twenty-something

Two years ago today, Duncan first told me he loved me.

It was our last night together before graduation, and he was sober. We lay on the futon mattress on the floor of my dorm room, where we'd spent so many nights before. I was on my back. He was on his side, snuggled up tight to me, his head on my shoulder and chest like a pillow -- just like I like it.

Our senior year fling had become something more than either of us had signed up for. It was supposed to just be hot, secret, no-strings sex. He was taking one of his first peeks out of the closet. I had just gotten over my first, real boyfriend, Joe, and I wasn't exactly eager to start something up. It was the perfect match-up for the casual thing we both were looking for.

But the boy who followed me home from class a few months earlier had become some kind of boyfriend. For a stretch of nearly three months, we spent literally every night together -- sometimes even without that secret sex -- hiding out in the sanctuary provided by one of our single rooms. We would study together, have dinner, watch Adult Swim, cuddle... all things that seemed so harmless. We were just hanging out. We weren't dating, and this sure as hell wasn't a relationship. But, despite having happened in the closet (or perhaps because of that), the ease with which our non-relationship evolved in those early months, the deep intimacy I fell into with him effortlessly, almost from day one, kept me sane and happy during my last months of college. I wasn't going to let myself fall in love, but he took my heart by surprise.

I think I knew I loved him the night I found out my aunt died and he let me cry in his arms. I first told him I loved him sometime after that when, very drunk from a frat party, he snuck in my room and ended up sobbing in my arms about his insecurities. I think it was the most vulnerable I've ever seen another human being make themselves. And how could I not tell him, even if he didn't say it back? He didn't, of course, not then. But I felt glad I'd said it. I meant it.

That last night, two years ago, we lay in silence, having just decided to just be friends, parting ways in the morning for new destinations apart from each other. It was the smart thing to do. Let go. Move on. Cherish what we had. I had fallen in love, unexpectedly, and it had only enhanced my last college memories. I meant a lot to him, he said. He was a different person than he was back in January, he said. And that was because of me, he said. I believed, in his own way, that Duncan maybe loved me back. It was something I told myself to feel less vulnerable, having said "I love you" to him on a few occasions and never having heard it back. I was ok with that but, still, I fantasized. Maybe someday, I thought back then, in a few years, I'll get an email from him. And he'll be out, and he'll be happy, and he'll tell me that he once loved me, but he didn't know it back then. He'll tell me that I meant as much to him as he meant to me. Someday, I thought. And only imagining him saying those words, not actually hearing them, somehow helped me let go of this thing we had.

But Ryan Adam's "When The Stars Go Blue" was playing -- one of the songs on the mix CD we listen to each night in bed. And someday came a lot sooner.

I was trying to fall asleep, but I knew that sleep wouldn't come easy that night. I heard him stir a tiny bit. And then: "I love you, Pat," he said.

My heart... my heart started pounding. And I couldn't help but cry. He said the words I thought maybe I'd never hear him say. And he changed the course of both our lives in that moment.

Letting go became impossible. And things became messy. Five months has become two years and five months. A lot has changed, but he's still some kind of boyfriend. He's still one of the most important people in my life. Maybe it's not as easy as it once was, but, above all else, he's become my best friend.

I still love you, Duncan.