As much as I wanna romanticize our first meeting as something cosmic, it wasn’t nearly as romantic as I like to play it out in my head. I had been mooning over a boy that entire weekend, someone who’d been hot and cold with me for nearly two months at that point, and someone I really, really liked. So when I didn’t hear from him on a weekend I was supposed to spend with him, of course it got to me. More than anything, I was in desperate need of a distraction, and meeting him happened to be convenient. Staying long enough to forget whatever was bothering me was exactly what I wanted to do.
And perhaps we got a little carried away. He said all the right things a girl who’d been feeling ignored would wanna hear, things that, let’s face it, he probably didn’t mean. He was likely just trying to win me over in that moment, without the slightest idea that I’d go on to haunt him the next day, and the day after, and the day after that, too.
And as naive and gullible as I can be, I really did believe every stupid thing he said. Of course, looking back now, I realize there’s no way he could’ve meant any of it when he’d only just met me. But I wanted to believe him, and perhaps that was enough for me then.
Little did I know that meeting him that night would change the trajectory of my life in ways I could never have imagined. The very words he probably didn’t mean that night are the words he swears by now. And even if I sometimes find it easier not to believe him anymore, I can’t deny the fact that I feel exactly the same way, if not more.
And if there’s ever a genuine question to be asked about us, it’s probably who liked whom first.
Well, he saw me first. He was curious enough to ask about me, and when he finally got the opportunity to meet me, he took every chance he could to stand as close to me as possible. Lucky for him, I was vulnerable. I needed the validation, something to make up for how humiliated I felt after opening myself up to someone who simply hadn’t returned the same effort. So, in a way, I was merely compensating for one bad decision with another.
But to answer the question, I suppose he liked me first. Not in some profound, life-altering way, of course. He probably liked me the way any man might like a girl he finds attractive, someone he’d wanna have a good time with and perhaps forget about afterwards. I didn’t quite realize that then, but I realize and accept it now. And I suppose there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. Sure, it would’ve been magical if he’d fallen hopelessly in love with me at first sight, beyond all reason and repair, but this wasn’t a movie I was directing, however much I wished it were.
But I liked him, too. I couldn’t quite tell you what it was about him, exactly, but being with him felt nice. There was something about his company that made me wanna stay a little longer. And hearing all those words he probably didn’t mean did something to me, perhaps because I so desperately wanted to believe he meant them. Because, again, I’m a hopeless romantic, and if things had unfolded the way I imagined them in my head, this would’ve been a page straight out of a novel.
So by the time that night was over, I’d somehow convinced myself that he was more than what he really was. Pure delusion, I must say, but it felt good, you know? For a little while, it was nice to believe that something extraordinary had happened to me, even if I’d probably made most of it up in my head.
And then, barely a day after we met, we had a conversation in which he was nothing but honest with me. The kind of honesty that should’ve been enough to bring me back to my senses. And it did, in a way. I knew what the situation was, and I knew there was very little good that could come out of it. But for reasons I still can’t quite explain, I desperately wanted to see him again. I wanted to know what it would feel like to be around him a second time, to reassure myself that I hadn’t imagined how wonderful it had felt the first.
So I went out of my way and made my way back to see him. It was probably the boldest thing I’d ever done for a man I barely knew, and certainly not something I would ordinarily have done. But I think somewhere in my gut, I knew I had to take that chance. I didn’t know what I was hoping to find, or what I expected to come of it, but I knew I would regret not going.
And so I did.
And seeing him again made me happier than I could’ve imagined. There was something so incredibly lovely about being around him, something that made the whole thing feel worth the trouble, even if I knew perfectly well how hopeless the situation was.
So maybe that was when I really began to like him. Or perhaps I already had, and seeing him again only confirmed it.
But it was a hopeless situation, nonetheless.
And then the months began to pass. I didn’t see him very often, but I heard from him every single day. And as sweet as that was, somewhere along the way, I began to accept the reality of what this was. I convinced myself that it was only a matter of time before we’d stop talking, that whatever this little thing between us was would eventually run its course. I suppose I was slowly making peace with the idea of losing something I never really had in the first place.
And just when I’d begun to settle into that thought, he did something incredibly sweet. The kind of thing you do when you really, really like someone. Something so thoughtful and unexpected that it made me question whether I’d been wrong about how little this all meant to him.
And just like that, I was pulled right back in.
More months would pass, and eventually, I would come to learn that somewhere along the way, he had apparently fallen for me. I say apparently because I still find myself refusing to believe it sometimes. Not necessarily because I think he’s lying, but because not believing him makes everything a little easier to bear. There’s a certain comfort in convincing yourself that something isn’t quite as meaningful to the other person, because then perhaps losing it won’t feel nearly as devastating.
But I never asked him when it happened. When liking me became something more, when whatever he thought this would be turned into something neither of us quite knew what to do with. And I suppose, if I ever did ask, the answer would be much later than that first night, much later than all the things I’d so foolishly convinced myself meant something.
So, who liked whom first?
I think he did, although perhaps not in the meaningful way I would’ve liked to believe. He was curious about me first, attracted to me first, and perhaps he was the one who first wanted something to happen between us. But I think I was the one who gave it meaning long before there was any reason to. I liked him genuinely from the beginning, even if meeting him had initially been nothing more than an attempt to escape the disappointment of someone else.
And somewhere along the way, what began as a convenient distraction became something I could no longer distract myself from.
Perhaps that’s the irony of it all. I walked into his life looking for a way to forget someone else, while he probably walked into mine expecting nothing more than a fleeting encounter. Neither of us could’ve possibly known that months later, we’d find ourselves here, feeling things we probably never intended to feel, and struggling with the weight of something that was never supposed to become this meaningful.
And I suppose that’s what makes me wonder whether there was something a little serendipitous about it after all.
Because had I not walked by that day, he would never have seen me. Had he not been curious enough to ask about me, perhaps he would’ve forgotten me altogether. And had I not stopped there a few nights later, on a night when I was desperately trying to forget someone else, we would never have met.
So many little things had to happen exactly as they did for our paths to cross. Things that seemed entirely insignificant at the time, decisions made without a second thought, moments that could so easily have gone another way.
And perhaps none of it was cosmic. Perhaps it was nothing more than a series of coincidences, two people in the same place at the right time, for entirely different reasons.
But isn’t that what serendipity is, after all? Finding something beautiful without ever setting out to look for it.
And maybe the most extraordinary part of our story isn’t that we were somehow destined to meet, but that neither of us knew we were about to become so important to someone we hadn’t even meant to find.
I went looking for a distraction, and somehow found someone I would spend the next several months wishing I could have a little more of.
And how terribly bittersweet it is, that something I never meant to happen has become something I wish didn’t have to end.
