I love you, you asshole

 Raziel sat draped across her bed, writing in her journal, feeling like a moronic middle school girl even though she was a 23 year old college graduate. She figured she might as well still have braces for the sort of progress she’d made over the years, which was none. The things in her life were still crooked and wrong and needed wire to keep them together.

Eight months earlier, at the beginning of the summer, she had told her little brother’s best friend that she liked him. Talk about a dumb idea. Raziel hadn’t a clue how the attraction had begun. How did she go from wanting to kick him and her brother out of her playhouse to wishing he’d want to spend one-on-one time with her? Micah was only a year and two months younger than her, but he had been that kid. The one she’d seen wearing Batman underwear when she was eight.

And now she liked him? The admission hadn’t gone over well. Micah told her that he was sorry, but he wasn’t interested in her. That he just didn’t have any of those feelings for her at all. However, eight months later, here she was, writing about how she still liked him—no, loved him—even though he basically thought of her as a sister. Raziel contemplated going through her entry and dotting all of her i’s with hearts, because everything was so ridiculous anyway. Might as well be a pre-pubescent teen about it.

She thought, Is it too much if I drive over to his house on a night that it is pouring rain? And I ring his doorbell at 9pm and am standing on his front step with soaking wet hair? That sort of thing happens all the time in movies, but is it too much if I do it in actual real life?

But she was determined. She needed to hear him say “I can never love you, and I will never love you.” It was the only way she could move on. All this time she had been clinging to some psychotic hope that he would change his mind, that he would see her in a different light.

With my luck I’ll drive over there and he won’t be home, she thought. Or worse yet, his roommate will answer the door instead of him. Then all the drama would be lost. That’s the thing about real life. It’s rare that anybody acts out the script you’ve written in your head.

If she was really being honest with herself, what she wanted most was for Micah to show up at her door—whether it was raining or not. She had thought about this many times—how she would hear a knock on the door, open it, and see Micah standing there saying, “I was wrong about you.”

It wouldn’t even matter that she’d be wearing sweatpants and have no make up on. She knew that if he were to show up at her door, she wouldn’t be lucky enough to be dressed attractively like the girls in the movies. No, it would probably be 2pm on a Saturday, and she’d still have her elastic waisted pajama pants on. But it wouldn’t even matter, because he would be there. For her. To ask for a second chance. And what she would do is look at a clock and note the time, so she could remember the exact moment in history when Micah came to his senses. Then she would say, “I’m so glad you’re finally here.”

As it was, Raziel could not count on that ever happening, and the not knowing drove her mad. She wanted to forget about him, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t expected this. For the three weeks immediately following Micah turning her down, she was fine. There were no tears, no heartbreak. She even signed up for Match.com.

But when that first message arrived in her inbox from a stranger, asking her more about herself, she realized she couldn’t do this. She didn’t want anybody but Micah. She would rather wait three years for him to change his mind than be in a relationship with a man who was sup-par to Micah. And everyone was sub-par to him. She couldn’t reason how anyone else could be better than him. It just wasn’t possible.

Raziel had self-diagnosed herself with psychosis. That had to be it. Who else reasons like this?

Yes, driving over to his house at night and showing up in the rain seemed like just the movie-esque thing to do. The reason scenes in movies never happen in real life is because people aren’t brave enough to attempt them. They are terrified that the other person won’t respond the way they envisioned, and so they go about their lives in a mundane, non-dramatic sort of way. Raziel didn’t want this to happen to her. She wanted to be the girl who at least tried to get a cinematic scene. She was determined to gather all of her shredded bravery and bind it together to form enough new courage to take on this challenge.

There was no evidence at all to suggest that Micah had changed his mind about her. There was really nothing hopeful about the possibility of showing up on his doorstep, but she needed to hear him say that he would never love her. She figured those words said in person would be enough to cut her to the core, to pull her out of her psychosis and realize that she needed to stop being crazy and move on.

***

Raziel practiced some lines during the drive in her car.

           "Michah, you are an asshole." She said it many times over, changing the inflection in her voice. But no matter how many times she rehearsed this particular sentiment, she couldn’t believe it to be true. She was not any madder at Micah than before. She was not angry at him at all. He was not an asshole. He was kind and sweet and clever and strong and handsome. He was everything she ever wanted in a man, and it was a pity that all those wonderful qualities had to be enveloped in the very person who didn’t care about her in the least.

Sure, there were a few things about him that she initially was not attracted to, like his wardrobe. The guy wore numbered jerseys just about every day of the week. How many times had she wanted to explain to him that jerseys were something you should wear for sports games, that they were not acceptable as actual attire? But she didn’t care about that anymore. She found them endearing, adorable—hot even. Micah could wear those stupid jerseys every day of the week and it wouldn’t bother her if he just wanted to be with her while he wore them.

Raziel tried a new line. Both hands gripping the steering wheel, she spoke over the dashboard and into the darkness with as much feeling as she could muster. “I love you, you asshole.” 

 An hour and a half later she drove past Micah’s college campus. She turned left and then right, finally pulling up to the curb on the street that Micah lived on. The house sat four driveways down. The lights inside the living room were on, and his car sat parked outside the garage.

Was she really going to do this? Make a complete fool of herself?

Sometime later she found herself on the outside of the white wooden door. Her finger hovered over the doorbell with such violent shaking that you’d think she was pressing the button that ended the world. About thirty seconds later the door opened, and there Micah stood in socked feet, wearing a Lakers basketball jersey and a five o’clock shadow across his jaw line.

It was act 1, scene 2.

“Tell me you will never, ever love me.”

“Raziel, what are you doing here?”

“Tell me you find me repulsive and you can never love me.”

She could see that he was considering whether or not this was a trick. Was this a prank or was Raziel serious? He wanted to respond safely.

“Dammit, Micah, I drove all this way and have been standing in the rain for ten minutes trying to get the courage to push your doorbell, and you won’t even say your line. You need to tell me that you don’t want to love me.”

Slowly the words fell out of his mouth, like he was testing them to be true. “I don’t want to love you.”

“I didn’t want to love you either. You are not who I expected I would love. But I love you now, and I can’t stop. Even though you dress like a moron and need to shave. I used to think those things were stupid, and now I just find them endearing.”

Micah treaded carefully. “Razi, I’m sorry. I thought you understood. I don’t like you that way, and my feelings aren’t going to change.” The words tumbled off his lips like boulders rolling down a mountain and squashing a hiker who was trying to reach the top.

A few drops looking suspiciously like tears collected in his eyes. But maybe it was just sideways rain. “I’m really sorry.”

Dammit, this wasn’t supposed to be hard for him. He wasn’t supposed to feel anything. How could he not love her, but still be pained to say so? Did he have to be kind? Why couldn’t he be an asshole? Slam the door in her face and say “You’re a creeper, don’t ever come near me again!”?

“Look, Razi. Someone is going to be crazy about you. I know it. They’ll want to spend every waking moment with you and every slumbering minute next to you. There is someone out there for you…It’s just not me.”

Raziel did her best to feel a broken heart. She wanted to have every faint glow of hope extinguished from inside of her. She wanted to feel what it was like to have no hope in the development of a relationship. Her psychosis had taken over her mind, though, and she still did believe. She still trusted that anything could happen, and she would not give up hope until Micah was taken by somebody else. She would respect that. How could she not? She loved him and wanted him to be happy, so if he found happiness in another girl, she would smother out her own feelings and turn them to ash.

Raziel nodded. She wasn’t going to tell him this. If he knew she still had hope, he might worry. She didn’t want him to have any unsettling feelings.

“Micah, please. Please get a girlfriend. For my sake.”

Raziel turned around and walked back in the rain to her car. She didn’t look back. What she wanted was for him to come after her. To race out into the street and say It was all a lie. I want to love you. I can love you. I was wrong. But this isn’t a movie. It’s not a Nicholas Sparks book, either. It is real life, and those things don’t happen.