THE GHOST OF ALMOST
I’m terrified that the ghost of “almost,” of “what if” will define me for a very long time.
Afternoons slip through our fingers like sand from a Lake Michigan beach. The bright Midwest summer glares down upon us, and her skin is warm and tan wherever it meets mine. It’s innocent enough, our shoulders brushing against one another. It’s innocent enough, until it isn’t, and she's sitting in my lap, her laughs nestled into the crook of my neck. It’s innocent enough, until we’re sitting in the hot tub and her back is pressed to my chest. She yawns, her arm extending to wrap around me like we’re characters in a rom-com. I shoot her a look and she looks back, grinning coquettishly, way too proud of herself.
Gradually, our friends depart; we’re alone. One friend lingers to watch us through a window; he’ll be disappointed. We talk for over an hour, the sun haloing around her head, eclipsing the rest of the world around us. I hate being in this liminal ambivalence, but I can’t help but let it happen. I’ve wanted this for so long, and now it sits in the palm of my hand. Even sitting by her side, my loneliness is poignant, all-consuming. I stare at her lips, my doubts and cravings at war with one another.
Not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not interesting enough, not funny enough.
The thoughts pound in my head like a hammer.
That afternoon, my grandma texts me. She tells me we make a beautiful couple—she saw the picture of us at prom, sashes around our shoulders and crowns on our heads as we hold each other on the center of the dance floor. I don’t have the heart to tell her that we’re not a couple, that what I saw as romantic she probably saw as awkward. When I look at that picture now, all I can see is my double chin, my pasty complexion, the yellow of my teeth, the crease of my arms where they press against my sides, my stature as I tower over her. All the obvious signs why I wasn’t good enough.
It all started as a joke. “Republican wives,” we called ourselves, after learning we both have lesbian aunts that voted for Trump in the 2020 election. Why the bit kept going, however, I’m not too sure. Maybe it was because we were the only lesbians we knew, or maybe our theatricality made us unable to give it up.
It started mutually, but I was the first to take it too far. “My mom thought your proposal was real,” she tells me. “That’s hilarious,” I say, and the sound is as hollow as my laughter. After our student-run play ended, I had our friends sing the national anthem while holding American flags. My poster read: “Shoot! I forgot to ask: will you take a hard right and vow to go to prom with me?” Our friend nominates us for prom king and queen. We win.
Do I even like her? I used to ask myself. When you’re each other’s only options, you have to wonder if that means something. When your mom and your friends alike keep making comments, a part of you has to ask yourself if it’s real or if it just “makes sense.” It’s romantic to think she was my first crush, but how much of it was just my friends reading into things? Every conversation we shared, every touch, every glance, they commented on embedded themselves in my brain, seeds that grew a forest of “what ifs?” They would tell me, “I see the way you look at her!” Did I look at her a certain way? I had to ask myself to be sure. Was I just desperate to have a love story like all my straight or bisexual friends did, and was she just my only option? Even now, I have a hard time parsing what my feelings were and what was projected onto me.
In the hot tub, I wait for the moment I’ll find her through the tension in the air, connect with her on some higher plane—or even better, on a physical one. The moment never comes. I don’t tell her how flowers pale against the starlight of her eyes, how our banner makes my heartbeat sing and sets every nerve in me aflame.
“She’s decided she doesn't like you,” says our mutual friend when I finally dredge up the courage to ask where we stand. “She says she might be aromantic.”
“Oh. Okay. Good to know,” I tell her, sweeping up the pieces of my heart off the floor without so much as a tear. I save my emotions for the pen, trade the blood in my arteries for ink. I write a song called “Cinnamon,” close to her name but not quite.
You're indifferent, I can tell from your visits.
Your gaze is intimate, but free from all my reservations.
I convince myself that that’s what I’ve been seeing.
You are not my teen years. I don’t resent what we could have been.
I convince myself that’s how I felt.
It’s a rite of passage. I might be sad, but I’m content with it.
I convince myself that’s how I feel to this day. The song is beautiful. I’m just not sure I believe it. I don’t acknowledge how I tried to stifle these feelings all the way back in January, how my self-restraint was caught in her voice the way I imagined my hands would be in her hair.
This past summer, one year later, she apologized to me for the first time. “I didn’t mean to lead you on,” she said, “if that’s what you thought was happening.” She proceeded to tell me about her girlfriend. It turns out she wasn’t aromantic after all.
I don’t blame her for being confused. Rather, I blame myself for letting things get too far. I blame my friends and family for pushing us together when she didn’t want it. I think, finally, I’ve forgiven her. If I’m being honest with myself, she did lead me on. She never promised me anything, but she basked in the attention I provided her. Now, I consider her one of my good friends. I’ve met her girlfriend, and I quite like them.
As much as I try, however, I can’t bury the sting of resentment when she sends me a video of Julien Baker (her) and Lucy Dacus (me) from Boygenius cuddling and kissing with the caption: “I miss you.” I can’t help but feel used when she asks me if I’m going to a function, because it “won’t be any fun” if I’m not there. I want to forget that summer. I can’t.
I just need this not to be the closest I’ve ever gotten to love. I’m about to turn twenty, and that afternoon in Michigan is the closest I’ve ever been to being kissed. Maybe if she liked me back, I would have caught up with all my friends. Maybe I wouldn’t be so romantically stunted. I’m terrified that the ghost of “almost,” of “what if” will define me for a very long time. That someone will ask me: “remember that time you and Cinnamon almost dated?” And I’ll say “of course”—two, five, and ten years from now. That “almost” and “love” will be irrevocably intertwined. That I am the reason “almost” will always come before “dated.”
As young as I am, I’m terrified I’m running out of faith.
AUTHOR: Noel Rosania
ARTIST: Noel Rosania