Story #90

Just to "lighten" the mood a little bit, I have another story.

When I was 16 I went to a boarding school for a year. The beginning of the year was a bit hard, I had just moved from the town I grew up in, had no friends at my new town and then I had to go to this boarding school where I was even cut off from my old friends. It was tough, but I managed to see it through and after a couple of months I had gotten quite a couple of friends.
On the campus I had a couple of broken love stories, but it's the very last of them that I want to share now.

It was spring, and I had been on the school for almost 8 months. There was this girl that I had taken a liking to. She wasn't extremely beautiful, but, as we all know, love makes blind, so to me she looked perfect.
After having spend 8 months on the campus everyone had gotten really close; Holding hands with a friend that was of a different sex was not unusual, you just did it because it felt good and nothing was thought of it. There was this kind of hippie theme going on, and the girl was always wearing one of those colourful Bob Marley reggae hats.

So, one day, one of the boys there had stolen her hat to get a small tease. He had thrown it up in the highest tree on the school campus. The girl looked like she was having fun, but I decided that this was my chance (lol at the dream of being prince charming), so I climbed the tree and retrieved the hat. Go me!

I gave it to her, and she gave me one of those shy smiles that can look extremely cute and is just impossible to resist. Anyway, I looked around, and I could see that the guy that was teasing her was looking at us with a smirk on his face. We had attracted quite an audience too.
I decided that I just wanted to be alone with her, so I grabbed her hand and did a run for it.

I remember that we were running as fast as we could while she was laughing her heart out. I felt like I could run for ages and not stop at all, but I could feel that she was running out of breath, so we stopped when we came to the gathering area inside the campus, dropped into a couch and just started laughing.

It was great, we were talking and just having fun. She was a friend of my best friends girlfriend (I got a story about her too ='P), and I already knew quite a lot about her, but this time it just felt special, I think that was the time where I really fell in love with her.

I knew that she had a boyfriend, but that didn't really matter too much to me. She hadn't been with him for ages, and I actually, in my nativity, thought that she'd break up with him if she'd start liking me too much.

We started to meet up at every break, always holding hands and hugging, but nothing really came out of it at that point. People began to ask me about our relationship, but what could I answer to that? We didn't have a relationship.... yet... I thought.
At this point summer was nearing fast, and I knew that I'd have to tell her how I felt, but I was, for some reason, really scared of telling her how I felt, so I kept postponing and postponing.

When I remember back, I always think of how much of a rookie I was, but the truth is, that it's still pretty darn hard for me to tell someone that I love them.. I don't even tell my mother that /sadface.

Anyway, one week we had a week off from school, the school, however, was not closed, so my closest friends and I decided to stay at the school during that week off. She so happened to be there too. It was a boarding school that housed 150 students + teachers, and there we were with a group of 9 students, 4 boys and 5 girls.

A local air strip was housing a huge car show, and we had been asked to help out cleaning the place, getting paid good money for it and we were free to sell all the bottles of whateverness that we could find. I had planned for a lot of things to happen during those 7 days, but incidentally, nothing came out of it. I spend as much time with her as possible, hoping for her to make a move.. She never did, and I was too shy to pour my heart out to her.

We were working quite hard, and I saw that two of my other friends were growing closer and closer. It did sadden me a bit, that they could be so close when I couldn't even get myself to tell my dream girl how I felt of her.

Time went by, and all of a sudden it was the last evening before the ending ceremonies of the school. All the students had gathered outside around a camp fire we had set up. We were singing songs and crying quite a fair bit.

All of a sudden, the girl walks over to me, she lies down in front of me and puts her head in my lap.
That was close to the worst thing she could have ever done... This certain circumstance caused some of my blood to unwillingly spread to parts of the body that it's not supposed to, and something that I didn't want to get bigger, got pretty stiff.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that she could feel it, so she told me that she was a bit uncomfortable lying there, and if I wanted to switch places with her. Me in a total panic could only respond with 'err..... sure'.
It was nice. We were like that for quite a while. It was dark, but the night sky was incredible. Full of stars. Suddenly she moved away from me. I thought she had had enough of me because of my, err, 'incident'. That was not the chase however. She was not moving away from me, instead she lied down right next to me, rolled on top of me and rolled us into the blanket I was lying on.

We were lying like that for what felt like for ages, just holding each other tight. I was silently kissing her shoulder, I was afraid to do anything else.
We were very quite, just holding each other. She was the first one to break the silence. What she said was something that I still remember very clearly: "I would wish I did not have a boyfriend". I didn't know what to say, there were too many ways to interpret that sentence. Did she just turn me down? Did she want me to seduce her? I didn't know what to do, so I chose to do what I had always done..... nothing.

When I think back, I can see what kind wrong choice I made, but you live and learn I guess.

Anyway, after a bit longer of the holding each other tight thing, the teachers called all the students in for bed. We separated a little bit from each other. I looked her in the eyes, and I could see that she had been crying without me ever noticing.

She then asked me: 'Is it okay if I kiss you on the cheek?'. Before I had time to react she had already started bowing down towards me. I turn my head ever so slightly. Her lips met mine right on the mouth. So incredibly soft, this might have been my first real kiss, the kiss of a girl that I was incredibly in love with.
I never got to see her face after that, she had already gotten up and ran to her dorm. I felt like I should run after her, but I was completely drunk on the kiss I had just gotten, couldn't think straight, could barely talk.
I went back to my dorm and fell asleep almost right away.

The next day she was acting as if nothing had happened. When the day was over and all of the students were crying and hugging each other good bye, I couldn't find her anywhere... She had said goodbye to all of her friends and left before I had the chance to.

The next time I saw her was new years eve 6 months later, at that point she had already gone through 5 boyfriends. I felt pretty heartbroken to hear about that, thinking that I could have been one of them, but I didn't say anything and just left it as it was.

I have tried keeping a bit in contact with her, but she never really responded openly to any of my emails or texts, so I just left it as it was.
A sad way to end the relationship of someone I was that much in love with.