I replied, "No, I don't think so."
"You're not mad at me then?"
Honestly, I said, "No."
A silence tended the next few seconds like they were somebody else's lost flock of sheep.
"That was an odd question," I said, unwilling to prompt him to tell me why he inquired. I didn't want to prove the typecasters right when they sometimes say us girls ask too many questions. I think they might be right. Therefore, I respected his right to have hidden reasons for ending our relationship. Almost as importantly, I didn't care what his reasons were--I felt no vindictiveness, no need for justification. When it happened, I merely felt like I needed to be put together with duct tape. But that passed.
"I have odd thoughts sometimes," he said. Sheepishly.
The truth at the time was not to be revealed to him, either. I remembered our year-ended relationship fondly, but not with great heartache. Hours with his spirit were beautiful, pleasant, and sweet, but not fodder for tearful strolls down memory lane. And as I was at the end of a much more painful infatuation, the months of getting-over-him were not as fresh in my mind.
He broke up with me over e-mail. I got the letter before class, and pretended to be more dazed during the period than I really was. But since I was habitually quiet, no one noticed when I had a genuine reason to sulk. That afternoon I deleted everything on my computer relating directly to our relationship--sound wavs, old letters, picture files. Fifty years ago I would've had letters, records, and photos in one ruby-fingernailed hand, a sturdy lighter in the other. But in neither time would I have said a word to him about it.
My life was nominally worth little at that point. I saw an RV convention show the next night--girls' night out gone horribly wrong, you might say. I did work around the room, making curtains, redecorating. I sang a lot. Mostly I rationalized everything, and told myself that even though we broke up, he still loved me.
I was vain. I felt love for him and his sensitivity, but I wasn't in love with him. Kate Winslet said in her Jane Austen movie that "To love is to burn, to be on fire, like Guenevere or Juliet." Though it was a flame, it was a potpourri candle that flickered in my heart for him. And like a scent smelled too long, it was no longer my favorite addition to my environment; I only missed it when it was gone.
I spent the rest of winter, and part of spring, getting over the loss of his friendship, getting into someone else, a dark young paradox with no depth, only breadth, to his pool of contradictions, a pleasantly sweaty, tolerably weird Michelangelo-sculpted boy who had many things in common with my Baby and many things alien to the idea I had of him. Though not sure if this new guy liked me, I kept courage because I thought my ex-boyfriend still loved me, and thus I perceived no danger in risking my heart again--as long as I had a pleasant memory to fall back on. I told you before that I was vain.
I only believed in those three words because I wanted to. I figured that he had said them first, so it would be true, always and forever. I had never said "I love you" to people outside the family in my life. It wasn't something to be said lightly.
The first time he said it, I smiled and blushed, looked down and away. How embarrassing, and how cute. Whether or not I reciprocated would direct the friendship, but I didn't think of that; I only thought of his feelings. The next thing I remember coherently is the realization that I was involved with someone. He didn't become "my boyfriend" until the term required a past tense modifier. He was, until then, my Baby. I nurtured him, protected him, and let him protect me from those hundreds of miles away. Now it seems selfish, but during those months we used each other, and we both thought it was good.
He imagined many things for me when we conversed, and I'm sure he thought other things that he didn't want to scare me off with as well. When we met in person, though, I could tell something was amiss. A minor reason--perhaps I wasn't pretty enough for him--wouldn't leave my head; it drove a chink into the armor-plated rationalization and dismissal of the breakup which I had eked out in months of after-contemplation. When we met, we touched, but not in the most important ways. We never kissed. He probably expected more, but I fear I wasn't up to code. This mean thought bothered me mostly for the first month of my new-found solitude.
I was never bitter, I thought. During the following summer I was separated from, seemingly, civilization--by cows and green tobacco lands and my hermitude-inducing work schedule. I dreamed on the couch of my childhood home's upstairs hall, and kept an eye out for pretty boys. While opportunities came and went, I nursed my heart.
In July, a letter came to my ex's mailbox from me; it detailed what really happened after we broke up. My closing words were, "All I want to do now is forget, forget, forget." The words were mostly drama--for I had begun to love his memory (absence, fonder hearts, yada yada). And when next I talked to him, we forgot past differences and became friends again.
I never told him about falling in love with the idea of being in love. When he asked me if I ever resented him, I almost laughed to myself. There was nothing to resent, I guess, except my own conceptions of love and the feelings they produced in me. He only hurt me temporarily, and now when I go back and read the letter he wrote to split us, it seems charitable, apologetic, and even sweet. He will never have the power to injure the core of my heart; only I am allowed that privilege.