Everything except…

We said everything except…

Well, you know.

That.

But it was, wasn’t it?

I mean…

I said “I don’t know if I could make it in the life it would take to be with you. But if there’s one man I’d try for, if there’s one man I’d be willing follow across the world it’s you”

And he said “I find myself thinking about you. Thinking about how you would handle each situation I come across”

And I said “I feel crazy. I can’t look at another man until I know what’s happening with us”

He said “I like you enough to try this, but I also like you enough that I don’t want to lose you”

And that other time he said “you are the only woman I can truly talk to about anything no matter the time that’s passed or the distance between us”

And I had said “I feel safe and comfortable with you in a way I’ve never felt with anyone else”

And he said “of the people I talk to, about life, dreams, opinions amd hardships, you are the only one that really listens though.“

He told me he thought about what it would be like if we were together 6 months, a year, 5 years, 10 years, and 15 years in the future..

I told him I didn’t know if we’d make it work but I wanted him to know how I felt so we could talk it out together. Because he was my best friend first and whether to jump and fall or play it safe is the sort of thing a person consults their best friend on… even in circumstances where they are the very person in question. I mean these aren’t just the sorts of things two people who like each other say, right? Well I suppose people who like each other say these things, but it’s got to be more than that. It felt like more than that.

And then this other time, I asked if we would be friends, if we met today instead of all those years ago. He ignored the original question and said that if we had dated a few years ago it might have worked, we might have been married. Well no, his exact words, were “and then after 3 years we either would’ve broken up or I would’ve proposed. Just think! We could be married by now!!!” I laughed dryly and told him “or divorced”and he looked me square in the eyes, those sea glass colored eyes, filled with the kind of seriousness that instantly sobers a person and said “I’m not the divorcing type.” I had scrambled to assure him I wasn’t either but somehow when he said it, it meant something.

We made a pact that day and before you take a guess, it wasn’t a marriage pact. No, nothing so romantic as that. We jokingly agreed that if we didn’t have anyone, we’d get buried together. Because the afterlife seems awfully lonely and he had assured me that wherever I went, whether up or down, he would follow because we had to go together. That’s the sort of thing you say to someone… well someone you’re attached to in a way that seems so much deeper than mere interest. There was a seriousness to it, a loneliness behind the agreement, and a fear perhaps that we might not have a person at the end of the day to call just ours. In a universe of people to spend time with, to face forever with, maybe it was a little less scary with him by my side and maybe he felt the same for me.

Mind you this man had looked death in the eyes. He had been in combat and had seen things that he might never have the words to describe. He had placed his life into the hand of teenagers with rifles and carried their lives to safety with each split second decision he made, constantly calculating an unending list of possibilities. And to my own credit, I had faced heartache and grief and had never truly believed there was a person on the planet that I couldn’t live without. I had heard stories of the worst things that had ever happened to others and had held the lamp for them in their darkest hours. I had done it surrounded by support and also entirely alone. He understood that somehow, I know he did. We never really needed each other, but there in our agreement to share a grave, to walk into forever together, we agreed that the unknown was less scary if we had each other.

Oh but it goes back so much further than that. Because we were kids joking that we felt sorry for each other’s future spouses and somehow we each paused for a beat, wondering who those people would be and if we were in fact talking about ourselves. We had our rituals. Perhaps it wasn’t in our words but in the ways we walked each other to our lockers just to talk longer. Or the way I accompanied him to put the flag up and take it down and the way he delivered my books and sought me out at lunch. The way we texted at all hours. One day he told me a car backed into him in a parking lot because he was distracted texting me. Another day I told him I missed my exit because I was on the phone with him. He called me perfect. I called him my best friend. We joked about the future and the people we used to like while evading questions about who we liked now.

Oh how I miss these kids. The ones who could’ve said it because they believed it and because they hadn’t yet been burdened with the responsibilities and courage required of their adult counterparts. We were studious kids, intentional, chatty, he had a boyish playful love for adventure, and I had a passionate, devotion to right and wrong. I always wanted to understand people though. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things about him is how easy he was to understand, to memorize, to know. At least for me. He might tell you the same about me, but I wouldn’t know now.

He said that over the course of marriage, we’re married to several different people because of how much we change over time. I believe him but isn’t there something so special that I found myself drawn to him at 17…18…19…20…25..26..27. A decade of this and so many iterations of myself coming back to this one boy. This one man. This one soul who, try as I might to stay away, always reeled me back in with his sincerity, his spirit of adventure, his eyes, his laugh, his care, and conversation. He told me once that his mother wanted him to find companionship in marriage and isn’t it said that we should marry the person we just like to talk to? Because we said that too! We said through the doubt and the “I don’t knows” that “I just like talking to you” and we realized that we’ve never once run out of things to talk about. Even in traffic, on the top of a mountain, in every age, over the phone, in grief and joy, when we were upset with one another, or just so excited to tell the other about something great that happened. It was something now wasn’t it?

We never did call it more than “like”, “friendship”, “care”, “feelings”, “companionship”, or even “attraction”

But when I look at it all… I think we said everything. We said everything except….