2006, Massachusetts and Maine

By Alex Cunningham

August 22, 2006

Dear Andrew, on the occasion of your wedding,

How long has it been since we felt the connection we once had and hid like it was our bastard? Has it really been since high school? Six years? How much time is that?

Enough, it seems, for you to fall in love, to court and to marry this woman, and to hope unselfishly for happiness for the rest of your life which, at last, after scores of months, is something we have in common.

You know how long I debated coming. I got home to Massachusetts after a nine-hour drive from Pennsylvania the night before your wedding. During that drive, I was still unsure whether I would actually do it, actually put on my nicest navy suit – the tie a relic from our prep school dress code – and go north to see you declare your love for her, publicly, unashamedly, challenging the Atlantic, which crashed under pink skies behind you and matched the color of your eyes.

Bleary-eyed and emboldened by the idea of one more chance to see you, I crawled at the speed limit the three-hour trip to Maine. The whole way, I thought of our story, the one I’d replayed in my mind over and over again in the intervening six years.

We’d skirted each other for the first few years of school. When I was the manager of the varsity football team, I knew you only as one of the few players who’d thank me for getting water or shagging balls. You weren’t Andrew - no one called you that. You were known by your last name, on and off the field, and I remember mispronouncing it one of the first times I spoke to you.

It didn’t matter. You and I occupied different social strata and, of course, I was envious of you – your grades, your girlfriend, your good graces, and your gregarious smile. But you were a foreign alphabet, something beautiful but interminably alien.

Or so it felt, until the end of our junior year, when I got to know your friends, and then I got to know you. You moved into the dorm room opposite mine senior year, and we were taking two classes together, and we would have to become either fast friends or distant enemies.

The former came so easily, it felt like an accident instead of a due consequence of circumstance. Debates carried from class all the way back to our dorm. You dragged me with you to come watch football. I dragged you over to my room to watch Star Wars. When my roommate and I had a big fight, you agreed to let me sleep on your futon one night a week, which sometimes became two or three and lasted until the end of the year.

We made ourselves better. You kept me practicing lacrosse all through the winter, and when I finally made the third string of the varsity team, of which you were the captain, you congratulated me. When, after the first game, I decided to go back to JV, where I would have more fun, you defended my choice in public.

One night, after a late AP English class, I challenged you on your definition of the word “good,” and two hours later, all the seniors on our floor were packed into your room, sitting around your futon, watching as our fight escalated until we were at each other’s throats, threatening, then finally laughing and embracing.

I gave you jokes to put into your history papers. You proofread my love letters to a friend of yours. It was only natural, it seemed to me, that I fall in love with you and then weeks later tell you.

We had gotten into a habit of staying up until 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. on weeknights, playing logic games. I would lay on the futon, immobile with cold, and we would talk until one or both of us passed out midsentence. One night, the game ended early, and I cleared my voice uncomfortably.

“So, um, I have to tell you something,” I said. “The other night, when we were watching a movie in my room, and you were sitting next to me on the couch….”

“Yeah,” you said.

“Well, I had my arm up on top of the couch, on the back of it, like behind your head.”

“Mmhm.”

“Yeah, so, I realized – and this, like, came out of nowhere – that I wanted to put my arm around you. So I think the thing it made me finally realize is that I have a crush on you, and I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but you’re my best friend, and I have to tell you because I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t hide it anymore.” I paused. “OK, so that’s it.”

You said, “Hey, Alex?”

“Um, yeah?” I replied, frightfully.

“You’re a really good friend. I have a ton of respect for you. I trust you. I like you a lot. But not in that way. I don’t really want to have something get in the way of us being friends. It’s not going to be a problem for me. But if it is for you, you should let me know.”

There it was, the anticlimax I’d been expecting and dreading. Of course you didn’t love me back in the same way, and of course you responded to my confession with honesty and compassion. Of course it made me love you more, because I had license to do so now, to fawn over you and flirt with you in public and fiercely defend you, without the fear that you would reject me.

Knowing we couldn’t have what I wanted meant I could still have something, and my longing for you became so big and private, I never really fell for another man again. I would speak to you, and see you here and there, after we graduated, but never for very long and rarely acknowledging how much I missed you.

Your wedding invitation sat on my kitchen table for months. I let it hide under a stack of old bills, the blue edge poking out a centimeter or fewer.

When I finally got to Maine, to your wedding, I was late. You were already exchanging vows. The light was rosy; the wind ruffled the edge of your coat and threw my hair into my face.

When no one – including myself – uttered any objections to your being wed, I knew, suddenly, that my anxiousness would be gone and would not come back.

I loved you still. I missed you as hard as ever. But I knew now why I had ached for you so much those six years and why I wouldn’t anymore. The span of your absence from me was the span of a love you’d built with her. As my pining had carved itself a den in me, you had nurtured a relationship with her large enough to fill it to bursting.

So much as you had created something with her, I could let something die within me. It was natural and peaceful as the light that filled your face when you looked at her and said you would love her forever. You didn’t have to think about my love for you ever again and, so, neither did I.

Love,
Alex

Alex Cunningham lives and teaches high school in and near Worcester, Massachusetts. He is an aspiring voice artist and competitive swordfighter, as well as a writer. This is his first professional publication.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 | Email This Post

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