🤢 TORN: I was NEVER going to tell anyone about this. Now here I am, posting it.
💔 I'm gonna barf just thinking about it: Johnny, Part 3
The third and most personal piece of Johnny’s Story | The Crush Chronicles
To better understand this part of the story, you may wish to read “Johnny, Part One” first:
then “Johnny, Part Two”:
T O R N
It took one week for Johnny to ask me out. I said yes. After that night, there was no denying I was attracted to him, and the tension kept mounting as we interacted and flirted during activities at school and The Music Pit.
The awful part was, I still had not resolved my feelings for my sophomore crush, who was even more active in theatre than Johnny was, and he was also in choir with me, so I was around him more. I tried with much intention to control myself when I was near him, but the flirting and the banter just flowed out of me like a broken dam whenever he was in my presence.
Nothing ever happened because that would require my acknowledgement of any reciprocal desires.
Regardless, I still felt guilty, a feeling that Erin helped me subside.
“I feel the same way sometimes about my old crush. He’s still in the back of my mind even though I’m with Joel. You’re not a bad person, you’re just human, and these things just need time to fade.”
She was right. Even though I struggled getting over my “two-year-old” feelings, I was infatuated with Johnny; I could not get enough of him. To quote myself from the pages of my own diary:
He’s good to me, and I do like him a lot. I just want to be next to him all the time, and I never want him to leave.
We had started dating right before school let out for winter break, which gave us a lot of time to spend together, except for the holiday, in which I journaled how much I missed him, although that’s ridiculous, right? Because I had just seen him the day before. I wasn’t the clingy type, and I didn’t like to be clinged to, either. This feeling was alien.
The night before Christmas Eve, we hung out, knowing we would have to separate for the next two days to be with our own families. This was the night I decided I needed to talk to him, as we drove back home after getting dinner.
My father was in the Air Force and had received new orders: I would be moving after graduation. I had no plans to stay in Texas, no matter how much I loved the people I had met there. I cared deeply about Johnny, but I already knew I wasn’t the type of person who believed in making decisions about your future around the person you’re dating. At least, not at that young an age.
I could see the sadness reflected in his eyes, the waters becoming calm and still, not their usual mischievous cyclone.
“I’ll be lonely without a girlfriend,” he confided.
“You’ll find one easily.”
“None of them will make me happy like you do.”
He couldn’t have pulled the strings of my heart any tighter.
Once, when Johnny was over, we were playing around in my living room. Just verbally at first, but then physically, tickling each other to the ground.
I ended up lying on the floor, flat on my back, while Johnny continued to tickle and toy with me. We were both giggling, enjoying the high of the teenage flirt, then in one swift, hot move, Johnny had gathered both of my wrists, pinning them up over my head and had straddled me around the waist.
Still playful, I tried to buck him off me and slip my hands free.
But I couldn’t move.
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