Our Story isn’t Over

I ended up seeing MFL on Monday instead of Sunday because I had a very stressful weekend. Suffice to say, I was functioning on exhaust fumes sleep-wise when I saw MFL on Monday.

Anyway, to update the whole “I love you, I love you not” situation with MFL, the night was… weird. I guess I couldn’t have expected to be able to avoid the awkward landmine(s), but I certainly did not expect the night to turn out the way it did.

He came over for dinner at 6 pm, and I, of course, pulled out all the stops in terms of my cooking abilities. It took us over three hours to actually finish dinner. No, I did not cook that much, we just took our time talking and drinking wine. We drank a lot of wine – by the end of the night, the two of us had gone through three bottles! But I needed that wine to give me courage, otherwise, I probably would have died of embarrassment and never gone through with the conversation I had planned. Although, in the end, the conversation did not go the way I planned, but what can you do.

It wasn’t until 10 or 11 pm that I finally brought up “the reason” I had asked him over. By then, we had chewed over his med school future, my law school future, and everything in between, and our conversation had been lighthearted. So, in that same spirit, I pulled out my “collection” of everything he had given me over the years, and in particular, pulled out the letter where he had said he would need 6 months to “prepare himself” if I ever wanted to break up with him.

“What’s this?” He asked, as I handed him the letter.
“It’s one of the letters you wrote to me from Egypt.”
He read it in silence while I sat nervously beside him. I probably downed half my glass of wine in the two minutes it took for him to read the letter. At one point, he chuckled.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You don’t have to read it, you know,” I said, reaching over to take the letter from him.
“No, I want to.”
So I let him finish reading. Then I told him why I brought it out.
“You know how in the letter you said to warn you 6 months ahead of time if I ever wanted to break up with you? Well, I was reading it, and I realized that it was exactly 6 months from the time I asked us to take a break to the time we actually broke up.”
“Was it?” He asked, counting the months in his head. “Oh, yeah I guess it was.”
“Anyway, I just found that weird,” as if to end the discussion. I just found that weird? What the hell is wrong with me? I hadn’t said any of the things I’d wanted to say. Is this it? Have I just closed the conversation? I contemplated what I should say next.
“It’s just… have you ever wondered why we broke up? I mean, I always thought– Wait, from your perspective, why did we break up?”
He paused. “I don’t know. Hmm… I really don’t know.”
“Exactly, right? I mean, whenever people ask me, I never know how to answer!”
“Actually, that’s true. When people ask me, I just say that we started hanging out less and less… and just drifted apart I guess.”
I tried to ignore the fact that the ‘people’ who ask him are probably the subsequent girlfriends he’s had.
“So… if I hadn’t asked for a break-up, would you have broken up with me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but when you brought it up, it seemed to make sense.”
Our conversation was lighthearted. We could’ve been discussing the weather.
“To be honest, I’ve been wrestling with the question of why we broke up for the longest time. At first, I thought it was because of SAD–”
“No, no, it definitely was not. She was a–”
“Rebound?”
“–mistake. Well, yes, rebound.”
“Well, I didn’t realize that until you told me last time. And then I couldn’t figure out why. But when I read this letter, I thought… Well, I thought, it was probably because of me, because I had asked for the break, and maybe that caused the, you know, drifting apart.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, as if he had never contemplated our break-up. “Yeah, maybe. Well, we were busy. I mean, you were especially busy that year, what with the yearbook and all, I hardly got to see you.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. The whole year, the only people I saw were pretty much the yearbook people.”
“So I became a yearbook person¹.”
I laughed, “Ok, I guess it was my fault then.”
We reminisced about high school some more before I brought up the topic of ‘us’ again.
“Do you think we will ever get back together?”
“I don’t know. Actually, a lot of people have asked me that.”
“Really? What did you say?”
“I don’t know… maybe.”
Silence.
“We’ve both changed, you know? I mean, fundamentally, we’re still the same, but we’ve changed.”
This wasn’t exactly the answer I had been looking for. I agreed halfheartedly.

I can’t recall what we talked about the rest of the night, but I didn’t bring up ‘us’ again. However, despite his less-than-enthusiastic answer, he still seemed to be into me. We were sitting very close on the sofa, and sometimes it seemed like he wanted to put his hand around me, but then pulled back. We talked for hours, and before we knew it, it was 3am.
“What? Are you serious?” I couldn’t believe it. It felt like 11pm. I had to get up at 7am for class. Yet, we continued to talk. He didn’t make a motion to leave or anything. I brought us a blanket because we were getting quite cold. We sat side by side, sharing the blanket. I warmed my feet with his and leaned my head on his shoulder.
“Wow, it’s 4,” he said, an hour later. “Time is going by so fast!” It felt like he didn’t want to leave. It felt like he didn’t want our night to end.
At 4:30am, he finally mentioned he should leave. He said he would call a cab. Yet, he didn’t. He didn’t even get up. And, as the host, I couldn’t tell him to leave.
At 5am, I knew I really needed sleep, so I got up from the couch, signaling to him it was time for him to leave. But he didn’t get up. After some back and forth, I offered to let him spend the rest of the night (morning) on my couch.

When I woke up two hours later, I almost forgot that MFL was sleeping on my couch. I had about 10min to catch the bus to campus if I wanted to get to my first class, so I tried to wake him up, but he didn’t budge. I got ready, tried to wake him again, and he still didn’t budge.
“Well, I’m leaving. So, you can stay on my couch…”
He finally sat up, but his eyes were still closed. “UGHNNNNNN,” he groaned loudly. I laughed, it was a hilarious sight.
“I’m sorry, but I have to be in class in like 10 minutes…” I said, as I busied myself with cleaning the kitchen.
“How are you such a morning person?” He mumbled bitterly as he stood up, his eyes still closed. I handed him his jacket. I felt really bad, I was literally kicking him out.
We managed to just catch the bus, and I actually made it to class on time. After class, he sent me a text message telling me how he had fallen asleep nearly twice in the lab while looking into a microscope. I felt worse. I texted back, “I am sooo sorry!! But… thanks for coming last night.”

Even though I had gotten only two hours of sleep, I was surprisingly awake and cheery all day. Despite his vague response to my blatant “are we going to get back together” question, my intuitions told me that he wasn’t over me. I mean, we had spent eleven hours talking! We had snuggled under a blanket together! He had slept over! (I wonder what his girlfriend would think if she knew.) And maybe I was awful to do this to him while he was in a relationship, but I didn’t really feel guilty. I had been biding my time for three years, torturing myself while trying to be a good friend to him. It was time for me to do something for myself. Especially in matters of love, I should be allowed to be a little selfish. Most importantly, deep down, I still feel like we belong to each other. Deep down, I feel like any girlfriend he has is temporary, that he doesn’t love her – couldn’t love her – because we are meant to be.

A day later (today), we met for lunch. We didn’t end up eating, instead, we ended up talking for over an hour. I wanted to tell him that I missed him, have been missing him for three years. I wanted to tell him that I wanted to get back together, and that this time would be forever. I wanted to tell him that if the timing isn’t right, I would wait, I would wait however long it would take because I knew we were meant to end up together. But I didn’t. I didn’t say any of those things. Instead, we talked about school and yoga and panic rooms (?). Again, it felt like he didn’t want to leave. But I had to go to work, so I forced him to leave.

What does all this mean? I don’t know. I don’t know whether he will leave his girlfriend. I don’t know whether he still loves me / can love me again. But what I do know is this: our story isn’t over. And that, alone, is enough to get me through the day smiling.

1. He became one of our “assistants” – in other words, our bitches. [↩]