“Do I have any unfinished business?” I randomly voiced to my roommate and best friend earlier today.
She looked at me confused, wondering how she should know. I told her I was talking more to myself than her, but I got curious and asked her about her unfinished business.
Then, she asked me in return.
And I asked myself.
And I had plenty of unfinished business in my life, but I moved past it, resolved it.
I reconnected with my first crush – with whom my relationship had turned completely awkward by the end of middle school – and we began a new kinda casual friendship without all the middle school drama and we don’t talk about the then of it all because we’ve both grown up and just don’t care anymore.
I missed my 8th Grade dance but made up for it by going to each and every single one of my high school homecomings.
I’ve said “Thank you” to one of my only friends from middle school who remained a friend, even if we weren’t super close in high school and after until now.
I spent most of my life ignoring my friend’s problems and bombarding them with mine, but now am learning to actively listen more and empathize so I don’t distance us.
Most of my issues are resolved.
Most.
“Remember how I wrote that short story about that girl who wrote love letters for special occassions and kept them?” I asked.
“Yeah…?”
I pulled out the letter.
She laughed, a bit surprised, but we both knew she should’ve already known I’d do something like this.
I gave it to her to read, and I read it myself once more, and then I taped the envelope close again and stuffed it in my journal. I had written it for his twentieth birthday. And I never planned on giving it to him.
“You should give it to him,” she said.
I planned on stuffing it at the back of my journal and writing for all the special occasions and stuffing those in my journal, too.
Then, he came over last night to discuss some club stuff or something with my roomate and vent about not winning the tennis semi-finals.
And I thought about it. A lot. And then some more because I was still unsure.
I took a deep breath and whispered to her, “I’m not leaving for summer without dealing with this unfinished business.”
I was going to quickly read it, then lock it up again.
But he said he wanted to read it himself.
And when I said no, he tried to come after it so I grabbed it and he tried to come after me.
He frikin’ chased me into my bedroom and said he was athlete and I wasn’t getting away and he asked me if I could please give him the damn thing and to stop being so weird about it.
For a guy who hates to read and is as impatient as he is sexy, getting through the three pages of slightly illegible handwriting must have been an effort.
It made me smile that he was pushing through with it anyway.
When I got up from my chair, he told me not to leave. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere and just moved to the kitchen to fix myself dinner. In truth, it was an excuse to not look at him while he read, and talk to myself, freaking out that this was actually happening.
He read it through then asked if he could keep it, then asked what else I wanted to say. And I, at first, said “I don’t know.”
Of course, he knew it was a lie. “Stop being so secretive.”
He’s as curious as he is impatient.
So, I threw my rant at him.
And he told me to stop being stupid and that I wasn’t less important because he had a girlfriend and that we were definitely going to see each other in the summer and even after that even if he’s moving to a different campus next semester.
And the rest of the night passed with me ranting and him analyzing and ranting back and we yelled a lot and joked a lot. And my roommate said she zones out half the time we talk because half the time we spend talking is spent arguing about random things.
He flung an empty plastic bottle at me. Twice.
Because when he dropped his bottle by accident, remembering that earlier I had accidentally tipped over my own bottle, I made a comment saying, “I guess I’m not the only one who’s clumsy.”
And he flung his bottle at me. The first time without warning, and the second time, with. And when I started hysterically laughing and asked why, he said it was because sometimes I say dumb things (especially when he’s in the middle of saying something serious like analyzing my jealousy/non-jealousy/co-dependancy issues) and he feels like hitting me. Not violently. Just in teasing-kind of way.
And I saved the bottle.
And he saved my letter.
It’s his now.
He said in some years, if I become a famous writer, he’d publish it saying this is how I started my writing career, then split the profits 80-20. 80 for me, 20 for him. We actually shook on it. But he said this deal is subject to change, so I jokingly said, “Yeah, the eighty and twenty might flip”. And he laughed and said he thought it was actually a clever joke.
And he left.
And I scanned him top to bottom as he walked away.
I’m looking forward to the day that the pre-condition for him publishing the letter comes true.
But on the other hand, I don’t know if I want the world reading that letter.
Not an “I’m in Love With You” letter, but an “I Love You” letter. “I Love You as a Friend” letter. And I don’t want the world reading it. It’s mine and his. It’s ours and only ours.
But at least he read it.
