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The letter wasn't exactly as 'spectacular' as I expected it to be when I saw it sitting in my mailbox today while coming home from school. I had been waiting AGES to hear from him, and now I felt a bit stupid 'running' upstairs to my room with that huge grin on my face when I saw the envelope addressed to me in Erin's handwriting. To say that it was anti-climactic would be a severe understatement. I opened it as soon as I kicked off my shoes and closed my bedroom door. I was literally wide eyed with such a high level of excitement that my fingers fumbled with the paper, dropping it more than once. It was finally here, I thought to myself. A letter, from my celebrity of a best bud! It had been what seemed like a YEAR to me, but I was finally hearing back from him after I sent a letter to see how he was doing. I know it was pretty long, I must have written him at least ten pages worth of stuff, but what can I say? I missed him! I had SO much to tell him, and in my eagerness, my heart just poured out every word that entered my mind until my hands went numb. I was SO hoping he'd enjoy hearing from me, and I was happy to be sending him a piece of my life to share while he was away filming in Seattle.
Somehow...what I got back from him in return...was a little less than satisfying...
"Dear Blake,
I am so so very sorry that I haven't been able to contact you in so long. If only you knew how busy things were here, how incredibly insane everything is for me right now, you'd see that there was absolutely NO way for me to get back to you any sooner. My deepest apologies dude. That aside, how are you? It's been a long time, I know, but I really want to know how you're doing. I miss you so much.
Listen, I can't stay too long. But I just wanted you to know that I'm doing ok, and I can't wait to come home and see you again. Take care of yourself, ok?
Budz forever,
- Erin"
That was it. I sent him all of that info, all of my experiences, a bunch of questions about how he was doing and how he liked shooting an actual MOVIE...and he sent back...this. I read the note two or three times in a row, which didn't really take long considering how short it was, and I guess I should be happy that I even got THAT much of a reply. Even if it was a bit 'impersonal'. I tried to be happy about it. I always was before. He'd send little notes like this and it would seem so cool...but nowadays it just wasn't enough. Now it felt like he could have sent this same note to anybody, you know? Like...he had written it once, copied it a billion times, and sent it out to anyone who had sent him some wacky piece of five minute fanmail. It just felt 'absent' somehow. Sighhh...I don't know how to say it. I'm not whining, I'm just disappointed is all. Yeah, disappointed, that's the word I'm searching for.
Maybe he's just busy. Who knows? He did say that they kept him pretty occuppied most of the time a long time ago when he first started filming. I still remember how excited he was to be getting fanmail, hehehe, he was so happy. That was a few months back...before I became one of those letters sitting in a sack with 300 others. I shouldn't really be so hurt, right? I mean, the movie wraps one week from now, and he'll be able to come back home again for a while. Hopefully a long while. It'll be cool to have him close again...if...if we're still friends, that is.
There was a time when Erin and I were the very best buds in the whole world. We were bookends, you hardly ever saw one of us without the other close behind. There was nothing we couldn't talk about, laugh about, cry about, bitch about...we were as close to brothers as you could get most times. Then, by some weird stroke of luck, he got famous. REALLY famous! Erin got an opportunity to try out for a film role. A REAL film role. And they called him back a few times before giving him the good news. We were bouncing around for a WEEK when he heard he was gonna be in a feature film. I thought it was awesome. I mean, when he used to tell me that he was going out on auditions and wanted to be an actor, I was always happy for him but never really invested much thought into what it would be like if he ever really became a movie star. I never thought about what it would be like to have a close friend who was consantly in the spotlight like that. A real life 'celebrity' for a friend. I guess I know how it feels now.....
...It fucking SUCKS!
Everything happened so fast. It was like this big explosion, and suddenly...he just didn't have time to talk to me anymore. The friendship that I treasured so much is now stretched too thin to even really matter anymore. I hate to say it, but it's the truth. I almost never hear from him, and when I do, it's months and months later after I've already forgotten what it was that I wrote to him in the first place. And on TOP of that...when he writes back, it ends up being some dainty little piece of bullshit like THIS that he probably wrote in like...TWO minutes...to keep me from 'bothering' him. Or maybe to keep himself from feeling guilty about this 'strenuous obligation' that he has to talk to his so-called friends. And yet, when some magazine or talk show wants his attention...all they have to do is ring a bell and he comes running to them at the drop of a hat. Me? I have to wait. And wait. And WAIT! Sometimes I get mad, sure. There's no shame in admitting to that. He'd probably get mad at ME if I said anything to him about it, but Jesus...it fucking HURTS, you know that? Sometimes it's like he doesn't even CARE anymore. I feel discarded and alone, and wonder who he got to replace me as his friend while I sit here and try not to think about him anymore. Then...just when I'm ANGRY enough to tell him to get lost for good, just when I've gone long enough to actually forget about him and move on with the rest of my life...he sends me something sweet in the mail and I find myself melting all over again. What do you do when it causes you just as much pain to hold on to somebody than it does to let him go? I've wondered that many times since he's been gone, and haven't found an answer yet. Because, to be totally honest, I need him. And I still can't figure out if telling him off will hurt me twice as much as it would him or not. Because there are plenty of people who want to get close to him. I'm the one who's gonna suffer if he doesn't stick around. I think that's my dilemma...wishing I didn't need him so much.
It's not cool, it's NOT fair, and it's not the way things are supposed to go between us. The more I thought about it in silence, the harder I had to try to keep from being angry. The letter itself was wrinkling up between my clenched fingers as I looked at the words again. I thought about how little effort he even put into trying to talk to me. I mean, for crying outloud, how long does it take to sit down and send me a little something to say hello? All of five minutes? Can he be SO busy that he can't give me five minutes? I try not to get mad, I try not to be hurt, I try not to even expect that he'll reply to me anytime soon...but the truth is I care about Erin more than he'll ever know. I always have. And he just REFUSES to let me in anymore. I doubt that I'll ever be any closer to him emotionally than I am right now. But I've never felt so distant from him either. So....'left alone'. Here I was, yearning for his attention, and aching with the misery of not getting it from him, and he's out there somewhere not thinking about me at all. If he IS, it's probably listed along with a bunch of other 'chores' that he'd rather not be bothered with. I began to tear up a bit, but fought it back. Don't you DARE cry over him! Don't give him the satisfaction of breaking your heart. I swear, as much as I wanted to crumble up that twenty five second note that he wrote me and throw it right into the trash...I knew that I was going to end up treating it like gold. I always do. He means that much to me. I never told him that, but it's the truth.
The phone rang, and I rolled over on my bed to pick it up. "Hello?"
"Hey babe. What are you up to tonight?" It was Rachael on the other end. A friend of mine from school. I was happy to let her kinda slide into my life once Erin had flown off to start shooting in March. Now, fourteen months later, she and I have become pretty close. Especially after an entire summer of hanging out and having fun. She's probably the only thing that has kept me sane in his absence. I don't want to think of her as a substitute or anything, because she's definitely more than that. But while she dulled the pain of missing my best friend, she couldn't erase it. Not by a long shot.
"Nothing. I think I'm just gonna stay in and watch some tv tonight." I said.
"Hmmm, gee...sounds exciting." She replied sarcastically. "Come ON! Let's go out and find something to do. All this free time and no mischief is killing me."
"I'm sorry Dana. I'm just...I'm not in the mood tonight. K?"
"You feeling ok?" She asked, hearing the sorrowful tone at the edge of my voice.
"I feel fine. Just tired is all. Maybe tomorrow night?"
"Alright, I'm gonna hold you to that." There wasn't much I could hide from her. She had honed in on my emotions and my every evasive tactic for them almost instantly. But luckily for me, she didn't push the issue unless she saw a real problem. "I'm gonna get out of this house, but I'll call you back later, k?"
"Sure. I'll be here."
"Alright. Toodles!" And she hung up, leaving me to wallow in the despair of that emotionless note a little bit longer before folding it up and putting it in the drawer next to me with the TWO others he had sent me in the past 8 months. I suppose I should just wait until he's done being tied up with everything to expect anything more. I just hope it's soon.
The next morning, I woke up to a rather annoying alarm clock. I felt around sleepily with my eyes closed, trying to turn the damn thing off, but I couldn't seem to hit the button. Finally, I had to sit up and turn it off before it drove me fucking insane. Great....THIS is a good way to start the day.
I got up, showered, dressed, fixed my hair...it was a typical day. Twenty five minutes later, I was heading downstairs to breakfast. A cold bowl of cereal was more than enough before getting ready to go. My mom came in wearing her bathrobe. "Morning, honey."
"Morning."
"So did you read your letter from Erin last night? You didn't say anything about it. You snatched it up and ran to your room so fast, I didn't even get a chance to ask you how he was making out on the set." Grrrr....I wish she hadn't brought that up.
"Yeah. I read it."
"So...? How is Erin doing? Is he enjoying himself?"
I tried to take what little he wrote me and create some kind of coherent 'story' from it. "Yeah, he says he's doing fine. Things are great."
"Is he getting asked for autographs and stuff yet? He was such a good looking boy, I'm sure the girls are swarming around him out there."
"I guess so. I don't know. He didn't say." I said matter-of-factly, hoping that she'd drop the subject.
"I'm sure he's working a lot. Poor thing. Did he say anything about when he was coming home?"
"No, Mom. He didn't." I was beginning to get a bit frustrated now. It's not that I hadn't asked him, I just didn't get an answer.
"Well, did he tell you anything about..."
"You know what, Mom? I'm gonna be late. I've gotta go. I'll see you later." And with that, I quickly got up from the table, put my bowl in the sink, ran some water in it, and headed out of the back door before she decided to interrogate me any further about the great Erin Tyler! Psh! Whatever!
I hopped the bus pretty much the second that I got to the corner, my headphones blasting music at full volume. It wasn't helping to distract me much from my thoughts though. Sometimes, I wished that none of this had ever happened. I truly do.
Erin did some modeling when he was about 10 or 11 years old. He didn't start getting commercials until he turned 13, and that's when he began drifting more towards his 'job' than he was towards me. Sure, he was always happy and acting just like he always had when he was around me, and we had a lot of fun. But he was doing what he really wanted to do, and it kinda took priority over me pretty quickly. Unfortunately, it was around that time that I began to realize how I really felt about him. Or about BOYS, for that matter. It's like, I was just beginning to see him as more than my 'buddy' at the other end of the block. We had almost everything in common, we laughed at the same things...even when nobody else in the room got it, and he was always there for me when I needed someone to lean on. Realizing that you might be a homosexual can be a really scary experience. Realizing that you might be falling completely in love with your best friend...is downright terrifying! I did what I could to block it out, or maybe pretend that it was something else that I was feeling at the time, but those feelings wouldn't stay vague and undefined forever. And when it hits you, it's like being run over by a truck!
That's why it really took me by surprise, that day when the setting sun shot a beam of light through my living room window one afternoon...and completely opened my eyes to his undeniable sex appeal. I remember it like it was yesterday. We were sitting on opposite ends of the couch watching MTV, and 'POW'...all of the sudden his soft chestnut brown hair, his sparkling blue-green eyes, his sleek frame and long smooth legs emerging from a pair of silken soccer shorts...they all came together into one picture of such amazing beauty that I almost had to get up and leave the room. It struck me like a bolt of lightning, and I was instantly smitten with him beyond any sense of self control. I felt my chest constricting, my heart inflating, my head spinning...I was infected with him in an instant. One split second, where my soul decided to notice that bright aura that it refused to recognize all this time. It was just too much to take all at once. That made for a hard few days for me, and it was only the beginning. But as the scare of that first burst of infatuation wore off in a week or so...I began to realize...
...I had been in love with Erin from the beginning. I just never let myself believe it. And now I found myself stuck with the awareness of it. I know it won't ever happen between us, but at least having him here as a friend helped me to submerge myself in the illusion for a while.
Rachael was the first friendly face I had seen, walking into the school parking lot to go in through the side door. She ran over to say hello and I made sure to let go of my inner thoughts for a while. No need to get her into 'counselor' mode where she starts coaxing information out of me that I don't want to divulge. "You know, you should have come with me yesterday. Me and three other people went out to the skating park and had a few good laughs." She took out her little make-up kit and started perfecting the colors on her face. She was an artist when it came to that stuff, not that she wasn't pretty without it. "There were a couple of guys doing some pretty awesome tricks out there. We might go back and hang out a while after school today. You feel like going?"
"Yeah, might as well." No need for me to sit at home. I think too much when I'm at home.
"Good boy. I'll see you in gym?"
"Shit...we're switching classes today, aren't we?" Every now and then, the gym classes switch subjects and combine different classes together every few weeks. We had been doing volleyball recently, and I was finally getting to the point where I enjoyed it. Now, who KNOWS what kind of torture they'll throw me into. God forbid I get the dreaded 'square dancing' section! Who the hell invented THAT as a gym activity anyway???
"Don't look so down. I think it's soccer or something." Rachael said, clicking her purse closed, make-up all in order for the day.
"No, it can't be soccer, my half of the class took that one already, remember? Maybe Basketball?"
"No, I just came out of basketball. And I hated it! I bent my finger back like 30 times bouncing that damn thing!"
"My Rachael, forever the 'delicate' one." I grinned.
"Bite me!" She answered. "Besides, forcing people to play sports can be considered cruel and unusual punishment." She walked down the hall with me a bit, and then was ready to shove off. "Listen, whatever the activity, I'll see both you and your sexy 'gym legs' later on. Cool?"
"Whatever. Get outta here." I giggled. "You're weird."
"Doesn't mean you don't have sexy legs. A girl notices these things." Rachael bounced away down the hall, and I made my way to class.
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