He Said (2/2)

Today is going to be my last day with the girl i've spent too much time with it's almost a sin to my future wife. She's moving away, not to another city, not to another country of the same continent, she's not even moving way up north she had to learn how to ride with the snow dogs, she's moving to Africa. The remotest village in Africa. No internet. No cell phone signal. Heck, there's not even enough water to bathe there. She had always been the pure hearted, sincere, good samaritan girl. She's not the prettiest girl i've met, nor is she the most charming, or the most cunning, she's just..her. Nothing so romantically written in one of your Austen books, or depicted in your korean dramas. She would have just blended with the rest of the world. Her face will not stand out among the hundreds and thousands faces of your facebook friends. But this girl had filled the niche in my heart for too long, it's idiotic not to grasp it.

I was too comfortable and too prideful to change anything between us. The friendship that we built must now come to a suspenseful halt until we saw each other again in one year time. It was the boy within me that kept me from seeing how important she was to the man part of me. It was the boy within me that playfully wrestled with her in front of public just to show the rest of the world that she is mine. My best friend. Now the man part of me suffers because he knows that she is not really mine. She belongs to the poor, thirsty kids of Sub-Saharan Africa.

"You're my best friend" was a lame excuse to run from a commitment that i knew i had to make one way or another. Now the man part of me hates the comfort we felt before. The knowing glances we passed was more than just grateful gaze to a friend, there was something more in that. I know we were never the serious type, but i'm not that daft not to feel the change in the air when we played the last round of staring-contest over sushi and hot matcha. At that moment, she was not my play-friend, or was she the gullible friend that i know. There was a piddling gentleness in her eyes that almost mocked me. She twitched her half smile, and moved closer till we were eye to eye. She stared down the boy inside of me and shunned him back to the dusty photo frame he belonged to. She won the game, knocked down my pride and got me very confused over feelings i've never even felt before.

Is this feeling the blank verb i have to put between the word 'i' and 'you'?