I could marry a girl like that 

I first had the thought sort of ridiculously early. Like, my first day? Pam was pretty in an understated, comfortable way, and there was something about the way she made me laugh, the way her smile felt familiar from the first moment. And the words sort of formed in my head: I could marry a girl like that.  

You know what, though? It wasn’t true. Believe me, I tried to find someone as much like her as I could (and as much different as I could find, too, and everything in between), and it just wasn’t true. If you take away that smile, or that sense of humor, or that little crinkle between her eyes when she doesn’t know what to say…then it might be someone “like” Pam, but it’s no one I’d have the faintest interest in marrying. And I realized that somewhere along the road it had become: I could marry her.

The problem, of course, was that she couldn’t marry me. Not me and somebody else, and she was already going to marry somebody else. Pam was going to marry somebody else and all I could do was watch her. And I did watch her. I watched her smile and frown and sometimes nearly cry and waste her talent and her compassion and her kisses and her time on someone who didn’t seem to want what she was offering. I wanted all of it. I want to marry her. 

It was more than enjoying her company or wanting to get her into bed, although both of those things were true. I wanted to marry her. I wanted to fight about money and take care of her when she was sick and deal with the in-laws and worry about getting the oil changed in her car. I wanted to wake up every morning knowing that Pam was my responsibility and I was hers, and then use the whole day building our life until we fell asleep together that night. I wanted to marry her and I couldn’t even hold her hand without causing a problem. I wanted to marry her and I couldn’t even tell her I loved her without breaking everything into sharp, tiny pieces.

I ran away. Call it cowardly or self-preservation or blind, dumb panic, but I couldn’t stay there and watch anymore. Everything was wrong, had gone wrong, and I was wrong to leave but I couldn’t have stayed. I ran and it seemed to be working. I even met someone else. I could marry a girl like that.

It might even have been true. A girl like Karen, maybe, but not Karen herself, and I knew it almost immediately. The things I liked about Karen, her quick wit, her warm smile, they were the things that reminded me of the girl I left behind, the one I really wanted. 

My escape plan backfired, and I ended up right where I started. Literally, yeah, but also…well, literally, because I was right back to pining for a girl I couldn’t have, even though now I was the one who had put someone between us. I wasn’t a very good boyfriend, and I tried to pretend that I was just a typical bachelor, casually dating, a free agent. But there were days when I caught a glimpse of Pam out of the corner of my carefully-looking-elsewhere eye, or heard a laugh, that same laugh from that first day, and I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t just a guy avoiding long-term commitment. I could marry… her.

The problem was that I couldn’t marry her if I couldn’t admit that I wanted to. I couldn’t admit it because of everything that came with it- admitting that I’d used Karen, forgiving Pam for hurting my pride and breaking my heart, acknowledging my own part in the mess, and, worst of all, opening myself up to having her crush me again.  

Things happened pretty fast once they started happening. It was all Pam. She stood on a chilly beach, her eyes lit up like the fire on her feet, and embarrassed me to hell and back. And then she didn’t back down from it, at the water’s edge or back in the office. She continued to smile, and I was amazed again at everything she is as she sat there and gave me her friendship and her smile and her love. She honestly wanted me just to be happy (that’s all I had ever wanted for her, until I wanted more than that). Pam sent me off that day knowing that, again, I was trying to leave her, and instead of trying to stop me she sent me a good-luck note.

How stupid. How stupid that all it took, after everything else, was a “while you were out” slip and a yogurt lid for me to realize I still loved her. He asked me just the right question. In ten years? I want to be where she is. Wherever she is. I need to be wherever she is, whatever she needs. I need to marry her. 

An ugly hour, a torturous drive back, a heart-stopping moment where everything hung in the balance, and then her smile. My God, her smile. I’ve been living in that smile for a year now. It hasn’t always been easy. We both have bad habits, like hiding our feelings or joking about what is serious, but I love her and she loves me. Pam loves me. It’s unreal, still. It’s what I’d wanted, hoped for, prayed for, suspected, gambled on, despaired of, and denied, and now it’s what I know without doubt.  

Being away from her, even for a few weeks…that was hard. And she’s going to get a job somewhere else, because she’s talented and she has dreams (she tells me this is my fault), but I won’t be losing her. Because it was raining and she was laughing and she was beautiful and my whole life pulled together in that moment, condensed and solid as the diamond I pulled from my pocket, the flaws causing flashes of sparkle and color, and I asked her. Pam laughed (my God, her smile), and she said yes. I’m going to marry her.

I’m going to marry her.