Burning

She was kind. And smart. And soft. And warm. And funny. As big of a geek as I was.

And her hair was always in two long braids. For some reason I was really into that.

We were both on the same local forum. She knew who I was, but that was it. Yet I still remember the first time I saw her.

Camo-pants, tank-top, pigtails, arms crossed. She looked tough. And then, at me. I looked away.

Yet I'd glance back and, she was still there. She'd do the same.

Some number of days, this played out. Her, standing weirdly far with her boyfriend. Me, always keeping stock on who was still here, and where exactly they were within "the here". At least, I think that was it.

Eventually, we held an event and everyone showed up. I took pictures. She was in a flavor shot that made it onto the forum, and I guess having her soul stolen was a good enough excuse to introduce herself to me.

Turns out I did know her online. But I thought she was a he. "LOL, everybody does."

I was some guy with a goofy blog and an "actual" web site.

She had a kinda-secret blog where she talked about her kinda-secret rocker boyfriend. Purple prose about sexual acts. Pigeon English to punctuate her every post with eternal love. And anime and imported games and language and foreign affairs and leftist politics in the land of the reddest necks.

Her universe was so alien to me. She was on this whole other level. Somewhere along the line I might've wondered what exactly she was doing talking to me.

But things were smooth, straightforward. She'd message me, or I'd message her. Of course, I loved it when she did. We'd rap about dorky teenager things.

She never talked about her boyfriend. Just as well, he always seemed pretty aloof - I barely knew the guy, really. He got along reasonably well with an older, mutual friend of ours, but I always assumed it was the rock-n-roll connection - discussing guitarist and drummer things, perhaps. It might have been their ages in common - it eventually came to light he was well into his twenties.

On my days off, I would drive to the city. She added an extra half-hour to the trip, yet was still somehow on the way. It didn't matter.

Food. Arcades. Movies that one of us had most likely seen. Being dumb in bookstores. Mall frolicking. Stuff like that. Time would fly, and the drive back inevitably sucked.

We'd hug. She'd compliment me on my hugs. I mean, I didn't practice or anything; I got that a lot, so, whatever.

Not every week, but every week, we'd do the same things, but different. Good fun. And the hugs got a little longer each time.

I woke up. We were lying sideways on her living room floor, holding on each other. Arms, maybe legs, wrapped around one another; I guess we'd both drifted off. I don't remember how it happened (other than 'wordlessly'), and to this day I can't think of a single non-awkward way that could've gone down.

She was soft, and warm, and charming, and what the hell was I doing? I had to get up. I was afraid of screwing things up - though, was that a foregone conclusion? I slowly withdrew from the embrace and eased back up, she did the same.

No words. Was this...just, a thing people did? Did we not know? Or did we simply not elect to speak about it.

I uttered my only slightly hasty goodbyes and started home.

No message from her waiting for me. But there was a blog post.

I don't recall if it was actual bad news, but anything she wrote could have come off that way given my mood then. And on top of it all: the penultimate sentence - there it was:

"And I think he likes me, too."
There might have been an emoticon after that.

I stared at my keyboard for a good few minutes, and suddenly sleeping felt like a better option than dealing.

It was an eerily quiet Sunday morning; everyone was gone to who knows where, so it was just me. And still no message from her, so I initiated. Eventually she shot back.

"Hey
"I need to ask you something."

An awkward few minutes with a fixed stare on the window status bar: she was typing, dot dot dot.

"Do you like me?"

All that time; that was it. This was it. I mean, I couldn't say yes; she was clearly, irrevocably tied to her mysterious boyfriend.

Never mind her arbitrary mention once that she broke up with her then-boyfriend to get with her then-current one.

There was clearly a wrong answer and a right one to this, no matter how I felt. Right?

"No."

It was another five or ten minutes, but felt like a million.

"Gotta stop sending the wrong signals, then."

And that was the last time she messaged me.

Sometimes I wonder, what if I'd said yes?

Maybe someday I will have the chance to ask her that very question.

...But, really, would she even remember?