She Will Be Loved

"All my life, I've screwed up," a hard glint shone from her dark eyes, "I just didn't want you to be another thing I'd screw up."

"What are you talking about?" he walked to her and started to stroke her arms.

"Please don't touch me. I really don't need this right now," Amata shrank from him and started for the window, "In two weeks, I'll be thousands of miles from here. Do you honestly think we could make this work?"

"But--" he pleaded.

"No Eric," she gazed at him with one leg out the window, "As long as we've known each other, you've never held me back. Please don't start now."

"I'm not trying to--" the words seemed to come out, but nobody heard them.

"Goodbye Eric..."

It's not always rainbows and butterflies
It's compromise that moves us along
My heart is full and my door's always open
You can come anytime you want

The two weeks came and went without so much as a phone call between the two of them. Eric's parents didn't seem to notice the melancholy turn in their son, but if they did, they would have most likely attributed it to pre-college anxiety. They noticed that they didn't see Amata around as much, but figured it was for the best that he forget about her and start thinking about the future. Yet for those two weeks, he slept with his window open, awaiting a return which never came.

His first semester in college went by quickly with the help of new friends. After the second semester, he started dating, realizing that he had never really gone out with girls in high school. Even Amata in her unconventionality was just a friend. Sometimes he would go to parties and see a girl in wild clothes with long, dark hair and think for a split-second that she had returned, despite knowing she was thousands of miles away from him, perhaps forever. Sometimes Eric would lie next to a girl in his dorm room and wonder if somewhere, Amata was doing the same thing, being with someone, but thinking of him instead.

I don't mind spending everyday
Out on your corner in the pouring rain
Look for the girl with the broken smile
Ask her if she wants to stay awhile
And she will be loved
She will be loved

Sometimes he would go home on breaks and drive back to her corner. He knew that the odds of Amata being home were slim since she had told him that she could live with her cousins when the dorms were closed. That never stopped him from hoping that some day, she would run out the door and meet him, rain-soaked clothes and all. At one point, her father came out, threatening to call the police under the belief that he was a robber who was casing the place. Three years passed with not so much as a word passing between them. Eric even attempted to look her up, but couldn't find the breath to utter a simple "hi" after getting her answering machine. Even if he had worked up the courage to speak, he was certain that she would not have called him back.

Then the unexpected happened. Over the summer of his senior year, he received an invitation in the mail. In sparkling silver script, Amata revealed her final secret. Eric was cordially invited to bear witness to the marriage of Joseph Chen and Amata Malaya. It surprised him little that she wanted to keep her last name. It reassured him to know that some things would never change after all.

Joseph shook Eric's hand warmly, not knowing of the past history between his fiancee and her best friend from high school. Eric noted Joseph's firm grip, confident smile, seeing everything that he was not and could never be for Amata. Joseph was working on his Ph.D in History at the university, and he had met Amata at a coffeeshop open-mic poetry reading where she was performing spoken-word. He introduced her to some other Asian-American activists, and they both collaborated on an awareness newsletter and arts magazine for the Asian-American community on campus. He was a handsome man, noticably taller than Amata, and even Eric. His jet-black hair shone as hers did. Joseph's deep eyes blazed with the same fiery passion as hers did, whether over current issues or out of love for his bride-to-be. The couple glowed from California sunshine and the optimism of a better future.

At the rehearsal dinner, Eric decided to put everything on the line once more despite seeing her laughing with her fiance. He decided to risk both his happiness and hers even if for once, he saw her parents smiling at her with approval.

"Does he really make you happy?" he asked, piercing her with his eyes, "Does he comfort you the way I did?"

"He doesn't need to," her dark eyes narrowed at him, the mirth he once saw as a teenager completely lost now.

She turned on her heel and returned to the party before he could respond.

I know where you hide
Alone in your car
Know all of the things that make you who you are
I know that goodbye means nothing at all
Comes back and begs me to catch her every time she falls

Eric drove around that night, returning to the familiar outskirts of town where he had sought refuge in a time which seemed lost to him now. He slowed down in his approach, recognizing the figure sitting alone in the car. It did not take him very long to realize that Amata was crying, and probably had been for awhile. The only thing he could do, the only thing he ever knew how to do, was the one thing he did not want to do. He wanted to be angry with her, to forget her entirely and move on with his life as she had once appreared to do with hers.

"What do you want?" she glared at him as she rolled down the window.

"For you to be happy..." he smiled gently and opened the car door for her to go out.

As they had done countless times before, many a summer ago, they sat on the hood of her car, with Eric acting as Amata's confessor. She lit a cigarette, the tip glowing orange in the dark of a Midwestern midsummer night.

"Does Joseph know you smoke?" Eric arched an unseen eyebrow at her in the dark.

"Of course not," Amata scoffed, ashing the cigarette as glowing embers faded out into the dirt, "This is the first pack I've had since sophomore year of college."

"What brought the relapse?" he asked, wondering if any of her other habits or affections would return in that space of static time.

"What do you think?" she spat, the taste of burned leaves not agreeing with her as it once did.

"Me?"

"Three years and you couldn't even send a damn email?" she joked without laughing.

"You never gave me your address," Eric explained.

"Yeah I did, I wrote it on a sticky note and left it on your desk," she insisted.

"You know how much stuff disappears there. I swear, my desk was like the Bermuda Triangle or something back then..."

"Seriously Eric, why didn't you try to find me?" she asked, "If you really did love me, you would have at least tried."

"I tried calling you, but I never knew what to say."

"Maybe there was a reason for that," she suggested, "What if we just weren't meant to be?"

"There you go again Amata...you always have to be right, don't you?" Eric chuckled.

"I was being perfectly serious."

"So was I."

"How could you have been? We were just kids then."

"What makes it different now? Do you really love this Joseph guy?" Eric gestured in the air as if Joseph was right in front of them.

"Of course I do," she took another cigarette from the pack and lit it.

"Then why this? Why the smoking and the crying alone in your car?" Eric demanded. "I know you Amata. I know when you're unhappy."

"I was happy in California with Joseph. It's just that coming back here after so long was so strange," she explained.

"Then why come back? Why did you invite me to your wedding?"

"I don't know. I guess I wanted some closure or something. I wanted you to know since you were one of the few people I was really close with, you know? As gross as it probably sounds, you're like a brother to me."

"You don't fuck your brother," the words tasted bitter against his tongue as he spat them from his lips.

"You're right, you don't," she sighed and put out the cigarette, "I guess that's why I got so weird the morning after."

"You could have stopped me."

"I could have, but I'm sort of glad I didn't."

"Why?"

"I just had to know if there was anything more between us. Isn't that why you did it?"

"Well yeah, I guess so if you put it that way."

"But yeah, you could have called me, you dork! Or maybe I should have called you. Either way, we could have saved each other from this awkward mess later in life but chose not to for some reason or another," she laughed and threw her arms around him one more time.

So, Amata drove away into the night, leaving Eric as she had the first time, bewildered but bewitched at the same time by the strange girl he could never quite understand or ever really hold on to. Only this time, he didn't have an eye full of sand. Sure enough, he went to the wedding, but did not cry out Amata's name in the style of Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate." At the same time, it would be a lie to say that he felt no jealousy for Joseph after his meeting with Amata in the dark of that Midwestern midsummer night, but it didn't matter. After all, the best things about first impressions is that they don't always determine the dynamic of a future relationship. Eric knew that Joseph loved Amata well enough to fully deserve her.