Forever and Always

I led myself to a bench where a bouquet of red roses sat. Everything was a blur, but this familiar cabin didn’t feel like home. The fireplace crackled in the moonlight, consuming nature’s serenity beyond these wooden walls. I looked around for peculiarities, but there was nothing except for a white envelope attached to the bouquet with centred, black handwriting: From you know who. My heart instantly lit up with hope.

Sitting next to the beautiful roses, I opened the envelope revealing a letter—four pages long. Each sentence gently flowed as I wore a smile with tears streaming down my eyes. Suddenly, someone endearingly sat close to me. It was him. After many months, we were now in each other’s embrace, with my head buried in his shoulder and his arm wrapped around me. This now felt like home—he felt like home.

I let out a faint whisper, “Thank you for everything.”
Before he spoke, my surroundings faded, and I longed to stay a moment more...

***

Romance is repulsive. It was already troublesome to develop emotional attachment while making friends, let alone falling in love. During tenth grade, I forced myself to disassociate from it, but I truly wanted to pursue a relationship and experience it all, even if it left me heartbroken in the end. I was only a sophomore, so those hopes were swept away, but my perception of love would surprisingly change that same year.

There was one person, and I didn’t know what it was about him, but it was the first time I felt immensely attached to someone. We ever only had three classes together, but he had dark hair, wore eyeglasses, and was a calm person with a wonderful smile. He also held an unexplainable aura that was enigmatic, yet charming. It was one that made me want to get to know him better—one that almost seemed tangible. He eventually became the very person I looked forward to seeing every day.

Tenth grade carried many cherished moments with him, and although they may seem insignificant to any other, they meant a lot to me. The most happened during woodshop, a course I got stuck with. I dreaded it before it started, but one of my closest friends, Hannah, was in the same class with him and me. She knew how to carry a conversation with anyone because of her extroversion, and helped me experience a few nice conversations with him.

The earliest memory I had of him was during a 2019 November day. Woodshop was finishing and the three of us had a history test next period. While I studied, Hannah briefly left, and everyone conversed while packing up. He swept around tables and saw me reading my notes amidst the noise. To preface, many of my classmates admired how I decorated my study notes, but others thought that I was “bored” for putting such effort into them, conditioning me to think that it’d be someone’s first reaction.

He paused his sweeping next to me and leaned in. “By the way, your notes look really nice.”

“Thank you! Call me bored for doing it, but—”

“Bored?” he grinned, “You’re not bored for doing it, you’re amazing at them.”

My heart fluttered in astonishment. No one had ever stopped me from self-doubting as he did. I spent an unhealthy amount of time wondering why the hell this felt different—he sounded sincere and seemed interested in what I was doing. If only he knew how much I appreciated him for that.

With each day afterward, we talked a little more. When we didn’t have anything to do in woodshop, we, and Hannah, would “skip” class and go to the library around the corner—we asked permission to, but we still felt like real truants. We went there to work on other projects, and one time he wanted to read through my unfinished, eight-paged essay. I didn’t even have the composure to proofread all eight, but I gazed at him a few times, intently reading each page as if he’s read a thousand from me before. Work soon turned into conversation—ones about each other’s favourite dishes, the meaning of our names, life experiences and more, along with compliments on each other’s work with utter excitement and awe. Time passed faster when I was with him, and I wished it only ceased for just a moment—where the memories lasted longer because he mentioned that he was moving away in a few months. Although I was happy for him, a part of me felt dejected knowing that I wouldn’t see him often anymore.

I never felt this drawn to someone before—to his mind, the way he articulated his thoughts and actions, along with everything else that made him whole—including why he was so damn good at carving in woodshop. I wanted to tell him all of this—I didn’t know how, but I wanted to.

One day, when Hannah was absent, he and I were alone in the art room, painting in our own atmospheres. This was my chance to tell him, but every time my heart began the sentence, my voice ceased to complete it. It was like a force held my mouth shut and I couldn’t tell him for the life of me. Time was running out—both of us wouldn’t be alone together soon and my fear of rejection consumed me.

I couldn’t do it.

Before the Christmas break that year, I gave small treats to my friends, including him. I could’ve told him then but didn’t. I still couldn’t confess on the last day I saw him, the history exam day. After that point, I was ready to let go—he turned a new leaf, and a relationship was improbable.

Just like that, he was gone, and I only wished the best life had in store for him.

***

It was springtime in April, and the COVID-19 pandemic brought masks, hand sanitation and eleventh-grade spent online schooling. My English teacher had assigned a reflection based on our experiences, and I thought writing about him was fitting. It had been over a year since I last saw him, so it was worth dwelling on. Deciding to write about when he complimented my notes—I opened a blank document and incessantly typed, attempting to follow the rubric.

My mind was a fountain of words—effortlessly written like my heart already knew its purpose before I did. I wasn’t only writing it for an assignment, but for my peace of mind— because deep within, no matter how busy life got, I still thought about him. I only suppressed them in a vault in my mind that was now unlocked through words. I appreciated him as a friend, but my confined feelings enlivened—only freeing a part of it in four pages. After Hannah proofread and I submitted my piece, the file sat untouched and unshared.

***

“Hannah, I need to tell you something,” I paused, “remember when I wrote about him for my English class and had you read it?”

She paced her walk, “Yeah, that was so sweet! What about it?”

This was my first time seeing Hannah since COVID-19 began—a tepid day on a mid-August Monday. We were on our way to a picnic with our other friends, the first and last time we would all hang out before senior year started. Hannah and I took our walk there as a chance to catch up on everything that happened during our pandemic-stricken lives, so I seized that chance.

“I have this strong urge to send it to him. I don’t know why, but I don’t want it sitting on my computer knowing that I could tell him how I felt in the time we had together. I miss him.”

“You should go for it! I don’t know where that’ll take you, but you should.”

She was right, I didn’t know what would come from doing this, but this never left my mind. Being the first time I said this, I was glad Hannah was the one to hear it. He never knew how much I appreciated him, and a part of me sought to know if he felt the same way—even the smallest bit. Even if he didn’t, at least there would be less ambiguity between us. I continued to contemplate it. If I couldn’t bring myself to confess, I could at least tell him how much I loved him as a friend—it was just a matter of when.

Two days after the picnic, my family and I went to Canada’s Wonderland, where it was less crowded. After a while, we sat at a table close to the fountain, talking about the past, the future, and all in between. Everything was perfect—the sun was setting behind the rollercoasters, gleaming on this blissful Wednesday evening. Suddenly, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder from behind and an unrecognizable worker wearing a cap, mask and eyeglasses appeared next to me, leaning closer while pointing to their name tag. I glanced at it, then at their eyes, speechless.

They spoke softly, “Hey, nice to see you again.”

It was him. Of all people and places, it was him, right at this very moment. Most would say this was only coincidental, perhaps it was, but it had only been two days since I first mentioned him aloud. I thought of this as a gift the universe brought back to me. He turned to my family to mention how we knew each other, and they were delighted to meet him. I was still trying to fathom this, but I certainly knew of one thing—I was sending my written piece to him this week.

It had been a while since the file was opened. I didn’t want to edit it too much, but I added a line at the end:

I deleted it.

I deleted the line again. It was probably too abrupt after only seeing each other for the first time in over a year. He moved away knowing he’d grow as a person with new people. I also lived my life, until I began exerting energy on anything that kept my mind occupied because my thoughts alone brought me to think of him, even though I tried hard not to. It couldn’t stop, and I fucking loved and hated it at the same time. Every time I thought of him, a euphoric high overcame me, but like most highs, realizations of regret and desolation followed, telling me to stop doing this to myself.

On Saturday, my family and I were driving home from Hamilton. It was after sunset, and the sky darkened as I watched cars pass by. At around eight-thirty, I decided to open Instagram and draft a message to him with the link to his letter. Finished, I just needed to hit send. My finger hovered over the button, nervousness engulfing my mind. He had every reason not to read it—it was late for an essay-length letter, or he could’ve found it strange. Forget this, I finally hit send.

Damn, I had never done that before, but I was proud of myself for boldly admitting my appreciation for someone when they least expected it. We were still an hour away from home, and I didn’t want to feel my phone buzz, so I muted all my notifications and listened to music for the rest of the trip.

The next morning, I looked at my lock screen with a text from him, sent after ten last night. I had no expectations of what it would be, but I reluctantly opened the message to a paragraph:

Holy shit, he liked it. It wasn’t a mere “thanks”, but a paragraph, and he didn’t question why I wrote or even thought about him. We knew how we felt about each other now, and were thankfully still friends, maybe better ones at that. This was something I’d never regret doing, and I kept re-reading it until I unintentionally engraved it in my heart.

Weeks later, I noticed his Instagram profile photo of a character seemed to have another half to it, a girl’s head perhaps. Feeling guilty for prying, I looked at who liked one of his photos, and I froze. There it all was—a cat killed from curiosity and the other half of his profile photo on a girl’s profile. It was a plain detail, but it was obvious—he already had a girlfriend.

***

I lay stagnant on my bed. It pained me to wake up knowing that he and the cabin were only a vivid dream. Great, my fucking dreams reminded me too. The sun peeked through the window as I wearily got up for school. It had all happened three months ago now, yet I thought about it every day since. My school days were spent being dazed and confused—wondering why I still felt miserable when it was life. Hannah even comforted me when it was worse on some days. She could only do so much, so I took it out in writing.

I typed like there was no end, uttering everything—holding back nothing.

My fingers lay motionless on the keyboard. I started typing this with a burning passion to slap my face, but I soon felt subdued. My eyes flooded with tears and continuously rolled down my cheeks. My screen looked blurry, so I wiped my tears to finish writing.