This summer seemed so thrilling and it happened so quick how fast I got to know you. I think I scared you a bit and it scared me, too. I know it was just online and not in person as much, but still. I suppose it could have been anyone on the other side, though it seemed like you. I got to know you so quick and opened up to you. I could be out at a bar and still I wanted to talk to you and open up to you. Yes, you're pretty and hot and all of that, but I just wanted to talk to you. I told you things that I hadn't told anyone in years. I mean these are things that were so personal, like from when I was a little Gothic teenager, and they seemed like so long ago, but it hurt then, of course.
I even held back things we had in common because it was scaring me how much we had in common. Yes, I like How to Deal, too, but that seems like a line. I had a poster of it until a little before I met you. It was such a neat little movie. I liked Oscar Wilde before, too, though not as much as when you had me finally read Dorian Gray. It's really a beautiful book. I feel like I've been having this completely intellectual affair with you (in my mind) and maybe I have. You recommend these books and I read them, sometimes immediately, or eventually when I can, and I try to be fair and say, "Hey, maybe I won't like this," but it seems I usually do. Wuthering Heights was a struggle at first, but wow, when I got into it, it was beautiful.
I knew we weren't dating (I never even saw you this summer), but I was thinking about you a lot. I wondered how you were doing, I would get jealous when I knew you were dating or hanging out with other guys, and the highlights of my days and weeks were chatting with you online. I had a little crush on you before, but now it was different. It went to another place for me and I cared about you. Like I told you, I hadn't had feelings for anyone in a long time and having them at all for you (even the little puppy dog crush I had earlier this year and starting late last year) gave me an inkling that I could still feel that way. But now...now it seemed you were on my mind in a different way.
Then I got to a point where I realized (or thought) that it wasn't going to happen. I had tried a few times to ask you out before and I guess I was flirty enough. You told me you weren't the girl for me, I didn't know you, you cancelled the one time we did try to set a date up. These things happened at different times, but it seemed to add up to things not going the way I wanted and I had to realize that (or so everyone in my life was telling me). Then there came the time I was having a bad day and I thought to e-mail you about it. It wasn't because I was trying to make a move or get you to talk to me or get you to feel sorry for me. It was because I wanted to talk to someone I cared about who might understand me. It felt weird to be messaging you about this totally normal thing like having a bad day. I think maybe I had tried to mask the fact that I have bad days, because I like to think I have a good attitude, and I was putting my best foot forward, obviously.
I do recover from things quickly these days, and this particular bad day was no exception. I read a book by the dying light of the sun and felt a million times better. I felt like I was in a good place with you, too, and I told you I was feeling better. But then the next day, you officially started dating someone. I told you I was happy for you, but maybe I was lying. I was happy for you, of course I was: I care about you. But I wasn't happy you were with him. I wrote a few angry poems and wished I hadn't met you and all that good stuff. You were never my girlfriend, but darned if I didn't want you to be. It was a bad couple of weeks.
I was still nice to you, though, because I can't not be. You're not my girl, but I care about you still. Then I saw you in person a few weeks later. You kind of sneaked up on me, but I was glad to see you. I hoped I was playing it a little cool, but I was so nervous to see you again, you have no idea. We talked and caught up and you recommended another book (I got it several days later and am reading some of it, of course). I think if I fake being cool long enough I might start to feel it a little, but I lose it all when I see you, usually. When I saw you again, you were that smart little woman who knew beauty when she saw it and thought the rest of the world should know about it, too, though I think there are things that not everyone need know about, like the story you shared with me that not many have read by Wilde. To conclude, I just like the world better knowing someone like you is in it and I wouldn't change having met you for anything.
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