I Know

“Will you go on a date with me, Zach?” 

That’s what he asked me. Outside, on the lunch hour at a robotics competition sometime in October. We two sat on a concrete quarter-wall in the high school courtyard, each in our team shirts. It was chilly outside that day so I knew my face was flushed, incriminating me. 

I forget the context in which he asked me that. It was meant as a joke, a witty response to some dry comment I’d made about girlfriends or boyfriends or sex or something. The point is that he asked me, and I had already convinced myself so deeply that he couldn’t possibly care about me in that sense that I failed to see it was my last chance. He gave me an opportunity, one final moment to be an adult and admit I ached for him before he moved on to somebody else. 

And I said no. 

Also laughing, also joking, I avoided his eyes and said no, as if I was some elusive prize that couldn’t be bothered with his affections. 

It began, for me, when I was fifteen and attending my second ever robotics competition. He had been on the team for two years before me; he was smarter than anyone I’d ever met his age. Already in leadership on the team, he programmed the majority of our robot and had a wicked wit to match. Never had I known anyone more even-tempered, disciplined, and sharp. He gave me special privileges that no first-year student should have–writing important lists, helping with sensitive data, bugging him while he worked. He welcomed my pestering either with a smile or a kind scolding, but either way it softened my heart like steam to butter. 

The first time I was especially close to him was on the six-hour bus ride home from that competition. I had the window seat, he took the middle, then our other friend Nick squished in at the end. He played with my hair, set his arm around my neck, inhaled the scent of me not-so-subtly and asked casually if I wore cologne. Foolishly, I thought it was a joke. I thought he was flirting in the way teenage boys do because they think gay people are funny or find the shock value amusing. When I came home that night I was giddy with an unplaceable feeling and couldn’t sleep until the sun had come up. For months, I didn’t know why I was so happy to be around him. I hadn’t had a real crush before and I wasn’t used to the feeling. 

That must have been what started it for him too. I remember now, years too late, how he’d shirk his programming tasks just to see me in the media room, or when he came up behind me to make a show of sniffing me because he loved my scent so much. He touched me often, small squeezes of my shoulder as he passed, quiet brushes against my hand where nobody could see. He found opportunities for us to be alone when he could, but I was nervous to be by myself with him so I usually brought a friend and squandered them. 

Then he told people he was bisexual. It jarred me that he said it with such confidence and ease even though a good portion of his friends were the kind of guys you’d avoid telling at all cost. I immediately didn’t believe him, thinking it was another joke or some kind of attention grab. It struck me after all this that he said it, specifically and solely, for me. 

From then on we were joined at the hip. Every bus ride to competitions, no matter how long, he had the window seat and I had the aisle. I always leaned against his chest while he stroked my hair. Sometimes he listened to his music, and other times we read books together–though that didn’t last long because I was a much faster reader and he felt embarrassed. Once we switched our places, then sat together during dinner at the hotel.

“Are you excited to get home?” I asked over Uno cards, pretending I wasn’t very interested.

“Yeah. I had a question for the bus though,” he’d said. 

“Oh, me too! Can I have the aisle seat again?”

“...I was going to ask if I could have the window,” he grinned.

Then one of the seniors on our team passed by us with a snort. “You two are made for each other.”

I smiled at him. Made for each other. It was so perfect, such a warm thought I loved to summon back again and again all day long. It felt real and true–not only was that the day I felt most secure with him, but it was also my birthday. Somehow that detail, the significance of the day, made it feel much realer.  

On the bus ride home the next night I laid my head on his chest and closed my eyes. At the start I had his hand near my lips so he could feel my breath, but sooner or later I became sleepier and let myself relax. He believed after a while that I was asleep, and I made no effort to correct him. A group of girls in the seats next to us thought it was adorable and took pictures, all while I pretended. Then when it became quiet again, and nobody was looking, he pressed a soft kiss to the top of my head. He believed that little kiss was known only to him and I never said anything about it. 

Then only days after something strange happened. He no longer texted me and I would send him message after message that he’d read but wouldn’t reply to. He avoided my company and looked exhausted whenever I tried to talk to him. I believed it was something I’d done, that I was annoying him or that he didn’t like the look of me anymore. Maybe he came to his senses and found a nice girl instead. I distanced myself as well soon after, afraid to pester him. One day, the two of us sat in the library–by chance, not by choice. 

“I think I’m just straight,” he said behind his laptop.

I looked up from mine. “Oh,” was all I’d said before I gathered myself. “Well that’s okay. Doesn’t matter what you are.” 

He smiled wearily and turned back to his lines of code. That’s all we said about it. 

Around September the team flew to California for an off-season event. The media team caught a break that time, with instructions just to make a video recapping our time and nothing else. With our dozens of other duties suddenly gone, I had the time to sit in the bleachers and watch the robots. Then he sat beside me. 

“That girl from the red team is so cute,” he said. 

I felt strange about it, but I looked up at him. “Which girl?”

“The one in the white pants. There,” he pointed. “I’ve got a huge crush on her. She asked for my number.”

He liked girls that looked like me. White girls with brown hair, brown eyes, and freckles. He pointed them out to me often, talked about the dates he went on. No boys though--he never talked about boys. Even in his bisexual phase the most I'd hear about a male crush was a slight infatuation with Tom Holland.

“Oh,” I murmured. “Yeah, she’s pretty.”

It was quiet for a while. I didn’t want to say anything–I wasn’t sure why he was suddenly talking about girls. I kept my eyes on the robot field. 

“I used to have a crush on you too,” he said.

I inhaled, eyelashes fluttering. I was lost on what to say; I could say the same thing or I could pretend to be shocked or–

“I know,” I said quietly, facing the field. 

It was quiet between us for a while as we listened to the other conversations happening in the bleachers. Insignificant remarks about strategy and robot performance, jokes and laughter among other teenage boys who’d always felt secure within themselves. 

“Why did you stop?” I murmured. “Did I do something?”

“No. No, you didn’t do anything,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “I just don’t feel it anymore.”

I rubbed the inside of my palm, thinking about that. Was it so easy? Would I one day forget this silly crush too, for no reason at all?

“I’m gonna go grab some footage,” I muttered awkwardly, standing up and leaving him without looking behind me. I felt as though I could cry. I was a little pissed; he’d ignored me for months, made me feel like a bother, avoided my eyes and my company and suddenly he wanted me to know he used to have feelings for me. What purpose did it serve, telling me after so long? He was older, he’d dated before. Maybe that was some nuance to flirting and relationships that I didn’t know.

I didn’t see him much for the rest of the competition. Not because I didn’t want to but because he was quite busy. The next day we flew home and a school bus picked us up at the airport to take us back to our high school. 

It was generally expected from the officers and leads on the team that they’d help unpack our equipment and put it away in the shop or classroom after a competition, no matter how late the night. It was one in the morning and he and I, both being leads, stayed to unpack. I returned all of my camera equipment to the classroom and when I finally came out of the school he had just finished too. 

“Good job,” he said with a charming smile, raising his fist to bump it against mine.

I grabbed his hand instead, stopping him from leaving. “I liked you too,” I mumbled. 

He smiled at me. “I know,” he said softly. 

My mom drove me home afterward and in bed that night I cried very, very hard. 

It’s been years since and I haven’t been interested in anyone. I pretended to, picking someone who I thought could work and forcing myself to be attracted to them, but I haven’t felt anything comparable to the feeling he gave me. I never told my parents or even my friends, too embarrassed to admit that my first love was a man and one who I could barely keep interested for more than six months. I bought him gifts every time his birthday came, and thoughtful ones. The book we’d read together on the bus was called The Martian, so I bought him another Andy Weir book one June. He never got me anything for my birthday–not while he liked me, not before, and not after. My birthday always fell on robotics competition days, so I’d wait foolishly for him to say something to me until hours would pass and he would find out from someone else that I was a year older. 

It’s much too late to do anything now. He’s moved to Canada and has a beautiful girlfriend and I’ve just finished my Irish citizenship naturalization. Soon I’ll be studying somewhere in the EU, an ocean away from him. I don’t often think about him anymore, but when I do I feel a hungry ache in my chest. I know that I will likely never see him again. 

I don’t regret much, though. I’m glad I met him and that he held me and kissed my head when he thought I was asleep. He was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen–at least I know that someone like him could love me. Secret from my family and my closest friends, whatever we were is known only to him and me. However, I have one regret. I wish I would have kissed him just once, one legitimate time, so it would make us more than just crushes to each other. If I’d kissed him we would have at least had a legitimate moment of romance, something to bind us together so that he couldn't leave so easily. But I didn’t, and now my first love is just a silly secret crush between two boys, one of whom will never know how much the other loved him. 

But I know.