Richard Baum

The first girl I ever loved got engaged today. And it wasn’t to me.

I was utterly in love with her for about three months in the spring of 1999. Stomach-turningly, heart-swellingly, swoon-inducingly gone whenever her name was even mentioned. I met her at my 18th birthday party. For a boy at an all-boys school who’d barely spoken to a girl in 7 years, having one this gorgeous at my party was quite an achievement, even if everyone there knew that one of the cool boys knew her really (through his mum), rather than me. 

In those days my heart was fairly easy to win. Having a pulse and being a female outside of my immediate blood-line were the two main qualifications, and honestly it was probable that neither were absolutely necessary given enough encouragement. She had both, and was lovely to boot. And so I was smitten.

I spent the whole spring and summer of that year doing nothing but rehearsing jokes to crack in front of her, and wishing pain on my friend Ben whom she seemed to whisper to her friends about, despite him being less amusing, generous or kind-hearted than I thought I was. I distinctly remember driving home on an early summer’s evening sobbing in my clapped out 1989 Nissan Micra after he kissed her in the back garden of a friend’s house. I thought my entire world had crashed, and I was so blinded by crying that it was only sheer luck that I didn’t crash my car into the central reservation of the motorway on the way home.

At one point during it all she’d sat me down and tenderly explained that although she liked me very much, we’d always be friends and nothing more. And she was true to her word. On both counts, no matter how drunk I got her.

We are still friends, and she’s still lovely. And she texted me tonight, as Tam and I were gorging on processed beef toenails at Dexter’s in the Trafford Centre, to tell me that her and her boyfriend had taken the leap we still haven’t taken ourselves, and got pre-hitched. There’s a diamond to prove it, I’m told, whereas the closest I have taken Tam to that is leaving her in Accessorize poring over the bangles whilst I stand outside looking bored.

On top of the marriages and the pregnancies that I’ve mentioned before, another door to the past slams shut tonight with this piece of news.

I’m happy for her of course. She was delirious on the phone. Her fella is a lovely guy. Nicer than Ben ever was, by a country mile, and now that my heart doesn’t treble its beat-rate every time I see her, I can concede that he’d even run me a close second if there was ever a contest. And Tam is the most wonderful woman on God’s green Earth, so there never would be.

But I haven’t forgotten entirely, and it’s an odd thought that this girl I was mad about is getting married now. She may never have succumbed to my 18 year old charm (which basically involved me looking at her a lot, alternating between hopeful and glum, depending on whether she was alone or with Ben), but at that age it takes quite some character not to laugh in my face. And yet she didn’t. She became my first grown up friend instead, and from little kids on the edge of a big adventure we’re now where we are, and she’s getting married.

Which is just great. Except I don’t know whether I should be too, or whether it’s just fine to be messing about in Dexter’s in the Trafford Centre and putting it off a bit more.

God knows. And it hurts my head to think about it, especially with a belly full of beef toenails.

Rick