Close to You

"Bobby, you have to stop," he says, handing me another beer as we sit at opposite ends of his kitchen table.

I sip lightly on darkened stout and say nothing.

"You can't keep writing her, not if you ever want to get over her."

He's right of course. He always has been. Ever since we were those two scrappy kids running wild through the woods near our homes in Dothan, my dearest childhood friend Simon has listened as I pour out the troubles of my heart. Now, as we sit together in his North Carolina home, a mere stop on my drive north to Washington D.C., he listens as I tell him about you Ornela. He listens as I tell him about all the letters I have written you over the past year, about how I traveled all the way to Boston just to see you, and about why I turned down the job in Boston when you told me goodbye.

"So she's the reason why you were looking for jobs up in Boston all this time," Simon says, shaking his head. "All of us back home thought you had lost your mind traveling all the way up there just for a job, but it looks like you had ulterior reasons for wanting to live in Boston. I guess you were willing to give up everything for some woman."

"Not for just some woman," I reply. "For her..."

Two weeks later I sit in my Washington D.C. apartment writing you this letter. Even now, I do not know if I made a mistake accepting the job offer in DC instead of Boston. I know that I wanted to move to Boston, very badly, but not because of a job...I wanted to move to Boston to be close to you. But when you told me not to move to the city for you, I knew that I had to respect your wishes. I could not move to Boston if you did not want me there because I felt that I would be forcing myself upon you, and I just couldn't do that anymore. So I live in DC yet again, wondering if perhaps one day we might pass each other somewhere on a walk through the National Mall. Part of me hopes that when you graduate you will move back to DC to be near your family. Perhaps then we might have the chance to enjoy the relationship we began six years ago in this very city.

Giving up the opportunity to live in Boston was difficult, but keeping the promise you made me make on our last day together is far harder...yet I am doing it. I kept my promise to you last Saturday night with the girl I took to dinner in Chinatown. We laughed over Pad Thai as I regaled her with silly stories about "une pesos" that I used to tell you. She smiled and asked me to come back to her apartment somewhere in Adams Morgan, but when I looked into her eyes I saw only your face, and so with only a slight kiss on the cheek I let her go. A few days later I found myself with another woman, a pretty young Russian whom I met at work who accompanied me on a stroll across the National Mall as we enjoyed our first date together. She teaches me some simple Russian phrases as we walk, the same way you taught me a few words of Albanian on our solitary walk in front of the Capitol six years ago. I mispronounce everything she says which makes her smile, but as she leans closer to hold my hand I instinctively pull away, not because of any aversion towards her but because even in this moment my thoughts are of you. I don't want to share these experiences with another woman. I want to share them with you Ornela.

In the long months that we have been apart from each other, I have asked myself if it would have been better if we had never met all those years ago. If we had never met, we never would have spent countless sleepless nights mending our broken hearts. We never would have cried with each other that night last March when we spoke on the phone and confessed that even after all these years apart we were still in love with each other. If we had never met, we would have lived our entire lives without knowing that the person we gave our hearts to, the person we loved, simply walked away. But if we had never met we also never would have laughed with each other, or stayed up all night in bed in Charleston, Panama City, DC, or Boston simply sharing our hearts and confessing the deepest secrets within. If we had never met, we never would have fallen in love, and even knowing what I do today, even knowing that you would walk away, I would do it all over again...I would endure having my heart broken a thousand times over simply to have shared those special nights with you. The moments are worth it. You, Ornela, are worth it.

Things don't have to be like this. We don't have to communicate only through my online journal. I just want for us to be close again. I just want everything between us to be like it used to be. You may think that is impossible, that there is no going back, but I still have hope for us Ornela because I know that we still have feelings for each other. Despite everything that has happened between us, somehow, someway, our feelings for each other are still alive. I know that you still have these feelings because you are still reading my journal...I have always believed that. If I believed that you no longer read my letters to you in this journal I would stop writing, but I am going to ignore the advice that my friend Simon gave me and I am going to keep writing you. I am going to keep writing you these letters for the same reason that you keep reading them...we still have feelings for each other, feelings that I hope will one day bring us together again.

I just want for us to be close again. I hope...I hope that you will talk to me so that we can laugh together, share our triumphs and struggles, and simply be a part of each other's lives.

I miss you Ornela.