We can't be just friends anymore

My mind raced as I fitfully tried to sleep. There were two girls sleeping on my floor and I was consciously keeping myself from tossing and turning in hopes of allowing them to sleep well. I may have dozed off for a few minutes before the phone rang in the middle of the night. Quickly grabbing it, my adrenaline raced and even once I discovered it was a wrong number, I knew that my attempts to sleep were done because my mind kept returning to the email from PJ I’d read before my abortive attempts at sleep.

We were nineteen and both fairly new to love on that day before that Valentines Day. PJ sent up a trial balloon, which might've been made of lead for how well I took it. All these years later I can still remember the pivotal line, "Unless we try dating, I can't be your friend anymore."

I sat up all night, quietly at first, staring blankly at the teen fluff movie that my roommate and her boyfriend were finishing, then discussing the whirling thoughts in my head with my roommate's boyfriend after she fell asleep. He offered me valuable insights, but I was still reeling when he fell asleep on the couch with her. I recorded that confusion in my journal but, beyond recording it for painful recollection later, the exercise served no purpose.

It didn't matter that I never came to a conclusion about his email. The grapevine between friends had given me a coward's exit--letting PJ know that his gambit was unsuccessful--and I was greeted the next afternoon with another email apologizing for the impression of an ultimatum. It turned out in the end that his unsuccessful email had opened the door and within days we were on our way to dating. But I can't think of Valentine's Day without remembering that long sleepless night.