Complicated Friendships

THIRTEEN - BLAIR

Noah and I have known each other for around six years. We were friends first before we were lovers, and we always told each other everything. We sought comfort in each other through an unusual point in our lives. Noah was on a break from his long-term relationship. I was in the midst of my sexual awakening. We were both intellectually provocative and sexually frustrated. Thrown together, what happened between us felt like it was inevitable.

We met in class. He was the TA for an upper year seminar course I was taking. I was a bright and keen student who asked a lot of questions and visited a lot of office hours, hoping to get on the good side of the person grading me. An email chain, that truly began innocently with me asking for feedback on my essay, outlasted the course of the semester. It turned into lists of suggested further readings, which then spiralled into quirky, intellectual discussions about anything and everything. A couple weeks after the semester ended, I found him on Twitter and our banter continued virtually there.

Until one day, when he sent me a private message, suggestively letting me know he'd be at a local bar downtown by sharing a flyer for a local jazz band we both liked. I showed up alone and so did he. With alcohol and flattering lighting, and of course, the already existing tension between us, our platonic friendship quickly took a turn into something more.

That was the first time I met him in person outside of class. I tried to be classy, but I couldn't keep my hands off of his thighs as I was sitting beside him all night. I tried to concentrate on the band but all I could think about for hours was the thought of him fucking me. And he did. The bar was conveniently down the street from his apartment.

We fucked, and stayed up all night talking and smoking cigarettes out of his bedroom window, and fucked some more. I knew how these things went, I didn't want to get too attached. But the next day, he was the one who begged me to stay with him. We had brunch together and spent the day walking around the city, just talking.

We texted every day for months and saw each other multiple times a week. I had never had anyone like him, and I thought that I never would again. He was smart and to the point, he didn't play games with me. He always let me know exactly what he wanted, something boys my age seemed incapable of doing. The air of maturity he had was so charming to me.

He told me that I was special. That he had never met a girl like me before. He told me about his long-term girlfriend. That they're on a break but seeing other people. That it's over with them. That he would never go back to her. He held my hand when we crossed the streets. He kissed me on the forehead. He drove me to my dentist appointments.

But our brief whirlwind almost-romance didn't last very long. I was almost in love with him. We were almost a thing. Almost, but not quite.

Things ended rather abruptly when he got his on again off again girlfriend pregnant. Just like that, they were back on again and he disappeared from my life like he had never been there. He ended things—whatever it was between us—with a single text. I don't even remember what it said, but I can remember how I felt. I felt stupid.

He was 27 and I was only 20 years old and clearly naive. We never talked about what we were, but for some psychotic reason I guess I thought wanting to talk to me and see me all the time was an indication of him falling for me, but no, I was only a placeholder for the person he ultimately wanted to be with. But after all, he had never asked me to be his girlfriend. We weren't anything. So why did I expect anything more? It took me some time, but I moved on. I was only almost in love. But not quite. I was fine.

Until five years later, when he liked a picture of mine on Instagram. Maybe he had liked the picture by mistake, but it was unmistakably him. noah___ with three underscores.