Hurt Feelings

 

There was nothing else to say about Lynda other than the fact that she was the love of my life at the time. She was everything that I had ever wanted in a girlfriend, she was an incredibly beautiful brunette with the perfect body for 15, perfect hips and well proportional breasts. Kissing her was like being smothered in honey while being touched by a thousand butterflies.

Other than the fact that her piercing blue eyes cut right through my bullshit and she saw me for who I really was, we connected on such a spiritual level. Not only did she accept me for being the bad boy of art in my school while pushing the limits, she relished in it. She loved flaunting her feelings for me in front of her parents and let them know all the horrible things we were doing together.

I was seriously looking at colleges around the area just so I could be around her while she finished high school. My entire future was rapped up and consumed with what-ifs and what’s going to be, secure in the pseudo-knowledge that I arrived and found the one true love of my life and nothing could possibly shake that.

After Lynda performed in the school play we went back to her house where she was going to change into something else. It was understandable that she didn’t want me to watch her since her parents were somewhere, either in the family room down below talking to my dad about some typical technology bullshit like Ham Radios.

While standing in the living room and making small talk with her brother, Bill, who was the definition of the words “nerd,” “dork” or “geek,” he looked me straight in the eye and asked; “Why do you hate me so much?”

I looked at him and couldn’t help but feel shocked; “What do you mean, Bill.”

“I heard you and some of my sister’s friends making fun of me…”

I stood there just trying to remember what it is that I might have said that might have been regarded as teasing or making fun of him. I totally admit that this guy annoyed the shit out of me and I genuinely felt bad for him. He never went on a date and never kissed a girl other than his sister or mother on the cheek. I hardly doubt that Bill spent an entire night doing to another girl what I was doing to his sister.

I stood there waiting, still thinking Lynda and I were about to go to the cast party and I stood there with this awkwardness. How exactly do you explain to someone that while he was indeed a pain and the ass and a minor embarrassment and I actually thought all those things I never actually send them out loud?

If anyone actually said any of those things out loud, other than Lynda’s friends and fellow classmates it was my father who was a bit of a hanger-on sometimes when I went to activities with Lynda. He insisted he drove so he could hang out with Lynda’s dad who was a fellow Ham Radio aficionado.

I stood there for the longest time, I felt as if so much time had past that the sun had started to convert helium into lead.

“Bill, if I said anything, I’m sorry.” I put my hands in my pockets trying not to look defensive. “I actually look up to you and I’m a bit jealous because you have your shit together and you have a dad who gives a fuck about what you’re going to be doing after college.”

I didn’t know that this was going to cause me trouble for Lynda in the near future, all I could think about was going with her to this party. Imagine my shock when she came out of her bedroom looking absolutely mature and beautiful as she looked at me and said; “I hope it’s OK, but I’m have to go to the party without you. It’s cast and crew members only.”

I stood there in shock, feeling as if the air was just sucked out of the room while my legs were cut out from underneath me. “I thought we were all set, I thought this was good?”

“No, it’s a last minute thing they just told us.”

“Didn’t you tell them I drove all the way from Fitchburg?”

“Yea, I know this sucks. I’m glad you understand…” she said before her mom whisked her away.

The next week my phone rang and Lynda told me that she didn’t feel for me the same way I felt for her. Things were going too fast and that she wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. I asked her if there was someone else and she was quick to say there wasn’t. She wanted to just be friends and that should be OK. Just friends… after I invested so much emotion and time into our relationship.

Two weeks later, it was after the prom and her dad came to pick her up. I stood there with my friends knowing that I would never speak to her again. Whatever we had, it was gone and to this day I kept wondering if this was all about her brother or if I was moving too fast.

For a short time I nursed a broken heart and thought about everything I went through with her and how much time and energy I had put into that relationship. There was a moment when I became really angry when I was one of my extreme camping trips. I was watching a lunar eclipse and wished I had her there with me. Then I realized, that just wasn’t true; if Lynda and I had something special than she should have told me why we weren’t a couple any more. If it had something to do with what she thought I said to or about her brother, then she should have said something.