I was madly in love with an Amy all through high school. Madly and truly and deeply and insanely and awesomely. She was in my classes my freshman year, but it wasn't until my sophomore year when I saw her in the commons area, my mind instinctively playing Never Tear Us Apart. Then it clicked. Funny, whip-smart, likable, cute as a forking button. Breathtakingly awesome in every way.
I summoned the courage to ask her out during spring break. I think she felt sorry for me when she said no. God help me, I have the libido of a vampire; it apparently can't see my reflection in the mirror. Because if it did, I wouldn't have even bothered. Maybe, on my best day, everything coming up Meat, Halley's Comet in the house of Uranus and all that, maybe, she might wipe her feet on me. That's about all I could expect as far as interaction between us, I think.
Funny thing is, we stayed friendly my junior year and actually became reasonably good friends my senior year. I never did go out with her, but heck, I knew my place. It was okay. Tis better to have loved and lost than to have loved and been hit with a restraining order. We embraced on graduation day (hands didn't drift: honest!) and we went our separate ways -- she to U. of Virginia (The Harvard of the South), me to VCU (The VCU of Homeless Shelters). We promised to stay in touch, and we did, for about a year. I even bumped into her in a little Irish knickknack store in the mall at home and we chatted.
That was the last time I saw Amy.
Actually, I did see her picture one more time; I The Googled her name for shirts and giggles and saw a photo package of her wedding on her now-husband's frat's website. Holy heck, did she ever look beautiful in that dress. But that was some time ago. Every so often I look to see if she's around in some form, but I forgot her new last name and have long since lost track of her. And I fell in love a few more times. learning the art of stifling it when it became obvious it was doing more harm than good. But it was never like it was with my Amy, a little revelation in a story of job and exodus, a living exhibit of sui generis wrapped in a 5-3 package who walked with scholars and cheerleaders without need of a passport, all while being hotter without trying than the skankiest skank at dear old Skank Ass High School.
I don't think about her much, though. Only random flashes of memory; a drive past the alma mater when visiting the family, the sight of my high school yearbook, a bulletin board poster misspelling "am". I don't press my subconscious but enjoy the encores as they come.
I wonder if she wonders if I would have been the one she should have been with. To think, instead of getting her master's at UVa., she could be sitting next to me in my dingy apartment on the couch that doubles as my bed, watching me play NCAA 2007 and scratch my head at when my life jumped the shark. All that could have been hers, and she passed on it. SUCKER!
On the bright side, I've yet to die of autoerotic asphyxiation, so there's that.