It was yet another new year – I felt like this was getting a bit ridiculous by now. Every year, the story kept getting held over to the new school year.
Never deliberately, fate would just awkwardly twist it that way over and over again – but this time, I was more determined to fix this than I had ever been determined about anything before. Whether Maddie even liked me – (let alone loved me) – after this was actually secondary to my thinking.
I simply had to come clean about my feelings, and just accept where that left her feeling.
I had a feeling that it would come to head pretty quickly too – since for the first time since that first year of high school, we found ourselves in the same class group. We were going to be around each other all day every day again.
It didn’t take long to get the vibe that it was coming to a head. There was a notable tension between us. There was a clear frustrated set of emotions coming from Maddie towards me, and I am pretty sure she understood the feelings of “almost” fear coming from me.
I say “almost” because I wasn’t frightened of her – not in the slightest – I still loved her every bit as much and probably more than ever before. There was however, fear regarding how she was going to respond when I came clean.
Other people were noticing the tension too. People would look at Maddie, then at me, than back at Maddie, and then back to me – and clearly have these “what the fuck is going on here?” looks on their faces.
It was becoming more and more disruptive to the class as more and more people started to pick up on the really awkward tension between Maddie and I.
This made me more and more determined to sort it out. I didn’t want this – Maddie and me – to be a disruptive influence in the class room.
I thought about re-doing the letter from the end of the previous year – remember it was written completely within the context of the end of the previous year, and wouldn’t have made sense if I just printed another copy and sent it to her now. I wouldn’t have needed to change much, if I’m honest – but I wasn’t sure it was going to be the right way to put an end to this.
Once again, I decided to just let the moment come at the right time, for the right reason.
A few weeks into the year, that moment came.
We found ourselves sitting nearby to each other in the school library one lunch break. There weren’t a lot of people around, and we’d absolutely both noted that the other was nearby.
I had been trying to just “be” nearby to her in non-classroom situations, and this was just another example of that. I guess I was just trying to engineer the encounter.
Pretending to be studying, I waited.
“Hey Andrew”, came the start of the conversation. “I think we should talk. I think we’ve both noticed the way other people are seeing us at the moment.”
“Yeah, I have”, were my first words in response. “We’ve let this drag out for far too long.”
There was a minute or two pause in the conversation. She was waiting for me to say what I needed to say, and what she deserved to hear me say. After all, it was up to me to fix my mistake – not for her to give me an easy out.
“I know I’ve said differently in the past”, I started.
“But I really do have a lot of feelings for you Maddie. I don’t know why I have lied to you so much about how I feel, and I could never tell you enough how sorry I am for how I’ve acted.”
There was a frustrated look on her face, and that confused me. I was still fairly certain she had feelings for me, so I kind of thought she would be relieved to hear those words.
I am sure she was, but the sense I was getting back was that I might have already damaged things too much – (which I believed was true) – and that I’d not picked up that before now.
“I don’t know what else to say”, I continued. “I get the feeling now that I’ve probably messed things up forever, but I glad that you know how I feel now. It’s taken me three and half years to get it out.”
“It’s a relief, but I can’t say anything more, or ask anything of you. I’ve been a dickhead.”
There was a good five minutes pause this time. I was trying to read her body language, but wasn’t picking much up.
Finally she spoke.
“You’re not a dickhead Andrew. I’ve always appreciated that you were a shy kind of guy, and I’ve always known that you care about me.”
My heart was pounding.
“I just need some time to take this in, and decide how I feel”, she said.
“I need to decide what do I do now?”
Those final words took me a little by surprise, and it wasn’t long until the first bell for the end of lunch went to move onto the next class.
Surprised because it didn’t say “no, no way Andrew”. She’d left the question open as to whether anything could or would happen from there – and I absolutely wasn’t expecting that.
Maddie reached out her hand to mine, and holding it gently said, “let’s talk soon, but just give me some time.”
I wanted to say “take all the time you need Maddie, because I love you” – but that probably wasn’t the best thing to say right at that moment. I smiled at her, nodded, and tried to say it with my eyes.
I walked away feeling okay, but my pulse was racing, and my head was spinning. Maddie finally knew for sure that I loved her, and that was a buzz – but I was scared out of my mind because I didn’t know what was coming next.
We didn’t speak about it for several months after that – but she asked for time, so I was giving her all the time she needed to process the situation.
Being pretty sure that she still had feelings for me, I was encouraged – but I still thought I had done too much damage, and that we needed to work on being friends again. The previous year had been difficult for our friendship.
I wasn’t about to push too much and strain it further.
I would let the situation progress naturally, and see where we ended up. I was in no hurry, and was happy to allow all the needed time to pass by.
Because I loved her.