Long Relationships

Last week I asked you to send in your stories. The stories of your love, your life, your time with your significant other.

The first entry I received wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I asked, but I think it is so creative and sweet, I’m going to put it up anyway. Enjoy.

Our two characters (and such characters!) are named Anastasia and Sebastian. And until only a couple of years ago, they hadn’t the vaguest inkling that the other existed. How strange then, that the poor lad Sebastian would become so enamored with Anastasia that she would never be far from his thoughts and dreams from the day they met until this very moment.

This entire story is true. Only the names, places, and events have been changed.

#1 – “Summer Loving� - from Grease

Sebastian met Anastasia at work. Or more accurately, on the way to work. Somehow, field work fit both of them perfectly, and the hour ride to and from the fields allowed such conversation that started a friendship unparalleled in this century. The farm season ended, and the two promised to call on each other throughout the following year despite attending separate schools. And so they did.

#2 – “There She Goes� – The Boo Radleys

Sebastian finished his summer and entered his school year in an unprecedented high. Anastasia was undoubtedly the cause. A happier girl he had never met, and there was something about everything she did that made Sebastian the happiest guy in the world. When he had to leave for a weeklong vacation soon after the season ended, the withdrawal symptoms nearly killed the two. At the end of the summer he asked her if she would be his, to which he received a regretful rebuff. Already displaying its incredible strength, their friendship remained intact.

#3 – “All For You� – Sister Hazel

Anastasia captivated Sebastian. Her voice, her thoughts, her actions, everything that she did just served to endear her to him further. Unfortunately, she also maintained such a flighty air that it was quite impossible for Sebastian to gain any insight into what the future might hold for the two. That same agonizing trait would be a common factor in the romantic parts of their relationship interspersed throughout up until present day. However, they still hung out, and Sebastian admitted to his closest friends that she was the girl of his life.

#4 – “Drift and Die� – Puddle of Mudd

Then, as the trees turned and autumn began to blow leaves over doorsteps and front lawns, Anastasia’s family was torn apart at the seams. Sebastian wept for her and for her family, as they were forced to accept the fact that their father had left them. Anastasia called on Sebastian for emotional support, and it killed him that he couldn’t offer more. The pain she felt was entirely tangible to him and to only be able to offer paltry online and phone call comfort nearly destroyed Sebastian.
#5 – “Best I Ever Had� – Vertical Horizon

The closeness brought forth from Anastasia’s tragedy brokered a new type of friendship between the two, one in which they began to see each other in a new light, as more than just friends to have good times with. Sebastian realized that the friendship now meant more to him than ever. However, as the year drew to a close, he began to realize that Anastasia was spending more and more time with a new man, someone Sebastian had hardly heard of before. Someone Sebastian would hold a sometime-secret envy of for at least the next year.

#6 – “Carelessness� – Fair

Seeing as how Anastasia had become somewhat distant and to an extent even ‘taken’, Sebastian refocused on another girl, in what would prove one of his most ridiculous failures at life. In fact, so little of that relationship was good that it barely warrants a mentioning besides the fact that it seriously made Sebastian want to have Anastasia back. Hell, by the time the relationship ended, Sebastian probably would have settled for a lot less.

#7 – “Two Princes� – Spin Doctors

That summer, Sebastian saw both more and less of Anastasia than he would have liked. Seeing her made him so incredibly happy, but then the time away from her was just made worse. How could he complain when she was quite happy in her relationship? And yet… every time they saw each other he knew he could feel something pass between them that pulled at him to just sweep her off her feet and kiss her, an impulse that he would, of course, never act upon.

#8 – “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love?� – The Spinners

There had never been a pair of friends who exercised more self-restraint than Sebastian and Anastasia. They managed to make it all the way to the beginning of another school year without anything leading to actions that both would have been too ashamed of to even speak. Sebastian, in lieu of actually holding her, had to cling to the things that reminded him most of her: burned CDs, borrowed and recommended books, and the tentative non-dates that they went on as often as possible.

#9 – “Say It Right� – Nelly Furtado

It’s hard to dance with someone who you have feelings for, but can’t be more than friends with. Both Sebastian and Anastasia took lessons similar to that away from the winter dance that he had invited her to. It was a wonderful night, but tinged with too much caution for his tastes, at least. Perhaps… but no, the night ended with a hug. And that was all.

#10 – “How Can I Mend This Broken Heart� – The Bee Gees

Random tangents:

Anastasia only broke Sebastian’s heart twice. (A remarkable figure, if you really think about it.)

The first time was shortly after he (finally) got his driver’s license. She was distraught over something, something for which Sebastian wanted desperately to comfort her. She told him to stay home instead. He obeyed, but was sick at heart for finally having no excuse not to be there holding her except for her pleadings.

The second time happened in such a way that Sebastian could have put his foot through a door in his utter frustration with the events. Everything was going fantastically, she had just stopped seeing her boyfriend, telling Sebastian that she wanted to date him over the coming summer, and it was the season finale of a TV show that both Sebastian and Anastasia loved. That night, Anastasia tried to call on Sebastian after the finale, apparently influenced by events on the show. If only his little brother hadn’t been on the phone, he might have been able to see her that night and things could have turned out differently. Instead, the next day she went out and met the guy who would become her boyfriend for the next couple months, well into her last summer before university.

#11 – “I’d Go the Whole Wide World� – The Monkees

The school year began to draw to a close, and Sebastian had nearly given up hope that Anastasia would ever drop her boyfriend in time for a relationship to occur. A month before the summer vacation began, he agreed to go visit relatives for a month, thinking nothing of the fact that he would be out of town… away from Anastasia. A mere two days after he had made his plans, she told him that she had dropped her boyfriend, and could see the two of them dating over the summer. Sebastian about slipped in the puddle of irony oozing out of his life.

He told her of the month long vacation that he’d planned, and told her that he would stay behind if it meant that they could be together. Though she insisted that he go on vacation, she could not have believed the certainty with which he told her that he would miss it, for her.

#12 – “Almost� – Bowling For Soup

It was a bittersweet ending to a bittersweet year. A date here, a chance meeting there, every one with the nagging thought that it could be the last before Anastasia left. Almost. Almost. Almost.

#13 – “Santa Monica� – Everclear

And without so much as a goodbye, she was gone. Only echoes, memories, and photographs remained where Anastasia once was. Sebastian maintained contact with her; a limited view of a world he could barely comprehend. It was a long-distance friendship that he would sacrifice sleep and school work for.

Despite himself, he clung to feelings that he probably shouldn’t have, kept a flame of hope lit in the gaping chasm where once a great fire of love had roared. Somehow, he couldn’t shake the thought that there must be a future for these two people so unique and yet so perfect for each other.

Was he right?

Maybe someday we will write the rest of their story together.

#14 – “Quien Es Feliz?� - Belinda

End Credits

Chorus:

Al final, será
como ayer,
más que un recuerdo.
Al final, será
lo que no fue
y nunca pudo ser
Hey, hey,
Tu nombre está en mi piel.

In the end, it will be
like yesterday,
more than a memory.
In the end, it will be
what it was not,
and it never could be.
Hey, hey,
Your name is within me.