September 14, 2000

Really, it all started with the sofa, if I remember correctly.

At my parents house, the cushiony blue sofa with the little flower pattern has 2 places to go: against the wall (where it ends up at Christmastime) or in the middle of the room, creating a little wall for the computer desk to go behind.

The sofa was in the middle of the room when my parents went to Canada. I slept on it at night, because it seemed too weird to sleep on the second floor when I was alone in the house. In retrospect, I have decided that when my parents were in Canada that June was the time I fell in love with Scott. We didn't say it then. Hell, I'm not sure we ever said "I love you" but once in all of our six years together. Maybe in some cards or such, but only once that I remember with any clarity and that's another story.

I wasn't big into crossword puzzles. One of my grandmothers is. Mom, too, I think. Scott did them. That summer, we sat on the blue sofa in the middle of the room and completed a whole puzzle. I clipped it out and saved it and later glued to the All About Me poster I had to make for 11th grade English class. That fall, when I didn't get to see Scott everyday because he was at the university over 2 hours away, I would go to my grandmother's house and get the crossword out of the paper. It was something I could do that reminded me of him.

I started watching Highlander because of him (though to him I pretended I'd always watched it). It's a good show; I still like it. And I still wish they hadn't killed Tessa, cause she was an artist, like me. I sat there on the end of the blue sofa, phone in hand, Scott at the other end of the line and watched the TV as Duncan Macleod of the Clan Macleod sensed the presence of another immortal. That caused my faux pas. I slipped up by not knowing the sound that accompanied an immortal sensing another one. I recovered it quickly, asking where do you suppose he always manages to hide a sword in his clothes?*

We would fall asleep on that couch. Far too many times to recall a single instance. We said we were just friends. You know, because what kind of good friends don't lie down together on a sofa and fall asleep there until 2:00 A.M.? What a ruse. It was so we could be near one another. I bet I could still lie on that sofa and remember how it felt to have him nestled next to me.

When the sofa was against the wall, we could lie there and be bathed in the soft blue light from the aquarium. And one night, under the flourescent glow, my head buried under his so I couldn't see his face as he said it, he told me how many times we had been just like that and he wanted to kiss me. If this was a really good story, that's what would have happened next. I usually manage to flub something in the few true storybook moments of my life. I think I did it that time by commending him on his remarkable self-restraint. I said it drolly and all I meant was that we had been face to face so many times and a kiss was never unwanted. Maybe he took it more like "good thing you didn't" because he didn't kiss me that night.

It pretty much ended on a sofa, too. Not the blue sofa at my parents' house but the brown-checked sofa-bed that weighs a ton that my other grandmother gave me for my first apartment. Him sitting at one end and me sitting at the other, after an evening of trying to be together and pretend we were still a couple though all the evidence was missing. All the same evidence that six years before had indicated we were way more than friends.

I sat at my end of the sofa and pitched forward and back out of a mindless need to do something while he sat there and said nothing. Today, I could say I wanted him to tell me, somehow show me, that he still cared. That, yes, we screwed up, but let's fix it. Yesterday, I might have said something else was what I wanted from him that night, and the same goes for what I'd say tomorrow. I ended up telling him he better go before I got mean.

* If Scott realized at the time that I was making it up as I went just to have something to talk about with him, another reason to stay a little longer on the phone than necessary, he didn't let on. I suppose it was because at the time, he too was looking for ways connect, feeling out things we had in common. I wasn't being too misleading, was I? I have always had a fondness for fantasy and Highlander surely fits the bill. I could very well have been a fan if I had seen it before that day.