I left for school.”
“That scared you?”
“Well, sort of. It… it killed me. Seriously, it tore me up.”
We never discussed this. In all the letters and cards since, we never discussed that very first one. The one where he said he was in love with me.
This was dangerous ground, and we were both treading lightly. One wrong move and it could set off a chain of events that we’d be powerless to stop. But it had been nine years at that point. The statute of limitations had to have run out by then, right? Surely, we were able to talk about a mildly dicey subject from our very distant past after nine whole years.
He took a moment to compose himself, almost certainly trying to figure out the right way to answer. “I’m sorry, I just thought, you know, you’d want to know.”
“No, I did. I just… We just always have bad timing, you and I.”
I meant to say had. We had bad timing. Crap.
He let that hang in the air between us for a minute as I drew a kraken rising from the sea on the inside of his wrist. It was easier to have this discussion when I didn’t have to look at him.
His voice was soft. “I did, you know. I did love you.”
The shock of hearing him say those words after so many years was overwhelming, and my hands started to shake as I said quietly, “I know. You did it well.”
I told myself it was fine. Just keep everything in past tense and it will be fine.
“You didn’t say it back.”
Ouch. My heart cracked at his words, at the hurt I registered in his voice. He was right. I never said it back, and I kind of always regretted it since. But the truth was, I did say it. In fact, I said it first.
The memory of our beach weekend brought a smile to my face, enough that I was able to lighten the tone in the air and sort of laugh out, “Well, maybe not that day, but I did say it. Remember?”
He started to smile, too, so I added, “I told you… you know, what I told you… in the bathroom at the beach. How I felt. And you just laughed, you big jerk! I could have died.”
That gave us both a giggle and pulled us out of our seriousness. Out of the line of fire.
He was still chuckling as he responded, “Lay, give me a break. You were too good to be true. I didn’t really think you had feelings for me. A girl like you? C’mon.”
Say what now?
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Lay, come on. You can’t tell me you were oblivious to the attention you’d get from guys. You were—you are—a beautiful girl. You’re smart and you’re funny. Surely you were aware of that back then.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Trip, are you trying to say you thought I was out of your league? Are you insane?”
“Guess I just didn’t think it was possible.”