I wish you were here. I miss you like a postponed inhalation. I need your warmth here beside me, reassuring me, telling me my fears are invalid, that I am not simply second best, my friend's runner up. I am in her shadow in many ways - I need my relationship with you to not be one of them.
I am terrified, like a child chained below water, fighting an anchor to have my next breath be air. I know that, in some way, you will always love her. She shaped you, like a stake guides the growth of a tree. But that part of you is now formed - it is no longer necessary for the stake to be there. You must let her go.
I'm not sure I can stay if you insist on keeping yourself tethered to her.
I don't know why you're not here tonight. Last night, you nuzzled close to me at the dinner table, ignoring our friends, and sighed about how much you missed me, that it had been too long. I exchanged a sardonic glance with her across the table. We could both read the body language of everyone around us, and could see your friend's defiance - "I slept with her, so what?" - and your guilty jealousy.
I want to believe that you missed me. I know it's more likely that you wanted to miss me, wanted to deny that you really missed her - even though you've spent the last nine months claiming to be in love with me. I hope hope hope that you really did miss me.
"I want to see you tomorrow," you said. "I don't care if it's not until late," you said. "Even if it's just for a few minutes," you said.
But now that she is gone, you are elsewhere.
If my prose hammers at your chest like a series of dangerous accusations, striking far too close to the truth for your comfort, I am not sure I am sorry.
When you and your friends parted ways from us last night, she and I made new friends to spend the evening with. I complained to them of how stifled I felt with you, bitter that I felt so consumed by you when you seemed to be feeding yourself to this expired, now out-of-circulation idea of my friend, your old flame.
I said semi-awful things aloud, but privately called to mind every reason I fell in love with you.
Your sweetness.
Your delight in puns, and the way you always call me "goofy" when I share one.
Your vaguely super-villainous laugh, the one you emit when something funny slowly soaks into your mind, gaining humor as it goes.
Your steady, calm tolerance when I'm going over the edge, losing my temper over small fish in small ponds.
Your eager willingness to discuss the brokenness of society's arbitrary sexual mores, and the way your eyebrows crunch toward your nose when you point out that same arbitrary brokenness in yourself.
Your desire to desire to have adventures, even as you sit on your couch to play the same old video games, and fall comfortably into worn routines.
I wonder if I will ever really be able to appreciate these things again. Because, my love, I need to talk to you, to ask you about my friend, your old flame. I need to see you, to have you bring it up, address it, say a eulogy for the situation and for your love for her. Then I will be able to smile, forgive you for leaving me uneasy, and continue on with you, indulging my love. The anchor will fall away from my ankle, and I will gulp in air with the appreciation of a girl who had almost accepted that she was going to drown.
But if you wait for me to bring it up, and then lie about your feelings, I will know. I will know that you did not miss me. I will know that, for you, I am second best, my friend's runner up. I will know that your stupid, impotent jealousy over her is more important to you than the past nine months, when you claimed to be in love with me. Worst of all, I will know that those semi-awful things I said to our new friends were true, and I will be forced to break my own heart as I break it off with you.
