Twas Brillig

(This week’s Mr. Linky of other Soap Opera Sunday participants and a link to the rules is posted below this post.)

One of the very soapiest times of my existence was my first year at BYU, living in the Foreign Language Housing. The Foreign Language Houses were used by a very elite group of students—those who spoke (and were passionate enough about) a foreign language, who wanted to immerse themselves into a place where they were only allowed to speak that language inside. Generally, these were older students—smart, classy, well-traveled. Elite. Men and women lived in separate apartments, though we were all part of the same “house.” Every apartment had one resident whose native language was the “foreign language”—that person was supposed to keep us on track and be our language mentor, while still being a peer and a roommate. There was the Spanish House, the German House, the French House, the Portuguese House, the Arabic House, the Russian House, and the Italian House. Probably others too… Obviously some were much larger and more popular than others. The Spanish House, for instance, had about 6 times as many members as the Arabic House, and even so it was still almost impossible to get into.

As for me, I was passionate about German. I’d been studying German for most of my life by this point. I had spent a summer in a German town having a very in-depth German experience. I’d been president of the German club in high school and was one of very few AP German students to actually pass the AP test (everyone in AP Spanish passes the AP test. But German is by far a more difficult language to grasp—and I can say that because I speak both). Also in high school, I’d taken a standardized test for all third-year German students. I placed number one in the nation and was offered a scholarship and an all-expense paid summer in Berlin (which I turned down, having already made other plans).

What I’m trying to say here as that German was my thing. It was what I was good at. It was where my heart was.

So how on earth did I find myself in the Italian House?

Ahhh. Good question. I really had no aspirations for Foreign Language Housing to begin with. But there was a woman in our neighborhood— a friend of my parents’— who was in charge of all Foreign Language Housing. And she happened to mention to my dad that she was afraid that the women’s Italian House would have to be shut down, because there were so few women who spoke Italian well enough and who were interested enough in living there. I’m not quite sure how the conversation went from there, but I know that my father always thinks more highly of me than I deserve and he turned my very meager knowledge of Italian into a great proficiency. And between the two of them, and without ever asking my permission (because I never would have given it), they worked the whole thing out. I therefore bypassed the application stage, the examinations, the teacher referrals, etc. that everyone else had to go through to live there, because my daddy boasted about me and this friend of his was desperate.

And thus I became one of the Italian Women. Even though I didn’t speak Italian. Even though I did speak German. Even though I never asked to be there and I never wanted to be there. And now, I was there, as a Freshman no less, living among brilliant, fascinating, and dedicated people… It carried clout, and I too looked like I might be brilliant, fascinating, and dedicated. But I wasn’t. Not at all. I didn’t belong there. Oh, and did I mention that I was on a full-ride scholarship, which I ALSO didn’t deserve?

Up to that point in my life, that’s kinda how things had gone. No one ever actually asked me what I wanted, they TOLD me what I wanted. They then handed it to me on a silver platter, and told me how lucky I was to have been given exactly what I wanted (even though I never wanted it). Then when I didn’t make the most of it, I was such a disappointment and a failure and no one knew what to do with me. Obviously, it was also very hard on people who DID want the things I’d been given— people who were working so hard to get into these places, people who were starving students with huge loans just trying to make it through college without going bankrupt. When it was all just simply handed to me, they were resentful and frustrated— especially when I was such a goof-off and so obviously didn’t deserve it all.

In fairness to myself, though, it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t want any of it. It wasn’t my fault that things were always handed to me. I couldn’t make myself want it, I couldn’t make myself care. My motivation was always just to not be too big of a disappointment to my parents, and that can only take you so far.

So, anyway, I found myself in the Italian House. I had three roommates: Giovanna, who was a feisty and insanely gorgeous Sicilian on a dance scholarship; Melissa from California, a Junior with beautiful long dark curly hair and the most perfectly proportioned body that made any man with eyes stop and stare; and Karen from New Jersey, a Sophomore who every one of my guy friends fell instantly in love with for her porcelain doll-like features that stood in contrast to her sassy, street-wise attitude.

These were some of the most beautiful girls I’d ever known. All three were smart, gorgeous, and talented. And soon they weren’t just my roommates, but my best friends.

We had a few things in common. I wish Italian were one of them, but, alas, while the three of them spoke it beautifully, I never did quite catch on. No, the things we had in common were much more trivial. We all had dark hair. We all frequently wore black clothing. We all received more than our fair share of attention from boys.

These three things earned us the nickname of “Italian Witches,” given to us by girls who probably didn’t like us very much. But it was a name we wore with pride. It was an honor to be one of the Italian Witches. There wasn’t a boy in the whole apartment complex who wasn’t in love with at least one of us, and there were only a handful of girls who would still speak to us.

And that, dear readers, sets the scene for the many soap operas that occurred during this time. A couple have already been shared here— remember Chad, the Godfather of soapy stories? Or Weird Internet Waffle Guy? Both of those come from this period of time. But there’s more, so many more.

(Yup, it’s Soap Opera Sunday (SOS), folks—even though there’s less than an hour left of Sunday in this time zone. Hey, at least I’m here now, right? The link-list of other participants this week is directly below this post, and more info on SOS is here.)

Due to popular demand, I will now attempt to finish my “Blake” story. The last installment was here, and that was over a month ago. Ooops…

So, we left off our saga when we were officially engaged. I suppose that now would be a good time to tell you that “Blake” was not his first name… but his middle name. His first is Brian. Ah, yes. You know where this is going now, don’t you!

Brian and I had a 6-month engagement, full of all the trauma and drama of two world’s coinciding. Brian’s family was so very different from mine. Heck, Brian and I were so very different! The only thing we had in common was our religion and… The Beatles. That’s right. Those were the only two things we could agree on.

Fortunately, we both enjoyed to debate. (We still do…)

Somehow we made it through those six months without killing each other. There were times when I think his mother wanted to kill me. It’s possible that there were times that I wanted to kill his mother. Hahaha. (I now love her as my own. But planning a wedding with a woman that you barely know and have nothing in common with is… tricky.)

The wedding itself was simple. Very, very simple. As simple as they would let me get away with, anyway. No cake. Please. That was one of my biggest requests. NO CAKE. Don’t ask me to explain that to you. It was just something I felt very strongly about. No professional photographer. Just snapshots, please, if you must. My wedding colors were white and navy, simply because I knew that both my bridesmaids and my mom and mother-in-law all owned elegant navy-colored dresses, and therefore we wouldn’t actually have to buy anything, because how lame would it be to buy bridesmaid and matron dresses that no one would want later? Hahaha. These are just examples of how simple I wanted to keep everything. It wasn’t about money. We could have had the over-the-top, elaborate wedding—there were enough people willing to fund such a thing.  But no, thanks.  I just DID. NOT. WANT TO.

We were married in the Mt. Timpanogos LDS Temple in the dead of winter. It was the happiest day of my life. Brian was mine, I was his. Not “till death do you part,” but “for time and all eternity.”

And now, seven + years later, he’s still the man I long for, the man I adore, the man I want to spend the rest of eternity with. These years have been full of their fair share of soap operas. There have been 7 pregnancies and 4 children. There have been misunderstandings and even the very rare all-out fight. (That’s something that happens when you have, say, an extremely anti-gun woman married to a man who keeps his rifle in their closet… for instance.) Sometimes he makes me laugh so hard I can barely breathe, and other times he inspires me to the verge of tears. Not one single day goes by that we don’t make time to hang out with each other, because we just can’t get enough of each other’s company. We watch movies, we read books, we talk about anything and everything.

Before I met Brian, I had a rather long list of things that I just had to have in a husband. Things I thought would make me happy. Hahahaha. That list has been burned and replaced. How silly I was! Brian is everything I could have ever possibly wanted, but I was too stupid to know it. We often laugh that we’d have never passed one of those compatibility tests (like at match.com or whatever) because on paper we aren’t at all compatible. But what do those tests prove, anyway! Brian was made for me and I for him. I love how different we are. I love the parts of the universe that he’s opened up to me—things I never would have considered before. I love how life with Brian is never, EVER boring!

And that, Gentle Readers, concludes our “Blake” SOS.

(”Blake,” by the way, is a family name on Brian’s side, going back many generations. We even bestowed the name upon one of our offspring… So, yeah. That’s where that came from. I mean, I couldn’t have started this SOS calling him “Brian” now could I?)

Soap Opera Sunday is here—better late than never, right? Our dearest Kate was planning to host today, but tragedy took her away for the weekend, so you’re stuck with me. If you’re playing along too, please enter your link. If you’re dying to play along, but you’ve been living under a rock and have not yet heard HOW to play, click here.

And so the Blake saga continues… (part 1, part 2, part 3, part holy-crap-are-there-really-four-parts-before-this-part)

So I called Blake… and I got his voicemail— which had actually happened a lot while we were dating, because he was insane and working the graveyard shift (which meant that he slept all day and was basically impossible to get a hold of) and I was a normal human who worked during human hours. Just one more way that we couldn’t understand each other at all. Anyway, I wasn’t quite sure what to say to his voicemail. I think I ended up with something clever like, “Hi, this is Brill. I’ve been thinking about you a lot, and I miss you, and I’m wondering if I can see you sometime? Maybe? Um… call me… or not… you know… whatever… But, um, I miss you. Yeah, I just wanted you to know that I miss you and that I’ve been thinking about you a lot, and that I’d like to see you. Soon. I mean, if you want to. Yeah…”

Well, he must have been stunned by my grace and eloquence, because the next morning as I headed out to my car, I found that he’d been there during the night. There was a card and roses. Lots of roses.

Apparently, he was willing to see me again.

And suddenly, we were back together again, this time for reals.

My parents, by the way, were thrilled that we got back together. You see, many months before— before Blake and I had started dating, and before my parents had left for Chile, my dad had had a chance meeting with Blake and had been immensely impressed. My dad had asked me at the breakfast table the next morning, “so, are you interested in Blake?” I’d been kinda floored by the question, because I WAS interested in Blake but hadn’t said a word about it to anyone yet. I was flabbergasted enough by the question that I blurted out that yes, I liked him very much. My dad smiled and said, “good.” He’d been sitting on the sidelines, cheering Blake on, ever since.

Blake told me his side of the story about the days that we’d been apart, telling me how difficult, dark, sad they were. We’d both learned a lot about ourselves during that time. We both learned that we loved each other very much, and we never wanted to be apart again.

I guess breaking up was kinda the best thing that could have happened to our relationship… because now we knew.

And so, on my 22nd birthday, he wrote my father an email, asking for his blessing. He then took me on a drive up the canyon and stopped at one of our favorite places. We got out and walked for a bit, and then he got down on one knee and asked for my hand in marriage. I was crying, he was crying, and somehow I managed to choke out the word, ‘YES!!!!”

(Yes, I know you’re about to vomit from the sappiness. Sorry…)

After that wonderful moment, we raced down the canyon back to Kate’s apartment and I walked in to a surprise birthday party for me (because did I mention that I have the awesomest BFF ever?) and it was so perfect, because the room was full of my dearest friends and we were able to make our big announcement. We were getting married!!!

And that’s when the REAL soapiness began…

(to be continued… again…)

Soap Opera Sunday is being hosted by Abish today. Head on over to her site for her post and for links to the rest of the soapiness. (For more info about Soap Opera Sunday, read this.)

(This story began here and continued to here and then here…)

Suddenly I was single— oh how I’d always LOVED being single. The DABU (Day After Break-Up) had always been the happiest. I would go and get my hair done (seriously— strange ritual, I know, but I always did it. People who were close to me always knew when I’d broken up with someone because my hair was suddenly completely different) and then go find at least one cute boy to kiss meaninglessly. (Sometimes, um, more than one…) Ahhhhhhh, so great.

But this, as I said before, was different. No relief, no joy, no haircut, no wasted kisses. Just misery, sorrow, loneliness, and… well… tears. Lots of ‘em.

The feeling of having just made the biggest mistake of my life.

I went to work, I went through all the motions, I continued on with my life. But I felt so hollow, so empty. I couldn’t get Blake out of my mind.

I knew that if I called him, he would take me right back. I was completely confident in his love for me. But I also knew that if I were to call him, I would have to be ready to answer that Big Question. Calling him would be the equivalent of signing my name to a marriage license.

WHY couldn’t I do that? How many women were wandering around DYING to fall in love, DYING to be loved back, DYING to be married and start popping out babies? What was wrong with me? The perfect man, the perfect life, the perfect love, and it scared me to death.

Surely I was meant for something bigger. Surely I was meant for something more exciting and noteworthy and celebratory than marriage. I had dreams, plans, goals. Granted, I wasn’t making any progress towards those dreams and goals. In fact, the more steps I took towards them, the more they sounded like someone else’s desires rather than my own.

And suddenly I found myself in the middle of an identity crisis.

All my life, it had always been the same problem. As a child, when asked in school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never had an answer. I never had any idea what I really wanted to do or who I wanted to be. As I was finishing up high school and was courted by various universities, I didn’t know where I wanted to go or why. Once I found myself in college, I changed my major not once but FOUR times in the 3 semesters I attended college— and nothing I “tried on” ever seemed to “fit”.

Others had picked up on my aimlessness. I still have parent/teacher conference reports dating back to third grade filled with comments such as, “Brillig has so much potential, but she doesn’t seem to have any goals or direction.” Potential, potential, potential. That’s all I ever heard. Potential that I was never living up to, because I could never find a reason to dedicate myself to anything. Potential… so much potential. There came a point where it made me furious. Potential for what????

Who was I, and what exactly did I want?

I dropped to my knees, as I had so many times before, and begged to know what it was that I was supposed to be doing.

And then, slowly but surely, what started as a little thought grew into a conviction and then to an urgent, all-consuming knowledge.

The things that had seemed so important before were now clearly nothing but silliness. The “dreams, goals, and plans” were no longer who I was— I wasn’t even sure they ever had been. They were so trivial and absolutely not worth trading true love for.

I still didn’t quite know who I was or what I wanted out of life, but I knew one thing for sure: I was in love with Blake. He was my future. He was the one dream, goal, and plan that now held any place in my heart.

And so I picked up the phone and nervously dialed his number…

(to be continued…)

Are you playing SOS too? If so, enter the link to your post.  (Find out about Soap Opera Sunday here.)  Everyone is invited to play!

(Part three of the Blake series. Part one, part two.)

Blake wanted to marry me.

We were having so much fun. He was so cute, so easy to be with. While we were incredibly different on the surface, we actually had a lot in common. For one thing, we shared a religion and religious goals. That was huge, because my religion was (still is!) everything to me. We were passionate about similar social issues— civil rights, tolerance, love, and just basic kindness. In fact, Blake was the kindest person I’d ever known. But he was also funny, obnoxious, and a big fat stinker—in all the right ways. He made me laugh, and better yet, he laughed at my jokes! He thought I was smart and hilarious! WOW! How could I not fall madly in love with him?

And, indeed, I HAD fallen madly in love with him.  I had said, “I love you” to other boys, I might have even thought that I’d meant it before.  But this?  This was so different.  This was life-altering, soul-consuming, tear-shedding, toe-tingling, floating-on-air LOVE.

And then he had to go and ruin it by trying to get me to marry him.

See, I was only 21. I was so young and I had so much left to do. I wanted to be someone before I got married— I had places to go, books to write, languages to learn, motion pictures to star in, and boys… there were so many more boys that I’d never dated. Age 21 is that age, you know? I was at my mental and physical peak and I couldn’t waste that by getting married! Ick!

Blake tried to be patient, but he was ready to get this show on the road. He loved me, I loved him, why weren’t we getting married?

I couldn’t really explain it, but I just wasn’t ready.  I did love him, I really did.  But I felt like I was being given an ultimatum:  marry Blake, or break up with him.

So I broke up with him.

Now, by this point in my life, I’d broken up with a lot of boys.  Always me— I was always the one doing the dumping and the leaving.  And every time I’d broken up with someone, I felt as though a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders.

I was waiting for that feeling— that relief— but instead, as I walked out of his living room that night, leaving him with tears pouring down his cheeks, I felt bleak.  Miserable.  Like someone had permanently turned out the lights.  And then… the tears came.  Tears!  I bawled and bawled for days!  This was NOT like the other times.  This was the worst feeling I could imagine.

I had made a huge mistake.

(to be continued…)

(Are you playing Soap Opera Sunday too? If so, enter your link here! To find out more about Soap Opera Sunday, check here.)

After that first date with Blake, I went back home to Cedar City, but I didn’t stay there for long. I was in the middle of an absurd relationship (remember Ben?) and had already been tossed out of SUU (apparently I was really good at getting thrown out of school…) and when I broke the “yet-another-school-just-threw-me-out” news to my parents (you can only imagine how… um… proud they were…) I also announced that I was cutting myself off: Daddy was no longer allowed to pay for my living expenses or schooling (assuming I’d ever go back to school). I knew that if I did it on my own, I’d finally take things a little more seriously. Plus, I wouldn’t feel so completely guilty every time I screwed up if I was now only reporting to myself. Plus, I wanted to cut myself off before Daddy cut me off. Surely he was about to. Ahhhh, I felt like such a grown-up. A very poor, very aimless grown-up.

So I got a job.

It was while I was at work one morning in Cedar City at my important $6/hour telemarketing job (SO glamorous) that my head began to throb. This wasn’t just a headache, this was a “holy-crap-I- think-I-might- be-dying-because-my-head- hurts-so- frickin’-brackin’-bad- and-I-have-to-go-lie- down-right-this-second” headache.

So I went back to my apartment and lay down. As suddenly as the headache came on, it went away. And in a moment of absolute clarity, I knew what I had to do.

I had to move back to Provo.

Provo was only about three hours away from Cedar City, but it seemed like a whole different universe. I packed up all of my stuff and told my roommates that I was moving out. They were really broken up about it… because the TV was mine, the stereo was mine, the microwave was mine, and all the cute clothes were mine (and, um, all the cute boys were mine too…). They were going to miss me so much.

My parents were in Chile at this point (and would be for a couple of years) and had rented out their home here to my brother J and a few of his friends… including Blake. That meant, among other things, that there was no where for me to stay as a free-loader. (Which was fine, because I was a grown-up, remember?)

Now I needed a place to live— and it needed to be cheap. And I needed a job— ANY job— in order to pay for said cheap place.

As unbelievable as it sounds, within a day of arriving in Provo I had a place to live (which was an absolute HOLE, and could be the subject of its own soap opera saga. But hey, it was home), I had a job which was way better than I deserved (thanks to my sister who had climbed the corporate ladder and heard of an immediate opening and got me right in— I totally didn’t deserve that job and within two hours of my working there EVERYONE knew it. But it was too late. I was there and I was earning money, and slowly but surely I was learning the ropes)…

AND… I had reestablished a connection with Blake, who had, of course, been in the back of my mind throughout this whole move, though I would have sworn up and down that I didn’t move to Provo for him. I was NOT that kind of girl— the kind who picked up her whole life just to see how things would work out with some boy I’d only been on one date with. Still, he was on my mind. A lot.

Blake and I were still… well… a bit too different. And while that made for a lot of lively conversation, it also made any kind of long-term relationship seem impossible.

But I just couldn’t seem to stay away from him.

(…to be continued…)

(Big thanks to Shellie of Little But Loud who is graciously hosting Soap Opera Sunday this weekend. She will have a list at her blog of all the other participants this week. For more Soap Opera Sunday information, read this.)

I have to start out this particular bit of soapiness by explaining that I was 21. I was attending Southern Utah University (well, I was enrolled at SUU. To say I was attending would be an overstatement, since I only showed up for class about 4% of the time…) and I was going through boyfriends like they were kleenexes. Oh, and like most 21 year olds, I knew everything.

One of my Provo-based friends was getting married, so I grabbed my friend Liz and drove my shiny teal Ford with its 6-CD changer (I had never even heard of a 6-CD changer until Daddy gave me this car for Christmas just the month before) up to Provo to attend the wedding reception and to hang out with my family for the weekend and show Liz the big city I hailed from (hey, compared to Cedar City, any town with a mall is a thriving metropolis).

After the wedding reception, my brother J called me to say that while I was in town he wanted to set me up with his friend, who we will call “Blake.” Truth is, I was dying for J to set me up with Blake. I’d only met Blake once, but he’d made a huge impression and I had been kinda holding my breath ever since I’d first seen him for a chance to go out with him.

But, I had Liz with me, and I couldn’t just leave her stranded in my parents’ basement while I went out with some guy I barely knew. I explained that to J, and he said that he’d figure something out and call me back.

Which he did. In record time, Blake had arranged a massive group date. J would be set up with a girl named Lindsay, Liz would be set up with a guy named Jesse, and two other couples would be joining us too. That’s ten people, all out on first dates, most of which were blind dates.

Blake had gone to an awful lot of trouble just to spend some time with me…

I was so excited.

When we met up with everyone, I just about had a heart attack over how darling Blake was. He had this perfect, almost angelic face. His green eyes were squinty, as if he were permanently smiling. And his hair? Short, perfectly groomed, and fuschia. That’s right. Fuschia. I confess that I was highly intrigued by this boy who gave off the essence of absolute innocence and purity, but with just a little shock of rebellion in the form of fuschia hair dye on his head.

We were divided up into cars– J, Lindsay, Jesse, and Liz all went in one car, the other two couples went in another car, and that left me and Blake to go by ourselves in his… um… vehicle.

It was a truck, I guess, but not like any truck I’d ever seen. It was like a truck had gotten stuck in a shrinking machine and was miniaturized. It had peeling black paint and a cracked windshield and the heater didn’t work very efficiently (I remember that last part acutely because it was January. In Utah. And, like any sensible girl on a first date with a gorgeous guy, I was dressed to be cute, not warm).

As he started the… um… truck, his radio blared “music.” Bluegrass “music.” He then told me— perhaps in response to the “trying-to-be-polite-but-really-hating-this-music” expression on my face— that he could never really be interested in someone who didn’t share his passion for bluegrass music.

Two possible responses came to my mind. The first one was something like, “well, then you’d better let me out here, because I’m clearly not the girl for you.” The second possible response was, “Boy, looking the way you do, I’d gladly poke holes in my eardrums and let you listen to whatever you want, as long as I can stare at you all day long.”

Deciding that neither response was quite appropriate, I settled for something eloquent like, “hmmmmmmm… .”

“It could be worse,” I thought to myself. “I could be on a date with an ultra-conservative Republican or something.” It was about at that moment that I noticed the “Vote for Alan Keyes” paraphernalia in his… um… truck.

Oh. Mygosh. I was on a date with a crazy ultra-conservative Republican.

Shoot.

Me.

Now.

And yet, he was so so so cute. And kind. And enthralling. And cute.

His cell phone rang— it was J, telling us that the restaurant that they’d planned on had a super long waiting list. As they discussed possible alternates, I heard Blake say, “no, not Italian. I don’t like pasta.”

Oh. Mygosh. I was on a date with an ultra-conservative, “truck”-driving, bluegrass-obsessed friend of my brother’s who didn’t like pasta. It was as though the heavens had created my exact opposite, and expected me to adore him.

And I did. I adored him.

The ten of us ended up going to an Indian restaurant, which was insanely delicious, and after much witty banter (seriously, Blake and I were both on a roll that night), we all went back to J’s house to watch a movie. J wanted to watch something that was Rated R and almost everyone was fine with that. But two of the girls had made personal decisions not to watch Rated R movies and they were really uncomfortable. They asked nicely if we could please change the plan and watch something else. The response from almost everyone was one of jeering and ridicule and “hey, if 8 of us want to watch this movie, then we outnumber you and you’ll just have to deal with it.”

It was then that Blake piped up, and said, “we’re NOT going to force anyone to watch something that they’re not comfortable with! We’ll find something else!”

And I think it’s just possible that that’s the moment I fell in love with him… though I hadn’t realized it yet.

His statement was so decisive and authoritative that all mockery ceased and they simply found a different movie to watch that everyone would be okay with.

Sometime during the movie, Blake reached for my hand, and we spent the next two hours holding hands, painfully aware that while there was definitely something going on here, our differences were far too gigantic to be overcome.

…to be continued, of course…

Hey, y’all… Anonymous Soapiness is hosting Soap Opera Sunday this week.  Head on over there to see the list of the rest of the participants.  Find out more about Soap Opera Sunday here.

Today we finish up the Adam saga. Click for part one, part two, or part three.

Well, my title here pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

That’s right. We all fell asleep (how I possibly fell asleep with Adam snuggled against me I’ll never know) and I woke up somewhere around 5:00 and I don’t actually remember how it happened. But suddenly he was kissing me. And I was kissing him back.

And it was the most disgusting thing ever.

Morning breath, chapped lips… it just makes for a really unpleasant experience, as I’m sure you can imagine. I’m not even sure if there would have been any chemistry anyway. It was just… ewwww.

I was terribly disappointed. Just as I’m not sure how it started, I’m not sure how the kissing ended either—which one of us finally broke away and stopped pretending like there was magic in this utterly unmagical situation. I remember that I had early play practice, and so I ran out the door, leaving most of my possessions—and Adam—behind.

Which meant that I had to go back.

I realized as I was heading back to Tara and Adam’s that I was going to be interrogated by the girls, who were all going to wonder what was up with me and Adam. He hadn’t exactly been sneaky, as you recall. I contemplated what to tell them— perhaps that nothing happened, perhaps that we’d accidentally kissed and it would never happen again, perhaps… well… certainly NOT the truth.

Plus, I wasn’t quite sure what Adam was thinking in all of this. Would he be calling me? Did he have as awful of a kissing experience as I? Did he think that this meant that we were an item? Yikes…

When I got back to Tara’s, Adam wasn’t there, but all the girls were. “So, we heard you made out with Adam!” Aha. They had already been informed. There was much squealing and giggling, though none from me. I hadn’t expected him to tell them all, and since I wasn’t sure what to make of it (besides the obvious unpleasantness) I fumbled a bit, and acknowledged that yes, there had been some kissing.

Then Monica blurts out, “he said it was AWFUL.” She announced it as though it were the best news ever, and I died laughing and acknowledged that yes, it was AWFUL. Hahaha. It was a bit embarrassing that he’d felt the same way, I confess. I’d rather hoped that he could spend a few years pining for me, the way I’d pined for him all those years. Oh well. It had been a fun run, and now it was over, which was, truly, just fine with me.

The next time I saw Adam was when my brother J was in town, several months later. J and Adam had been best friends once upon a time, so it was natural that they’d be hanging out. I knew I’d run into him at some point, and I wasn’t sure how either of us would react. But one night we all ended up at the same barbecue in the canyons that I attended with J. I saw him as soon as I got out of the car. He came towards us, with a smile on his face that made me smile and he reached to give me a hug. I hugged him back and without speaking we both started laughing—washing all the anxiety, awkwardness, flirtatiousness, past weirdness away. He kept his arm around me, and I swung my arm around him and my other arm around J on the other side of me and the three of us joined the party.

And we’ve been friends ever since.

My dearest co-founder, Kate of Walking Kateastrophe, is hosting Soap Opera Sunday this week. Be sure to head on over there for the list of other SOS participants!

(More Adam—Part one, part two.)
Tara and I began hanging out on a regular basis, and I therefore ran into her brother often. Every time I saw him, it was as though electricity was surging through me.

Neither Adam nor I were what you’d call “shy.” We were both flirtatious, overly-confident, and well-versed in the art of playing. Neither one of us was looking for a relationship. In fact, if memory serves, I was already in a relationship with someone else… (Y’all remember Chad, right? Epic proportions of unhealthiness…)

I became infatuated with the idea of conquest. I HAD to make this boy, who I had adored so obsessively once upon a time, adore me.

And I found, from the way he kept manipulating situations to be near me, that I was in the drivers seat. He did seem to adore me. I was winning. It was such a thrill!

I never talked about this Adam-game I was playing with any of the other girls. I wasn’t quite sure how to talk about it with Tara, after all. And Ginny and Monica were clearly pining for him. So it had to be my little secret, I decided.

One night, Tara invited me, along with Monica and Ginny (who were now living with her and Adam in their parents’ house) and Sara to watch the MTV Movie Awards at their place and then just spend the night. Perfect.

Adam would be away that evening, but somehow I knew he’d find a way to make an appearance… This crazy magnetic pull was affecting both of us and I knew he’d be there.

We girls filled their family room with blankets and pillows and snacks and settled in for the long haul, just like a slumber party right out of Jr. High School, except that we were all in college…

A few hours into our slumber party, Adam appeared. Hahaha. Shocker. I knew he would come home. He boldly marched towards me, lifted the side of the blanket that I was snuggled under, and made room for himself there. I’m sure the other girls were arching their eyebrows about this, but I wasn’t paying any attention to them. I was completely focused on this gorgeous grinning boy… whose legs were resting against mine, whose heart was pounding as frantically as mine, and whose lips were close enough to…

(to be continued…)

I’m hosting SOS today because, um, I kinda forgot to secure a guest host this week. haha. Oops! So, you’re stuck with me again! The Mr. Linky is at the end of the post.

About a million years ago, I started a Soap Opera Sunday saga about a guy we called “Adam.” Remember? Seriously, it was so long ago that if you’d like to go catch up, it’s here (and it’s very short). I’ll wait.

Back already? Great. Moving on.

So six years went by…

I’d heard that Adam and his family moved to Ireland and then he went to serve a mission for his (our) church and then he went to college… somewhere.

I’d been great friends with Tara, Adam’s sister, while we’d all been in Jerusalem. But once they’d left, we all lost touch.

A few years later, while in high school, I met a girl named Sara who had also spent a lot of time in Jerusalem and, though we’d never actually known each other there (she left before I arrived), there was a certain bond by having shared similar experiences— both the magnificent and the horrifying. Sara and Tara had been great friends in Jerusalem.

Over those six years, I… well, I grew up. I was no longer the insecure 12-year-old child that Adam had known. I was 18, confident, flirtatious, and comfortable.

I was a freshman at BYU, majoring in looking good and making out with virtual strangers, when Sara called me to say that Tara was in Utah and they wanted to come and hang out with me. Sounded great! So we all went to lunch, along with a couple of Tara’s girlfriends from Ireland who were also at BYU. It was great to catch up, to see how we’d all “turned out” etc.

We had such a good time that we all began hanging out regularly.

One day, we were all having lunch together when the conversation turned towards their plans for that night, which was to stand in line all night for tickets to some big movie that opened the next day (I’m thinking it was the new Star Wars Episode One or something equally nauseating that I couldn’t have been LESS interested in…). Did I want to join them? No, thank you. Who all is coming? Sara, these Irish girls (whose names were Ginny and Monica), Tara, Tara’s brother and his roommates…

Now I had, of course, already moved on from my obsession with Adam. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t become suddenly VERY interested in the various details of their conversation. It didn’t mean that my heart didn’t speed up. It didn’t mean that I wasn’t instantly contemplating ways that I would run into him and dazzle him with my grown-up-ness.

“So, Adam’s here? Is he a student at BYU?” I tried to sound as casual as possible, but I watched Ginny and Monica glance at each other, and I suddenly realized that of course these girls were also interested in Adam. As I thought about Adam’s excrutiatingly handsome face and his dark wavy hair, I understood that every girl within a ten mile radius of him would bask in his perfection. I almost wondered if that’s why Monica and Ginny were such devoted friends to Tara…

And yes, Adam was here, and he was a student. He was living in an apartment, but only for a few more weeks until Tara and Adam’s parents finalized the purchase of a house here, where Tara, Adam, Monica, Ginny, and one of Adam’s friends would all live together in the basement. I smiled at Ginny and Monica’s transparent delight over this arrangement.

I was thrilled that Tara would be living here on a more permanent basis. I’d enjoyed catching up with her and I knew that we could all have a lot of fun with her nearby.

After I left that lunch, I confess that I considered joining them for their sleeping-in-line-for-tickets-to-see-a-dumb-movie fun. But that was just so not me. Still, I couldn’t get the idea of seeing Adam again, SOON, out of my head.

So, I did what any other good friend would do… I enlisted Matt’s aid (Matt was an invaluable accessory in any social situation… and he had a car… plus, he and Sara had always been friends, as she was one of the few people who didn’t run for the hills when he’d come out of the closet a few months before) and we took hot chocolate and cookies to our friends out in the cold.

I was a bit disappointed as I approached the line of crazy people waiting in the cold—Adam’s face wasn’t in the group. Sigh. So much for that. Still, I greeted the girls joyfully and distributed my goodies to the eager recipients.

As Sara was introducing Matt to the group, there were some guys right next to them, playing cards as they waited in line, who were clearly checking me out. Ever boy-crazy, I flashed them a flirtatious smile and one asked me if there were any more cookies for them. I laughed and brought some to them. There were four of them and they were funny and flirtatious and easy to talk to. But after a minute, Matt was bored and I was cold (and Adam wasn’t there…), so we decided to move on.

Just as we were walking away, I heard the guys I’d just been talking to yell, “Adam! You made it!” I turned and saw Adam sitting down with them— realizing that this wasn’t two groups after all, but the same group, and that my flirtatious new friends were Adam’s roommates.

My heart was racing. I found myself moving back towards the group. Tara said, “Brillig, you remember my brother Adam.” Adam instantly jumped back to his feet. I couldn’t believe that the real Adam did, in fact, live up to my memory.

“Hey,” I said, smiling, but doing my best to appear poised and confident.

“Hi,” he said, grinning like an idiot.

to be continued, natch…
**********************

Playing too? Enter your link here! To learn more about Soap Opera Sunday, read here.