Hellooooww?!!!

Even though I told her that I was sleeping when the phone first rang, the truth of the matter is that I was already awake. It was noon and I was under my blankets, trying to forget that mild headache that comes after too much wine the previous night and hoping to fall asleep again so that I could get some badly needed rest. My cell phone's screen displayed a "Caller-ID blocked" sign, and when I picked it up the first time, there was just silence on the line, as well as the second time. The third time I let the cell phone rang a couple of times before picking it up; I've always thought that if you let it ring, the odds of a call getting through are greater. Don't know if it is true or not, but I've always believed it works. My parents have two phone lines and one of them is a private line, so my caller id doesn't pick up on that number and that's why I thought the phone call was originating from my home town back in South America.

After the third ring I picked it up and a very familiar "hellooooww?!!!" made my jaw drop and my heart rate go through the roof. It was Stephanie; my very sweet and very cute Steffi.

That was a phone call that I wasn't expecting, but at the same time I knew it could come any day. The last time we talked was back in summer right after she left. As much as I wanted to call her more often and to tell her about my things and to hear about her life, I had enough courage and balls to realize that the sooner we stopped talking on the phone, the sooner I'd be able to put all her memories in the back burner and move on. I sat on my hands several times during the next weeks and months in order not to call her; and as time and distance started to be more evident, and our sporadic e-mails got shorter and further apart, I was able to put a lit on all my memories of her. Her void in my daily life was then filled with other friends and plans here and there and a lot of work; but as much as I tried to stuff that void with whatever, the more evident it felt that i was just trying to fill a hole in my life.

But live goes on, and as farewells and broken hearts occur, the truth of the matter is that always someone else will show up to brighten one's path. Old memories and feelings will slowly drift to the side of the brain where events look like history, and not like a very near past reality, allowing you to get on with your life. So for the next months we just exchanged e-mails and messages, and a letter here and a postcard there about daily life in Europe and Southern US. Just like good old friends.

I was planning in giving her a phone call for New Year's in order to say hi and to just talk about what was going on around here. I was expecting that phone call to be nothing more than an exchange of stories and updates, and also about plans for the new year and stuff like that (I had forgotten what we really talk about when we talk. . .) I wasn't planning in talking about what we had had and that now is long gone, or the things we did and didn't. Whatever happened between us lies where it belongs, in the past. I see her now as an awesome girl that I once had the chance to get to know and hang out with, and whom I would like to keep in contact with for the foreseeable future. But in all honestly, I wasn't really thinking about calling her: my plan was actually to send her a long and nice e-mail and maybe, just maybe, give her a call at some point next year. The reasons for not calling being that I was kind of afraid to face whatever feelings I still have for her (yes, I'm a chicken) and also because we used to talk on the phone for hours at a time, and now I didn't want to be disappointed that after five minutes into a phone call we would ran out of things to say, being just an exchange of stories about "life lately". I kind of wanted to keep the memories of our time together untarnished by today's reality. Again, like if I had forgotten what our endless and circular conversations were about.

I'd say the first ten minutes of our conversation this morning went like I'd envisioned them: I told her what was going on with me and my life in the Bible Belt, give her some updates in the new places to go out in downtown, and gave her an update on some of my plans; she told me about her school and some of the things that she'd been up to. Then, the next three hours we talked about pretty much nothing in particular. Or a better way to understand this is to say that even though we spoke English, we end up talking in our very own dialect. I remember, for example, that we went back and forth for more than half an hour about me telling her that I'm shy and how outgoing she is, and her telling me exactly the opposite, that she's shy and that I am the outgoing one. We remembered situations and use them as examples of each one's point of view and even gave insights on those situations, and we kept going on and on and arguing on the same topic and laughing on pretty much the silliest conversation there have ever been. But if you give it a thought, it is also a very meaningful one: talk for more than three hours without really thinking that it's been that long and without thinking that you have to come up with something smart to say. Fuck that, I like to leave smart conversations on current topics for when I'm drunk!
When my right ear got hot for holding my cell phone and I move it to the left one, I saw the time elapsed on my cell phone's screen and it was already an hour. At that time I told her that this phone call was gona be too expensive for her and that I didn't want her to fill for "personal bankruptcy" because of me, and next thing I know, she was telling me that we'd already been talking for more than two hours!

At the end we had to do as we always did: count till three and hang up. It took us another fifteen minutes or so to be able to do the "1-2-3-bye", or maybe it took us that time to actually count from one to three. I don't know. She was going out tonight and needed her usual hour and half to get ready or so. It is actually much less, but when I mentioned this to her, it was another ten minutes going back and forth about it.

And looking back to this past summer, if we were able to get lost in words for hours at a time, we were also able to just be with each other just hanging out, doing nothing in particular other than enjoying being side by side. But now that I give it a second thought, there was always a lot of talking between us. Was it maybe because we were either sipping a cup of coffee or drinking vodka and redbull when we were together that we couldn't shut up? Today I also had to tell her like twenty times to shut up or to just be quiet and that I didn't want to listen to her because she was telling me either some silly things or was trying just to bullshit me, making her get upset, or more "silly upset". She makes this silly voice when she gets upset but doesn't really get upset that cracks me up; she talks like if she was an spoiled eight years old girl and that is so funny! She's also studying Spanish in school and read to me some stories from her text book and. . . have I ever mention how HOT it is to hear a girl whose native tongue is not Spanish, talking in Spanish? It is to me, call me crazy but I love it!

So we finally hung up, but not before we manage to squeeze a little flirt here and there, and we told each other a lot of nice things. Nothing out of this world, just sweet words between friends together with a lot of good wishes for New Year's. I guess the lack of coordination on this post mirrors some odd feelings that I still have for her, a combination of longingness, some great memories, and the realization that our relationship has evolved into some sort of long distance friendship. And even though I got a bit sad after our conversation, it was very nice to talk to her and to realize that even though time and distance has definitely changed a lot of things between us, we still manage to be the two silly friends who used to waste hours at a time going back and forth about who will hang up first.