It was the fifth hour of driving down route 80 when I realized it. I was alone in the car, my mind lazy from concentration. I tried to appreciate the landscape. The trees had just begun turning colors and the grass was still matted down with morning dew. The mountains were as if painted. I sky was spotted with fluffy white clouds and birds flew freely through them. But I could only think about you. My mind didn’t care about the magic of nature. No, it cared about how your nose freckles in the summer. Your eyes were a rich brown that caused my senses to turn muddy. Your smile was perfectly awkward and shy. When you stood, you towered above me. Your shoulders hung wide and far from your neck. Your neck. It is long and detailed. The curves almost demanded attention. My mind continued to wonder.

It wasn’t the way you looked that created this fascination. It was simply you. Your heart. Your essence. I can’t really describe it. I can only go back in time to when it all started. To when my life fell into yours.

I don’t remember meeting you. We just became friends one day. We were young, still learning how to ride bicycles. Your house was diagonal from mine. We would play basketball together. I was just as good as you because I was taller than you. Later in life, you would surpass my athleticism by lightyears. But for the time being, we were equals. I would play catch with you and your father. You got jealous when he only showed excitement when I threw the football. You thought he was only proud of me. You learned later in life that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Nonetheless, when it snowed, we would build igloos of livable scale. We would throw snowballs at each other and laugh when one of use fell in midst of throwing. We would play in the cold for hours. We would only go in when our parents told us we were going to get frostbite.

It was your birthday, but it had snowed over two feet of snow and the roads and sidewalks were neglected by the plows. I spent hours digging a tunnel to your house. When I got there, we drank hot cocoa and watched a movie. After, we dug another tunnel together.

In the summer, we would fill up your cheap store-bought pool and pretend it was a real pool. We would even wear goggles. When we wanted to be more adventurous, we would set up a slip-n-slide in my backyard. When we were feeling dangerous, we would take the hose and climb up my large swing set and pour water down the slide. We would zoom down the waterslide until one of us hit a conveniently placed concrete slab. That activity only ever ended with scratches. We would also strip down to nothing and prance around the backyard, singing and laughing. One time while doing this, I was eating a slice of watermelon and you chased me with the hose until the fruit had flung from my hands and landed in a pile of mud. We were only five at the time.

But time is never stable. When we grew older, you found other friends. It wasn’t right to be friends with a girl. Girls were weird and gross. On weekends I watched boys come over and play sports in your front yard. I longed for you to invite me to join. That never happened. In school, you stopped talking to me. I was alone.

You see, you were my only friend. I was too boyish for the girls. They liked dressing up and I liked getting dirty and sweating. I liked competition. The girls liked pretending to be mothers to plastic babies. So, I watched you have friends while I had none. I missed my best friend. I still wonder if you missed me. I can’t imagine you did.

I became friends with your sister. She was two years older than me, but she reminded me of you. So, I began coming over again. We played with barbies and toy animals. We would share tales of wonder that came up in our imagination. Sometimes, when I was lucky, you would come say hi and to see what we were up to. Perhaps you were jealous? But your sister got too old to hang out with a little kid, so I went back home. I sat at my window watching people passing but never stopping. I longed for the days when you would come over and we would spend hours being dumb.

It was now approaching the sixth hour of driving and I blinked rapidly. I had tears falling from my eyes. I wiped them away. The once blue sky had begun to turn to grey. It began to drizzle.

When we were in middle school, a rumor spread that I had a crush on you. It was obviously true, but I denied it. I had made a few friends by then. They loved to mock me about my love for you. I told recall ever talking to them about you. Perhaps they would see it on my face. In truth, I still sat in the window on the weekends waiting for you to come over. You never did.

And then I moved. Not far, only a block away, but still. I couldn’t see your house from my window. That’s when I forgot about you. I went on with my life without you in it. It was good. Great, even. The burden of loving you was no longer, and I could finally move on. But life isn’t that kind. I had gotten over you, but I had also gotten sick. I spent days-weeks in the hospital. I was never not in pain.

In tenth grade, I tried to end my life. It was too much. Life. But much like everything else in my life, I failed.

When I went back to school, I was assigned a partner for a presentation on new scientific discoveries. Of course, I was paired with you. We worked together well. We laughed. We thought. We enjoyed each other’s company. It felt natural. It felt right. But that was only for a week. It’s funny how much you can feel in a week. Every buried emotion hurled out of me and I realized I still felt for you.

In eleventh grade, you started dating one of my friends. It tore me apart. But you were happy and what more could I want? I remembered something someone told me:

You know he knows you like him? Well, he told me that he would never like you like that.

It was wrong of her to tell me that. She knew it. But I hadn’t believed her until now. You would never love me the way that I loved you.

In the eighth hour, my mind became foggy, so I pulled into a rest area. I parked and sat at a picnic table under a large willow tree. I nibbled on some sliced fruit as I spaced out. The day had turned to evening and the sky was not turning to a dark blue mixed with pinks and oranges.

When I graduated high school, we went our separate ways. For that I was thankful. You were still dating my friend. A half a year later you broke up and when I heard, and I cursed myself for doing so, I smiled. A spark of hope lit inside my soul. But it shouldn’t have because you were not made for me. You were never going to love me.

I was on the road again and my mind became distracted by all the red lights. Cars whipped past, busy to get to their location. The highway was dark at night. There wasn’t very good lighting causing the taillights became hypnotizing. I was in a trance. But it was broken when a thought crossed my mind.

It had been over a year since I had seen you. On one ruthlessly hot day my sister dragged me out of the house for a walk. I saw you standing on the corner. My heart remembered you. I wanted to run, to forget how you made me feel. But you had already seen me. We approached slowly. You were standing with your ex-girlfriend. My mind raced to a million different conclusions. Had you gotten back together? Were you just friends? But I forced myself to speak. I said hello. You said how are you. I shrugged because I had always had trouble with lying. He laughed. I felt my soul drip with love. You greeted my sister. And that was it. We walked away. I walked away. That was the last time I saw you, sweaty and the sun shining on your face. Your freckles had been more pronounced. You looked older, taller. You stood like a man. I didn’t go out again for a week.

Where I was driving to was not relevant to you. I wasn’t driving to confess my love. I wasn’t driving to win you over. I simply was just driving, and you popped into my head. I wondered why it had to be you, someone unattainable. But you weren’t, were you? I could be with you. We could be happy. We could-

It was a naïve way of thinking. I wondered if when you saw me that day you felt anything close to what I felt. Had you ever felt that kind of love? Had you ever loved me? When we were best friends, did you love me? Could children love that deeply?

I think about my future. About yours. I imagine sitting at your wedding, wishing I was the one standing up on the dais with you. I think about how I’ll feel when you utter those words that bind you to another. I think about if I’ll cry. If I’ll feel broken. Perhaps I will be there with someone too. Maybe even with my children. Perchance I’ll be in love with someone other than you. That thought confused me. But even if I was, even if I had another, would my love for you ever fade? Would I live with this unrequited feeling for the rest of my life?

The drive was concluding, and I began to wonder when I fell in love with you. I wondered what you did that made me fall so hard. What did you do? What did you do?

But, for once, I needed to admit something to myself. I needed to unlock a truth that I had buried to protect myself. I needed to- I wanted to- I-

I had never not been in love with you.