I had walked away from him once and for all. Sure, there had been times where he had made me angry and I said that I was done, but I had never meant it. This time I had told him that I needed for him to change, I needed for this friendship to be different if it was going to work. I told him that the way he was treating me was hurting me. I told him all of this in an email. He had read it and not addressed it. That Monday night I finally wrote to him on Facebook. “Last chance to say or do something.” He read it at 9:48 and didn’t respond. That’s when I said I was done. I was wrong.

It was difficult to avoid him given the fact that we attended a boarding school of 40 students and only 12 of them were actually on campus right then. I was doing a good job of it though. That morning at breakfast I had been cold, ignoring anything that he said and making as little eye contact as possible. It was almost relieving in a way. If he wasn’t going to try and fix the situation, then I didn’t need to try either.

I was walking out of the Boy’s Dormitory when I heard him call my name. I kept walking, hoping he would take the hint. When I heard footsteps behind me, I sped up slightly, not really knowing where I was going, but trying to get away. I heard him panting slightly behind me. Once he was close enough that I couldn’t pretend to not hear him anymore I was forced to acknowledge his presence.

“What?” I said in a tone icier then I knew I could make.

“We should talk,” he said.

“We don’t have time,” I said and I started to walk away.

“But we can make time,” he said, there was a pang of real emotion in his voice that made me want to take him seriously, but it didn’t make up for him taking this long to address the issue.

“Maybe later,” I said.

“No, I have a few things that I need to say now,” he said.

I thought about saying no, but I couldn’t do it. I guess deep down I really did still love him, even though I told myself I didn’t. I had found a distraction, another guy I thought would make it so I could forget about him. Once I had told him that I loved him, and he had said he would never love me, I knew that we couldn’t be friends, at least not for a while. Fast forward a year and here we were.

“Fine, where?” I asked.

“Back in the dorm?” He asked me.

I didn’t reply but just started walking back in the direction we had come from. We walked up the stairs I had fallen down several times over the four years I had lived there. I felt a little like a prisoner being escorted to my cell. When we got to the common area I sat down on an uncomfortable blue couch and folded my legs beneath me. He took his seat in a red armchair and propped himself up, leaning forward, and his elbows on his knees.

“So, I read your email,” he said.

I looked at him expectantly as if to tell him he was going to need to say more then that before I felt obligated to respond.

He cleared his throat before continuing “I think we need to have a much longer conversation about things later on, but there are just a few things I wanted to say in the meantime.”

“We really don’t have time for this right now,” I said, starting to get up.

“Give me a minute,” he said.

“Fine,” I said, settling back into my chair.

“I realize that there are times that I treat you like s***,” he said, “and that is probably not going to change.”

My eyes became dangerously wide.

“But I want you to know that I truly do value you,” he finished his thought.

He looked very proud of himself for having told me this. I thought about screaming at him. Did he really think that telling me that he valued me changed anything. You tell a customer that they are valued. You don’t tell that to someone who hates you to make them stop hating you. Instead of saying any of this however I replied “thank you, I’m glad to know you value me.” I said this in a very sarcastic tone, but he didn’t seem to recognize that.
“No problem, now lets have that longer conversation tonight so we can actually work all this out,” he said.

“That sounds great,” I said and I walked out of the room.

I highly doubted we would actually have the conversation he was talking about. He didn’t like talking about feelings. He probably would forget he suggested it. If we did have that conversation, there was a chance I could forgive him, and I was open to that, but in the meantime, at least I knew I was valued, and isn’t that what everyone truly wants?