This is a sentimental story for those who had a childhood crush and never forgot it. For those who live in small towns that are often disregarded on maps. Somewhere there is still love and hope for everybody.
Please remember that the story shows an athletic, fit girl, because that's the type I like. There is also a scene of kissing under the influence of alcohol. You've been warned :)
Enjoy :)
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I was sitting in front of my computer, mindlessly scrolling through my Facebook feed, when the dull splash behind the window woke me from my trance. My heart began to race and I felt heat creep up my cheeks. It was stupid, strange, and uncalled for, but I couldn't help it. With my whole not-so-strong free will, I stopped myself from sneaking up to the window and peeking out, because I knew the sounds were coming from Jenna Kendall, my neighbor, cooling off in her pool. She had done the same yesterday, right after she had come back from college for the summer break. We could only see each other briefly in the driveway as she came in and I went out. It was the first time I had seen her since Christmas. And Jenna looked so... she was.... Oh, it's so fucking weird to even think about it!
Jenna was not only my neighbor, but also my friend since childhood. My best friend, to be exact. Our parents were close too, we were like one big family. That's why I felt weird about Jenna. I had a much better relationship with her than I did with my biological cousins. Damn, I was closer to her than I was to Sheila, my own sister.
It had always been an unusual constellation between me, Jenna, and our siblings. Jenna was only a 'year' older than me, so we were obviously close because we shared the same interests, challenges, and problems, if I may call it that way. We were basically peers because there was only a five-month age difference between us. We were just born in different years.
Sheila, my sister, was five years older than me, so I never had a close relationship with her. It's pretty obvious why. When I was still pooping in diapers, she was already finishing preschool. By the time I was ten and running around the neighborhood with stick guns, she was in high school, getting her first crush, and dating boys. Then I was in high school and she was in college. Now I was done with high school, and she was getting married soon. Probably, because I had no idea what was going on in her life since we rarely spoke. We had never been on the same page. Or, to extend that metaphor even further, we'd never even been in the same book, because just as I opened the cover, she was already putting the book back on the shelf.
The same was with Michael, little Mikey, Jenna's brother. Funnily enough, he was five years younger than Jenna. So he almost didn't exist in her life either. Or in our lives. Because Jenna and I were like a binary star system that had been orbiting each other since the beginning of time. And Sheila and Mikey were like comets that passed near us once in a hundred years, but never synchronized with us.
Jenna and Sheila did get along well up to a point, though, but then grew apart for some reason. Perhaps for the same reason, I had never established a real friendship with Mikey - I couldn't treat him any differently than I would treat a small kid.
So our closeness was the reason I started to feel weird around Jenna. To be exact, it started in high school, but I wasn't fully aware of it then. It was all because we were both growing up and there was a moment when I suddenly realized that the skinny, somewhat tomboyish girl I had climbed trees and fought nettles with was turning into a beautiful and athletic young woman, a volleyball player. There was a moment when I noticed that her legs were becoming long and shapely, nicely complemented by the slender muscles she was building up as she worked out. That her chest became full and perky. And her face was changing, too, which was hard for me to notice at first because I saw her every day and she always looked like... Jenna. But she became beautiful like an Instagram model but still with a familiar, the-girl-next-door vibe.
I think I had a highly-suppressed crush on her at the time, but it was easy to dismiss or rationalize since we were still hanging out on a daily basis. Jenna was my best homie. A friend, a homegirl. Bro girl. That's how I saw her my whole life. Until she left for college.
Only then, when for the first time in our lives, we were separated for six months, I began to realize all of that. And it sucked. The last year of high school really, truly sucked like fuck. I missed her like crazy, I felt like a craving addict. Everything was so bland as if the air had less oxygen and the sunlight was bleached. We talked online pretty often, but it wasn't the same. It was a mere substitute. I felt like our binary stars were going further and further from each other. And I didn't like it.
And while I knew why I missed her, at first, I couldn't understand why observing via social media how she was settling into college life and getting new friends made me bitter and sad. I had this feeling of missing out on everything - Jenna was experiencing adult life in Dallas, and I was this kid, left behind in Marietta, our forgotten-by-world town.
And something else made me angry, even though it was hard to admit it to myself. About two months after starting college, Jenna found a boyfriend. Actually, this shouldn't bother me, since we had dated different people in high school, but it still bothered me. Because it looked serious. Too serious.
Jenna was studying health and nutrition at The University of Texas in Dallas, and that's where she met her douchebag boyfriend. Um... I don't know if he was a douche for real, I just had a feeling about him. Or I was just jealous, but I did not realize that at that moment. All I knew about him was his name, Tyler (a pretty douche name if anyone asks me), and that he was a sophomore with passion for bodybuilding. He also introduced Jenna to weightlifting.
One time, after winter break, Jenna started a bit of an awkward discussion on Messenger about Tyler, it seemed like she was about to tell me something, but for some reason I got scared. I didn't want to talk about this guy. It put me in a bad mood so I cut the conversation short for some made-up pretext. She never mentioned Tyler again, and to be honest, I was glad about that. I preferred to hear about her workouts than about some douchebag...
And since she's always been a sporty type, she clearly caught the bug and started to pump the iron. She always had an athletic silhouette, but after her first few months in college, she had incredible gains.
I remember how shocked I was when I saw her arms during winter break. They weren't outrageously big, but her biceps and triceps were well-defined, visible even when she wasn't flexing. And her shoulders were broader, which accentuated her hourglass silhouette even more and contrasted very distinctly with her narrow waist and shapely hips.
We were both quite awkward about her transformation and she jokingly asked me if I liked it. And I 'jokingly' answered that I wasn't into muscular women at all and that she needed to be careful with her workouts so she wouldn't look like a dude with tits when the summer break started. Jenna seemed to take it in stride, as she laughed and shrugged her freshly-built muscular shoulders, but I knew her through and through and sensed that my response wasn't very to her liking. Yeah, no surprise there. I guess it was a rather tremendously witty-shitty comeback from her best friend.
I don't know why I answered that way, why I lied, that I totally didn't like it. Was it out of shock or because I felt insecure or jealous or whatever? I had no idea. Jenna looked impressive then, at Christmas, even I had to admit that she put a lot of work into her body. But now, as I saw her again, I noticed she lost a bit of her buff, she was more slender, her muscles smaller but better defined, and she looked very sporty and fit. On top of that -- she was never going to look like a dude, no matter how big her muscles were. She had a very feminine face and looked like a healthy, athletic young woman. So, I felt like shit for commenting on her body like that. Like the worst friend in the world. I was supposed to support her in her passion, whether I was on board with it or not.
And I wasn't even sure I was so adamantly not into muscular chicks as I claimed. I mean, I didn't care about female bodybuilding at all and had no interest in following the sport. I wasn't into all those women, although I appreciated fit, harmonious bodies. But I guess I was into Jenna. But she was into Tyler. And we were just friends...
I heard another splash and involuntarily got up from my desk to take a look. But just before I did, I heard a whistle. It was our special signal from childhood. I was quite surprised that she decided to use it for the first time in a long time. For other people, our timing would have been more surprising, but we had this kind of thing a lot. A strange, unexplainable, almost telepathic connection.
I walked to my window and held my breath like an idiot.
It's only Jenna, you moron, calm down,
I told myself and opened the window. I had to squint my eyes because the sun blazed them, and then I heard Jenna before I could even make her out.
"Hey, Lane! Come out of your cave, man!" she called out energetically, and my eyes finally adjusted to the bright light so I could see her. She was floating on the green air mattress in the middle of the pool.
