Author and Columnist
I tried writing it and I got as far as "I am falling in" then my fingers refused to cooperate further. But perhaps that is all that needs to be said.
I am falling in.
That was already on thin ice with Eileen, who wanted you to fall in liking her. Fall in kissing at most.
But you were falling into the beginnings of love with her. Not love, though you appreciated and respected her. You cannot love anyone without far more involvement, but you can start the fall around the time you have the confidence to utter that particular four-letter word.
This person Eileen wants and needs but is scared to have.
She isn't scared. Not of you. She cares for you.
She may be scared that you want something more solid than a game. She likes playing this out with you, but that is all she can want: playing.
I wish I could sit my heart down in a chair and give it a lecture about the importance of patience and how trying to rush into relationships with girls who have never really had a serious relationship tends to make them flee and therefore make us (the heart and me) rather sad to have lost them.
You are playing the role of your heart right here. Allow me to lecture.
You lost the chance at a romantic relationship with her and, in time, a friendship. It isn't that you aren't friends. If Eileen called me right now and wanted to go on a double date with our respective spouses, I would be eager to catch up on twenty years. However, I barely know her and do not anticipate that changing.
For a month, Eileen was growing to be one of the most crucial people in your life. Then she said no to you, and the fading began.
I think of her as my girlfriend (I am going to have to learn enough French that I can find a term I like better than "girlfriend." It reminds me of what one calls the girl they just snatched a kiss from on the playground in fifth grade).
She isn't. That is a reciprocal relationship you did not establish. You adore her, which is a fine thing to do, but she has no commitment to you. Passion, yes. At different moments, you both were crushing hard. But you did not belong to one another.
I want to be that last call before she falls asleep.
That's what drives in the final nail. You are whispering Eileen to sleep over the phone and assume she has passed into unconsciousness. You think there is no better time to say precisely what emotional state you are falling into.
The sleep was a ruse. She is immediately alert and clarifies that you have overstepped your bounds, and she can no longer play at these fraught words.
Of easing this confusion and pain, because I cannot endure not helping her. Not as I would a friend, but as I would an angel.
I am using my one allotted gag per response for this line.
A part of me, however repressed, was five minutes away from getting in my car and going to her so that she could cry on my shoulder, or do whatever it is she needed to do on my shoulder. I think I will always wish I had.
Maybe you should have. It would have made for a better story if you had this dynamism.
I don't think you would have been doing this to comfort her but to try to win Boyfriend Points.
Today, I sat on my bed and I looked out at the air as though it were her. [...] I tried to explain to the Air Eileen how I felt. Tears began streaming over the bridge of my nose (my head was on the pillow looking out, otherwise they would have streamed down my face.)
You overestimate how charming melodrama is.
You are not crying because you are falling in love with this charming sixteen-year-old. You are pushing out Kate and the desire to be single.
I think all semblance of control slipped once I confessed to her that she alone hold sway over my heart. Foolishly I surrendered the reins of my emotions in this respect, both to her and fate.
Buddy, you are lucky that I have exhausted my allotment of gagging already.
I would say here that she may very well run in fear and I wouldn't blame her.
She walks away in resigned awareness. You don't blame her.
But I know from my achingly limited experience of her that she will not run from me because I confess... emotion... to her.
Oh, Younger Thomm. What you don't know could fill the ocean.
One of my friends said today, after telling her of Eileen in the same terms I would use to write to her (Eileen), that I am in the process of writing the great American novel about her.
Aside from one short story (I remember the details, but I don't know where the story is any longer), I never cannibalized any part of Eileen for my fiction. I have characters that began as thinly veiled versions of friends or those who took on aspects of others as they developed. Eileen, however, has never ended up in building blocks, not that she wouldn't have deserved it.