Flowers and a Week.

I spent most of my free time during high school being a complete brokenhearted loser. Had the awkward long hair, listened to emotional punk music, wrote songs on my acoustic I never played for anybody. You can get the picture. I basically ran about harping on how hopelessly romantic I was like a giant sponge for pity and attention. Wicked cool.

It was not actually the truth. I was a happy kid and had fun. And while I pretended girls never requited my “love,” and I was lonely, there were girls that did in fact have crushes on me. But blinded by chasing ideals and dreams of girls way too far out of my league in vain, I never realized until long after the fact and they told me. Kick myself a lot about that. There were a few too. Cute ones.

Sky was one of the ideals. Older, smarter, cooler, etc. And she liked me and showed me attention, which was really all it took those days to convince me we had a shot at being madly in love together. We had hung out the whole Winter Carnival dance and even slow-danced twice (huge for me, huge.) The following week, we talked all the time. She was going through some rough private business with her family she shared with me and I was all happy-go-lucky distraction from depression. And my tiny head got lots of big thoughts that grew and grew with the days.

I was well aware I had an opportunity here, a window, to try and land in before I got too consoling and she ended up telling me we were best friends and like brother and sister and I was locked in the Friend Zone forevermore. So what’s my move?

I knew nothing at this point about any sort of “game” that people play when it comes to courtship. The delicate art of telling someone in a nonthreatening way that you like them and would like to start seeing them semi-regularly for dinners, movies, adventures, or whatever it is people do on a “date” were all very foreign to me. Being a junior. Having never been on a date. My track record really just included my first girlfriend who lasted two weeks and a long list of females I’ve scared away by the sudden confession of my feelings. I wanted to avoid that happening again, so I made the executive decision not to ask her out on a date.

This had to be a feel-better thing. A show of how I care that she is sad and want her to be happy. But also indicate that, yes, this awkward theatre kid is totally all about you.

Flowers.

I was a fucking genius. I even wrote a tiny letter to here rolled around the base of the stems. It had the corniest quote I’d ever read in an away message: “Never frown, even when you’re sad, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.” The shame of how lame this was hurts me to even repeat out loud. And yeah, not exactly subtle. I’m telling you, I was a winner. Michael Cera ain’t got jack shit on me.

So that Thursday, I was dressed all Fancy (because it was Fancy Thursday), and I walked up to her at her locker and without words moved her elbow out a bit and slid the bouquet in the crook of her arm. Then quickly walked away, not looking back for a second. A knee-jerk reaction. Pathetic, really.

And Sky did not talk to me for the next week.

She carried the bouquet around all day, I’d see her in the cafeteria with it, in study hall, etc. The next days we’d pass in the hall but she would not look at me. A couple very awkward moments. A mutual “friend,” Pebbles, talked to me about it online once during the week. I can’t remember what he told me but he asked about the letter, which means she showed her friends. All the cool older theater and music kids I was friends with.

She did eventually talk to me again, thanked me for the flowers, apologized about not talking to me, apologized for leading me on, and hoped we could just be friends.

Then she took a friend of mine to prom because Pebbles and her friends did not make fun of him, they made fun of me. Pebbles told me this.

I didn’t go to prom with anyone my junior year.