From Her Fridays #6: Dearest

Feeling quite sentimental lately and an extra need to tell people how I feel about them. This song came to mind thinking about Isaiah, lately.

We spent about 6 months of our 3 year relationship apart, wading through time in a gut-wrenching long-distance relationship. I can vividly remember at the end of a regular eight hour phone conversation, even in the beginning months, knotted in a pretzel in the front seat of my car in a carpet-store parking lot from nerves and anxiety, knowing with comfort that I would love Isaiah forever.

We hadn’t even really told each other we liked each other yet. Later, he told me, he used to whisper “I love you” after he had hung up.

I was twisted in the front seat with my left leg outside, through the window of the car, the other against the windshield, my bare feet making warm toe-shaped tattoos that my windshield wore for months. He slyly mentioned that he remembered when I liked him in Aurora, how shy I always was around him, and how he could tell I was swooning a bit. I told him I liked him. A lot. I can’t imagine his surprise, what a shock, coming from a girl he was having daily 5-8 hour conversations with.

Either way, I was so nervous at the silence on the other end that I pushed my right foot through my windshield. Cracked it out so far there was a bubble on the other side. Just my bare foot, from the inside of the car. Once more: Just my bare foot, from the inside of the car.

He didn’t say anything. And then: “That’s cool.” I died. I almost hung up on him and called it a day, to take my very tender foot and walk to Las Vegas and put it in his mouth. I said, “That’s…cool?” He said: “Well, obviously I like you too,” with a smile I could hear 800 miles away. Then, “I live in Las Vegas, Lizzie…Talking to you is the highlight of every day.”

I knew then, and know now, that “Together, our love will grow old.”

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