Not Ready

When my parents first signed me up for driving school in the last week of summer, I wasn't very enthused. Being a very shy guy who didn’t like talking to new people, I knew this was going to be a challenge. Even though I’ve been an athlete all my life, playing high level basketball and volleyball, I still struggle with talking to people.

When I first walked into the room for the school, I was one of the last people there. There weren't many desks left so I headed towards the back. Little did I know this spot had a clear view of this special girl. Before class started, I was looking around scoping out the place for anyone I knew, and I found two girls who I didn't like that much in my school. I turned my head the other direction and WOW. I was struck by this girl that was so gorgeous, like OMG. Her gorgeous, black ,straight hair, slim body, long eyelashes, and sparkling green eyes. I must’ve been staring at her for quite some time because she turned towards me twice as if she told her friend about me and laughed. This wasn’t the start I was looking for, as I blushed with embarrassment. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of this girl, I couldn’t even pay attention to the class as she was racing through my mind the whole time. I would sometimes catch her looking behind at me and then quickly looking away, pretending she wasn’t looking at me at all. We would occasionally make eye contact and she smiled, and man, it felt soooo nice, but I wasn’t sure if it meant that much.

After a long boring day of driving school, I walked home from school and she passed me in the passenger seat and smiled as we looked at each other. Moments later I was texting my best friend Kate about how hot this girl was and that she was smiling at me a lot today, but Kate kept saying, “She’s only doing it to be nice Spencer,” and kept claiming she knew she was right because she was a girl. She was ultimately trying to crush my confidence to talk to this stunning girl, but I knew I was right, that she was looking at me a little too much to “be nice.”

Wednesday morning is when I knew I had to shoot my shot. I wasn’t sure when the right time would be, but I decided I had to do it. At lunch I saw her outside of the school on the sidewalk with her friend, that’s when I knew I had to talk to her. I took three steps towards them and turned around immediately as butterflies filled my stomach. I somehow got enough courage to walk up to them trying to act cool and asked when they will be getting their license and what school they went to, and it turned out they lived 20 minutes away from me.

The conversation very quickly got awkward, so I walked away before it got any worse, thinking maybe Kate was right to assume she was just being nice. It wasn’t a good feeling, but I was proud of myself for trying. At least 30 seconds later, the fire alarm went off inside and we all got moved onto a patch of grass. I look behind me and there they were again, and both smiled and said, “Hey,” and laughed a little. We started talking again for a few minutes a lot less awkwardly, as I knew some people from their school. My dad was pulling in to get me for lunch as I asked them for their Snapchats, and they gave me them.

I then realized I didn't even ask them what their names were, and when I saw it on Snapchat, I searched them up on Instagram only to see that they both had already sent me a follow request. As I followed both, I realized that this girl that I reallllyyyy liked was named Madison and her best friend was named Kaitlin. Shortly after looking on her Instagram, I was confused. Why was "had a date" in her bio? I was immediately like nah, I would’ve gotten rejected if she had a boyfriend, but NOPE. She had pictures of them together, as they were dating for two years. On the way back to CONA, I messaged a group chat of my friends telling everyone about this, and everyone was saying how unlucky I was.

After lunch that day, we started talking again when we were walking out of the class together on our break. I was waiting for them, since they were so slow leaving the class and made sure I got out just behind Madison, and DAMN she was thick. But she had a boyfriend….

We talked for a bit more walking down the halls, and they were going outside. I wasn't sure if I should go with them or not, so I stopped in case I looked like a creep that they didn’t want to talk to. Madison looked behind to see if I was there behind her and asked, “You comin’?” with a smirk, and I said yes and smiled and I ran down the stairs behind them. All three of us sat on the picnic table together as we learned more about each other. I learned a lot, specifically about her boyfriend Mitch. After driving school that day, we were talking a lot on Snapchat, and she had to work that night at the ice cream place she worked at and actually told me, “If I wasn’t in a relationship right now, I would date you.” This made had me in complete awe, but I couldn't do anything about it, I didn’t want to ruin what they already had. But I was also like OMG I would actually get such a hot girlfriend if she wasn’t in a relationship, my luck is so shit. So I answered her snapchat saying, “Chilllll, you’re in a relationship!” but she didn’t didn’t seem to care that much.

The next morning I saw her and Kaitlin on the couch by the stairs in the entrance, but I didn’t really wanna sit down and sit by them and be awkward since I barely knew them, and they didn't look up at me, so I went to the classroom. At break time, I waited for her to go over to me to make sure she still liked me, just to check, and sure enough, she did. I think this break time, we went to sit on the grass outside, where I told her about my first kill, and she flipped out 'cause Mitch fucked her before too, which was funny because she’s now a hoe haha.

We then laid on the grass in the sun a bit longer as I also found out I knew her cousin. We completely ignored the teacher during this and Snapchatted each other and texted, and I took a cute video of her which I saved along with a picture. She kept begging me to sit next to her in an empty seat, but I kept refusing, saying the teacher would tell me to move back and it would be very embarrassing. At lunch time, I wasn’t able to hang out with them since I had an audition for an acting role for NLTA (Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association,) and I actually got the role.

I was on the way back, Snapchatting her the whole time, had just got A&W and I finished it on the outside stairs of the building with them talking about how that was our last day together. Those stairs hit me so hard and made me feel so nostalgic that now, every time I walk up them, I just think of the good times after one year has passed. After the last break of the day and more lying in those black chairs inside, we went to the vending machines downstairs, where we didn’t do much. We went back to class, and shortly after, I went to the washroom with the purpose of coming back and sitting in that desk that she wanted me in. Which I did, and everyone else gave me weird looks, but I remember that smile she gave me, and it was one hell of a happy one.

She kept putting her legs on me with her goofy smile, and it almost felt like we were dating, but we weren't. Near the end of class she took my name card and wrote “faggot” across it, smiling as she handed it back. I continue to hold on to this name card, as it helps bring back good memories. As the bell rang and class was over, I was struck with sadness, lots of sadness. I realized I would never be seeing this girl ever again, she had a boyfriend, she lived 20 minutes away, and neither of us had our license yet. Kaitlin said she had to use the washroom before we left, so we walked her over to the bathroom, and it was awkward, as neither of us said anything to each other; we just looked at each other. Madison looked at me awkwardly, then asked if she could have a hug, to which I immediately said yes. I would’ve asked for one too, but was scared to get rejected with her boyfriend and all.

As I walked down the stairs and they waited for Madison’s mom, I waved to them and walked home thinking about what just happened, slowly processing it, as I’m pretty upset. That same night, Madison asked me to facetime her, and I said yes, obviously. We didn't talk about anything important except for the fact that her boyfriend didn't even know I existed, and she was acting like this with me!!! I thought I was going to get killed. We talked for several hours, and I had to hang up at 1:30 AM because school was approaching and I had to get back to a regular sleep schedule. The next day she must have seen Mitch, because he messaged me on Facebook messenger, “Stop talking to my fucking girlfriend.” At this point I was pretty scared, he was actually involved in drugs and stuff and probably could get me killed if he wanted to.

As Madison and I slowly stop talking, drifting away from each other, we still somehow managed to keep our streak on Snapchat. After not talking for a month or so, she told me that her and Mitch broke up, and I immediately facetimed her and asked what happened and tried my best to support her in every way I could. I think we even talked for several hours that night just catching with each other. We didn’t talk much for another month until that very sad night for me where I was really upset about another hoe whose trap I fell into. She really was there to comfort me. I think I must’ve sent a picture of me sad because she immediately told me to facetime her, which I did, and she made me feel so much better in the few hours we talked, and I even met another one of her friends, Emma, for the first time there.

That facetime call really made me realize that I need this girl in my life. I need this pretty girl who is always the sweetest to me and will do anything to make me happy, this is the girl I need. I proceeded to ask her if she wanted to come over the next day and help me feel better (I was gonna wanna cuddle and maybe kiss), but her dad was watching NASCAR and didn’t want to drive her to a boy's house, so we couldn’t hangout. She said she would be able to next weekend, which had me impatiently waiting all week. The next weekend came around and Madison came over, and we went downstairs in my basement and watched a movie. We cuddled throughout it and even kissed, which was the start of our relationship. :)

The first six months of our relationship were nothing but love and happiness. Those was some of the happiest times I’ve ever had in my life., enjoying every second of seeing her once or twice a week as the time flew by. Our parents became great friends and I was able to sleep over at her house, and the same went with her at mine. I became very good friends with her best friend Emma and her boyfriend Noah, as we went through lots of drives together listening to "Robbery" by Juice Wrld, yelling it at the top of our lungs.

Then came the next month. Madison wasn’t herself. She was already on medication, Zoloft, to help her with her anxiety, but something was different with her. We went to her house instead of going to a big field party since it was raining out, and she didn't seem very happy to be with me that night. She rarely looked at me for the first two hours and didn’t want to even kiss me at all. I was so confused, because she’d never turned down a kiss before… She looked at me and started bawling when I asked her what was wrong, and she started saying, “I’m sorry I'm not feeling like myself,” with tears running down her cheeks.

I said, "It’s okay," and gave her a comforting hug, and then she pushed me away.

She said, “I don't want to be touched.” This is when it hit me: we’re going to break up. As tears ran down both of our faces, we laid in her bed watching our favourite show, and then she jumped on me. She started making out with me for a solid minute before giving me a four-minute long hug and lying on top of me, all cuddled into me. At this point, I’m so confused and at a loss for words, so I wrapped my arms around her and just lied there. We ended up getting nachos shortly after and eating them right before bed. The next morning, she had work early in the morning, so I had to get picked up by my dad.

The next week was even harder. She was working almost every day or studying for math or bio and barely had any time to text me, and when she did, it was always a short, dry response to my 5five or six lines of something crazy that I just witnessed or a question about something. She said she would come over Saturday after her mom dropped her off. She walked up to my room, sat on my bed, and started bawling uncontrollably. She couldn't get her words out, and this confirmed my suspicion that we were going to break up and it wasn’t because either of us wanted to. She had been told by many people that she had depression and she couldn't deal with a relationship. She was crying in my arms for 15 minutes, telling me how much she loved me and didn’t want it to end like this. We talked everything out and left. Shortly under an hour of being over, we decided she needed a break to look after herself, and we would look at possibly getting back together after exams were done in a month time. If we never got back together again, she said she would love to best friends like the summertime.

Exams came around the corner and her mom found out she smoked weed, so she was grounded. Six weeks later, she was still grounded with no phone, no car, and all of her social media permanently deleted. I had very minimal contact with her only through her friends, as she lives so far away and is stuck at home occasionally seeing her girlfriends. Madison managed to message me on Emma's phone saying she’s still not ready and for me to move on to other girls and not to wait around. She says she loves me so much still and can’t stop thinking about me as she cares about me so much, but she’s not ready.