Throughout the entire two years I had known Richie, there had never been an awkward moment. Even during that night we first spoke outside the tour bus, I didn’t feel awkward at all. Richie was as smooth as silk even if he didn’t realize it. Perhaps two years wasn’t enough to form an everlasting bond with someone, but he was defiantly becoming someone I wanted to be close to for the rest of my life.
Within the first few weeks of our friendship, he had taught me the truth about passion and how sometimes the only choice you have is to hold onto what you care for most or have nothing at all. Then, when the world shunned me, Richie gave me a place to go and a shoulder to lean on. Throughout most of my sophomore year and the summer following it, I disappeared from public, hiding away at Richie’s house almost every second of the day. No matter how bad I felt about things, Richie never let me forget how important I was. Together, we immersed ourselves into the busy void of our junior years, and together, we came out of it.
Richie Sheffield was my best friend.
Instead of going to prom, we were, as Patrice said, going on a date to the beach. We should have been having the time of our lives, singing songs at the top of our lungs and reminiscing about what an eventful year we had while watching the sun sink below the horizon.
But that wasn’t the case. Not this time.
It felt awkward. It actually felt awkward to me. I kept trying to figure out why; maybe I was delusional or tired or going crazy or something. It just didn’t make sense. “Richie” and “awkward” were not supposed to go together.
It wasn’t just me, though. I could tell by Richie’s nervous fidget that he was feeling a bit off. Also, his car window was all the way down, which was another telltale sign that he was anxious. He usually kept the window halfway up so that the wind wouldn’t get in his face, but when he was feeling anxious, he became severely claustrophobic and needed to feel the wind at full force.
Both of us were feeling a bit strange today, and I wasn’t really sure why. I had a few theories, but nothing was certain.
Richie finally parked the car and sat for a moment before turning off the ignition. We hadn’t planned on actually walking onto the beach because crutches and sand never seemed to get along very well. Even with the windows down, however, I started to feel a bit claustrophobic, too. In the silence, I suddenly missed the mechanical hum of the engine. At least the noise could have filled up the crushing silence; now all that was left was the rhythmic sound of our breathing. Together, we watched the sunset, but I could not have felt more alone. Neither of us said a word or even looked at each other as the twilight set in.
It was enough to drive me completely insane.
Thankfully, Richie smashed the silence into a million pieces with a question just as awkward as the silence it broke. “Do you believe that things always turn out for the better?”
It was a weird question, but things were already weird enough, so I tried not to make a big deal out of it. “I’d like to think do. I think everything’s changing anyway, but it’s up to us to decide whether it’s for better or for worse.”
He continued to stare forward at his windshield as the stars began to appear on the rapidly darkening sky. “And do you think that we know a good thing when we see one?”
“Sometimes, I think so. There are always times when we are blind to the good and simply choose not to see the bad.”
I dreaded where this was going. I feared what he was leading up to. It wasn’t as though I never had feelings for him before; I honestly did have a small crush on him for a while, but it never got any deeper than that. There were many times when I thought I felt a spark between us, but we never mentioned it. This was the one topic we avoided at all costs.
Was he treading into waters that we had been running from all this time? If he did, would it really be such a bad thing? I just didn’t know how I really felt. Did I really want to take the plunge with Richie or were we better off where we were now?
“And do you think it’s possible to be handed a golden opportunity on a silver platter and turn it down because it wasn’t what your heart truly wanted?”
“We can’t take every chance thrown at us. There are times when we must pick and chose, then sacrifice all the rest. Just because something looks good on the outside doesn’t mean it’s valuable to everyone. The most priceless things can seem worthless to you if it was never desired to begin with. What someone considers ideal could be anything but for another. You know how I feel about that.” He was more obviously distressed now and it was beginning to worry me. “What’s going on, Richie?” Impulsively, I gently placed my hand over his.
Whether or not that last move was a mistake, I couldn’t decide. Either way, we were suddenly very close to each other.
And, to be honest, it wasn’t the first time he had kissed me, either. We had shared a few moments in the past, but it was nothing like this. It was softer, more cautious, as if both of us were holding something back.
Probably because we were.
I couldn’t explain it. There he was, a boy that could only be described as perfect in every way, kissing me, and I felt nothing. He was cute, charming, sweet, shy, and bright, but I still felt nothing. Richie was the perfect fit for my idea of a perfect boyfriend, but it still felt like nothing to me. Any spark that we may have ever had in the past was gone, probably for good.
The kiss deepened for a moment – one single moment that, despite lacking romantic intent, we would cherish for the rest of our lives.
Tonight was supposed to be our prom night. It was a night for people to look back on their year and see how much they had changed; it was a night for people to fall in love. For us, however, it was a night to fall away from love, forever locking it into our hearts and engraving into our memories as that golden opportunity on a silver platter that was just not the right choice for us to make. If this had happened a few months ago, who knows what could have come from it? If we had taken this opportunity back then, chances were that we could have fallen in love. In only a few short months, things had changed for us, or perhaps we were the ones that changed.
No matter what happened, though, we would always be friends, and now it seemed as though that was as far as we took it.
Slowly, we broke off the kiss and he stared into my eyes, resting his forehead on mine. “Change is good, right?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” I smiled. “Change is good.”
