william_miller

Well, this was a rough weekend. At least until Sunday, with a four-hour workday and a viewing of Steamboy. But my heart had hung heavy the day prior.

It starts on Friday night, in the pouring rain. I decide to check up on Ioana -- so I am off to the Midway. I notice Jutka (her best friend and roommate for the summer), and go and sneak up on her to scare the hell out of her -- which doesn't work. She turns towards me and just tells me Ioana's in the cottage.

I go over there -- she opens the door. Behind her, a man. One of her friends, one of the people she had met along the last week or so. She invites me in, tells me to sit down. He goes to work on fixing their television, which hasn't worked since they moved in. He gets the TV itself working, but the cable box seems to be shot anyway (of course, he never turned the TV to channel 3 or even had the cable box plugged in, so it seems like he isn't as mechanically inclined as expected). During this, Ioana's taking a shower. When she comes back out, she gives the guy a hug for fixing the TV and goes to prepare grapes (since this is about the only thing she eats -- at least, as far as I've seen). I excuse myself to go smoke a couple cigarettes. I noticed her flirtiness with this guy -- and only a few days earlier, I managed to sneak the information that she still has her boyfriend from her without being outright blatant about it.

So I come back in.

She has grapes on her lap. He, a plate of Chinese. And in between their chairs, are their hands. Grasped loosely around one another's in that slightly intimate way.

This blasts me. You've got to understand, this girl means quite a bit to me, and there's a whole history to her and her boyfriend that kept me from doing anything (since I'm a respectful and good person).

So they joke. And I sit back down. I don't say anything -- at all -- for the next several minutes. Maybe ten passed. Perhaps fifteen. But she finished the grapes. I barely said a word. He finished his food. Not a peep from me. They decide to go over to find Jutka so the two roomies can go to sleep. Two cottages down, inside the room, there's a packed little group of people I've met before. But before I head in, I stop and turn. I pull out a cigarette. I need it to calm down my heart, which is already beginning to drop under the pressure of being broken.

She stops as she walks in, turns and comes outside. I tell her I'll be inside in a moment, that I just need to smoke. She asks me what's wrong. Tells me how I've clammed up for several days already, how I never say anything anymore. How this is different from the old me, the one she spent time with last summer. I tell her nothing's wrong -- and then retract the statement, and say I don't know how to put it quite yet. That I'll tell her when I figure it out. She says she'll await the answer eagerly. We go inside. She cuddles right up next to the guy. Her hand is draped over his shoulder, another one rubs his arm softly. Jokes are made, and then he leans in and gives her a kiss. And she coos "you're trouble".

The sledgehammer comes down on my feelings, and I'm just as worried and pained because of how her boyfriend is thousands of miles away in addition to my own pain. I try not to be totally selfish, as you can guess.

So time continues on -- on a TV behind me, Conan O'Brien is pulling a lever that pops Walker: Texas Ranger scenes on screen for shits and giggles. Finally, it's 1 AM. The girls decide they need to sleep, and so we leave. She walks him towards the cottage he shares with his younger sister, and they proceed to clutch onto each other with their lips and arms like they're never going to let go. There's salt in the rain, I think, and it's rubbing in my wounds.

We say our goodnights.

I spend the rest of the night thinking about how I'm going to bring this up to her -- how I'm going to ask her what the fuck she's doing. So I figure out a way to bring that up that's soft and easy but straight to the point. And I think about how I've felt very much like the outsider with that group of friends -- moreso than at most places, even.

I spend all of Saturday thinking about it, too. My heart still hangs heavy throughout the day, and when people ask me what's up, I tell them what is.

So I get out of work. I drive over to Midway. I don't even turn off my engine -- I chicken out, drive off. I go to Irving, fill my tank, and head towards the route home. And all the while, my head's going "you have to do this, you've gotta make this happen. You can't be a pussy. What you need to say must be said tonight, or you'll never do it."

So I reach the end of the turnoff onto the main route home, and turn around. I go back. I figure out which cottage they're in -- the guy's -- and after they ask me to take a picture of them all together, I tell Ioana that I figured out what I'm going to say.

She tries to get us to sit in the comfy chairs that only hold a single door between us and the rest of the group. I, however, walk right out the other door and sit down on the stoop.

I start off by explaining how through all my life, I've always been kind of the third wheel. How it's always been hard for me to get involved into a conversation if there's someone there whom I don't know and really doesn't seem to care that I'm there. How it is kind of hard to insert oneself into their conversations, since it's fragmented into English, Romanian, Russian, Slovakina, etc. -- it becomes terribly tough to follow.

She says that they really have no problem with me, if that's what I fear. That when she was roomed with the Lithuanians last summer, she was in the same predicament, and how she eventually burst through and made them notice her, made them include her, She says I should just try to make them notice me, make them include me.

We have a quiet moment... and then I ask her "didn't you say you have a boyfriend?"

She says yes.

I ask her what's going on with the guy.

Her response? "Just what it looks like." And we see how our personalities splinter here. Whereas I worry about others above myself, where the happiness of everyone else is ever-so-important to me -- not so I can look better in their eyes, but because I think it improves me as a person, she wants to do things because she wants to. She wants people to remember her as someone who did something because she wanted to do it. Someone with a strong spirit, with a strong point of view. Someone who's unashamed to live in the here and now. She talks about how arriving here, and how every nook and cranny of Midway gives her an overwhelming load of memories that she feels saddened that she'll never experience again. So she's trying to keep herself from falling and is trying to make new memories. She talks about how close they all are -- how I can't understand, since I'm not in the same boat as they are, being foreign to this place and not knowing nearly anything about how to act. And it leads to this type of stuff. She knows how her boyfriend will react.

At some point, she asks me if I'm being her conscience or something -- it's said with a bitter tongue, but my retort, "I don't have the top hat or the umbrella, but I'm trying", makes her laugh. Through this her eyes get glassy. She feels guilty, she feels horrible about everything. She is already thinking about how much I like her (and she remembers it from last summer), how it all must've hurt me, and about her boyfriend back home. About her family. She feels so isolated here.

So I get really honest. And I turn into Jerry Maguire interrupting the divorcee's meeting. I tell her about how I know this'll be the last summer she'll be here, most likely, how I just want her to go back and not be regretting something she did. How her happiness is foremost in my heart and mind, I just want her to smile and be enjoying herself. How I won't judge her, because I don't judge people. I hate judging -- it's not right. She actually says earlier as she begins to explain what happened the night before and says "if you want to judge me on it", and I interrupt her.

She's really glassy-eyed now, but she'll hold it together. She says that I am a true friend if I meant what I said. And of course I do.

Silence again.

And then I go for broke. "I think I can say this as a friend... as a human being..."

I turn.

"I love you."

And here's the point where she damn near loses it, because her voice goes to a hoarse whisper and she ducks her head down to say "thank you".

And my heart stops feeling heavy. We say our goodbyes -- she says the same thing she said the last day I saw her the summer before. "Thank you for everything." We have a nice hug, and I go off to my car, to go to my house, so I can sleep. She goes back inside to say goodbye (we had spent nearly an hour talking to each other) to the boys, and I'm long gone by the time she and Jutka head back to their cottage, I suppose.

But that conversation was one of the most important and most emotional ones I have had in my life. It was painful and uplifting, scary and beautiful.

Expect to see it in a movie someday.

... And don't even think I'm joking.