But How Do You Coin The Phrase, Though, That Will Set Your Soul Apart, Just To Touch A Lonely Heart

--"Summertime", The Sundays

I used to tease Breanne when we first started talking that, if she wasn't careful, I was might end up falling in love with her. I didn't think it would happen. I don't think she did either. In some respects, I guess I should have seen it coming. If you spend as much time picking someone else's brain as we did, if you let yourself go to the degree we did, hell, if you just allow yourself the opportunity to see all of someone's best traits, you can find yourself falling very easily. It slips down like water on a brownstone wall, in fits and spurts, gathering momentum with every passing minute. It's not this flood of emotions that people come to expect it to be. Nor does it freefall uncontrolled. It takes its time, but it inevitably happens. Like the rain on the wall, there's no stopping it all. You may stop a trickle here and there, but you can't stop it all. Yeah, it didn't happen overnight--my impatience be damned. But it did eventually happen.

My biggest concern in the beginning was how best to proceed from there. I'd already taken some shots for even involving myself with someone still in high school when I had already moved on to college. To add the fact that I was starting to become infatuated with her on top of our friendship would have been asking all the rumors to come flying even faster. Contrary to popular belief, I don't relish putting myself in awkward situations. I don't have a compulsion to draw controversy with every girl I see. To paraphrase Rilo Kiley, "you say I choose scandal like it has never once chosen me." No, I didn't go courting to be whispered about as the pedophile or pervert or the hundreds of other names I was called during those first few years. In fact, there were dozens of people I didn't even tell about Breanne. She was like some dirty secret that I had to keep to myself lest I be judged by people I swore could never understand. Friends, family, co-workers--I kept them out of the loop even while I would tell her about them. Sure, there were a few people--like Dennis and Heidi--but there were people that were considered islands to me. They had no way of talking to my family; they weren't in my regular circle of friends. I felt I could hold them to strict confidence. I felt that I could regulate the flow of information with them rather effortlessly. After all, I could barely figure out how I wanted to proceed. The last thing I needed was to spring Little Miss Chipper on the other people I supposedly loved and have them initiate the lectures or advice-giving. The only two people I wanted to have a say in the matter were me and here. Quite frankly, I wanted it to be be 100% my choice, but as they say, it's a feat better dreamt of than accomplished.

I remember there would be ten minutes of conversation that I would lose in the folds of memory because the only thing I could concentrate on was how lovely her voice sounded some particular day. I would get lost in the way she would phrase her words. I would gladly trade all the news of myself I'd been dying to tell her for a few more minutes of that forceful hurricane laughter of hers. I would just listen. That's one way I knew how special she was becoming to me. The other area would be the small thunders of daydreams that would crash into my day. There I'd be, at work or in class, and I would conjure up this daguerreotype of her in a satin nightdress or some other absurd get-up. I wouldn't even know what would spur them on. It would just happen. Slowly my fantasies about starlets like Jenny Lewis or Sarah Polley were being, one by one, replaced with thoughts of her. It was easier with Breanne. She was real. It was very doable to imagine us meeting up this weekend or the next, while all the actresses or models or celebrities always took the word of a thousand masons to even conceive a possible scenario where I could even bump into them. It was more tangible to be speaking to a certain young woman and hearing her repeat back to you that she wanted to see you. It was more real to hear someone wanted to be with you as much as you wanted to be with them.

Even when I couldn't see her in person--which was difficult--I could take that next step of predicting a future where I could see her everyday. And I had the pictures. Yes, I felt very shameful lusting after someone who very easily could have been my younger sister, but it was better than hungering after a complete stranger also. I knew her. I knew I liked her. It felt very safe holding onto these feelings and not dismissing them out of hand. It wasn't like I felt I was being delusional in hoping that she felt as strongly about me as I did about her. I had it on her good authority that she definitely did. The only obstacle was how to come across to her how passionately I felt about her without feeling like a complete freak inside.

I should have just told her I loved her. I mean--I've said it hundreds of times in the last fourteen years. I don't know what the huge difficulty would have been saying that when I first felt it. On the outside a eighteen-year-old professing his undying affection to his thirteen-year-old friend sounds troublesome--even apart from the age difference. But I truly believe that we weren't just any eighteen-year-old and thirteen-year-old. The longevity and strength of our friendship speaks to the validity of that. It's not like my faith in our bond has wavered since that time. I should have told her as soon as I had worked out how I felt for myself. That would have been easier than agonizing over the decision as I did. Breanne's always talking about acting from the gut and of not being able to swim without getting your face wet first. That's what I was attempting to do, to swim a great length without getting my face wet first. I wanted it to be done without taking that first step to accomplishing it.

But how do you tell the person you love that you love them when you've spent weeks and weeks convincing her that that very thing will never happen? How do you take back your proclamation that it'll never work, it'll never come to pass, it'll never even be attempted? I was so busy trying to convince her that that wasn't something she wanted that I was afraid I had done to good of a job. I wanted us to be friends for life and, in the beginning, that meant not getting us entangled in the netting that love throws over a couple. I wanted to give her the sense that either one of us could walk away from the other with the minimum of hassle. I wanted to give the sense that both of us were committed to the friendship because we felt that strongly and not because we felt a sense of obligation. I wanted her to be free to care about me as little or as much as she pleased.

Then I was just afraid that the answer would be she didn't love that much at all. Not in that way, at least.

When it came time to take that dive off the platform, I almost chickened out. I couldn't find the words to express the wealth of statements that I wanted to get across to her. It was all so much. I wanted something succinct, but succinctness has never been one of my more stronger points. I've always been the guy who speaks from the heart and pretty much rambles until he strikes the turn of phrase that sums up everything he has just been spewing on and on for the last twenty minutes into a few words. I don't know--I think I gave a brief history of how we met and early conversations. From there, I think I segued into flattering her mercilessly. Then finally I ended up with a diatribe about how fate and fortune and happiness were all intertwined, that they had all conspired to bring me to the point I was at.

I couldn't bring myself to say it. I couldn't just say how much I was in love with her, how much joy she brought. I couldn't tell her how much I looked forward to our conversations the whole day. I couldn't describe to her the smile and the laughter just answering the phone when I knew it would be her brought. I couldn't say how much I wanted her to hold, to kiss, to sleep with, to wake up next, to brush the bangs out of her eyes, to plain love. I couldn't weigh the words and parcel them out to her. I was stuck in the worst way.

I was about to hang up defeated, one step short of actually putting myself out there in terms of how I felt, when it came sliding out of me. I don't know who was the more surprised, me or her.

"I've never been good at telling people I love them, but you should be the first, Breannie," is the way I remember saying it. The fact I didn't actually say the words is what struck me immediately. I kind of said that I did love her without actually stringing those three particular words together.

But what she remembered most and what finally made it real for her that I was telling her how much I cared about her was that I had called her Breannie. That was something I'd never done before. I'd called her Little Miss Chipper, Peaches, and other nicknames that she had taught me. I'd even taken to call her B. by then. But I had always stopped short of using any sort of endearment for her. I was very careful in not allowing myself a pet name for her because, again, I didn't want to give her the wrong idea of where I thought we were headed.

That all changed that day. Breannie she became then and Breannie she will always stay. It's not just a nickname, you see, because if you spell out that word you'll see that it's actually spelled, "I love you."

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers