Memoir of Her

Okay I never wanted to make you feel like an idiot I just felt like you felt different about me than I did about you and I just saw you as a friend and I didn’t want to lead you on or anything so I tried to like talk to you more casually and I guess that’s why I seemed so distant I’m sorry -12:33 am.

My eyes raced up and down the faded screen of my iPhone. I scanned each word, trying to decode some hidden message beneath the obvious layer of truth. Well, maybe she meant - no, there was no other meaning. Just stop it already.

Sorry champ.

The phone left my hand in a violent toss. I let it arc over my shoulder and collide into the plastic exterior of the lifeguard table, unaware that I may have potentially shattered the screen. What did I care? If it did shatter, let it. I couldn’t care less about the phone. I brought my hands to my face the moment the phone was released from my exhausted grasp. In the same movement I tore my aviator sunglasses from my eyes and tossed them in the same direction as the phone, listening to the pathetic crunch as they hit the table.

I closed my eyes, cupped my hands around my mouth and emitted a defeated sigh, a rumbling waterfall of emotion.

“Hey friend.”

I didn’t bother to look up immediately. I recognized the comforting, sympathetic voice of a recently re-discovered best friend.

“You okay?” her voice was like a symphony in a hurricane.

My hands didn’t leave my face, not for a few moments. Eventually I ripped the phone from the table and gloomily went back to the texts to show her. I handed the phone to her, and as soon as her hands wrapped around the small device my hands went back up to my eyes to shield my emotions.

It didn’t take her long to read the whole conversation.

“That sucks.” she said blatantly.

I nodded, but I refused to open my eyes. A little over-emotional, I guess? I didn’t think so at the time.

“I’m so sorry.” she continued.

Finally I broke the silence. My friend deserved that much. She had helped me ever since I first told her about how all of this started happening.

“Thanks.” was all I could muster.

“Do you want a hug?”

I let out a false smile that did little to masquerade the emotions that loomed over me.

“No, I’m honestly fine, thanks.”

“Alright, well, if you need to talk, just let me know okay?”

“Believe me I will text you later about all this, just not now”, I pleaded, standing up from the guard table and heading to the pool.

She understood, and walked with me as we went down to our respective lifeguard posts. Along the short trip I passed one of my closer friends, whose shift I was relieving. As we converged in opposite paths he stopped me. I guess it really wasn’t that hard to see the life drained from me.

“Yo, you okay?” there was evidence of concern in his voice.

“Don’t worry about it.” I explained coldly. I felt bad, but it was just one of those moments where I wasn’t in the mood.

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll tell you later.” I nudged past him and headed over to the empty lifeguard chair.

The chair beckoned me like some sort of unconventional safe haven. My side of the pool was empty; the entirety of the pool was mostly void. It was a breezy, cold Monday afternoon, no one would go to the pool on a day like this. Frankly, I don’t blame them. In fact, I thank them; I don’t need to worry about two problems at once. Ironically, the weather seemed to mirror my mood.

I climbed the rungs of the ladder and sat myself down to begin my shift.

And thus began thirty minutes of wallowing in self pity and insult.

I barely paid attention to the pool for the duration of the half hour. There was no living soul splashing around or drowning in three feet of water.

Well, that’s what you wanted to hear wasn’t it? You got your answer, finally, after floundering in depression for the past five months, wondering why she had just simply stopped talking to you. Now you have your answer, aren’t you happy?

I was the farthest thing from it.

My mind wandered to those departed five months of heart warm and heartbreak; of laughing and crying. Spending night after night texting her and making up dumb stories to make her laugh. Lying awake other nights, eyes polluted by tears wondering why she hadn’t texted me back.

My thoughts drifted depressingly back to the first day I met her. Sitting in my Chemistry classroom, silently judging the girls that I could tell by simply gazing at them that I did not want to make an acquaintance. All of them were fakes. Their fake outfits, and their fake smiles that were just facades of loath and disgust. “Hi’s” and “hello’s”, which in reality just translated into the softer version of “Why in God’s name was I put in this class with YOU.”

Now I look up, and I swear I have never been so struck by a girl before. Even the ones I talk to now.

No feeling quite like this.

She was wearing this elegantly informal white dress. The more descriptive details of her outfit have long since escaped me, but let me tell you something; it was darn well eye candy.

Her silky, long golden hair wrapped around her face and blanketed her shoulders; those blonde locks topped by one of those girly berets. She wasn’t wearing glasses at the time, revealing these turquoise eyes that were full of life and happiness.

I stared at her until she looked towards me. Even then I lagged behind a few seconds. Worth it.

From the time I first began talking to her in October, it took me until January to ask for her number. After that, I asked her to Junior Ball in February. In pursuit of prolonging that wonderful night I asked her if she’d like to go see a movie.

That was the decision which ultimately cost us our friendship.

How could we have started out so great, and ended up so distastefully terrible? For five months I questioned myself about that. I even questioned her on that a couple times, but it was like trying to have a conversation with a painting. No, I’m insulting artwork; at least a painting gives off some form of expression.

I kept looking back on those words she had written to me:

I just saw you as a friend and I didn’t want to lead you on or anything.

What a splendid job you did there. Really, just bravo. You certainly didn’t lead me on. Not talking to me in general or responding to my texts certainly isn’t leading me on.

I just saw you as a friend.

That part hit me harder. I felt my stomach churn and groan every time I repeated those words in my already sore mind. A bullet to the head at least, only after five months of being shot in the chest and left to bleed to death. Now I’m out of my misery.

If only I had known sooner.

There’s never gonna be another girl like her, I told myself over and over. She’s perfect. She likes the same music I do, she has style, she’s funny, awkward. All those great qualities. No, I’m never going to find another girl who I appreciate as much as her.

Never going to be another like her.

I swiveled the lifeguard chair back to face the pool, probably wasn’t such a good idea that I hadn’t even been facing the sparsely populated shallow end.

She was walking down the steps near the flagpole, on her way to the middle of the pool to conduct her water samples, to check the acidity of the pool or whatever. Her rich, reddish brown hair bounced over her shoulders as she made her descent, perfectly white teeth revealed in an ever growing grin.

Wow, she had beautiful eyes.

I sat motionless in my chair, but I faced her and smiled, until she got close enough and I threw my hand through the air in a wave. She waved back, still grinning, and knelt down at the pool’s edge to collect the water.

“You’re doing it wrong!”

She looked up at me.

“No I’m not, shut up.”

I kept going, playfully but with intent.

“Who even let you do this? You’re not even a lifeguard!”

She didn’t reply, but her smile held.

“Really, like, you’re doing just a terrible job at this. Just stop.”

“You stop!” she retorted, standing up from the water’s edge as she headed back up towards the office to hand in her results.

I sat back in the chair, smiling like a fool and waiting for my shift to end so I could talk with her more.

Yeah, I had once thought, there’s never gonna be another girl like “her”.

And so far, I’m right. I don’t want know what it is about this particular girl. I’ve acquainted myself and gotten friendly with a lot of other girls since her, but none of them have resonated so deeply in the way that she has.

After grieving over her for a year, I finally met a girl in my first year of college. She was...peculiar, but at the time I was still lamenting about the first one and so I found solace in chatting with someone new.

We talked for a few weeks and eventually we started dating. And for the year that we dated, I have to say I was pretty happy. For the most part, we were always together, and initially, we spent quality time together. And then the honeymoon phase ended and I started to see through the cracks in our relationship.

In the end, we were totally opposite people. Different taste in music, different political views, and overall we had absolutely nothing in common. I don’t even know why I was still dating this girl four months later. Well, actually, I do know why I stayed.

It was because I liked being in a relationship. I liked having someone I could be intimate with like no other person. But as I look back on it, it really wasn’t a healthy relationship, and I wish I had ended things earlier.

Eventually, we broke up, and I cried for a day. And then I got over it.. But of course, I started thinking about her again.