End of Chapter 1

I don’t believe it. She’s OK. I’m so overcome with emotion that I just start to cry on the spot. My cats swarm me to see what’s wrong. How could I have let it go this long without seeing her? How could I have let it come this close to never being able to see her for the rest of my life? How can my parents not understand why I have to go?

From the time I got home, I’ve become fixated with watching the news. I wasn’t even going to answer the phone again until I realized it was Eric. I get annoyed with myself because my heart leaps when I see his name on my phone.

“Hello?”
“Hey, let’s get out for a while. I’ll be there in five minutes and we’ll go to our bar.”
“Hey! I’m busy right now you know!” It’s a lie, but I hate that he can just assume that I’m sitting here alone with nothing to do, just waiting for him to call me and rescue me from the mundane.
“You are not busy. I’m almost there.”
“OK, see you in a few.” Dammit.

He wants to go to the bar tonight. No big deal. Maybe there’s another beautiful girl at work that I get to hear about. How the Hell did I let myself fall into the friend zone? Dammit. Fine. I’ll go. Any excuse for us to hang out together. He is the person I spend the most time with. My best friend in the world, if you will. Oh, but here’s the catch. I’m completely smitten with him and he has no idea. At least I hope he has no idea. God, I’m pathetic. But how could I not? He’s the one that’s always been there for me since the day I met him. When I lived with a guy up in Detroit (huge mistake) right next door to my ghastly biological father, and I was fat and miserable and lonely, he came up to see me every weekend. It was the only thing that kept me from making the Detroit Evening News or an episode of COPS for domestic violence. When I finally left the lying, cheating Detroiter one night at 1 a.m. and just decided to start driving home, Eric was the one that was there for me on the spot. I honestly thought at the time that I was going to die. I thought that I was in love with that guy and I would never recover. I enormously despise the person that I was when I lived with him. I was a paranoid, whiney, obsessive girlfriend. He was COMPLETELY in love with himself. He thought, he was the best singer/dancer/looking individual to ever grace the Detroit Metro area. I was also the only one that wasn’t completely convinced of his closet homosexuality.
As it turns out, the relationship really had no effect on me whatsoever. In fact, that entire segment of my life is so vague that it’s like a movie I barely remember seeing, or like it happened to someone else. It only creeps up every great once in a while at an inopportune time, when I get afraid that every man is just like him.

Eric comes to pick me up and we’re off. Everywhere you go people are watching the news and they are pissed. The entire country is in an uproar. No one knows what is going to happen. So Eric and I get thoroughly drunk. We’re playing bar games, laughing, and having a fabulous time. Then he tells me how beautiful he thinks I am. Excuse me? Could I possibly have to deal with any other emotions today? This isn’t funny. He can’t screw with me like this. Is he kidding? What am I supposed to do with this? So I laugh, say “of course I am,” and with that understand that I’m going to obsess over this for the rest of the night. He breezes right past it, smiles, and takes another drink. Dammit.

When he drops me off I am convinced that I have exploded into hives. Is this the time that he finally attempts to kiss me? Crap, he looks like it. When that happens, there’s no turning back. We will pass the friendship line and go into the stage of either complete bliss or complete disaster. I zoned out for so long and I ran through so many different outcomes in my head I forgot that we’re sitting in front of my house and he’s staring at me with kind of a concerned look on his face. Oh, right. Time to get out of the car. I laugh, say goodnight, and run up to my door. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that I dodged a bullet.

I’m pretty sure that I ended up daydreaming about Eric and me together for a few hours. I know that I’m pathetic. I really do try to stop thinking about him. I know he’s not at his house doing the same thing! He’s probably sitting in his room drunk, playing some sort of ridiculous video game. I prefer to picture him pouring over his copy of Walden, stopping only to reflect on the amazing intellect and to picture my beauty. I attempt reading my book to stop thinking about my little life, but it doesn’t work. I begrudgingly get into my bed. I didn’t realize that I was so exhausted from the last 18 hours until I finally stopped moving. The entire day is running at warp speed through my mind. My sister, my best friend, and the Trade Center debacle. I honestly think that my head is going to explode. Is spontaneous combustion real? I wish some of my friends were insomniacs. It would make being awake at 4:30 in the morning considerably more entertaining. Maybe I could call Eric. Oh for God’s sake. I’m just going to watch Court TV. They don’t judge me.