Answering Machine

John and I had never been particularly similar. He went to school to play sports and spend time with his friends; I went to school to collect information and ace exams. From day one, he had branded me a nerd after I had nervously spewed obscure facts about the Earth at him. At the park, when we were younger, he chose to monkey around on the play scape and jump from structures of great height; I, on the other hand, played it safe on the swings. He disobeyed his parents; I obliged to practically everything my parents asked of me. In fact, they blamed John virtually every time I didn't do something that pleased them. Our differences were visible even in little ways: he was chocolate and I was vanilla; he was fruits and I was vegetables; he was concerts and I was theater.

It was a wonder we even became friends so easily. I always accounted our friendship to necessity, and the fact that we both had lost our original best friends – him, when he moved, and I, when my friend moved away. The O’Callaghans had moved next door in the middle of the summer, and John wouldn’t have been around a group of kids our age for another month. In a way, I was all he had. As we grew older, I would feel guilty for being the one he got stuck with. If it weren’t for me, I used to think, he wouldn’t have been made fun of for having a girl for a best friend. If it weren’t for me, he would have spent many more Friday nights during our high school years at parties, rather than slumped on my bed, watching chick flicks. If it weren’t for me, his heart wouldn’t have been broken for three years.

I always felt as though I needed John a heck of a lot more than he needed me. I was convinced, in fact, that he didn’t need me at all. He made friends the second he stepped foot inside our elementary school. Girls were constantly interested in him, regardless of the amount of reciprocation he showed. He was John O’Callaghan, and he was the center of attention.

And who was I?

I was Lindsay Thompson – awkward, nerdy, Lindsay Thompson, the recluse. On any given day, I would rather be holed in my stuffy room, reading a book I had already read eighteen times, than at a public outing with a group of people. I barely had any friends, and the friends that I did have were simply borrowed from John.

Girls hated me because I was John’s best friend and, for some reason that they (and to be honest, sometimes even I) could never seem to fathom, he spent nearly all of his time with me. Boys never approached me because even once I emerged from my awkward stage in middle school, I was still, well, awkward. John’s friends didn’t seem to mind me, though. They turned out to be just like John in the way that they, for some reason, seemed to actually enjoy spending time with me.

Garrett and I, perhaps because of our eerily similar personalities, became the closest of friends out of our small, strange group. He introduced me to my eventual passion for all things science fiction, including a love for (sometimes horrible) zombie flicks. We appeared to be so similar, in fact, that our friends eventually convinced us that we were destined for one another. Garrett took me on a date to the pizza parlor and the arcade, and it wasn’t much different than every other time we had spent time together, until he tried to kiss me. It was then that I realized I could never see him as anything more than the brother I never had.

It was also around then that I began to realize John. Of course, I’d always noticed John, because he was my best friend, but I started to see him in a way in which it had never occurred to me that I could see him. I liked to blame Kennedy for this realization, because he was the one who had told me that John had been acting “really freakin’ weird” when everyone started pushing Garrett and me together.

“He was probably just weirded out by the idea of two of his best friends dating,” I had originally reasoned.

“Yeah,” Kennedy had begun to retort, “or maybe it’s because he’s in love with one of those best friends.”

“Oh, that’s cute,” I retaliated, without missing a beat. “John has a crush on Garrett?”

“Har, har, Lindsay,” Kennedy sighed sarcastically, rolling his eyes, “you are just so funny.”

“There’s nothing funny about love, Kenny,” I continued, cracking a smirk at him.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see who’s laughing when I’m right and you’re wrong, and you and John are married with, like, eight quadrillion babies.”

At the time, I had pulled a face and scrunched up my nose, proclaiming that the idea of John and I making any number of babies together was nothing but disgusting, and I immediately discounted Kennedy’s vital information about the ways in which John may or may not have been acting.

What Kennedy had meant by “really freakin’ weird,” however, I then soon came to discover, was “jealous,” and I knew this because I had begun to feel the exact same way whenever I saw John with another girl. I knew I had no real right to feel jealous, because John wasn’t mine. Sure, he was my best friend, as I was his, but there was no romantic attachment between the two of us, meaning I had no say in who he should have or shouldn’t have dated. Naturally, I gave him my opinions on the girls in whom he was interested, if solicited, but I bit my tongue every time I wanted to tell him not to date someone. And I was convinced that I definitely was not someone that John wanted to date.

But then things began to change.

At first, it was subtle, silly things, like John sometimes coming up with lame excuses as to why he would rather have a movie marathon with me than get drunk at someone else’s party. Then it was his constant act of nonchalantly grabbing my hand and lacing our fingers together as we walked to the ice cream shop or through the mall. Then it was the way he would hug me, holding me close for longer than usual and letting his arms and hands graze my lower back. Then it was the excuses he made just to come over for movie marathons without having even been invited, not to mention the way he would cuddle into my bed with me, wrapping his arms around me as I fell asleep. Then it began to be the way he would softly kiss my forehead, my cheek, or the top of my head and huskily whisper, “Goodbye,” or “Goodnight,” or, “See you soon,” right against my ear, every time we parted ways. And then, well…

Then it was the way he had said, “I love you.”

And the way I kissed him once he said it.

And the way he kissed me back.

And the way that, from there, everything escalated.