Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2013 21:46:00 +0000
From: Starcrossed Lover <starcrossedlover77@hotmail.com>
Subject: I Knew This Day Would Come

The following is true story...no names were mentioned, but I wrote this the
very day it happened (Jan 27th 2013) and sent it to Nifty as my very first
story; the only story I would ever be able to tell.


I knew this day would come.  I had always known this day would come.  I had
lived in a world for so many years where hope had ebbed and flowed, and my
dreams were like the mists hiding a mountain.  This time though, the tide
had gone out and left only the sand and the clouds had drawn back and left
no less than Mount Everest looming before me.

That the way it came was so simple surprised me.  A surgeon's knife could
not have delivered a more swift, decisive and almost painless cut to my
heart...a simple text...a few words.  "got engaged...wasn't planned, just
happened."  Just like that, there I was standing on dry sand and looking up
at a mountain...

I was happy for him.  I had to be.  He had managed to get hold of the dream
he had been chasing and he deserved that.  The funny thing is, not even 5
minutes before that text I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror
shaving and thinking to myself "Our twenty year anniversary is next
weekend.  I'll have to make plans to meet up for dinner...maybe a really
nice bottle of scotch...like REALLY nice, to surprise him and mark the
occasion".  My thoughts started drifting, like they always do, and I
started imagining how I could have a little fun with him.  "Hey, you know,
twenty years is a long fucking time!  We could have had a kid halfway
through college by now!  I don't know why we just didn't call off this
search for the perfect one and just get married...who's better than us?"

It all sounded great in my head, and I actually chuckled inside.  I managed
to ignore the creases under my eyes reminding me that thirty-seven was fast
approaching, and felt excitement build a little inside me.  I was going to
see him today as well...after five weeks of messed up schedules and plans,
we were finally supposed to go see "the Hobbit".  It was one of our few
"things"; anything related to Lord of the Rings we saw together for the
first time...no cheating.  Just one of the ways we tried to maintain a
friendship that life had stretched across time, distance, and the demands
of careers.

I had messaged him "What time were you thinking?" noting he was last online
at 2:40 am that morning and thinking to myself that the party animal in him
was never going to quit, and jumped in the shower.  When I had finished
shaving I checked the phone, and saw two messages.  The first was "gotta
pass".  The second "got engaged...wasn't planned, just happened."  I texted
back immediately..."WHAAAAT?  Holy hell, the devil has been tamed!
Congratulations!" and leaned forward onto the shower door to cry.


Feb 2nd, 1993.

We met in high school.  I was a Junior, and in three years had never
crossed paths with him.  That all changed the day I walked into my
Accounting class, and after signing in and chatting with my teacher, walked
over to the far side of the room to grab a spot along the wall.  As I
walked down between the rows of desks, I stepped into another universe.
There was this boy, leaning against the wall, third desk from the back.  I
had never seem him before, and his head was down slightly as he hunched
forward a little in his seat.

It felt like my stomach had jumped out of a plane and left me behind to
catch up.  I stumbled into the desk one behind and one over, forgetting all
of my plans for a wall seat to minimize the chance of people crowding me on
either side.  I don't remember much after that, except the certainty that
life had changed in a way I never anticipated.

I had fallen in love for the first time...and at first sight.  Maybe it was
the tenderness I saw on his face, the gentleness I knew was there from the
soft curves of his mouth, the puppy dog eyes, or the cute little nose that
would wrinkle when he laughed...but I knew it was more than that.  I saw in
my mind my hand stretched out towards him, and myself saying "I am for
you".  In that one look, I had been captured, hogtied and delivered to this
boy by a force greater than simple chance or fate.

I didn't know his name, but I knew I would...and by the end of the third
day, I was laughing along with his jokes.  We made eye contact that first
time he noticed me laughing, and the mischievous smile he directed my way
was burned into my memory like a brand on a horse.

In ways that surprised me, since I was not the boldest or most outgoing of
guys, I befriended him.  I'm not sure how I got his number, but I found
myself calling him every night under the pretense of reviewing homework.  A
friendship grew between us, but I was still at arm's length.  He was still
the popular, athletic one that all the girls blushed around, and I was the
tall, skinny, bespectacled one.  I wasn't bad looking, but I certainly
hadn't come into my own like he had at that point.  He was cute, and
everyone knew it.  Mention my name, and they said "yeah, he's smart!"

By the end of the semester we were relatively established as "friends",
enough so that I knew I needed him in my life.  Up until that point, I
hadn't truly realized I was attracted to guys.  I just wasn't attracted to
anyone before that.  Sex was a mystery, so I was still incredibly
sheltered.  I didn't have someone in my life to be a mentor, or role model,
or someone who could even explain the mystery of human physical contact so
I remained blissfully unaware until I met him.  The torrent of emotions
that coursed through me from that point on became a test...in a nutshell, I
learned to stand under Niagara Falls and not bow my head.

The summer holidays stretched long ahead of us, but I had no idea how I
could survive them without him.  When he flubbed his Business exam and in
order not to fall behind signed up to do the course again in summer school,
I did the same.  Since I had an A in the class, everyone wondered if I was
mental, but I dismissed them with the explanation that I had an A+ record
to maintain, and I would do whatever it took.  We grew closer over the
summer as a result, and eventually he would be picking me up in the
mornings to head to class.  I hung out at his house a couple of times, and
each time we were alone I wondered if it would be the time I lost control
and blew the lid off my feelings.  I didn't...locked in the closet and
afraid to jeopardize his presence in my life.  I was a chicken, and I
didn't even have the nerve to try to cross the road.

When school started up again, I made my boldest move.  On the first day of
classes, I asked him what his schedule was like...and before the end of the
day re-arranged mine to make sure I was in three of his four classes.  I
was guaranteed time with him that way, and since our friendship was
blossoming, with all of the exposure we quickly became inseparable.

The next semester I again ensured I was in two of his classes.  I only had
three, as I was ahead a year and at that point had taken nearly everything
available in the curriculum for seniors.

When it came time for college applications, I applied to everything he did.
I was obsessed with just being close to him...I needed him in my life to
breath, to feel like there was a purpose in living.  Throughout all of
those years, I was still struggling with accepting who I was, and trying to
control my attraction to the young man who was now my best friend.  But as
torturous as that was, I kept telling myself it was better than not having
met him at all.

When he told me he would consider rooming with me if we ended up at the
same university, I felt like the moon and stars had collided with the sun
and rained pieces of heaven down on me.  We did both get accepted to great
schools, and I turned down a scholarship to both of my other choices in
order to go to the same place he chose.  We checked out the place and found
an apartment close to campus, and suddenly I was faced with the fact that I
would be living with him in a few months.

He almost backed out of his decision to go to that school...and I remember
driving over to his place in a panic and essentially forcing him to
reconsider.  Years later and I still feel bad about that, but we had
already signed a lease on the apartment and my parents would have just
about killed me if I had walked away from it.  We were not rich by any
means, and the confusion of my turning down scholarships and having to take
student loans still lingered.

We moved in as roommates and enjoyed the freshmen year as only young guys
could.  I remained a virgin through all of it; determined that if I
couldn't have him I would have no one.  Some of the guys who hit on me were
unbelievably good looking, as were some of the girls...I remained resolute.
It didn't even cross my mind most of the time that I was being hit on, I
was that focused on him.  Years later I would wish I could have a second
shot at some of those cuties chatting me up!  So clueless!!

We were closer than anyone else could be; we had one massive fight when I
allowed my pain at seeing him with a girlfriend to lash out.  I was
deliberately a jerk to him, and when he confronted me lateron it, I just
lost all control.  I didn't think I had the lung capacity to yell as loudly
as I did, and when it was done, I felt purged, broken, and done.  He must
have been confused, as I remember I kept yelling "I gave you everything!!
Everything!!"  The hurt I felt seeing him fall in love with someone who
wasn't me wasn't something I had ever considered could be coming my way and
I had no idea how to deal with it.  When he first started dating her he
told me one night when we were hanging out in his room, "She has no idea
how far she has to go to be as close to me as you are".  I could have
pulled any star from the sky that night, he need only have pointed.  What
hit me the most is when he crept into my room later that night after our
fight and sat next to me on the bed, wrapped up in a blanket...and told me
my friendship was the most important thing to him, and he would do anything
to mend it.  I didn't know what to say, as I was so discharged of any
emotion, but I numbly said yes...I would still give him anything he wanted.

We didn't room together the next year, and began to pull apart a little,
which was a good thing.  I made new friends but still maintained our circle
by ensuring we all knew each other.  We still hung out, studied together
and stayed in each other's lives, but living together seemed like a bad
idea.  By third year we were back on track...we decided to move in together
again, and it was just like old times.

After college, we took different paths for a few years.  I started out at a
major food company in their accounting department, he started at one of the
banks.  I started to get over the intensity of the emotions I had for him,
whereas just being around him before meant breathing was a shallow
experience, I started to accept that things would never happen between us.
I was still not about to admit to the world who I was, and who I loved, and
he was straight.  Talk about the odds stacked against you.  I started to
move on, to begin to look for other ways to make my life worthwhile.  I
travelled, made new friends, and put all my efforts into my career.  It
worked, and I moved up the ladder rapidly while feeling a little empty
inside.

A few years later, I was in a massive accident, and was too scarred
mentally to drive for a while.  He was looking for a career change, and I
ended up pulling him in to my company and my department.  Just like that we
were working together and in our lives every day again.  He would pick me
up every morning, and we were together most of the time until he dropped me
off.

I realized I was falling back into the abyss of my emotions that I had
hoped time and distance had managed to have me cap, and after a year, I
fled.  It came after I sent him an anonymous letter confessing to being
someone who had loved him for a long time, in a hope of "putting out the
embers of a fire that had been burning for what I was sure was countless
lifetimes".  He confronted me, and asked him I was playing a joke on
him...thinking I was pulling a mean prank to make him feel like he had a
secret admirer.  It was too close for comfort, and I left behind a company
where I had developed a reputation as an up and coming management star, and
jumped to another opportunity to put distance between us.  We kept in
touch, not as frequently as before, but enough to keep me comfortably in
the friendship.

I ended up taking a job where I was a road warrior, travelling ninety
percent of the time.  We kept in touch only occasionally, and saw each
other maybe once a year.  I tried deliberately to avoid him, even though he
tried multiple times to arrange times for us to hang out.  I knew what
being around him meant for me, and I refused to let me myself fall back
into the spell.  I blamed work, and brushed him off for almost two years
until he gave up trying.  I would still message him on his birthday, on
Christmas, and on New Years, but otherwise kept away.  Deep inside me
though, he remained in my heart, remained a part of my soul and was always
my definition of what love meant.

He had a string of girlfriends over the years, some serious, some not, and
even had a six year long term relationship with one girl who I never met
but heard about enough that I thought a wedding invitation would show up in
the mail one day.

After some time passed again, I thought that the scab was strong enough
over that open cut that was my heart to see him again, for the sake of the
friendship.  The few times we hung out again after a few years of me being
on the road we compared careers, and bragged to each other like the young
punks we were back in college.  We reminisced about the boys we were, the
dreams we had, and the optimism we faced the world with...and I realized, I
had become more like he was back then and he was more like me.  I was
outgoing, confident, a leader who was determined to meet any challenge.  He
had mellowed into a quieter, introspective, mature man, with the slightest
bit of gray starting to caress his temples.  I laughed about it one night
over our yearly catch up dinner, and he fired back "This was always me...I
just became a different person around you because you needed me to be
strong".  I nearly dropped my fork, because I realized it was true.  How
could two people have such an impact on each other's lives and not be
allowed to merge into a passionate form of love?

He reminded me of a gift I had given him on his 21st birthday...and I
blushed.  How anybody thought I wasn't in love with his man was probably
just denial.  It was a small mantel clock, with a frame that was supposed
to hold a picture.  I had instead inserted a poem I had written, called
"Timeless".

I didn't remember much of it, but the last lines I will never forget.

"Know this; when I look back at the end of my life,
Yours is one of the faces I will see,
For what you mean to me,
Is timeless"

He had displayed it for years on the fireplace at his parents' house, and I
remember cringing each time I had dropped by and seen it there; a shouting
testament to my love for him that everyone else chose to believe was a vow
of friendship and brotherhood.


So here I was, nearing the twenty year anniversary of our first meeting.
The day that changed my life and made me realize that the universe does
truly hold wonders beyond the stars and the planet we live on.  The dreams
I had were still there, buried under layers of time but still able to
astound with their vibrancy.

And then that text.

I stood in against the shower door, leaning on my hanging towel, and ran my
trembling fingers over the loops of cotton again and again.  Every detail
of each loop stood out, as if the world was magnified a thousand times.  My
eyes filled, emptied, and dried silently, all in the matter of minutes.  I
knew this day would come you see...I had always known.  The countless love
songs I sang in my mind, the heartache, the yearning unfulfilled, the
running and the hiding, all were part of the journey that I knew would lead
me to this place.

Still, on this day, in this moment, the words came to me.
"I must not think of the breaking of my heart as the breaking of my dreams.
As painful a thing as heartbreak surely is, what can break a dream?
I must think of it instead as the loosening of chains,
To let my dreams remain free and just as they are; dreams.

For with each piece of my heart that breaks,
The pieces crumble smaller and smaller,
Till surely the day must come when like sand,
My heart will be light enough and small enough to take flight on the wind".

And just like that, I accepted it, like I always accepted inside that he
would never be mine in the way I wanted him to be.  I accepted it knowing
that I had given up on any other choice for my life but this one; to be at
his side, at his call, in whatever role he deemed me fit to play.  I knew
that my goal was simply to be with him throughout this life, to watch him
blossom and grow as I had over twenty years already, to maybe watch him
start a family and learn to be a husband and father, and maybe one day a
grandfather.

I knew that if we were in our 70's and he was sitting on a park bench,
whether surrounded by his family or alone, if I could sit a little off to
the side and to the back of him, to just be there in case he needed me,
needed a hand, a comforting touch, or even a glance at my eyes to see the
love there still burned steady and true, that my love story, and my life,
would be complete.