Love and relationships have been sensitive topics between me and my parents for the past eighteen years. “You shouldn’t bother yourself with any of these in high school. Focus on your studies. Right now you don’t have the luxury to waste any time. After high school, then you start worrying about finding girlfriends in college.” I never questioned my parents’ authority on this matter before, but now I realize what their admonishments actually entailed.
It was late July, right in the middle of the summer. Hot and humid air drifted around every corner of the city and had settled uncomfortably on my tanned skin. Yet I felt something quite different when I first saw her, even though we were in a huge classroom with over sixty kids all trying to get a good score on the SAT with the help of this prep class. At first I felt I was immersed in a cool bath with a summer breeze flowing through my hair. But then I heard my heart pump sporadically like a buzzing phone, and the coolness was replaced by an extreme heat. Dragging my eyes away from her, I couldn’t help but take a few more looks. She was like a magnet, and I was irresistibly drawn to her.
She was wearing a pair of black flip-flops, black sports shorts, and an extra-small black T-shirt. The contrast between her light complexion and the dark color of her clothes added to her beauty. Beneath a pair of fashionable black glasses, her eyes, just like mine, were also scanning the new environment. I averted my eyes, feigning non-interest, hesitated awhile, then stood up and walked over, casually parking my bag on the seat next to her.
As the classes went on, I was glad that I could learn so much about Jessica. When we stood side by side, the tip of her ear lined up slightly above my shoulder. She was eight months older than I and a senior at a high school in Baltimore. Occasionally I told her a few things about myself, and she said she really envied the fact that I went to school in New York; she loved big cities, and Baltimore was just not urban enough for her.
After a few days, whenever I was by myself, she would jump right into my head, no matter what I was doing. When I took a shower, I thought of her slim waist and long legs. When I was brushing my teeth, I thought of her balmy lips and sweet smile. When I was drying my hair, I thought of her short yet tidy hair gathering in a braid right behind her neck. I had definitely seen more beautiful girls, but it was only she whose clothes I could remember whenever I changed mine. I boasted to my friends how pretty she was and how lucky I felt to know her. But they mocked me, “Yeah, so what?”
When I was in middle school, this girl sat in front of me for three years. To me, she was special. She didn’t look cuter than other girls. To be honest, at that time I didn’t have much standard of judging whether a girl was cute or not. However, whenever I had trouble with my Mandarin homework, I would tap on her shoulder. She would call me stupid while patiently explaining to me how to do it. At the beginning of classes, if I tapped on her shoulder, she would throw a pen over on my desk. Whenever she brought candies to school, she would put a piece on my desk, rub my head and say, “You’re welcome.” I didn’t know what affection meant, but I felt an urge to talk to her more, a feeling to always be in her presence, a hope that she had a similar feeling I had for her. Yet what my parents told me about relationships demonized my feelings. Guilt suppressed me whenever I wanted to talk to her about things beyond academics. Sometimes when I craved a conversation with her, I would reach out my hand yet immediately retract it before it touched her shoulder, as if I dared not break the friendship bubble separating us. After graduation I hugged her and watched her walking farther and farther away until she was immersed in the crowd. It wasn’t until then that I realized I couldn’t tap her shoulder anymore, I couldn’t hear her voice anymore, I couldn’t share her candies anymore. I repeated to myself in my heart, “I hope I can see you sometime in the future.” I didn’t even dare to tell her through a text message. Then I came to America, and I never saw her again. In retrospect, I feel more regretful for being cowardly about telling her my feelings than for failing to have a relationship with her. Three years later the same feeling I had before occurred again when I met Jessica.
I decided not to be silent. Perhaps I didn’t fear my mother as much as before; perhaps I felt I was “mature” enough to at least make a decision for myself on relationships. But most likely it was regret that propelled me. I told myself, “It’s the last week, my last chance.” I planned carefully, recited every word I would utter in our conversation, yet still stuttered in front of her, “Would…would you like to wa…watch a mo…movie with me?” I forgot how we ended up watching The Terminator, but I can clearly recall a sudden, terrifying explosion from Arnold Schwarzenegger's shotgun, which caused my hand to instinctively grab the nearest object. It was her hand. She was surprised but did not resist. In fact, she put my hand between her hands and laid her head on my shoulder for the rest of the movie.
After the course was over, we could only see each other through Skype and only on weekends due to the distances. She was overwhelmed, she said, by college applications and even sounded resentful at times when she recounted the minutes we’d spent talking to each other. I should have been angry, but I was mesmerized by the experiences we had and only half understood what she was implying when I agreed to shorten the amount of time we Skyped each weekend, and then every other weekend.
By then I knew where our relationship was heading. More than once she hinted that she wanted to break up with me, but I begged her to remember how sweet and wonderful the summer had been. I fought on insistently against the inevitable. I had started working out because she said she admired masculinity, and I’d casually slip into even our brief conversations how much firmer my abs were growing. I was teaching myself to cook because she said she loved sweet food, and I told her about a new cheesecake recipe I was eager for her to try the next time we saw each other. I described to her the books I was reading on art history because she wanted to study art in college. God knows how many hours I spent trying to distinguish between Roman and Greek architects. Yet all these things could not stop the gradual erosion of our relationship. I still liked her as much as ever, but her feelings for me, I knew, were slowly dying like a flower shivering in the cold.
I knew that breaking up would be beneficial for both of us: she couldn’t spare the time I demanded of her, and I devoted excessive amounts of time and energy doing things for someone who neither appreciated nor even wanted it, at the expense of the time I allocated for my own hobbies. My grades and performance in classes also suffered as her image constantly distracted me. I couldn’t sleep well, focus on a math problem, or even finish reading a paragraph on history without unlocking my phone to check for her messages. My heart just couldn’t let go. She seemed so precious to me that I was worried that I could never find a girl like her again if I lost her. However, maintaining such a relationship required so much effort that my reason urged me to stop. I felt ambivalent and really struggled. Just like a rotten tooth, the physical or mental pain was unbearable, but what was more unbearable was the fear of losing something irreplaceable.
Finally I came up with a solution. After the SAT on October 3rd, I took the long weekend off campus and hopped on a Megabus to Baltimore. I was hoping that a reunion after two months would reinforce her feelings for me. She picked me up from the bus stop and we spent the whole weekend together. We watched a movie, did some shopping, and enjoyed a couple of decent meals. I hoped that the weekend would be just like the summer, but it wasn’t. She seemed to be exhausting herself trying to please me instead of being herself. When I said I was hungry, she prepared a bowl of miso soup for me but immediately went back to doing her homework. When I suggested watching a movie, she used excuses that the theater was too cold. When she sat beside me on a car, she fell asleep on my shoulder, making me comfortable yet cleverly avoiding having a conversation with me. Lastly, when Uber carried us back to her school, she climbed from the cab, collected her bags, turned briefly to wave goodbye, and disappeared. On my way back to school, I sent several messages to her, but she didn’t reply. It was on the train from Grand Central to Westchester that my phone buzzed.
“Thank you, but I think it’s time. The feelings just aren’t there.”
Now, a year later, I can’t remember how I started talking about Jessica to this girl whom I like on our way back to school from the village of Dobbs Ferry. Trying to avoid the chill, we both kept our hands in our jacket pockets. Her smooth blonde hair rested quietly at the back of her head with a few strips blown to the side by the autumn wind. Dim streetlight dropped on her cheeks and reflected her clear dimples into my eyes.
“That was the shakiest train I ever took,” I sighed.
She awkwardly smiled, “That was so rebellious.”
“Yeah, but besides stupid, what do you think of what I did, going alone to Baltimore?”
“It’s definitely some crazy stuff, but I guess it’s good that you took some risks. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken during high school, and I’m glad someone as shy as you could do something straightforward.”
“I guess sometimes I can be straightforward. Well, um… You know, after last year, I thought that I would never have the same feelings as I had for Jessica during this last year of my high school. But then I met you. I feel like people always walk themselves into the same situation. This time, I want to ask directly. Do you like me?”
Her eyebrows frowned and her lips shook, “Well, don’t get me wrong. I do like you, but the age difference…And also I don’t really have much time for this. I hope you can understand. But I am glad that you asked. This is definitely a necessary step in establishing a relationship and you are doing the right thing.” She hugged me and waved me goodbye.
After all these years, I think now I have a deeper understanding about relationships. Back in middle school, I liked a girl because she was nice and helpful, perhaps merely as a friend. I would feel affectionate for anyone who did the same things as she did. For Jessica, all the feelings I had for her were based on my momentary passion and needs. However, need is something that passes in time after you've fulfilled it. A healthy relationship involves something more than need. Whatever it is, love is not something you can stow away in a box and hold on to like little memories. Memories are like bubbles, beautiful, delicate, evanescent, and certain, one day, to be forgotten.
Moreover, I also realized that relationships aren’t something as formidable as what my mom claimed them to be. It’s not love that distracts one from focusing on other things one should do. It’s one’s attitude towards a relationship that determines whether love will change one positively or negatively. In the past, talking to a girl, whether I liked her or not, required courage; I easily blushed and uttered one-word responses to their questions. But now I am brave enough to ask a girl out and tell her about my past and my feelings. In retrospect, I appreciate these experiences—they helped me become mature and explore what relationships feel like. They will brew in my memory cellar into some thick, tasteful ale. One day when I am old, I will sit on the bed and talk to a friend, “Old sport, let me tell you what I did when I was back in high school….”