I must have realized I loved him while I was staring into the barrel of his gun. He was pointing it at me. He was standing across the honey colored hard wood floor. When I shifted my body on the edge of his bed the floor creaked under my weight. His arm was outstretched. His stance was confident, controlled. His finger was caressing the trigger. My nervous laughter and halfhearted humor when I said, “Ryan, what are you doing?” fell flat against his stone faced glare. My repetitive, awkward suggestions that he put the gun down – that it was not funny - did nothing. No response. No words. No movement. Just a sly smile that slowly broke across his face as he pulled the hammer back.

Loving him was complicated. I hadn’t planned on it – not in the least. He was not the kind of guy I typically liked. He was the snapback wearing, gallon water bottle drinking, weight-lifting guy I usually avoided in the hallways of my college. But I was warned. I was told to be careful. In the passenger seat of my friend’s SUV, I was told that I could easily fall for him. The sky was fading to black as we drove down the streets of our almost quiet town. My hair blew in my face as the summer wind gushed in through my open window. I laughed and told her that those chances were slim. She muttered under her breath, “that’s what you think” and we made our way to his house.

By the end of that night I would be able to see why she was friends with him. By the end of that summer my friend would be gone from my life and Ryan, my best friend, would be the center of my world. By that spring I would tell him (after months of deliberation) how I felt. Standing outside of his one-story beige house with the green shutters. Listening to him go on about the girlfriend he never really loved. Words spilling out from my lips faster than I could keep track of them in my head.

He didn’t love me. He never did. I’m not sure he ever could. I struggle to sort out the memories I have of him – to understand what our friendship meant. Snap shots strung up out of order on a cloths line. I’m constantly examining them. Grabbing them and holding them up to a light to see what is real.

Snap

We have driven three hours to then end of Long Island. The sky at Montauk Point is dark in a way city goers only dream of. Ryan and I lay, with our backs against the rough concrete of a concession table, staring up at the faint glow of the Milky Way. We watch for hours as the light from the Montauk lighthouse turns and washes out the stars at an even tempo. The waves of the Atlantic giving white noise to our splendor. He touches my arm. “Did you see that?” I tell him I didn’t. Shooting stars, he says. I smile wide. Slowly I see stars dancing across the darkness. On our 2 hour drive home, well after midnight, we opened my sunroof and took turns staring in awe at the falling sky.

Snap

It is the first time we are alone. We are flying on the swing set of his old elementary school. It’s a cold darkness and I’m wearing his neon-green Nike sweatshirt. The fabric stretched tight over my wide frame. I pull at it –conscious of my body. I don’t yet know him well enough to be this vulnerable. He tells me, nonchalantly, that he doesn’t fuck fat chicks.

Snap

We are in my car, parked in front of his house. He sits in the drivers seat, having offered to drive my car home after another one of our late night adventures. Unwilling to end the night we show each other photos from high school. He tells me that I was so pretty back then. That I was so thin then. A moment of quiet passes between us before he places his hand across the console and on my thigh. I ask him what he’s doing. He slides it further up.

“Does this bother you?”

“No,” I say, “why would you touching me bother me?”

He let his hand rest on my upper thigh for few seconds more before removing in quickly, telling me he had to go to bed, shaking his head as he got out of my car.

Snap

I’m at a start of summer party –it is the first time I’ve seen him since I spilled my guts. The first time I’ve seen him knowing that he knows how I feel. He told me there was nothing there. He told me we were just friends. He told me there was no going back from what I said – just moving foreword. He hugs me warmly and tells me he is happy to see me, grabbing me a drink as he walks away. I think that maybe things will be like normal. Two hours later his hand is down my friends shirt and I am crying in the too-small basement bathroom. The next morning he apologizes. I tell him it’s okay, but the words taste like ash in my mouth.

Snap

He lowers the gun. Laughter bursts from his lips. I pull my legs into my chest feeling naked. He asks if I really thought he would shoot me. I didn’t know if I did– I still don’t. He turns from me and places the gun in a shoe-box on the bottom shelf of his bookcase. I ask him if it’s loaded, but he doesn’t answer. I feel an overwhelming sense of intimacy wash over me – as though this is the most powerful I have let him be and the most vulnerable I have allowed myself to become. I try to see the beauty in that. He sits back down on the bed and resumes playing video games. I watch as I try and remember why he grabbed the gun in the first place.

For a year we do not bring that up. We do not talk about it. It is like it never happened. Only after we no longer speak – after thoughts are laid bare and bridges are burned, after pages are written about him and stories are told – do I ask him what it was, that night with the gun. Over text message he tells me that the gun was fake. He tells me he told me this – even though he did not. I do not fight him. I let him and the answer fade into the design of things.

I do not think I will ever really know what to make of what we were. I don’t think I will ever know what he felt. If he liked me. What that moment with his hand on my thigh was. I don’t think it matters anymore. I have tried to write myself an answer. I scribble words on paper or put fingers on keys and nothing seems right – nothing seems real. I am left with the same questions I always had. I’ve written this story a thousand times before, the narrative melting and melding under my touch into something never quite right. But I’m done with that now. I’m done re-writing the story. I’m done questioning the moments. Because I will never really have the answers. Not the ones I want. But he will always remain, unchanging in those moments, for me to look back on when I need a story to tell.