Rekindled
It had been two days since I had heard so much as a ‘Hello’ from him, and I was starting to worry. Now, that might make me seem pathetic and desperate, but in the 3 years since he and his family moved away, we had never gone more than a day without talking without prior notice. Even then, there were the occasional text messages or emails. So this two-day disappearance came like a shock.
I didn’t know what to do. I barely left my computer for more than a minute or two, for fear that he might show some sign of life and I would miss it. I checked my phone every 5 seconds. I tried calling him, but it went straight to voicemail. Absolutely nothing. He could have been dead for all I knew. So I sat there, barely eating, barely sleeping. Had my mother seen me, she would have thought I was crazy.
Ben’s family had moved to England the summer between grades 9 and 10, after his father got a job at a museum there. It was the worst summer of my entire life, and the most heart-wrenching goodbye I have ever known. Of course, as things like these always go, it wasn’t until he was about to leave that I finally realized just how much I truly loved my best friend. That was almost 3 years ago. Now we were only a week away from graduation, a celebration we had been so excited to be able to spend together all those years ago and now seemed like just any other day.
In the time that he had been gone, I had eventually gotten up the nerve to explain to him just what it was that I felt for him, and how much it hurt me that he was gone, how much I missed him. This was some time near the end of grade 10. I had been terrified to tell him, terrified that he wouldn’t understand, that he wouldn’t feel the same way. Terrified that, if I told him and he didn’t share those feelings, it would ruin the friendship that had lasted for close to 13 years. And for a while, it seemed that was how it was going to be. For 3 days afterwards, he had seemed extremely distant, as if he didn’t know how to speak to me without accidentally leading me on. It nearly killed me to think I had so foolishly destroyed what he had before.
But then, on the 4rd day, I got a phone call, one of the rare few I have ever received since that fateful summer. There was no ‘Hi’ after I answered, only an ‘I love you’. Three little words spoken in the voice that I would always recognize, that same voice that had sung me to sleep so many times before, the voice that had teased me and had stuck up for me. I nearly broke down crying as I choked out a crackled ‘I love you too’. The line was silent for a few seconds that seemed to stretch into eternity, before Ben whispered a quick ‘Goodnight’, then hung up. That night, I lied in bed, staring up at the ceiling, barely getting a wink of sleep as the butterflies fluttered and tumbled and did cartwheels in my stomach all night.
And now, two years later, here I was sleepless again, hoping for any sign of life, trying to put a stop to the constant waves nausea that kept folding me in two as I imagined every possible cause for his sudden absence.
I was home alone that night, my parents out of town for the weekend and my brothers each at a friend’s for the night. As I sat curled up on the plush leather sofa in the living room, staring blankly at my computer screen and slowly sipping on tea that had by now gone cold, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open, though it was only about 7:00 in the evening. I wasn’t expecting the knock that came at the door, and jumped up slightly, startled by the sudden burst of noise. I put down the mug of tea, leery to leave my laptop for even a moment, and trudged towards the door, begrudgingly opening it to face whoever it was that had decided to interrupt her misery.
But the face that greeted me as the door swung slowly open was the last one I was expecting. I watched as the person’s eyes widened, their lips moved slowly, carefully.
“Elizabeth…” the person whispered.
“Ben!”
