Word of the Day: pusillanimous Location = ’Good morning, Holiday Inn Victoria’ That’s right, I’m working [finally]. However, it’s a Sunday morning that’s moe slow, and with two people working it makes for little to do. I’m writing this out at work because otherwise I won’t have time—and that’s sad that I have time to write out a journal entry while working. The damned phones aren’t even ringing. I’m wearing myself out and I like it. Being happy is tough. The Background So I started out the summer reading furiously, watching TV [my weakness?], buying fruits, flowers, and fabulous new additions to my wardrobe. Ah man, my Italian skirt with my brown ‘Italian’ [Old Navy] shirt and my black ‘Italian’ [Wal-Mart] shoes, and all I need is a tan and horrible red highlights. Right, so, like I said, I started out the summer well enough. But alas, in Ashleyland summers are the least favorite of the seasons because of, without a doubt, whole huge things. There was that one whole huge thing with Lee/Laurel/me/Karl, there was that one whole huge thing when Lee went to Spain and left Dawn and crushed on Jenni and made Karl want to beat him up, there was that one whole huge thing when my dad made me a schedule for every hour of every day and if I screwed up I couldn’t see Aaron, and there was that one whole huge thing kept on the downlow. This summer, just to kick-start life, I have three whole huge things. It’s time to bust out my madd list/organization skills: !. Aaron So thanks to Father Mark, the Sisters of Mercy, and the women’s silent retreat, I’m well-contented to let Aaron do as he pleases, and I’m fine with him and Dawn. There’s still some bitterniss for Aaron’s self-centered and narcissistic [‘You know the only reason for it was your father.’ ‘Then why are you with Dawn?!’ shout various and sundry familiar faces]. But no one’s perfect and I’ve always been very willing to forgive the faults and forget the failures. Word, I’m tripping with alliteration. Right, so there’s the issue with Aaron and me and friendship and awkwardness and Dawn and Dawn living four houses down the street from Aaron and Aaron being hated by my father. I don’t want to lose him for a friend for everything we shared and how close we were. I just don’t know how we’re going to keep a friendly relationship with his jealous girlfriend, my idiot parents, and a jealous Aaron involved in the whole situation. @. Lee Lee asked me to go with him to San Antonio Sunday last to retrieve his entertainment center and other stuff. I don’t remember if he had told me this before this awkward escapade, but he definitely told me on the way to San Antonio that his goal for the summer was to get closer to me, whether be it a friend or a girlfriend, because he wants someone to replace Gabby as a close female friend. And it has to be me? So I don’t want to tell him no, there’s no chance in the forty-eight contiguous states, Alaska, and Hawaii of me ever being his girlfriend, because he’s such a good friend, although at times rather ruinous to my life. I know he does the wrong things, says the wrong things, think in twisted, grand plans that don’t make sense, but he means well, or thinks he does, which counts for something. Dear Lee, he really is confused. I’m always torn between being nice to him and belittling him, both of which might give unnecessary encouragement. I just don’t know what to think of him because I know two diametrically opposed sides of him, both of which are hard to handle without being painfully blunt. And then there’s the while Lee dynamic with the whole Aaron dynamic, and I just wrote that because I like writing the word dynamic. So needless to say, Lee doesn’t yet know about the third whole huge thing unless he’s talked to Aaron [who would tell him just to spite me], but when he does find out it’ll be Hitler and Mussolini combining forces to beat down the Allies. Wait, did that work? I’m not the all knowing, history-loving A.R. Linderman. Mr. Linderman in Fulda, Ill Magnifico calls you! #. JD Now there’s always been something about JD that, you know, [expressive eyebrow and head tilt] caught my interest. For some reason, I’ve always felt that there was something in there, just under the surface, that would absolutely sparkle if it were uncovered or found. But I didn’t realize until recently that I could be the someone who found it, that I wanted to find it myself. I was knocked off my feet when I realized this. Word of the Week=uncharacteristic. But I’m moving beyond The Background. So any road, as JD began creeping into my head and heard, so did thoughts of as to how the ‘general public’ would react, namely Aaron and Lee. Then I decided that this particular whole huge thing was just too overly complicated to think about and so I thought I’d just see where it led concerning my love square [?]. Which brings me to my next show of madd list skills—The Week That Was The Week That Was 28 May Graduation. Between Aaron and Laurel, in front of Caren, Lee, and Mr. Cummings, and behind Amber [who I kicked rather hard with my pointy shoes accidentally] and Cara and Sam. We made fun of Ross Rodriguez […’he’ll now read a poem he writ.’], the He Whom Writ the Poem [‘Dude, he should just start rapping. Where’s the flow? {insert characteristic Ashley pretending to be ghetto moves} ‘Ashley, I saw that,’ with profuse contained laughter from Mr. Cummings], Mark Shutt’s leading capabilities [‘Where’s he taking them?! All the way to the freakin Ag building?!’], the tiny band [‘Even if they were right next to the band they still wouldn’t be able to hear them.’], the quality circle the class made for the Alma Mater [‘Now we know who has friends and who doesn’t—the truth comes out!’], and, among many other things, JD’s pink shirt [‘Oh good Lord, he’s wearing pink, God love him!’]. The Four Musketeers hung out at male-free, excepting Adam, at Mee-Maw’s until Lee found me about to bring Caren home after Laurel bailed with Josh. Punk. 29 May Much remembery with cleaning my drawers and closet, putting up Rome stuff, discovering half the boxes in my closet were empty. Now I can sit in my closet and have long phone conversations. Any road, Lee harassed me into going to the movies with him, Caren, and Charlie [who cancelled five after seven, grrrr…]. Enter pow-wow at Ashley’s, me, Caren, and JD watching ‘Seven Year Itch’ and Lee eating in the kitchen. So we go see the movie, boo-ya. 30 May Adventures in San Antonio. When I returned, I was informed that JD had stopped by, and he was there again about an hour later. He was highly contagious. 31 May Memorial Day. The most memorial thing that day was me going to Lee’s and giving him his check that I held back and eating dinner with them after I’d already eaten a whole freakin lot for dinner. Whatev. 1 June JD came over in the afternoon, and I decided it was time to make my stylish seducing-moves…uhm, I mean, I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to hold his hand. I had noticed he moved from the chair to next to me on the couch, so I thought I might with good results. Begin the highly uncharacteristic Ashley, with the holding hands. I’ve never done that before, anything like that. To me, that’s a huge step away from me waiting for the boy to make the moves, although it makes me wonder how many moves were aimed at me before I realized what the hell was going on in this situation. So I try and it works, and I’m happy. We talked and watched TV and he sat with us while we ate and didn’t eat [I think my mother was really shocked when he said he didn’t want anything—‘Who is this boy?!’]. This holding hand business happened after dinner, and man, I was asking myself who I was when I went to bed. ‘What are you doing, Ashley Marie? What are you getting yourself into?’ I couldn’t have ever imagined, and I had no idea. 2 June JD returned, this time armed with his guitar. There are some things that just gain lots of brownie points with me—speaking French to me, singing to me, badly or otherwise, playing the guitar, these are only a few. That JD does. I felt awkward and confused from the night before because I didn’t know how he felt about the whole affair, so I planted myself in the chair and left him alone on the couch. He played for me, and he played for my mother, and my father tried to play, but he quitted and went outside. He said that he carried around his guitar to try to impress women and it didn’t seem to work for him. I asked him if he was trying to impress me, and he said something clever. I realized then that he didn’t need his guitar to impress me. He didn’t need anything other than himself. I was already falling. There were just so many things going through my mind, what I wanted to happen between us, what I thought was going to happen between us, what everyone else would think if they knew what I was thinking about us. After dinner, when he had left, I verily went into my room and danced around, I was so excited. 3 June So I made the mistake of telling Aaron about my three whole huge things over the internet. Not everything, but enough. I went over to his house and gave him back the plug adapter thing to the cell phone he let me borrow, talked to his parents and his sister, and then we talked about my whole huge things in the order previously stated. I learned in that little conversation that Aaron still majorly had feelings for me which I was completely unaware of. This was the third time I’d seen him since I got back, and once was at graduation and he was with Dawn and didn’t really talk to me. Too late did I realize, however. I was still really confused about JD, and it seemed on the surface that Aaron was ready to play matchmaker, though I knew he was really hurt. I probably should have said less than I did about what I felt for JD, but my smile couldn’t tell a lie. I couldn’t help myself—just thinking about holding his hand made me beam, knowing that something was there, that something was going to happen. Coincidentally, JD stopped by Aaron’s house [after going to mine and finding me not home], and awkwardness ensued, at least for me, for a little while. I didn’t know what to do because I knew Aaron was going to be watching me closely, I still didn’t know for sure what JD thought about me or about the possibility for an us, and I didn’t know who to look at when I talked. So that was a little difficult. I decided to go home for dinner, and Aaron and JD walked me out. Aaron left to go edge his aunt’s yard and left JD and I alone for a while. I was nervous, he didn’t seem nervous but shy instead. He finally let me know that for some time now, he had had an ‘unhealthy crush’ on me. ‘Why unhealthy?’ asked I. ‘Because it’s one-sided,’ replied he. And I subtly diverted the conversation, as is my wont. With my great lack of eloquence, I always prefer to save my answer until the person’s not really paying attention so I can have time to think of something to say. We stood by my car during the burning sunset and heat shower, and then we went to sit in the shade of Aaron’s front neighbor’s yard. Where we stayed till midnight, talking and holding hands and in general becoming better friends and better people. It was probably a mistake to stay there so long and so close, across the street from Aaron, but at that moment I didn’t care about Aaron, I didn’t care what anyone thought. I just wanted to stay there all night, lying on the grass with JD, looking at the stars and revelating. It was one of the most wonderful nights of my life, magical, unexpected, close to perfect. Except that Aaron and Dawn came and sat beside us on the grass, trying, I suppose, to make us [me] feel awkward and leave. I ignored them as best I could and concentrated on JD. We had our first kiss [awkward, like everything, because it happened in Aaron’s yard] a little after midnight, and I went home to sweet dreams. As a note: I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I just has a cup of tea and a bottle of water. 4 June My first day back at work. I got four hours and fifteen minutes of sleep during the night and hadn’t eaten the day before and missed breakfast. I knew something good was happening to me when, despite all this, I felt great that morning at work. I wasn’t tired; there was a gnawing in my stomach that I realized wasn’t hunger when I couldn’t finish nearly half my lunch. JD waited in the lobby for me to get off my shift, and then I said we should go see ‘Shrek 2’ because he’d been wanting to see it and I wanted to see it again. Off the cuff? spontaneous? me asking the boy?! This is definitely not the Ashley I thought I knew and loved. I like this new Ashley much more better. Any road, after the movie, he brought me to my car, and I left the hotel parking lot at eleven that night. Yes, we stayed in his car in the Holiday Inn parking lot for about five or so hours. We learned a lot about each other, including how happy we both were, how passionate we both are [attack mode], and how similarly we think about many issues. There were so many steps that had been skipped in the past two or three days that everything was upside-down, different colored, sized, and shaped, and we hardly knew what to think of each other and what was happening between us. I realized then that he hadn’t stopped smiling for at least the last few days, and neither had I. I saw it, I saw him sparkle, and I recognized it from the night before. He seemed more real, more natural, and genuinely afraid. He asked me to be his alone, and I said yes. 5 June So after another about three and a half hours of sleep and less food, I went to another day at the hotel. Beautiful. I went to Mass because I had to work at 7 the next morning, and then I called JD at 9. I was tired so I was just going to ask him how his day was, tell him about mine, say good night and go to bed. I did all that, but it took till 4:02 AM the next morning and my phone dying to say it. I’ve never talked to anyone on the phone for seven hours, but it didn’t feel like seven hours. The time disappears when I’m spending it with JD, I lose track of it so easily. I’ve learned that it’s a bad thing when I take off my watch when I’m with him. 6 June And now it’s today. I got about an hour’s worth of sleep, not even quality sleep because I was thinking about JD the whole time, and then got up to go to work. My JD met me in the parking lot with flowers to say good morning. And life is beautiful. I see the sparkle. I see what’s worth seeing in him. I know what he’s done in the past, but I know that he’s changed. He just needs someone to believe in him, someone to love him, someone to bring the real him out. And I want to do that. I am doing that, every time I smile at him and search his eyes. I want to understand him, know everything that’s going through his mind. I told him that, and he wished me good luck. I told him I wouldn’t give up on him, and he smiled for real. I love to see him smile.