₦airaland Forum

tonysunkan:
Our two social circles did not intersect in the slightest, but every day I got to come home and hang out with you, and spending those few hours with you between the end of school and dinnertime was always the highlight of my day.”

Christy glanced around her room, a smile on her face as she reminisced about those days. “Yeah, we had fun back then.”

“You’d been my playmate since we were little. Building pillow forts out of the couch cushions,” I said with a small chuckle.

“Playing make-believe with our LEGOs,” she giggled. “Your pirates always wanted to attack my princess castles for some reason.”

“Just running around the backyard with nothing but our imaginations.”

“Teaching you to bake chocolate chip cookies.” Christy shook her head. “You never did catch on very well.”

“I always wanted to follow the measurements on the box precisely.”

“When a true baker knows how to tweak things a little to make it just right.”

I rolled my eyes and waved my hand. “There was nothing remotely hormonal or sexual about it, but I was in love with you back then. I wanted to spend every waking moment possible with you. I dreamed we’d fall in love and get married one day after we both grew up, the classic girl-next-door romance from the movies, you know? But then in ... eighth grade ... I think? You started crushing on Taylor Guazelli.”

“Who?”

“You seriously don’t remember Taylor Guazelli?”

I shook my head. “You didn’t care whether or not I was around – I was the invisible brother at that point. You whined and complained to Precious and your other little girlfriends about how he walked past you in the hallway and didn’t even look at you. You thought you were gonna die.

"You described in great detail how he was such a hunk, defining qualities that did not resemble me in the slightest. and I convinced myself then and there that I would never get to be with you. Precious even said one time that I was getting pretty cute, but you dismissed her comment immediately saying that -I- was like a brother to you.”

Christy frowned and gave me a strange look. I had paused, so she led me with a somewhat impatient, “And then what?”

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure myself, but I thought back to the way I’d felt back then, thought really HARD and tried to will myself to bring such old memories back into clarity.

I don’t know if I succeeded or if I was just drawing new conclusions from old data, but after a few more seconds of trying to make the puzzle fit in my brain, I said, “I think ... I think ... I think that’s when I decided I could never consider you as a potential partner because you were like a sister to me.

Rather than let myself be hurt by rejection, I just ... categorized you as out of bounds. It was easier to believe than continue to hope you’d eventually see me as man but be perpetually disappointed.”