Misunderstood

Looking back now, the “Ninja” seems like such a fitting nickname for her. She was quite the sneaky one, always working covertly. I never really knew what she was thinking. At the same time, she never really told me what she was thinking. And, for all of the time that I have known her, I was never really sure what went on in her head.

Her name was Jacqueline—Jackie for short. We spoke again with each other. I do not know when it was, but it must have been in the middle of November 1999. I also do not remember what we talked about but it must have led to a conversation about me having a girlfriend. I am not sure if she had asked me or if I offered the information freely. Either way, she ended up knowing. I only know this because of what happened next.

Towards the end of the month, I signed onto AOL as usual, but this time the man’s voice said, “Welcome. You’ve got mail!” I looked in my inbox and found an email from Jackie. Again, my blurry memory will not let me recall the details of the email, but the gist stayed with me.

It apparently had been a reaction to finding out that I now had a girlfriend at the time. She then informed me that her wanting to have kept me “company” earlier on did not mean just for the moment. It had the tone that she was a little regretful for not having snatched me first. How flattering, right? With my fading memory, I cannot even say for sure now that it was an email—maybe it was an actual IM conversation. Either way, the effect was the same.

It made me realize how much I liked her from the start. It also made me start to second-guess my relationship with Adrienne, but ultimately, all I could do was feel flattered, and then feel bad for the both of us because I was committed to making my new relationship last. I could not imagine myself breaking Adrienne’s heart and becoming the cause for a break-up at any time.

There was nothing else to do. I had to shrug it off that some other girl that I liked also liked me back. I did not know that back when we first met. I could not say, however, that it did not make me think. I still liked Jackie, and I never, at any point, hid that fact from her.

Maybe everything was happening a bit too fast. I did consider that. But, there was no turning back. I took the path and it was a one-way road—it seemed as if it was, anyway.

It was not, of course.

Little did I know back then that that one email would start the snowball rolling. Everything that happened thereafter only made it harder for me to forget Jackie’s intentions. And Adrienne’s niceness did not alleviate the situation either—it only made it more difficult for me.

In hindsight, however, maybe none of it would have been so difficult if I had only noticed one important fact that is still true to this day: Jackie never actually told me that she liked me.