How does it feel to fall in love with someone you can’t have? How do you tell them? Do you tell them at all? How do you get from day to day when you have to see them all the time, because they are your brother’s best friend? Questions like this have been plaguing me for quite some time now, because I am in love with my brother’s best friend. I have never been so sure of something ever before in my life, and neither has a realization been more difficult to come to terms with.
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I have known him for just over 10 years now, and he has become a part of the family. He is the only friend that my brother has stayed close to over the years and I have been a part of us all growing up together. I know what he and my brother mean to each other and there are some things that are not mean to be jeopardized. But a lot of your actions and your thoughts become involuntary and out of control because the heart has a mind of its own. Watching him come to our house, going out with him, laughing and talking together has made me feel things that I have never felt before with anyone else. The story of how I feel in love with my brother’s best friend isn’t easy, and I don’t think it ever will be. Here is how this came to be.
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Even though we have practically grown up together, I never really saw him as someone I could fall in love with. He was always gentle, soft-spoken and caring, but there are some relationships that remain platonic, some relationships that you couldn’t imagine complicating. Even though we had hung out together a thousand times before this, something changed the night of my brother’s 20th birthday, which was a day I am never going to forget.
Even before that night in mid-June, there were times when he and I spent time alone, without my brother. He would make me laugh, and we still have our own inside jokes that no one else in the world would understand even if they tried. I had called him when my boyfriend’s would behave badly, or even when I needed a shoulder to cry on, and somehow involuntarily, I seemed to go back to him again and again. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I might have more than familial feelings for him, because he was after all my brother’s friend, and was almost like a brother to me as well, whether I wanted it or not. It never bothered me that he spent an inordinate amount of time with me, and we sometimes spoke of things that even my brother would be surprised to find out about.
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I felt sheltered and protected in my bubble, where I could pretend that I didn’t feel anything more than sisterly love for him, and he merely spoke to me and hung out with me because he was obligated to my brother. There was no denying that we had gotten close. However, in June last year, my brother celebrated his 20th birthday and everything changed.
The evening started with a house full of people, rowdy, loud and full of alcohol and food enjoying a party as they should. I hung around inside for a little while, and when things started to get really hyper I thought I would step out of the way for a while. It hadn’t been ten minutes since I was outside, sipping a Coke, when he came out of the house. I thought he was looking for something, so I didn’t pay much attention to him. Turns out, he was looking for me. I tried desperately to look calm and ignore the emotions that I was feeling when he started to walk towards me, but keeping a calm visage was getting increasingly difficult by the minute. I don’t know whether it was the warm buzz in the air or the heat radiating from my body, but everything seemed to go hazy and I couldn’t understand what was happening. This person is no stranger- I have been with him several times before so why is this time so, so very different?
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He didn’t seem to have anything to say as he stood in front of me for a long minute in complete and loaded silence. I wasn’t expecting him to say anything either, but I knew without words that it was me that he had come looking for. Neither of us moved for a while but after a pregnant pause, I jerked back to my senses and realized he was holding my hand. I didn’t know whether he was drunk, or whether my sensed deserted me as soon as they came, but the next thing I knew is that he was kissing me and it was the best kiss of my life.
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It might have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes but time seemed to have stopped right then and there and I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t even get myself to think straight and even now when I think about it, it makes me shiver but I don’t know what happened in that brief moment that we were so close. He left abruptly, and I tried searching for him inside, but he was gone.
Even though I didn’t get time to think about that right then, it has been haunting me ever since. Everything made sense now- the laughter, the familiarity, the inside jokes, the support system that we had become for each other. I was in love with him, and there was a very real chance that he felt something for me. But he was after all, my brother’s closest friend, and if there was even the slightest chance that our feelings for each other will hurt my brother or complicate my brother’s relationship with him, I am not going to do it.
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We met the very next day, but both of us pretended nothing happened. In fact, the first time either of us referred to that night, was six months later, at another party, where we managed to escape outside, just like last time. I couldn’t tell him how I felt, but he seemed to know already. These unspoken conversations had become the norm, and even though he is going out with someone else now, we seem to be having these conversations with each other constantly, where we understand each other without saying a word. We both agreed that night that we were being foolish. That everything was a mistake and that there could be no possible future with us, because it would inevitably lead to him losing my brother.
I had nodded nonchalantly that evening. I had agreed with everything he had to say and I told him of course I loved my brother enough to think of their friendship before anything else. But I know how deeply I love him. I know how much he means to me, how much it hurts to see him with someone else and how difficult it is to some to terms with the fact that we might not ever get that night back again.
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I have tried to move on. I have tried to tell myself that there is someone out there who will love me as much as I love him, and maybe someday I will be able to reciprocate with as much passion. Yet, every time I see him, which is still as often and every time we have conversation with or without someone present, the ghost of our encounter hangs like a shadow above our heads. My eyes are constantly clouded with longing for his company and despite the fact that he is my brother’s best friend, I can’t help but wonder sometimes- is it him that I am meant to be with forever? It is conscious rejection of my happily ever after? Am I keeping true love at bay, because I am not brave enough to take that risk?
Only time will tell…
Featured image source: Shutterstock
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