Love, with Teeth (Part Two)

We started texting again during my second semester of law school. It was my winter break, and I was back home applying to summer jobs. My roommate and her cats were staying with me in San Diego after having to evacuate the historically severe LA fires. Having given her and the cats my room for the week, I camped out on my living room couch under a pile of blankets, listlessly scrolling LinkedIn under the guise of looking for job postings. My best friend had just moved away to work her dream job on Catalina Island, where she now had limited time and even more limited cell service. We'd gone from texting every day to barely texting at all, and though I was thrilled her dreams were coming true, I also felt more lost and alone than ever.

At some point in my scrolling, I saw a post that made me think of my college friend --- the one I'd lost touch with yet again months ago. No matter how much time passed, she stayed in the back of my mind. It was annoying. What the hell do I have to lose, I thought, screenshotting and sending the post to her. As she always had before, she responded fairly quickly. We exchanged surface-level quips back and forth until there was nothing more to say. I steeled myself for when the moment would pass and I'd lose my sad grasp on this friendship again. My acceptance of that inevitability was the only way I let myself send the text in the first place.

I was astonished when, a day later, my phone was still buzzing with notifications from my college friend. We flitted from topic to topic, discussing what we'd been up to in greater detail than we ever had before. I wondered if maybe something had changed in her life circumstances too that was making her lonelier and thus more open to sharing than she'd been before. Whatever spurred it on, I was grateful. I felt, for the first time since college, that I was actually getting to know her better.

Our conversation seeped into the following weeks and then months. She learned all about the classes I was taking that semester, and I learned all about her job at the company with which she'd been onboarding during our last days of college. We texted constantly. I worried my grades would come back tanked, knowing I'd spent a large portion of my classes typing furiously to deliver her the joke I'd just thought of instead of writing down my professor's explanation of the subtle difference between easements and covenants. When my GPA actually improved, I was only further emboldened. My semester bled into summer, during which I kept my phone face up on my desk as I worked. From morning until night, we kept each other company that way. We texted about anything and everything. I received real-time updates about her trip to Iceland with her best friend, and she got the same from me as I road-tripped up the California coast with my mom. We commiserated about the awkwardness of coming out to colleagues and acquaintances when they asked about our love lives. When her brother got married, and she texted me all through the bachelorette weekend, as well as through dress shopping, preparations, and finally the reception itself. We fantasized about our respective futures, she about moving to New York and I to San Francisco. Yet we also concluded we were both the type of person who could never commit to a solid plan, so everything could change tomorrow. We understood each other because we both felt defined by our unattached-ness. We scoffed at people our age in serious relationships who had to think about so much more than we did when planning out their futures. We considered ourselves among the lucky, selfish few.

___

  When she first brought up visiting LA, I had to remind myself not to feel excited. She was coming to visit her (other, not yet married) brother his fiancé. I secretly hoped, of course, that she would make time to see me too, but it felt presumptuous to even suggest such a thing. But the more time that passed before her trip came to fruition, the closer we grew, until it no longer felt so out of the question for me to suggest that she let me know if a spot happened to open up in her schedule for me. In a tone just as non-committal as I'd used making my suggestion, she told me she would. I felt both frustrated and excited, and then frustrated with myself for being excited.

Her trip ended up being postponed all the way until November. As luck would have it, her brother's schedule necessitated her staying elsewhere for a night or two in the middle of her trip. By that point, I felt secure enough in our friendship to offer her our couch and a couple days of exploring the city with my roommate and I. My more clandestine goal, though, was to suss out what had really been going on between us over the past months. Surely, in person, I'd be able to tell whether our flirtations were just figments of my overactive imagination, as they'd been in college. If she came and showed no signs of being interested in me as more than a friend, at least I'd finally know and be able to move on. 

Just hours before she arrived, like a mean stroke of fate, I felt suddenly sick. At first, I thought it was an allergic reaction to the dust I'd roused from all the untouched crevices of our apartment I'd been cleaning in preparation. But my eye irritation was soon followed by congestion, sneezing, a headache, and even light chills. Despite the haste with which I applied every home remedy I knew, none of them worked. I couldn't believe my misfortune. Hours later, my friend sat on my couch while I was at my kitchen table, bent over a pot of boiled water with a towel over my head as I tried to steam the mucus out of my sinuses. (Not exactly the look I'd wanted for the first time seeing my crush after two and a half years...) 

I was determined not to let my affliction ruin the weekend. We spent the weekend with my roommate as a social buffer, going from bar to museum to brunch. When we watched TV together in the evenings, I sat on the opposite end of the couch as my friend so as not to get her sick. I knew that after LA, she was going up to the Bay Area to see her (much closer, real) friends, and I wouldn't forgive myself if I got her sick before that. Of course, I'd also completely given up any fantasy I'd had of exploring a possible romance. It was all well and good, I decided, though it still saddened me. Maybe my getting sick was a sign from the universe that things wouldn't have gone well if I tried to make this anything more. On the second night, though, after my roommate went up to bed and we turned off the TV, I panicked knowing this was the last chance I'd get to spend any time alone with my college friend. Sleepily, I suggested she scoot closer and she scroll through TikTok on her phone while I sat behind her and watched. She obliged. I kept glancing between her and the phone, but she kept her focus strictly forward. Got it, loud and clear. 

___

Her brother picked her up early the next morning. I'd implored her the night before to wake me before she left, knowing she was the type to not want to cause any disruption. I couldn't tell her that I'd be crushed if I woke up and she'd gone without saying goodbye. To my relief, I awoke the next morning to a soft, awkward knock on my bedroom door. "I'll walk you out," I told her, despite her protests. "Give me a minute." Still sick, I realized I had sweated through the t-shirt I'd slept in. I hastily pulled a sweatshirt on over it so it wouldn't be noticeable, even though the extra layer made me feel disgusting. My fantasies from just days ago of reaching for her hand or kissing her goodbye felt not only naïve but downright shameful. At this point, I was thankful I'd gotten sick to spare me the embarrassment of making a move and being rejected. Maybe the universe had been protecting me all along.

When we walked up to her brother's car, I felt awash with sadness. This was really it. My one opportunity, months in the making, to see if all our flirting over text could possibly amount to anything more. It seemed I had gotten my answer, and now I could move on. When I turned to tell her goodbye, I was caught off guard as she threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly to her. It was like the night I moved out of our college dorm, all over again. She cares, she does care, she is sad to be leaving me. And then, Oh god, I hope she can't feel my sweat. The sensation of my t-shirt plastered clean against my sticky back brought me back to reality. No, whatever might be going on, this was never going to become the thing I'd hoped.

After watching her drive away, I walked back to my apartment and climbed into bed again. I wouldn't have to go to class for another few hours. Laying in my cold, sweaty silence, I resolved to turn my life around in the coming weeks. I'd slow down our texting and we'd return to a "normal" kind of friendship. I'd redownload the dating apps that had automatically offloaded from my phone due to lack of use. I’d go out on the weekends, meet new people, return to my former spontaneous self instead of this pining, pathetic version I hardly recognized. Soon, I'd be in control again. Just as soon as I stopped responding to her texts before my phone even stopped vibrating. As soon as she stopped texting me about how left out she felt while meeting her friends' significant others in the Bay. As soon as she stopped worrying about my safety when I sequestered my phone away to study and was uncharacteristically uncommunicative for long stretches, convinced she wouldn't notice or care. As soon as we stopped confiding in each other about how ill-suited we each felt for romantic love. As soon as I stopped referencing her in my journal in such ways as: "A crush starts as a fascination with someone that then develops into fondness -- the things you like about them that just make you smile to yourself or make you wonder that this interesting person exists in the world and you're lucky enough to know them, and to see a side of them that maybe not everyone does."

Soon, I'd get a handle on myself. Maybe in the new year…