So it seems like I am always out looking for second best. I know where best is, but she is forbidden, so now I have to settle for a second best search. They may not even be second best, at least I hope not. I hope there is a closer approximation of you. There will be nothing that will equal you, but maybe something that comes a lot closer than what I am meeting. Why do I want to go out to midtown on a Friday night to watch you dance with German guys? Which then reminds me of your Danish guys in NO. They must have been cute, so much cuter than me. For you to kiss Christian at the end of a drunken night. Doesn’t seem like you, but I have witnessed it happen now. Have seen how that scene goes down. I don’t know that Grier. I don’t know her at all. I hope that it made you feel good. I am sorry for what I did that made you feel justified. Were you ever true to me? Was there always, from the beginning, someone brewing in the background? A secret desire? Was I ever your desire, or just a filler? I think I know I was more. I think you did love me. I know I did and do you. You asked why we couldn’t be, and I am not sure exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, but we were. We did exist, me and you, for a time period, and I think you were happy for at least a portion of that. If I am lying to myself, please do not correct me. I am looking for number two now though. I blew number one. I should have known I couldn’t deserve you. I should have known that achieving this dream wasn’t possible.
Jenny told me today that she thinks she likes me because of the way that I love you. That she has always wanted someone to love her that way and that seeing how I love you made her fall for that side of me. I told her that I love YOU though and that is not transferrable to someone else. She said she had thought about emailing you to tell you about my heartache and unflinching passion for you. I told her she should not do that. I could not see how it would help me, you or her.
When I was in high school I spent one glorious summer in Charlotte at a state-sponsored summer program. It was one of the best times of my life, and returning to my high school was difficult. After that summer I pined for it and thought that I had been given an experience that I could never top. Only I applied to Governor’s School the next year, and in the spring, in the middle of a tennis match, my friend Shaq came out to the courts to tell me that we had both been accepted. I felt like I had a second chance. I was in a dream state for months. The GS experience was even better than the previous summer.
I sometimes daydream about a second chance with you. I dream about getting number one back. I dream about what I would be like to fall back in love with each other. I dream about calm, maturity, knowing that I did something right. That I finally got it right. That there is forgiveness, and that right and proper change and hope can be rewarded. That it might even be better the second time, after we’ve lived a little, figured a few things out, know that we miss and want each other more fully.
I cannot give up. Not yet.