The One That Got Away......

I just got the worst news EVER!...ok so maybe not the worst, but it is still pretty sad. My friend calls me today and goes on to joyfully announce that a mutual friend of ours is getting married this summer. Now ususally i would be all smiles and happy for him..... well that was if he wasn't the one that got away. It all began almost 8 years ago, i was a freshman in college and with very few friends on campus and little interest in making any really. I was woken up one morning by a call from my friend saying she was downstairs in the lobby of my dorm and needed to be signed in. I grudgingly got up and wiped the sleep from my eyes as i cursed my friend for waking me up abruptly. When i got downstairs i noticed she wasn't alone, the stranger in the baseball cap seemed engrossed in a phone conversation with a girl called "Nina", i mumbled a general hello and turned to go upstairs as they both followed closly behind me. It later turned out that the guy i had taken little notice of was my friend's classmate(still don't know what they were doing in my dorm though), he would become the first guy to hold my teenage attention for a while.
He was tall, dark and very handsome. He was amazingly smart and i loved to just listen to him talk. He would come to my dorm room and we would just talk for hours on end...all the while i wondered what it would feel like to kiss him. When exams rolled thru...he would come to the little dingy study room down my hall and ramble on about calculations he had to spend all night doing..... all the while keeping me company on my mission to pulling an "all nighter". On one of the very random Sat that we had little to do, he invited me out bowling with him...i accepted. Didn't feel the need to point out that my ass had never been bowling before. I had the most amazing time that night...i sucked at bowling but he never let me know it. After falling on my ass a couple of times and never really hitting the target, we went out for ice cream.... we took a long walk down the little river behind the bowling alley, as he asked me about my family and my ambitions. With every question..... i liked him even more. I thought i was in heaven really, i mean i was with a man i had the biggest crush on and he wanted to know about ME....i was living out the movies i soo loved to watch.
As the year went on, we hung out and became closer even though neither of us ever said we were anything but friends. About a year into knowing him, i met my now ex-boyfriend. I told him about my new man...he seemed happy for me. Over time i spent less and less time with him and more time with my new man but i still adored him to death. I moved off campus and didn't see any reason to hang out with him anymore, especially when my possessive ex-boyfriend seemed to dislike him. The years passed and we would call each other from time to time...even while i was with my boyfriend, i would still wonder what it would have felt like to be his girl. He became the big man on campus, the guy every girl liked to talk about, he was very popular.... but he always made time for me.

And then today ....i feel like my perfect world just came crashing down. He is getting married and has a beautiful baby girl who he absolutely adores. He is no more the guy that just rambled on about the calculations he hated doing, he is the guy doing his PhD and looking into what the future has to offer. I had seen him only six months ago and i remember it felt soo good to just laugh with him again, recognizing the twinkle in his eye everytime i said something funny. He slipped me his number as we parted ways that night and made me promise i would use it this time..i never did keep that promise. After i got over the shock of him getting married ...i confessed my crush to the friend that called me and in return he goes..."I know...he liked you too". Those words stung...all these years i had wondered what it would have felt like to be his girl..and all the while he had been telling my friends how much he thought he liked me too. He never told me how he felt...for the same reason i didn't tell him how much i adored him. We had both been too afraid to change what we had with each other.
Now i will never know what loving him would have felt like. At the back of my mind, i guess i am happy he found happiness with someone else...i really am. I can't help but wonder if that would have been me he will be waiting for at the altar. Because he is my friend...i am going to show up at the wedding, smile and give his bride a hug, tell her what a good man she has, give him a kiss on the cheek ...all the while dying inside, afterall isn't that what a good friend is supposed to do?. And someday when i get over my pain and can smile back at the memories we did make, He will always be to me.... The one that got away....