It Was Me All Along: A Memoir (12 page)

Living just two doors apart, Daniel, the guy I’d met on my first day, and I passed each other dozens of times a day. Nicole and I had become friendly enough with him that he’d stop by our room to say hello, hang out, or grab something to eat. I couldn’t get over how funny he was. No one could. His humor made people comfortable, and it made him popular. Everyone knew his name. He’d make the sharpest, pithiest observations I’d ever heard, and laughter
would pour out of me, heavy and uncontainable, as full and thick as an upended gallon of milk. I’d laugh so hard, tears would fall down my face, so hard I couldn’t breathe. That kind of elation made me want to be around him more often. Oddly, it seemed the only thing that made Daniel laugh was me. He poked fun at my mannerisms, my eccentricities, and even though I rolled my eyes, I secretly liked seeing him smile. I liked hearing the gentleness of his laugh compared with mine. I noticed that the bits of me he deemed quirky were some of the same ones I found weird to the point of annoying in Mom. And somehow, that made me feel strange and comforted all at once.

Two Fridays into the semester, a big group of our new friends had congregated in the student lounge for a party, and I realized that Daniel was not only funny but brilliant, too. In the middle of some conversation about our majors, the guy who’d been endlessly spewing jokes and witticisms since I’d met him revealed he had more brains than he let on. He told me about his choice of major—journalism—and waxed poetic about writing, language, and literature. The way he referenced
The Elements of Style
—one of only two books he’d toted with him to college, alongside Salinger’s
The Catcher in the Rye
—impressed me.
What guy packs these kinds of things?
I wondered. We compared class schedules to find they were almost identical in our choices of anthropology and film history. We drank in conversation rapidly, as easily and eagerly as we did the Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Hours later, just as the moon got woozy and let the sun tuck her to bed behind the hills of Amherst, Daniel and I said good night. Alone in my room, in that extra-long twin bed with a candy-apple-red comforter, I smiled, thinking of the new friend I’d made. Getting to know Daniel was like taking one bite into something
I couldn’t quite place. It was layered and complex, an unfamiliar taste I liked enough to crave more of instantly. Perhaps what lured me most was that it was never enough to feel sated. There was always a gentle nuance to him, something new I’d just begun to discover.

Months passed, and we grew closer. We walked to and from our film classes, lunched together at Franklin Dining Commons—his plate composed of a cream cheese–schmeared pumpernickel bagel beside a bowl of minestrone soup and mine a children’s menu mainstay: chicken fingers with french fries. And come Thursday evening, affectionately known as “Thirsty Thursday,” we partied together—as loud and long as the start of a weekend would allow.

Out of all four girls in our circle, without his needing to confirm it, I knew he liked me best. It was our chemistry that kept me confident, the way we’d sit for half a night in the elevator lobby, long after all had gone to bed, and talk about everything from Martin Scorsese films to our mothers, to the worst meals at the dining commons.

It wasn’t until Valentine’s Day, one month into our second semester, that I sensed a shift in our connection. My girlfriends and I, each of us single and sappily sad to say so, lay in a pile of hugging bodies on my and Nicole’s pushed-together twin beds cooing over the movie
13 Going on 30
, cry-singing “Love Is a Battlefield,” and eating pink-frosted Dunkin’ Donuts. Daniel dropped in to find us tangled together, alarmed at what a broken mess a group of girls could become when so taken by a Hallmark holiday.

“I’ve got just a little something for you. It’s nothing much, but considering how crazy you guys are about this silly day, I think you’ll appreciate it.” He handed Jenny, Nicole, and Sabrina
tri-folded sheets of printed paper. Turning to hand me mine, he smiled and left the room with a nod and a gentlemanly bow.

As soon as the heavy door clicked closed, we unfolded them feverishly. We sat in silence for a few minutes as we read the personalized messages. Each of us had our own love poem, a favorite of his by poets he admired. The stanzas sat squarely at the top of the page, leaving the bottom open for a paragraph or two of his own writing. Sabrina’s, Nicole’s, Jenny’s—they were sweetly worded and heartfelt messages that let them know how special he found each of them, how unforgettable his time had been while knowing them. But mine. Mine had only one sentence tucked below the poem “elaborate signings,” by Kenneth Carroll.

And below, in four words, he had penned,

I reread the poem. My heart, my whole body, tingled, a jump into a cold pool after steeping for hours in a hot tub. My eyes darted back and forth between the lines, replaying my favorite parts. In a state of shock, I tried to look back in my memory for signs that had led to this. I remembered the times we sat in the elevator lobby after
dark, me telling him about my dad and a liquor-laden girlhood and he admitting that his own mother was a heroin addict, now only a fragment of what she once had been. We commiserated, both of us exposing hearts that had torn, ripped, and lost pieces. I let him in. He knows what I know. We were kindred spirits.

I noticed I had been holding my breath. I exhaled, blowing out the air in a controlled stream to steady myself.

If ever I’ve had a moment where I felt downright cradled, just absolutely embraced by someone’s actions, it was then. Reading and rereading that poem—a gift from a man who knew me well and had decided, nonetheless, that I was wildly worthwhile—I felt loved.

His added note at the bottom, though only four words wide, was lines longer in meaning. There was an odd satisfaction, a certain pride in knowing that, although kind to each of us girls, he was rendered a touch speechless when expressing the way he felt about me.

It felt doubly validating for someone to have chosen me as his favorite among a slew of what were undoubtedly desirable girls.

Later that night I saw him. A group of us sat circled in my dorm room amid a landfill of red plastic cups and grease-soaked D.P. Dough calzone boxes, while Jay-Z threatened to call my RA for yet another noise violation. Unsure of how to react to his love letter, it took a whole thirty minutes for me to find the courage to glance his way. He leaned back in my desk chair, balancing precariously on its two hind legs, laughing as he played the perfect devil’s advocate in a hilarious argument with Justin, his best friend as well as ours.

He should consider practicing law
, I thought. Dad had been the only other person I’d ever known to be able to defend or defeat
a point as masterfully, as convincingly. I remembered the way Dad challenged anyone, everyone, to spar with him in wits. How he’d never just let me win at anything—from miniature golf to Monopoly—for the mere sake of winning. I should earn it, work for it. And I craved that sweet, albeit annoying, know-it-all twinge of nostalgia Daniel gave me. Midstare, his gaze met mine. A half smile was all we could spare. But still, we acknowledged a moment. I sensed an unspoken agreement between us that we meant more to each other than the company we kept.

Weeks passed in a seemingly ordinary fashion. We talked as we always did; we bickered and bantered back and forth. And then, one Friday night, as we stood in the stairwell of Grayson, I handed him my feelings, certain and sudden as a baton passed in a relay.

“I’m in love with you,” I revealed.

When he hesitated, I swished the cup of Captain and Coke in my hand. He pressed his lips together, looked down, pivoted to stare at the left entrance to the stairwell, and let out what I knew to be a remorseful sigh. “I … I, wow, I just—it’s just … Andrea, I don’t feel the same.”

On his last word, I looked down and found my heart had deflated and fallen to the tiled floor.

“Oh” was all I could muster.

“I’m sorry. It’s—I mean, I really care about you. I just don’t love you … romantically.”

I felt my chest tighten, my defenses rising. I left the stairwell before the conversation, the explanation, could constrict any more around me. Before it could leave me any more exposed and vulnerable. I heard the door close, and I knew he’d stayed behind, giving me at least a five-Mississippi head start back to my room.

How? I mean, well, I can’t … how could I have misjudged it so?
How could I have put it all out there like that, so confidently?
Bubbling tears slipped out from the corners of my eyes.

Of course
, I thought, looking down at the belly that caught those tears.
It’s this that keeps me stuck. It’s this that leaves me unlovable
.

But then I thought of his body, his chubbiness, and I felt angry. Here I’d thought we were on the same level, both of us big, but maybe all this time he’d thought himself to be better than me because he wasn’t
as
big. I no longer felt reassured by our mutual fatness. The rejection stung.

I spent a week thinking I’d really ruined things between us. All the days that followed, I avoided our usual spots. I went to a dining commons that was farther away; I would leave immediately after class without pausing to talk to him; I stayed busy away from our dorm.
Maybe he’ll pretend it’s all okay
, I soothed myself.
Maybe he’ll think I’d just had too much to drink
.

When we met again that Saturday night, in the eight-by-ten-foot box of Justin’s dorm room, hands cupped around beer cans, we said “Hey!” as casually as could be among friends.
Don’t make it weird, Andie
.

We moved swiftly through small talk, confidently into our comfortable jokes. The tension seemed to break apart, scatter into pieces on the floor. Daniel and I had successfully swept our previous conversation—the one in which I pronounced love and he sighed—under the rug.
Onward
, I thought.

Our friendship returned to a state of normalcy. Classes, lunches, deep elevator-lobby chats, and laughing, always laughing. I almost forgot that night and the heartbreak. I was inching closer to “over it” territory, assuring and then reassuring myself that we’d gotten past the discomfort, the awkwardness.

And then summer came. And with it, forced time apart—with
Daniel back in Worcester and me at home in Medfield. We kept in touch online, chatting via instant messaging all night. And then one Friday night, when a party in the woods of Medfield ended earlier than we were ready for, Nicole and I decided to drive west for a visit with Daniel. In her mom-ish silver wagon, the stereo blaring Dave Matthews at peak volume, and with all windows open, we drove the forty-five minutes to his house. It wasn’t until we were two streets away that I noticed the butterflies. The anticipation of seeing him somehow made me dizzy. We knocked quietly on his front door, sure that his dad would be asleep at two thirty a.m.

“Hey!!” Nicole whisper-yelled.

We each hugged, reuniting for the first time in three weeks. Arms wrapped around me solidly, he stayed in our embrace a little longer than I’d anticipated. It felt as soothing as seeing my mother coming to pick me up from a friend’s house after a sleepover spent homesick.

We spent the next few hours in the living room watching Dave Chappelle’s stand-up special on Comedy Central. He and I sat beside each other on the worn blue sofa while Nicole reclined in its matching La-Z-Boy. I looked over at her when I could no longer hear her laughing at the barrage of jokes. She was leaning to the side of the chair, face smooshed into its rolled arm, fast asleep. My eyes shifted from Nicole to Daniel, whose eyes were set squarely on the screen. I turned back to watch. Seconds later, just as my laugh started rolling to a boil at Chappelle’s “purple drank” bit, I felt Daniel’s hand cup over mine. I shivered, not having expected such a move. I turned to face him and saw he was smiling, too, head thrown back forcefully for a full-body laugh. When his eyes met mine, we paused.
I adore you
, I thought to myself.

It was then that he leaned sideways toward me. Face inches from mine, his breath warmed the air between our mouths. My whole body tingled. I felt the hint of his lips hang hesitantly, lustfully, nearing mine.