Page 15 of Friendshipped
I know better than to verbally spar with Rob. It would be like stepping in the ring with Mohammed Ali. I’d be flattened and walk away humiliated every time.
Rob and I continue running in silence with a matched stride. The only sounds around us are our feet hitting the pavement, the chirping of birds in the trees and someone mowing their lawn off in the distance.
My feelings for Lexi have become so much a part of my day-to-day, I don’t usually give them too much thought. I guess they’re like having a bunion. You just go about life the best you can, living around the pain and inconvenience and making the most of it.
I sigh without realizing it.
“That sigh says a lot,” Rob notes.
“Yeah. I’m having a hard time dialing back my feelings for her this week,” I admit.
“And you aren’t asking her out because of the infamous kiss?”
He’s referring to the time in high school when Lexi and I almost kissed. Long story, but it was an epic disaster and almost decimated our relationship.
“Not the almost kiss. Though that’s still the day not to be named. Way worse than Voldemort. See, I can say his name. We don’t talk of the almost kiss. Ever,” I remind Rob. “The aftermath of that catastrophe should have been a clarion call to stop any future pursuit of Lexi. We didn’t speak for a week after that disastrous encounter. I thought I had lost her.”
“High school,” Rob reminds me. “You can’t base your life choices on anything related to high school. It’s like this alternate reality where we all go temporarily insane.”
I chuckle.
Rob’s the only person who knows how I feel about Lexi. But he still doesn’t know about what happened our Junior year in college.
“There’s something else,” I tell Rob.
“You don’t have to explain it to me. I’m sure you have your reasons.”
Somehow him giving me permission to keep my secrets to myself makes me want to open up to him.
“Did you know I went to visit her at Miami U at the beginning of our Junior year?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”
We turn out of our neighborhood and cross a country road that runs behind the last row of houses in my neighborhood. Rob follows me across, and I take up the spot nearest the lane where cars will come past us. Rob runs next to the long fence bordering acres of pasture. The shoulder of the road consists of about five feet of dirt and pebbles with occasional weeds or wild grasses popping up. It’s a great place to run for a longer stretch.
“Renata and I had broken up at the end of my sophomore year. You know? The girl I had been dating at OSU.”
My breath and words come out in measured bursts.
“Yeah,” Rob says. “I remember you telling me you couldn’t keep stringing Renata along, and then you said she wasn’t Lexi. You lamented having been ruined for all other women, or something like that.”
“I did,” I admit. “I am,” I tell him. “Or at least I think I am.”
“So, this one weekend during fall semester, I had come home to visit my parents. Lexi’s mom was out front gardening. She looked up and said, ‘I was just talking to Lexi this morning and she said how much she misses you.’”
A tractor passes by going almost slower than we’re running, a few cars zip by, but they swerve around us and around some people on horseback up ahead. The road stretches beyond us with trees along the fence line every ten or twenty feet. Cattle graze at a distance in the field. I picture Lexi that weekend at Miami U.
“I decided I didn’t have anything big going on, so I thought I’d pop in and surprise Lexi with a visit. The last I heard from her she was single. We hadn’t talked in almost a month. Even though we’re best friends, college life created a natural distance between us. We each got busy on our own campuses and only touched base every few weeks or so.”
“That’s still pretty often for a guy and girl who aren’t dating one another,” Rob notes.
“True. But you know us. We’re not normal.”
“Isn’t that the truth!” Rob barks out on a laugh.
“Says the man who talks to possums and tries to fly in lawn chairs,” I retort. “I had this brilliant plan to profess my love to her, but it started with asking her out on a date.”
“Good not to drop the love-bomb first thing. Strategy is everything,” Rob adds. “So, what happened?”
