Flashback: The First Time Around

Since once again B stalked my dreams last night (his girlfriend was a tenant in my grandmothers house and was letting her have a joint graduation party in her home for B since we were having one for another family member, and his girlfriend found out the hard way that I was her landlords granddaughter and was livid that I was there and she couldn’t tell me to leave. Anyone care to analyze that?) I figure maybe it’s time to go back to my story on how I got here in the first place.

There are a lot of running themes in my relationship with B that were present from the start. We had said from the first night we were alone together in his car that we weren’t looking to start a new relationship, as B had ended his first major relationship a few months prior, and I was only a month out of my relationship with K. We agreed to be friends, and I liked that idea of him being like a male BFF. Then we spoke 3 times on the phone (including one time where I snuck a personal call from my job at the department store) seen a movie, gone for ice cream, talked a ton, and made out in the front seat of the very car where we had decided to be “just friends” 24 hours before. There was something between us that sort of pushed us to that level. It didn’t feel wrong. It did feel slightly dangerous though. I was so used to being the one who held the control in the relationship, and I could tell even that early on that I would surrender to him every time.

B was so different than my previous boyfriends. He didn’t even look like them, he was a foot taller than me, nice athletic build with brown hair and green eyes. He had this awesome smile and these perfect teeth (that he would later pass on to M) There was this aura about him, a mixture of confidence and arrogance, that scared and intrigued me. But inside, he was intelligent, which is something that my other boyfriends lacked. I mean, K was brilliant, but his illness hindered him socially. B could talk, you could have an intelligent, analytical and well thought out discussion with him.

There were two conversations I remember in particular. We had been talking about trust in a relationship, and we disagreed about how to gain trust. He said trust had to be earned, that he trusted no one until they proved themselves. I agreed to a point, but argued that you had to start with some sort of blind trust, off a vibe or a feeling about someone, or else you wouldn’t be involved with that person from the get go. Off that initial trust, it grew unless someone did something to break that trust. He couldn’t believe I would blindly trust someone even a little bit. I used him as an example, by telling him that if I felt that he wasn’t worthy of a little trust, we wouldn’t even be talking, I ‘d never give him the opportunity to be in my life. But if he was going to distrust me from the get go when I gave him no reason to do so, what would be the point if I already had a strike against me. I deserved a clean slate. I was quite the perceptive 17 year old, I tell you. I come back to that talk a lot.

The second conversation was later in the same phone call. We were talking about our recent breakups, and he had asked if K and I had been having sex. I told him it was like twice, and then we broke up. He then asked if I had ever had a pregnancy scare, and I told him that we really didn’t have much opportunity, but we had been safe, and it had been a couple of months since we had been together, so I was all good. He confided in me that he and his ex had been having sex since he was 14, and his ex used to fake pregnancy scares to get his attention. I was pretty appalled. I mean, I couldn’t even imagine why a 15 year old would want to be pregnant (naïve, huh?) but how could someone mess with their boyfriend’s head like that? I would later recall this conversation after I would tell B I was pregnant, for real this time, and he would call me a liar.

B and I began to spend time together. We talked everyday after school, and spent Friday nights hanging out in groups of other couples, and alone. We were at the same place in our lives, six months before graduation, unsure of our future beyond high school. Neither one of us had a real plan as to what we wanted to do. We knew college was a definite, but as far as where and what to study, we were lost. I was most likely going to study journalism, since I loved to write and this just seemed the only way I could do that and make a career out of it. But my heart wasn’t in it. I was interested in leaving my town and exploring other parts of the country. B changed his mind every day. One minute he wanted to go to a military academy, the next he wanted to do something sports related, like athletic training. We didn’t want to think about it. We wanted to go out and have fun and live out the rest of our childhoods while we still could. We were beginning to “sow some oats” and engaging in typical senior in high school behavior that we had never engaged in: cutting a few elective classes, drinking, etc. And neither one of us could have seen that our childhoods would end soon enough.

Again, I wasn’t stupid enough to think that a teenage boy did not have sex on his mind, but it was never discussed, or attempted. It was a non issue, I never thought about it because technically, B liked to remind me that we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, and there was no way I was going to sleep with him without that commitment. However, making that commitment was always on my mind. I tried not to, but after a month, I had to admit I had fallen hard for B. It scared me only a bit, because I thought B had started to fall for me too. I figured that an exclusive relationship was just around the corner, after all, it wasn’t like he was seeing anyone else, and things were going well.

At least I thought they were. Looking back, I saw tons of red flags that only maturity revealed. Like how I would see him in our first class we had together, we would say goodbye, and I’d never see him again for the rest of the day. Three days a week, we had off at the same time, but we never made plans to spend it together. I would see him at Taco Bell or the pizza place, and he would be with his friends, I’d be with my friends, and it would be fine. Coming out of smothering relationship after smothering relationship, it was a relief to me. But what did confuse me was the Saturday Night Ritual. Since Friday was “Date Night” Saturday was reserved for hanging out separately with our friends, but we had the same friends, which meant we were making the same plans. B would go out of his way to make it as separate as possible, making sure that even when my friends would look to hitch rides to parties with his friends, he would get annoyed if they offered to pick me up. When we were at parties, he would say hello, talk for a bit, and walk away, or go on runs with his friends. It irritated me. Whenever I’d complain about it, he would remind me that Saturday night was his night, and he wasn’t obligated to spend time with me. I countered that spending time with me shouldn’t be an obligation, if he liked me and wanted to be around me, why did it matter what night it was. He accused me of purposely orchestrating my plans to be where he was to take him away from his friends, I would argue that his friends are MY friends too, and he knew that from the beginning since they set us up.

It was hard. Everytime I felt like I had gotten through, that the walls were beginning to come down and that we could really have something, B would suddenly build that wall back up. I lived in a black and white world, where if B didn’t like me, he wouldn’t even bother, so the fact that he was calling me, spending time with me, kissing me, inviting me to be his date at events meant that he did like me, and therefore would eventually fall for me too. B’s world was grey, I think he liked me, but he could like me and be with me and not feel the need to make things serious. I was in way over my head before I knew what hit me.

We had been dating for two months when there was a big shift in the teenaged world around us. First, I had begun to visit colleges that I had been accepted to. My first choice was only about 20 miles away, but I had been wait-listed. The other schools were all considerably further. There had been a school break, and I was going on a road trip with my parents 800 miles away to visit the school I would eventually go to. Before I left, I rememeber we were partaking in the senior tradition of cutting out of classes the day before a break and were hanging at a friend’s house, and everything was fine. When I returned five days later, I learned that our other couple friend, who had been dating as long as B and I , had decided to go exculsive. I was sad that I missed it, because D and I were forever plotting to have the boys commit to us, but I knew that since all the other couples we started with had broken up, it was just a matter of time before B followed suit and asked me out too. The other thing was that suddenly everyone was planning for the prom that was three months away. My friends started talking dresses, the boys started planning limos and afterparties. It wasn’t discussed, but everyone thought it was a given that B and I would go together, given that we were dating. His friends counted us in the limo count, and I figured it was time to go dress shopping before all the good dresses were reserved. (where I live, everyone shopped at bridal stores for their prom dresses, and in order not to have dress wars, the attendants kept reservation lists for each school prom so that no one sold the same dress to a girl attending the same prom. Ridiculous, I know but I never questioned it!)

It was a Thursday afternoon and I called B after school as I always did while I waited for my friends to pick me up to go to the bridal salon. When I asked him what our plans would be for the next night ( which I was uber excited about, because I was convinced that this would be the night I because B’s official girlfriend) he told me he had decided to go see The Doors movie premiere with a few of the guys. I remember I was pretty OK with it, I figured he was just looking forward to the movie and told him that we’d just go out Saturday instead. I left with my friends not thinking anything was wrong. Later that night, I was on the phone with B again, recounting my shopping trip and how I still had to look around some, and B asked me about the prom. Specifically, if I thought we were going to go together. I still remember the conversation:

Me: Well, why wouldn’t we?

B: But what if we aren’t seeing eachother anymore? The prom is in May, that’s like three months away.

Me: So? I mean we said we’d always be friends, we’ll just go as friends then. (suddenly dawns on me what he’s saying, and that we don’t have a date set for the weekend) Why? Do you see us breaking up before then?

Silence.

B: I think it’s best we don’t see eachother anymore.

That’s all I remember. I know I didn’t beg him to reconsider. I know I didn’t yell at him. I think I was in shock. I know I got off the phone before the tears came.

And that my friends, is the story of the first time I got my heart broken.