“i think i’ll always be a bachelor.”
he told me this after kissing me in what was supposed to be a fountain, but the groundskeeper had already come by and shut the jets off for the night, leaving us in just a pavilion. but that didn’t really matter to me. it was always the thought that counted when i was with him. though this anecdote was a good predictor for who he & i were. almost good enough, but not perfect. or maybe, so perfect that it could never really be realistically executed.
this wasn’t our first-first kiss. our real first — & one i often like to lie about to my friends when they ask — was in a stairwell, in a hotel outside of disney world. outside of disney world. he’d been given the chance to kiss me under the late night fireworks (yes, every teenage girl’s dream). all of the opportunity in the world to fulfill my one wish in life at that very moment & it was wasted in a stairwell.
okay, i will give him a point for the fact that it was rather cute. we met once, i got nervous & ran away. but then he told me he required just a couple of minutes of my time. we’d both brushed our teeth in those moments apart. i stood on a stair above him, though it didn’t make me any taller really. but it made me feel bigger, & that’s what mattered for that moment.
the second the kiss was finished (sorry for not recounting that moment, some memories still hurt long after we’re over a person), the spiral began. how he was going to leave, that he wanted me to be able to live my life to the fullest without him around. reasonable things? yes. but things to talk about after you kiss someone? no, definitely not. things that were probably going on in his head before he kissed me? oh…probably. things that if you’re thinking about them, tell you that you shouldn’t kiss the person you’re thinking those things about? another yes. but that was the way things were with he & i.
the truth is, i should have known from the very beginning that this was never about he & i. it was always about him, & me. that’s the sad reality that i’ve come to terms with whenever he happens to pop up on my feed, because you see: he’s on his way to not being a bachelor pretty soon & i’m stuck wishing i’d never left my hotel room that night.