****SEE NOTE AT BOTTOM OF ENTRY BEFORE READING!!!...****


"You tell me."

"No, you tell me and then I'll tell you."

"No."

That conversation played itself out for more than an hour. Just him and I trying to bribe information out of each other.

We exchange amazingly philosophical small talk in the mean-time. I don't know what it is that he wants to tell me. What he doesn't want to tell me.

It all started with a question.

Backtrack to the start of the arguement:

"How are you?" I ask, even though we've already been talking for an hour.

"Okay." A simple, one word answer. How typically male.

"Just okay? Why aren't you amazingly fantastic? Why are you not both hunky and dory?"

"I don't know..." He knows I'm kind of joking.

"Well, what is it that would make you happy?" I can't resist asking. I am just so manipulative that I know I can coax the information. Not to mention, it would be a great ego boost to have him tell me he likes me.

That's what I want to hear. I want him to tell me he just can't deny the feelings he has for me... Hell, I don't even know if those feelings exist but...

"So, are you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"What would make you happy..."

"I don't want to." Except for "want to" sounds like "wanna" and he's whining like a four-year-old.

"Why not?" We spend about twenty minutes discussing how he can trust me, I won't tell anyone, and I won't judge him.

I'm being manipulative.

And then my inability to restrain stupid shit from slipping out of my mouth and into unsuspecting ears almost kicks in. I mention,

"Oh, thank Allah for a verbal filter."

"Huh? Wait, what?" He uses "wait, what," the running joke in my family.

"I just almost said something I shouldn't have. Thank Allah for the verbal filter..." Due to my incresing stupidity as summer vaction continues, I don't realize that I am digging a hole for myself.

"What did you want to say?"

"What would make you happy?"

"You tell me."

"Nope. You."

"Nope."

An hour later we are basically still in the same spot.

I say "Why do I feel like we are talking about the same thing?" Because not only do I want him to confess it, but I want to tell him about my feelings.

He mumbles something I can't quite hear.

"Can't hear you babe."

"Mine is really selfish. Really selfish." He stresses the word "really" the second time, making it last.

"Just tell me."

"No. I don't want to." It sounds less like he is whining, and far more earnest.

So I confess.

"I haven't ever really found one person that can understand me. With everything I've done, everything I've gone through, no one person could bear the weight of everything that goes on with me. But he," I reference my boyfriend, "he comes closest to understanding."

(This just got interesting didn't it. She likes the guy but has a boyfriend? What the fudgeicles, eh?)

"So I finally started to trust someone," I continue. "And I fell in love with him."

"Then, it started to happen all over again. I was falling. It was everything again. The feelings. The love."

There is a huge pause, and I can tell he knows I'm going to say it, but I also know he wants to hear it.

"It's you..." My life hangs in the balance as I wait for him to confess that he loves me too. I'll leave the boyfriend, and we'll be happy ever after with 1.5 children, a yellow lab, summers on the Cape and a white picket fence... (also, a Japanese car, loud neighbors, rude in-laws and horrid hours at work.)

"I... uhm..." He stumbles over the words. "I didn't know you cared that much..."

"I obviously cared too much." I only think this. I don't want to say it to him and hurt his feelings.

He doesn't care about me the way I care about him. He admitted to me that the attraction he feels is probably just hormones. You know, typical teenage boy not being able to resis cleavage type of 'in like with you'.

What I was trying so hard to get him to say, what he wouldn't tell me, was angst about his father. Understandably, because his father is scum. But it wasn't the fairy tale I wanted.

It never is.

I'm sorry I had to tell him that I'm dying...


****NOTE!

PLEASE COMMENT!!!! !!!! !!!!

I do not know if I am going to turn this into a deviation. If you want to know if this is true or not, send a note. I will not divulge for the general masses.

But think about it seriously, should you take this a face value, or do you think this happened?

That's a little teaser for you...****



Thanks, as always, for reading...

Caitlin R Dean