46. George
George
[Tape hiss and static, faint click]
[throat clearing]
Okay…yeah. It’s a recording. You might hear a bit of fuzz, but that’s the tape, not me losing it. I probably sound drunk. I’m not really. Maybe a little. Fuck—never mind.
This is probably stupid by our standards. I didn’t think it through. I’m not exactly…firing on all cylinders when it comes to you these days. I’m just putting it on stupid tape because I can’t say it properly out loud, not without it turning into a mess.
I’ve been trying to figure out where to start. When it began. I keep going back over everything and I can’t fucking find it. Maybe there wasn’t a moment. Maybe it was always there and I just didn’t see it.
In my defense, you’ve always been the annoying one. Still are. But you’re also… you. Hard to ignore. Hard not to want around.
I think about how I know your coffee order better than I know my own.
How you’d show up at the shop after a bad shift and just sit on the bench by the workbench, not saying much, and somehow the whole day made more sense with you there.
I never thought about why that was. You were just there, and then I’d notice you weren’t, and the garage felt too big.
I think about every time you fell asleep on my couch and I’d turn the volume down instead of waking you. How I’d put a blanket over you and go to bed alone twelve feet away and somehow that felt like enough.
I think about how I’d text you when I got home. Never told you that wasn’t normal for me. Never told anyone when I got home. It’s just you.
Somewhere along the way, you stopped being someone who’s just around and became the thing everything else got measured against. I just noticed, one day, that nothing felt finished until you’d seen it. The car. A bad day. A good one. Nothing counted until you knew about it.
Calling it friendship made sense. That’s what I could handle.
I told myself I was just being a good friend, watching out for you, all that.
I wasn’t. I was selfish. Didn’t want anyone else getting the version of you that showed up tired and unguarded at my place at nine at night with takeout.
I was already gone, caught up in the way you looked at me, touched me.
How right it felt waking up next to you.
You’ve got a real future ahead of you. Bigger things than this town. Bigger than me.
I wanted you to go not because I don’t want you, but because I fucking do. I believed that, if I kept pushing you away, made it mean nothing, you’d be able to go on. Be fine. I’d just be the one left behind.
Watching you stay small for a place that can’t hold everything you are was harder than letting you go.
That’s not a good enough reason. I know that.
Now it’s one in the morning and I can’t sleep, and I keep going through all of it.
Ten years of doing things for you without ever once asking myself why it was always you I wanted to do them for.
You did the same for and with me. That’s just who we’ve been, this whole time, without either of us calling it anything.
Now I don’t know who I am when you’re not around. Haven’t had to find out before. I never needed to.
My heart chose you a long time ago. It’s been choosing you this whole time, in every small stupid thing I never thought twice about.
Letting you go now doesn’t undo any of it.
I don’t know what to do with that except sit here and hope that somehow, even if you never get to hear this, it would be enough.
I think you’ve always been it for me. I just didn’t know it, or I did and I was too much of a coward to say it. You’re always there, in my head, and I never questioned why. That’s just where you belong. That’s just where you’ve always been.
I hope you’re happy in Seattle. Hope someone’s good to you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’m not saying that to complicate your life. If you’ve moved on, you should stay there.
Had my chance. I let it go.
Just know…I love you, Lance. And I probably will for a long time.
Hope you’re okay.
[click, tape hiss fading]