I don't know when I first became aware of my feelings for Bea. Sometimes I think they were always there, even when I was a child and couldn't comprehend what the feelings meant. Then they surreptitiously slithered through my soul and bloomed when the rush of adolescent hormones surged through my body, and I was left helpless. I started to feel funny when I was around her. My stomach churned and my skin tingled whenever she touched me. My skin flushed and it felt like every part of me was on fire. I found my eyes drifting towards her automatically, and I had to make a conscious effort to pull them away. My thoughts were consumed by her and my heart raged within my chest.
I had a burning desire for her and I didn't know how to deal with it. It hurt me so much that I spent nights crying with frustration because I simply didn't know how to deal with my feelings. I'd always known that I was a little different because I could never join in properly when the girls were talking about all the boys they liked. I had to pretend and smile and act like I knew what they were feeling, but I didn't really know until my feelings for Bea flourished.
There were times when I followed her around like a puppy dog and I knew that it was bad and that I was suffocating her but I couldn't help it. She and everyone else out it down to the idea that I needed her for strength...I just needed her.
I started to notice the littlest things about her, like the way she would cock an eyebrow to indicate surprise; a gesture inspired by Mr. Spock from the endless re-runs of Star Trek, which I watched because she watched them even though I never understood what she loved so much about them. Then there was her laugh, it came out like bubbles and seemed to float through the air, its lilting tones so golden and glorious. I wanted to wrap myself up in that laugh and wear it like a blanket. She didn't always laugh, but I could always make her laugh and so it became my laugh, and I cherished it.
Chapter 3
But I was in endless agony because I couldn't tell her how I felt. The swirling, turbulent, intense emotions were locked inside the cage of my heart. We had been friends for longer than we could remember and even if we hadn't she liked boys. She'd had a boyfriend before and she would have one again and she always told me about this or that boy that tried it on with her and we would laugh at how she declined their offers with a sneering, ridiculing comment that would have shattered their confidence and made them turn tail and scurry away.
I was afraid of being the recipient of one of those comments. We laughed at them, but my laugh was hollow, tinged with fear and sadness, because I knew that she was unattainable and my poor, wretched heart wouldn't be able to move on.
Caught in the lens of teenage angst the whole thing seems melodramatic now, and I feel foolish for the way I dealt with it. I should have been honest with her from the start I suppose, despite her blunt nature I don't think she would have been mean about it and turned me away like the admirers who lined up because there was something so alluring about the mean girl, the aloof girl, the girl that didn't give a shit about anything. I should know because I was right there with them, except I didn't have the guts to step up to the plate and ask her out. Instead I was on the sidelines, despair twisting in my soul because there was that sliver of vain hope that if I just worked up the courage to tell her the truth then her eyes would light up as she responded by saying that she had felt the same things too...but the fear was too strong and I couldn't escape it. It suffocated and stifled me and no matter how hard I tried to summon the courage to reveal my feelings to someone there was an invisible barrier tightened around my chest, constricting my breath, preventing the words from coming out of my mouth.
So for the longest time I suffered in silence and I didn't mind it because she never took any of her relationships seriously and they were all with men, so I knew that even if I did tell her how I felt she wouldn't have reciprocated anyway, so I buried them deep down inside where I tried to forget about them, pushed them all the way down, hoping that eventually they would disappear. For a time I thought they had, and the two of us were able to be proper friend again, the way it had always been, and I even got a girlfriend myself, although I kept it a secret from everything. I think Bea knew that something was going on but I remained tight-lipped, and that was part of the problem. She grew tired that we couldn't share our love out in the open, and that I would always drop everything if Bea called. I didn't tell her that I was in love with Bea but I think she suspected I had deeper feelings for my best friend, and she told me that she couldn't be second best. But I couldn't choose her over Bea.
And that's been the story of all my relationships since then. Even when I get with someone Bea hangs over us like a shadow. I thought that maybe if she was in a serious relationship then it would help me move on, but when it happened it only made me sicker.