The next actions should have made me realize what a crazy person I am and these actions delved and marked the next two years of my life. It should have been an absolute omen that he and I were destined to be awkward. My friend, Aura, was aiding me one night after I got a cryptic text message from Jake. He wanted to meet me the next night before I left Florida on a trip to Boston the day after. I wanted so desperately to kiss him, but being an insecure baby, I had no idea how to go about making the move. I didn’t believe in making the first move anyway, regardless of my insecurities or not. Boys should always make the first move—it’s more romantic that way. I was freaking out on how I would make a move that I certainly did not want to make, but my friend Aura had an idea.
“Phoebe, you’re so clumsy, why don’t you hurt yourself and blame it on one of you guys’ marker fights? Then he will have somewhere to kiss you to make it better.” Aura suggested.
I was absolutely for the idea (going back to my first initial thoughts as a possible masochist) and we devised a plan. Aura didn’t want to clunk me on the head with an anvil or slice my face off with a sharp blade. No, we found something more awkward than that. Aura got a bobby pin and took off that dulled plastic ends of it, exposing the sharp metal. She took my head and scraped a fleshy wound on the side of my right eye until it was a tiny bit raw. It was good enough. The next night, I met him under a dim light pole next to his house. I showed him my wound and sure enough he kissed the side of my face to make it feel better... and then I stumbled onto his lips and we kissed for the first time on the muggy July night.
That wound, that I still laugh about with Aura to this day, set the tone for our relationship, as weird as it was. He never hurt me physically, but emotionally, I was being held together by masking tape. The 26th night of March, in the middle of my porch, I held his hips to mine and whispered in his ear. The mosquitoes were out for blood that night, and I was sure my heart was on the ground so they could have a free-for-all. My voice cracked as I leaned against his earlobe the first time. I had to repeat the words and the second time it lost its effect. After I said those three insidious words that night, I was tainted. I was the idiot girlfriend who got caught up in a something fake. His eyes did not look how I wanted them to look after I said it. His mint green eyes were blank. Not touched, moved, excited, or even confused by my utterance, but completely apathetic. He stood there, swaying with the warm breeze.
“That’s cool. I’m sorry,” he finally said.
“Yeah, it is cool. Kay ..... bye!” I squealed.
I didn’t even look or kiss him again as I darted back into my house. Fuck my life. Fuck my life. Fuck my life. I thought. I should have let things go like any normal mortified girl, but I had to make it worse. So I called him. And hung up. Shit! Caller ID! I had to call him back. My first words to him:
“Just kidding!”
“What? No you weren’t,” he replied back, acidly.
“Shut up, you don’t know anything. I was only kidding. Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding! I’m sorry, I was kidding...” I was beginning to become an emotional wreck, so I believed that repeating words would possibly make him forget the ass I had just made out of myself.
“I’m sorry, I don’t love you Phoebe. I don’t know but maybe someday I will...”
He had no explanation.
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