I didn't know what was happening between us, only that you were the person I looked forward to seeing the most every day at school. You were the first friend whose house phone number I memorized. You were the girl I was excited to talk to and listen to. You were the kid I wanted to play with most.
Cisco recently dug up a whole bunch of video footage that our parents recorded of us. Halloween was just another day for you and me. When I watched those videos again, I remembered just how constantly we were dressing up and role-playing. I hope you haven't forgotten the "Barry and Iris, Mad Genius Scientists " bit we did, or the band we started for a good month after you got a keyboard for your birthday. It's okay if you forgot that latter one, we were pretty bad to the extent that our parents were our only fans.
I don't think any kids had the level of imagination we had. I'd say we still make pretty good use of that imagination in the bedroom…
I think I've reached the first sentence I may have to edit out for the public reading of this.
Back to our dress-up games though: before my Bachelor Party was so rudely interrupted by Ralph, one part of Cisco's video montage reminded me of the time we actually threw ourselves a wedding and got married as kids. I hope you remember that because Joe had forgotten it too.
I don't recall whose idea it was, and I'm sure you didn't think anything of it because it was just another one of our games and another example of our imaginations getting the best of us, but seeing that video again took me back to that time, and I think that was what marked the days I started to realize I was falling in love with you.
I knew nothing about love and relationships let alone marriage. I just knew that I wanted to love someone one day the way my father loved my mother, enough to want to spend the rest of my life with them and start a family with them. And if I wanted to care for and support someone like my dad did my mom, who else could have been the recipient of that but you? My best friend who I risked my perfect behavior record for to pass notes to in class, for whose birthday I tried baking cupcakes for the first time ever (setting the smoke alarm off in the process), whose house I never wanted to leave when my parents came to pick me up or who I hated seeing leave when Joe rang our doorbell, who I couldn't stand to see upset or scared, who I wanted to share everything with.
Maybe that was the biggest sign, that I wanted everything that was mine to be yours too. If I was happy, I wanted you to be, and if you were sad, I wanted to be sad too.
I even wanted to share my mom with you, because of how much you loved her and she in turn loved you.
I remember when you confided in me that you wished you had two parents like I did, a mother and a father who loved each other so much that they didn't know what to do with that extra love, so they had to pass it on to someone else. You were so certain that the reason I was the happiest boy you'd ever met and the best friend you'd ever had was because I had a mom to love me. And I reminded you that you didn't have a mother, but that didn't stop me from thinking of you as the best person I'd ever known either.
