31 March, 2002 - 12:56 p.m.

I am a bad, bad person. And it's not something that has just struck me anew or anything like that. I guess I've known it for quite some time now .. but things just keep on happening to me, almost as if it (whatever "it" may be) wants to keep reassuring me that nothing has changed. That maybe I haven't changed.

See, there's this guy. This guy that I met through a mutual friend years ago. Well, maybe not that long ago .. but long in the instance of it happening to a person my age - when a day to wait for something that you want seems like an eternity - you know, that kind of thing.

Anyway, when I first met this guy, I was heavily involved with someone else. We'd been dating for about 6 months, and granted, that mightn't seem like a very long time, but the way that I felt about this person rivalled anything else that I had ever felt. I mean, my boyfriend at the time was someone that I ended up being with for the next 18 months or so .. and for me, that's an incredibly long period of time for any relationship to last. And the way this guy made me feel .. it defied description. He looked at me and I tingled from head to toe. He hugged me, and I'd feel all my fears dissolve. He kissed me, and my mind would fog up. So yeah, it was potent, and I loved it.

The problem comes in the fact that this new person that I met at the party made me feel this way too. I mean, I hadn't kissed him, or hugged him, or anything physical. It was just .. chemistry, I guess. We didn't even talk all that much that night. And when they were all walking me back to the train station so that I could get to this other party, he was walking with another girl, hands swinging together between them the way little five year old girls do it. I don't recall being jealous .. I was on my way to meet my boyfriend for the next party, and all I could think of was him.

That gives me some sort of credibility, right?

But this other guy. For some reason, the essence of him stuck around. And when he called me at 4am that morning just to say hi .. I felt really special. It was like, "wow, I can't believe that somebody like that remembers me." But when all was said and done, I was with somebody that I was very happy with, and although I was flattered by the attention this other guy gave me, I would just like to state for the record that I was never tempted to do anything behind my boyfriends back. I guess some would argue that by even associating myself with this other person I was being unfaithful, and to tell you the complete truth, I can totally see where they'd be coming from. But yeah, nothing ever happened between us.

But looking back as of right now, things have happened between us. There have been slip ups on both our behalfs. A hug that's lasted too long here, a stray hand on someone's thigh there. A closely shared laugh that ends in an accidental [*snort*] brushing of the lips. A late evening spent on a secluded beach watching the sunset, swimming, and then sitting inside the car talking for several hours -- despite his being late to meet up with his girlfriend.

sigh.

See, that's where this all starts getting horribly difficult. For as long as I can remember now, he's been my What Could Have Been Guy. That one who if I'd only just met him several months earlier, I would be seeing him instead of the person I was currently seeing. Or if we'd just caught up sooner for that coffee, he wouldn't be seeing that girl that he was.

It's odd, you know. Part of me keeps thinking that if this is all really there, if it's all really happening in the way I'm seeing it - then it would be logical for the both of us to dump the people we're currently with and start afresh together. Be and do that thing that's seemingly so well crafted between us. But there's this other part of me .. the part that thinks that maybe we've always just missed out on being each others other for a reason. That maybe what we have is for "what if" purposes only. That that great chemistry that we have will wither and die as soon as we try to make it something that it's not.

I guess neither of us will ever know until we try it. But if that means growing that spare backbone - I guess it's just going to have to wait.

The End.