Anniversary Week: 'Just Friends'

I don't remember much of that "for the first time, again" meeting. I remember feeling really warm and sure that I was bright red. I tried to pay attention to the mission pictures Chris was showing me, but I was distracted by the hotness. At that moment, I swore I wouldn't develop a crush on him. He didn't want me in high school, so I would want nothing to do with him. Wouldn't that just show him. Besides, I was seeing someone- the guy my dad loathed.

We found ourselves sitting together in church classes, and conversation fell into place pretty easily. The relationship I had with the loathed one was heading downhill pretty fast, as things often do when you're dating a liar. One major falling out later, and I found myself in a precarious position. How to endure a 'group date' with this guy and all our friends. So what's a girl to do, but ask her old high school friend to come with them? We're all friends here, right? Getting ice cream after, WBH and I talked about old friends and recalled lunch-table antics. The beginnings of a crush started to grow, but I beat them back into the corner.

The next week, he wanted to go see a movie, but wasn't driving at the time, so he asked me. Yes, we began our relationship by using each other. Not the point. I had to pick up some supplies for the drama camp I was teaching before the show. At the store, a man I looked up to from our congregation saw us and began chatting us up. I didn't think anything of it, but the next Sunday, he caught me in the hall, saying "You know, if you go on one more date with that guy, I promise you, you're going to marry him."

I don't remember what I said after that, because I was flabbergasted and embarassed. It was probably something like "Um, I don't really think so, because, um, it wasn't really a date, and we're just, um, friends, and I'm totally not interested in him like that, really," or something equally brilliant. He looked at me for a moment, said "uh huh," and walked away. I was shaken.

Soon we were together every night, reminding our mothers that we were, of course, 'just friends.' We text-messaged like crazy. We began seeing two - three movies a week, and renting movies on the nights were weren't going to the theater. Conversations became difficult, because I was fighting so hard not to fall for him.

Around that time, I was invited to compete in a talent show a three hours' drive away, over a mountain pass. WBH made a necklace for me to wear while competing. The night before the show, I was so nervous. Surrounded by strangers, I compared myself to the others, who seemed to be cuter, and far more with it. I sent a text message to WBH: "I don't know about this thing. There's a lot of other girls, cuter and more talented than me." His message came back, " I doubt it. Doesn't really seem possible."

There went that warm all over feeling again. I decided it was time to risk it. I wrote back "You know, when you came back from Argentina, I swore I wasn't going to crush on you again."

Palms sweating, I waited for his response.