“You basically just asked the same thing twice, but in different words. He’s just a friend, Mom,” I say. “A very male friend. Who I haven’t seen in twenty years.”
“Riiiiiight, so why did you call me and ask about him?”
I pause before repeating, “He’s just a friend, Mom.”
I then hang up the phone, throwing it across the room and pulling out a book to try and distract myself.
The following month is simultaneously the shortest and the longest of my life. In some ways, I feel like time is flying by, but at the same time, I spend all of my time daydreaming and overthinking, so the days also feel like they are dragging by.
I try to distract myself with good books and walks onthe beach, sketchpad in hand. But drawing the crashing waves and reading about happily ever afters doesn’t take my mind off Stephan coming to visit. Feeling like I’m back in kindergarten, I realize that all of my sketches are either of Stephan or his name. Truly, am I a child again? Am I in love with someone who is basically a stranger?
I spend my days and nights scrolling through his photos on Facebook. Just to be prepared. As a friend, of course.
I go to church and have my head bowed in prayer for most of the sermon, to the extent that I barely hear a whisper of what is said or any of the songs that are sung. After the service, I go to the personal reflection room and continue to pray by myself for several hours, but I can’t shake the nerves.
The next week, one of the partners at my firm asks me to mentor Owen, showing him the ropes on how to use our CRM and teaching him where to go to review case law. After this frustrating interaction, Owen acts as if he were self-taught on something I had taught him about building charts and graphs in a staff meeting. The other partner praises him, saying that he knew his choice in hiring Owen would pay off. I escape into a daydream. My career is a good choice for me and fulfilling overall, but at times it can be very frustrating. Sometimes I feel like being a woman in this field is an uphill battle. Despite this, I always feel understood by Stephan online.
A few days before he’s scheduled to arrive, I wake up to three missed calls from an unknown number. I ignore this, assuming some teenagers were playing a prank, but a sense of unease starts to stir beneath the surface. I don’thave many numbers blocked, but the possibility of it being one person makes me nervous.
The morning of his arrival, I spend nearly an hour in the shower, compared to my usual 5-7 minutes. I am so nervous that I hold on to the support beam to avoid falling and hurting myself. After I’m convinced that I smell an acceptable level of fine, I throw all of the clothes from my walk-in closet onto the floor, unable to decide what to wear. I have dated and been involved with men my entire life, and yet I’ve never been as stressed as I am in preparing to meet Stephan again. But I’ve never been as excited, either.
8 pm. Stephan’s flight lands in two hours. He caught the last flight out of San Antonio, having driven there from what essentially became his hometown of Alpine, Texas. Not as cool as Marfa from what I’ve heard, but close enough. He’s visiting me “as a friend,” and we haven’t seen each other in person since we were little kids. I have liked him since we first started talking again as adults but have never admitted that to him. When we have random chats over social media on a weekend or late in the evening, I assume that he likes me too, but I have never had the guts to tell him how I feel. And now he’s visiting.
I take the bus to meet him at the airport. He’s getting a rental car for ease of use, but I had wanted to meet him there. Twenty minutes until his flight lands. I am nervous. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
While walking to find my seat on the bus, I notice apeculiar old man with an oval-shaped face and receding hairline. He is pouring over a magazine one-handedly and behaving very strangely. Realizing he was rubbing himself through his jeans, I attempt to get to my seat until the bus jerks and I fall backward slightly. He drops his magazine, pages filled with provocative content, and smiling widely, asks, “Do I inspire you, ma’am?”
Grossed out and vowing to never become like this man, and ideally never be inspired by him either—except perhaps as an inspiration to do better—I try to get my mind off this and select a seat near the back exit. Only a few stops and a few minutes until I’m at the airport, and my friend’s plane will land.
I get off the bus, quickly glancing behind me to ensure I am not being followed. Then, Stephan’s flight lands. I stand waiting by baggage claim and see the flight from San Antonio appear on baggage drop four. I see him coming out of the secure area. “Phoebe?” he says, as we start closing the distance. What do I do? He’s just a friend. I try not to second-guess myself and run up to him with my arms wide open. He picks me up and spins me, saying, “Long time no see.” I feel a tingling throughout my whole body, with a strong pull that makes me feel like I want to dive off a diving board into open water.
Awkwardly, I tell him that he looks great, and then I feel I can’t make eye contact. He tells me that I look great, too, and then awkward silence ensues.
He hadn’t scheduled the showing to see me, right? Charleston is an artsy enough town for it to be a coincidence.I had offered him my couch for his trip. To save money, you know?
He takes me to pick up his rental car, and we make awkward, stilted small talk. “So, how’s the weather? Oh, right, we’re in the same place,” I say. He chuckles, maybe thinking I said it as a joke. I mentally face-palm at this awkward question, but I truly wasn’t expecting to see him in the flesh again. I had thought we were just the modern equivalent of pen pals.
He drives us to my neighborhood, and I show him where the guest parking is before giving him a quick tour of my home. While neither of us is the biggest fan of TV or movies, we sit on the couch and rewatch a movie about dinosaurs that we had seen together as little kids. We are sitting on opposite sides of the couch with my legs on top of his, but he couldn’t possibly mean anything by letting me do this, I think to myself. I just don’t have an ottoman. I’ll have to buy one at some point soon, to avoid people feeling compelled to make near-romantic gestures due to the limited space allotted.
The movie finishes without much fanfare.
As I get up from the couch, intending to go to bed, Stephan says “Phoebe, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…” I am instantly worried that he will tell me that he doesn’t like me as more than a friend or that I will accidentally admit my feelings, so I avoid the conversation entirely. Perhaps not the best choice.
“Have a nice night,” I say before shutting my bedroom door. The next morning, he is nowhere to be found. Did I scare him off? Maybe I should have listened to what he had to say.
He pops back into my sunny rented townhome a few minutes later. “I grabbed myself a coffee and you some peppermint tea with stevia. Your favorite, right?” I stand there, surprised and in awe, grateful that he remembered a one-off comment I made six months ago. Yes, I love peppermint tea and drink it frequently. I had some in my cabinet, though, but I know he is just being nice. As a friend.
He then pulls a book out of a bag, saying that he remembered I liked to read fantasy books, and the coffee shop had some indie books for sale. It was a thin paperback book with a purple cover, featuring a goose.The Ever-Darkby El Hoffman, it read. “The lady at the register said it’s been all the rage lately. Apparently, it’s Christian fantasy but not overtly, so I thought you’d love it.”
I thank him, as fantasy is one of my favorite genres, and I had never been able to leave the house without at least one book.
He then follows up, saying he had purchased a poetry book that he thought would inspire his artwork,The Pirate, The Pen & The Flame: A Collection of Poems by Pat Ulacco. Apparently, Pat is a poet who lives by the beach up in North Carolina, and his collection has been flying off the shelves nearly as fast as the fantasy book. He opens the book, claiming he had read an interesting poem while in line to pay:
“Dream well, dream real,
trust what you feel.
We saw no mermaids
