Love, Actually.

Autumn in New England was just as unpredictable as the winters. From my dorm room window, the Boston skyline blended seamlessly with the gray sky, it had been a dull day fading into an equally dreary evening. Raindrops spattered my windowpane and the sidewalk below, brightly colored leaves holding onto the last breath of summer before the winter winds blew them away.

It was one of those evenings where the pile of homework on my desk eluded me, and I opted instead to let my mind wander as I lay procrastinating on my bed, staring at the Christmas lights strewn from wall to ceiling. It wasn't hard, my imagination had always been wild, and days when my anxiety got the best of me, it was easier to slip away into make believe than deal with real life.

I had a date coming up, a week from today, with a guy whom I'd been seeing for three months. It was unlike any other relationship I'd ever been, not even considering the five-year age difference between the two of us. (In the time we'd been together, I'd gotten good at overlooking that, choosing instead to believe the notion "age is just a number.") He came from money and I, well, even if I hadn't been a poor college student there was always the fact that my homelife had never been exactly prosperous.

For most of the time we'd been together, he'd talked about the two of us taking a trip out to New York for a week. Just a simple trip to get away from Boston, a taste of fresh air, and take in the sights of a city he knew like the back of his hand, but I had never seen. As much as I wanted to go, I didn't want to assume I was going. That was dangerous territory--the land of assumptions. So, for now, I focused on the up coming date. The way I saw it, there were a few days it could go...

I wanted it to be romantic and sweet, something that didn't always happened when he worked a full-time job and I balanced a job and college. I wanted to get dressed up and meet him at his place. Maybe he would open his door and pause, staring at me.

"Mona," He'd say, "You look beautiful."

Maybe he'd even have flowers, because of how rough the last two weeks have been with his job occupying all his free time and school monopolizing all of mine. Mostly, I just didn't want him to see me and ignore the fact that I'd put effort into getting ready while he'd forgotten to shave. I wanted to captivate him, and I wanted to be good enough. We didn't call each other any sort of terms of endearment, no sweet nicknames, and the closest he'd ever come to complimenting me was telling me I looked nice. Nice. I wanted him to be as expressive as I was about the nitty gritty things most men feared: feelings.

I wanted to hold his hand, and to look up, and catch him watching me. I wanted to know if he felt towards me how I felt towards him. I wanted him to walk me down to the waterfront and just kiss me. I wanted to be able to courageous enough to tell him I was falling in love with him.

It made it easier for me to get in my own head. Maybe it was because of the age difference, my expectations were different. I was always affectionate, I always had been passionate of every facet of my life--relationships, jobs, you name it, I didn't half ass anything. My family had been affectionate towards each other, while his had always been lukewarm. I knew he had feelings for me, and that he liked me, but he was more actions prone than words and I just wanted him to turn to me and just say, "Mona, I really care about you." or "Mona, I think you're beautiful." Anything.

Of course, the night could also go the way I feared:

I show up dressed up, and he takes no notice. He hurriedly changes into jeans and a button down, takes a razor to the homeless stubble he's grown over the last couple days, and walks out the door, knowing I'll follow. We have a nice dinner, we go down to the waterfront. I tell him how I feel and the look on his face is one of panic. We aren't on the same page, maybe we never were. I tell him, "I love you."

"Mona," He'd say, "I like you. But I'm not on that level. And I leave for a new job in a couple months. You're sweet though."

And my heart crashes into my ribs and slides into my stomach.

Or maybe, when I text him the day before our day telling him how excited I am for it, and when should we leave, he'll tell him he forgot. He'll say he's so sorry but it just can't happen, he forgot, and work got in the way, and maybe another time.

My feelings have intertwined with my imagination. Because I love him and I'm scared. Because we are two different kinds of people who can show our affection two different ways. Because I was expressive and he was quieter.

Because I loved him and I didn't know if he loved me, and that was a deadly labyrinth to enter.

I was in my head, I was in love, and my imagination was getting the best of me. And the only thing I could do was hold on and wait for reality to play out.