when i was 15, i was told a little white lie by a boy i liked a ridiculous amount, but that lie filled me with the most amount of satisfaction & longing i had been looking from him that whole summer. summer going into my sophomore year of high school, i was friends with a boy who was two years older than me. we had spent the summer finding silly things to do & while our friendship was never one i saw coming, i had never had more fun than the days i spent with him up til that point in my life.
through conversation, we found out that we both loved riverdale. riverdale was a few seasons in deep by that point & a new season had come out that summer. we would talk about how excited we were for the season finale of the show, wondering what would happen, & we would conspire in his car and compare each others theories, until one day i grew the most amount of confidence i had ever brewed & asked him if he wanted to watch the show with me at my house.
for some context, he told me that he wasn’t done with the season and he was just a few episodes ahead of me. so when the day came, we buckled down in my upstairs loft & spent HOURS watching riverdale. when the finale episode was upon us, i went crazy throwing around every conspiracy that came to my head & with every idea i proposed to him, he always disagreed & was confident on his theory of the seasons cliff hanger. i grew slightly annoyed with every idea he disagreed with that i felt so confident about, but i liked him a little bit too much to let that really get to me.
as we sat on my couch for the hours of shows, you would think something would happen…ANYTHING, but in the five hours we sat in my loft we just sat there, shoulder to shoulder. i think my pinky grazed his hand but that’s as close to hand holding i got that day. regardless of this disappointment, we got to the last episode & he ended up being correct about the season finale…he was right on the nose about the ending, but i was more caught up in the fact that i was wrong to wonder how he could’ve even guessed the finale.
he left shortly after finishing the season, & i think disappointment was an understatement. i had spent that summer growing to like him more & more, & a little part of me really believed that he liked me too (i would’ve NEVER invited him over if i wasn’t at least 90% confident that he liked me back). i texted our mutual friend about my frustration, wondering why he would even come over if he didn’t like me back, or why he would spend so much time with me that summer or why he would sit with me watching some silly little show for that many hours.
one thing you should always keep in mind, especially if you’re a teenager, people don’t know how to express their feelings at that age, especially boys. so, after i type a bibles worth of complaints and confusion to our friend, he said something along the lines of “he had finished the season weeks ago”. for some reason that made me slightly more upset. i was annoyed he didn’t make a move, i was upset he lied about where he was in accordance with the season, & i was flattered that he wanted to sit with me for all those hours just to spend time with me.
our mutual friend & i were equally as confused because he had expressed some interest in me to our friend, but this situation taught me one really good lesson that i took with me as i grew up: missed opportunities come from a) ineffective communication & b) fear. while we both were guilty of not expressing our feelings to each other, we hid behind our actions, hoping they would say all the things we didn’t have the guts to say to each other. we spent weeks tip toeing around each other-entertaining the idea of the two of us as more than friends in our minds without ever telling the other person.
nothing ever came from this, & if my memory serves me well, i’m pretty sure he eventually went on to friendzone me once the school year started, he was a senior & i was a sophomore, & i went on to date another boy for the duration of my high school years. i still made the same mistakes in the years to follow-i let my insecurities & lack of communication skills allow for toxicity in my relationship, but i share this story to remind you that young love is hard. it’s hard to know what you like in a person, hard to gather the courage to shoot your shot, & hard to piece together how you will fit in another persons life and vice versa. go tell a white lie to someone that leads to you and them spending more time with each other, but instead of playing chicken on who will tell who first, just tell them how you feel; imagine if it worked out in your favor all because you spoke up for yourself.
with all my love,
♡steff
Comments