Another Anniversary

It was 10 o'clock pm on March 24th when I made a phone call from my California hotel.

Ring ring.

Viola answered. Groggily.

Had I awoken her?

Yes, I had.

Wasn't it 9 o'clock back in Utah?

No, it was actually 11 o'clock.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry," I said, breathless and embarrassed. "I just wanted to let you know that I decided that I like Runner Bean."

Viola gave me her official best friend approval. Then she went back to sleep and there I sat, alone with my phone, reveling in the quiet excitement of crushing on Runner Bean.

ONE YEAR LATER
"My anniversary is coming up," I explained to Etch-a-Sketch and Best Friend Boy. "It will be one year since I decided I liked Runner Bean. Therefore, I need an engagement ring."

They couldn't argue with logic like that. So one night, after a stake dance (a dance thrown by the Church for fourteen-to-eighteen-year-olds), Best Friend Boy drove me and Etch-a-Sketch all across town in search of an engagement ring.

The quest kept us up fairly late into the night. At some point, all three of us affected British accents, which we used for the remainder of the night.

"How did your parents meet?" I asked my friends in my British accent. That curiosity called marriage was on my mind.

I was in the back seat and they were in the front, so they twisted around to tell me their parents' tales. It wasn't the most exciting conversation we'd ever had, but I remember how it made me feel. Something about the combination of the nighttime drive, and the British accents, and my friends' support of my ridiculous desire to buy an engagement ring to mark one year of unrequited love made me simultaneously giddy and utterly content with my lot.

We looked at every one of those machines that vends little prizes in little plastic space saucer egg things in hopes of finding a sparkly ring. We looked and looked, but we couldn't find one. I ended up buying a garishly huge ring at the Princess Faire on a Disneyland trip a few days after.

ONE YEAR LATER
Best Friend Boy texted me.

Best Friend Boy: Happy Anniversary!

Awkward Mormon Girl: Haha. Thank you very much on behalf of myself and Runner Bean!

ONE YEAR LATER
Someone else was on my mind.

The day after my anniversay, I wrote in my journal, "A girl can only hang on to someone who won't let her in/she feels unable to let in for so long."

PRESENT DAY
Crushes aren't fun anymore.