"I have a delivery for a 'Mr. Eric Grant'?"
A delivery?
"Uh, sure. That's me. Come on up."
I buzzed through disembodied delivery man, and curiously awaited him until five knocks on my apartment door announced his arrival. Opening it, I was surprised by the sight of two dozen long-stem red roses and a velvety red gift box with a gold bow and ribbon.
"What the- I'm sorry, these can't be for me," I stammered as he started to shove the flowers into my arms. He flipped through a clipboard for a moment, then presented me a paper with my name and address on it.
"Is this information here correct, Mr. Grant?"
"Yes... I just, I can't imagine where they're from."
"I'm afraid I don't have the sender's name, sir. However, there seems to be an envelope in the bunch of roses - perhaps that will help you."
Indeed, there stuck out a gold envelope with my name scrawled in fancy writing. I fumbled to manage the flowers and the flat red box, then turned back to the delivery man.
"Do I need to sign for these or anything?"
"No, sir," he smiled at my obvious confusion.
"Alrighty, then," I struggled. "Thank... you?"
"You have a nice day, Mr. Grant. And just so you know," he added. "That's a nicer bouquet of flowers you've got there than I've seen any lady with this past Valentine's Day."
"Thanks," I mumbled as he walked away.
I let out a sigh as I closed the door behind me. Four steps away, I sat down on a stool in the kitchen and set the flowers and box on the counter. I plucked the envelope out of the roses and hoped it would glean some insight as to who the sender might be. As I extracted the sealed letter several pages long, I recognized the familiar, careful writing of my best friend and a chill ran through my veins.
Eric,
I know this is too late for Valentine's Day, but I saw these at the grocery store (remember the one we worked at when we were fifteen? You pretended to flirt with the girls, and I pretended I didn't care?) and they made me think of you - but, then again, I'm always thinking of you. Also, they were on clearance.
I love you.
You know that, of course. I say it all the time. You even say it to me. I can almost hear you, seven-years-old, saying 'I love you, Jonah' in Miss Kingsley's second grade class during nap-time, where we huddled beneath the quilt your grandmother made. And I said 'I love you more'. And you smiled so wide I wondered that your face didn't split right in half. You still smile like that, you know - like even the smallest thing, whether a passing compliment or a shared half of a Twix bar, has made your entire week. With those huge, deep chocolate eyes of yours, you sure know how to make a person feel like a million bucks. I still don't know how you do it.
You're my best friend. We tell each other everything. Right? You're a hopeless liar, and cannot keep a secret if the world depended on it. I can count on one hand how many times you've managed to surprise me with a birthday present because you'd always give it to me early, too excited to wait. You just about combusted when I made you keep Pat's twenty-first birthday party we planned for him at the strip club a secret. And after all that work, you didn't come to celebrate with us. The so-called fairer sex has never appealed to me, but even I went - and the strippers were very much female. Oh, right, you had to work. You were covering for Laura at that awful casino you guys worked at. What I found odd about that, though, was Laura was with us that night. And good old Mr. Facebook had you located at your house.
But maybe you forgot your phone there. You'd always had a habit of leaving it on the table after you'd eaten breakfast, before school. I should know - how many times did we end up late to class because we had to go back for it? Every time you did, I threatened to leave you behind so at least I would be on time; I never did. Of course, your mother would have killed me if I had, and that would've been the end of our constant sleepovers.
Oh, the sleepovers. Remember how we used to beg our parents to have sleepovers? As elementary-school kids, the only way they were allowed is if we both kept our rooms cleaned, and our parents would call each other to decide whether or not we deserved it. Eventually, though, we were permanent fixtures in each other's houses. God, so many all-nighters full of junk food and video games. We had so many great conversations in the early hours of the morning, from gossip about our friends to debates over the creation of the universe.
Even as we grew older, though, we still huddled beneath your grandmother's hand-made quilt. That was our safe place. There was no judgement there, no matter what the topic was. Always just you and I. So what if we sometimes didn't wear our pyjamas? Or if we woke up in each other's arms? Nobody had to know that I liked to rest my chin on your stomach while you ran your fingers through my hair. And maybe you liked to stroke my back, and I liked to caress your chest. Sure, our touches occasionally went to more intimate places, but they were no less innocent. A few flitting touches, that was all that ever happened. It was okay. I was just you, just me.
Your first girlfriend sure thought our closeness was weird, though. And she didn't even know about the sleepovers. Oh, well, Chelsea was a bitch anyway. You lost your virginity to her, didn't you? You were so nervous to tell me! That was the first time you ever purposely tried to hide something from me. And then I hugged you, and you let out a big breath, glad I wasn't mad at you. And I wasn't. Not really.
You, though, you were mad when I got my first boyfriend. Augustus Yarnold. What was I thinking, going out with a guy named Augustus Yarnold? But puppy love knows no bounds, and it was hardly a month before I slept with him. Boy, if I thought you were upset about me and him before that, you were downright furious after I told you. You yelled at me on and on about how he didn't deserve me, but got very, very quiet when I asked you exactly who you imagined would. You got over it, though. At about the same time we broke up, coincidentally. And by 'broke up', I mean 'I caught him getting a blowjob in a closet from a freshman'.
Yeah, we definitely had a sleepover that night. I needed to cry, to mourn the death of my first relationship, and you were there to help me through it. You held me in your arms and whispered in my ear about how one day I'd find someone who loved me so much they would move mountains if that's what it took to make me happy.
And then I tried to kiss you.
We'd never kissed.
You got this panicked, choked look on your face and shook your head slowly. You said you couldn't kiss me, that you didn't think of me that way, that you weren't into guys, and that I was only doing that because you were being nice to me while I was in pain. That in the morning, I would realize you were right. We went to sleep. I didn't bring it up again.
We still haven't kissed.
But you still love me. And I, most assuredly, still love you, and the way you smell like honey and lemon. We still huddle together beneath that tattered old quilt, all these year later. We're two grown men at twenty-three years old, and it's our business and nobody else's about how I trace your lips with my fingers, or how you hug me to you in your sleep.
I see things, though.
I see the girls that talk to you, that push themselves onto you, that flutter their eyelashes at you, that may as well have a tattoo across their forehead reading 'take me home tonight'; but you don't see them. You give them a polite smile and shuffle around them. You don't even see the guys with the tight, bright tank tops that pet along your arms in admiration and giggle at everything you say.
I see you, Eric.
