Three little words that are uttered a million times a day. 99% of those are appreciated and reciprocated, and everything is grand and merry in the world. The other 1% is, well, all just a bit awkward isn’t it?!
I had a bit of a shocker a few years ago with regard to those three little words. A story which, after it had happened, I swore to myself I would never tell anyone else about due to the cringey nature of the episode, but it was that cringey nature that made me blab it to the first friend I saw after the event.
It was one of those moments that you look back and just have to wonder, what on earth was going through my mind, what on earth could possibly make that seem like a good idea at the time. As inexplicable as it is embarrassing, this is my ‘I Love You’ moment:
I had this crush on this girl throughout pretty much the whole of first year of uni, and to be fair on me, we had got with each other on numerous nights out throughout that time. Unfortunately, this wasn’t what I thought it was, and I was well and truly in the dreaded friend zone, despite these drunken lapses into something more.
First year ended, and summer rolled around. It turned out that she would be in Italy the same time I was there with the family, so I suggested she come and spend a few days with us in Tuscany, which was enthusiastically accepted.
We had fun in the sun; innocent fun in the form of table tennis, swimming, and walking round Lucca, nothing more than that. It was nice; a good rest after what you can imagine had been a long, tough and difficult year of academia in our first of three at Newcastle. I was aware that the sparks weren’t exactly flying, and I pondered the issue as we navigated Lucca’s Roman streets.
It got to the day when she was to leave for the airport, to fly back to the UK in time for a festival, and my Dad offered to drop her off. We got into the car and set off, all of us, including me, unaware of the impending romantic disaster that was about to take place.
She had been reading this book on holiday, whose binding had started to break, and as we sat there in the back of the Chrysler, conversation flowing, the pages started to fall out as she opened the book. I began to gather them up and as I was giving them back to her, an idea, that idea, the idea, struck me like a hammer. Clearly, I needed to make a statement, make my intentions clear. One last throw of the dice, why not? What was the worst that could happen? Dr. Pepper knows.
I scribbled those three, terrifically immasculating words down on a page, folded it, and returned it to her, mentioning that she shouldn’t open it till she got on the plane. A fool-proof plan, a romantic mega-gesture, one that would spur her into mutual giddiness.
I didn’t clock the ridiculousness of the situation as we walked through the terminal and said our goodbyes. She went through the security barrier and I waved her off. As she disappeared round a corner, I turned and headed back to the car where my Dad dutifully waited.
And then it hit me. A cold surge of terror and disbelief swept into my consciousness and I stopped dead in my tracks. What had I just done?! I cursed my stupidity, my ridiculous sense of logical thought. I bent over with my head in my hands, panic coursing through my veins. I had to do something.
I fished my phone out of my pocket and quickly typed:
‘If you haven’t read it yet, don’t! Throw it away!’
Now, I’m no scientist, but I get the impression that the text failed to accomplish what it was designed to do. Needless to say, we didn’t hook up for good after that, if ever again actually. Months of awkwardness and avoidance from both her and me suggested as much. Unless, I’d read the signs wrong. Possibly? Possibly not.
My friend who I had told on my return from Italy, having laughed all that he could laugh, asked me why I hadn’t made a joke of it by sending a different text, along the lines of ‘Haaaa, Kidding!’. The power of hindsight is an often celebrated tool, but I don’t think that even in this instance hindsight highlighted anything that could have made the situation better, other than perhaps not sending the note in the first place, and everyone could have told me that beforehand anyway. For once, hindsight was obsolete.
And that was it. That was my ‘I Love You’ moment. And didn’t it go well! What followed was many months of ‘I love you’ coos from my friends, which served as an important lesson to learn… Whatever embarrassing things you do in life, don’t tell a girl you love them on a scrumpled page of a novel, then tell your friends haha.
The Warm Up 