Grace is really cute. I love the way that she holds eye contact with you when you talk. She also has about the softest brown eyes you’ll ever see, which makes it’s pretty much impossible for you to stop looking at her. Of everyone I have ever met on Earth, I think Grace is probably the person who understands me most. I normally hate having long conversations about my emotions and feelings, but I think I could talk to Grace for a really long time if I wanted to. But we’re just friends. I think she’s an amazing girl, but I don’t ever see us getting married.

We’ve known each other for eight years. We both went to Eden Middle School, Scariot High School, and now we’re both fin-ishing up our freshman year at the same college. We get together eve-ry Sunday morning and go out for coffee. 

She always dresses up for when we go out. I think dressing up for something so informal is dumb, so I don’t. Today she wore a light blue blouse, and had her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Really cute. We met outside the coffee shop, seeing how it was such a warm, sunny day out, and then walked in. I almost wanted to take her hand and hold it.

We got our coffee and sat down at our normal table. The smell of coffee always calms me. We reflected on our week, talked about classes and professors, and mentioned the weather. I don’t really re-call the first several minutes of conversation, but I remember looking down at my empty glass coffee cup and saying, “I don’t know. I guess I just never thought that my dad loved me.”

I looked up to see how Grace would respond. She held my gaze, her eyes instantly comforting me, and said, “Why do you feel that way?”

“I don’t know. We have our car rides, kinda talk at dinner, but he just never seems to care. Actually, that’s a lie. I know he cares. But he always seems to let me down.”

Grace took a sip of her coffee and thought for a second. “How does he let you down?”

“It’s not any one big thing. It’s just that as long as I can re-member, I have this picture of him abandoning me. Like promising to come to my baseball game and not showing up, or promising to take me to a movie and then forgetting about it. He never seems to come through.”

“Are you exaggerating?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. He’s done a lot for me, I know that, and I feel like I’m obligated to love him for that stuff. But it’s hard. The things that I actually care about, it’s those things he forgets about.”

Grace looked kindly at me. Her face always says more than her words. She just looked at me, with this sad, understanding look that told me that she somehow sympathized despite her own perfect family situation. She always talked about how much she loved her mom and dad.

“Josh, has this happened recently?” Oh yeah, my real name is Judas. But I hate that, since no parents should ever name their kid after the person who killed Jesus. So I changed my name to Josh. Grace is the one person who has never talked about on my name change. She always called me Josh in such a way that I forgot I was actually a Judas.

Back to her question. “I guess. I just remember him promising to pick me up from the movie theater after I got done hanging out with my friends. I waited twenty minutes and then called. Guess what? He was taking a nap.”

“He just fell asleep.” She almost seemed to be siding with my dad.

“If he loved me enough, he would set an alarm. He just doesn’t care enough.”

Grace took another drink of coffee. She paused, as if she wanted so say something but then stopped herself. She took her hand and scratched the back of her neck. “What do you think he should do if he promises you something?”

“I don’t know. Set an alarm in his dumb phone. Write in his stupid planner. A least try to show that he cares about my life too. All he cares about now is his own.”

She thought for moment, and then quietly said, “Do you think that you’re being selfish?”

Coming from anyone else, that question would have blown me up. But Grace has enough respect from me that she can ask rude questions. “Maybe a little. I’m not gonna pretend that I’m perfect. But I think that I deserve at least a little of my dad’s time.”

She looked at the clock. I hate when Grace looks at a clock in the middle of conversation. It’s like she wants to leave. But she quickly looked back. “Where does you mom play into this?”

I laughed for some reason. “I don’t know. She’s nice.”

Grace looked puzzled for a second, like my response caught her off guard. “Does she love you?”

“I think. As much as she should, at least. I don’t have a prob-lem with her.”

The hard thing about talking to Grace is that, at these random times, her eyes seem to twinkle in the light at the same exact time that she smiles and you get so caught up in her that you forget about whatever she’s saying. Grace poked me on the arm and softly chuck-led. “Did you hear me?”

“No, sorry. I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Again, I didn’t get mad at that question. It usually bothers me when people ask about my thoughts, since they’re my thoughts, and if I wanted to share them I would talk, but Grace just has a way of asking questions that shows how much she cares about you. But there was no way I was going to answer her question honestly. I wouldn’t even know how I could say it. Like, “Yeah, I was just thinking about your eyes.” So I lied.

“My pet dog.”

Grace seemed to be caught off guard again. “I didn’t know you had a pet dog.”

She was right, I didn’t. “Yeah, we had a golden retriever that died when I was in fifth grade.” Another lie.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did your dad treat the dog nicely?”

Grace is normally really good at carrying conversations. But every now and then, she just seems to ask these random questions where you can tell that she’s trying to move the conversation back to where it was a few minutes beforehand. It’s really annoying.

I looked into her eyes, and they twinkled. I couldn’t lie to that Grace. “I never had a dog.”

She didn’t say anything. So I continued. “Yeah, we never had one. I made that up.” Before that, I don’t think I had ever lied to Grace. Something about her makes you tell the truth. I sometimes stretched the truth, and whenever talk comes up about our friendship, I always downplay the way I feel about her. I tell her that I greatly appreciate her, that I am so thankful she’s in my life, but I also hide some stuff too. I don’t think I’ve ever told her how incredibly pretty she is.
But anyways. I felt a little bad after seeing Grace look down at the table. She was really hurt. Grace is by no means a perfect girl. She is by far way too emotional. I did feel bad after lying to her, though.

“Sorry, Josh. I have to go to the bathroom real quick.” She walked quickly to the bathroom, putting her hands up to her face. I’m pretty sure she was crying in there, since she was peeing for like eight minutes. She did her best to wash up afterwards, but it was still really obvious. She’s definitely way too emotional. We could never get mar-ried.

She came back, and before she sat down I told her, “Look, Grace. I’m sorry. That was a really stupid thing to do.”

“It’s fine.” Her voice was different. I had hurt her. Oh well. She’d get over it.

Still, Grace didn’t have a problem coming back to our talk. She quickly brought up my dad again. She could be a jerk sometimes. “Josh, how do you act towards your dad?”

She has some stuff that bothers me, but I still respect her more than anyone else. Sometimes I could see myself proposing to her. “I don’t know. I’m not an amazing human being or anything, but I think I do a pretty good job of caring for people. I love my dad way more than he cares for me. I don’t think I have ever missed or forgotten about something we planned together.”

“Do you use a planner?” She looked at the clock again.

“No, I don’t need one. I’ve got a pretty good memory.”
Grace took one more sip of her coffee to empty it. She looked at me and her eyes twinkled again with her smile. “Josh, I want to let you know that whatever your relationship with your dad is like, I care about you deeply.”

“Thanks.” Grace didn’t have any idea what that comment did to me. My mind buzzed, and the smell of coffee hid behind the scent of roses, like I had just noticed a pot of flowers on the table that had been there the whole time.

  She probably just thought she was being friendly. But for the past five years, about all of high school, I have dreamed about her admitting how much she loved me. I think I’ve always known that she cares for me. But it’s different when somebody says it. My dad rarely tells me that he loves me. I think Grace likes me more than my dad.

There was an awkward silence. I wanted to say something back to Grace. I wanted to tell her that I thought she was amazing, that I thought she was pretty, and that I thought we should get married. I just wish I could have the strength to tell her that I cared about her. How is it that Grace is stronger than I am?
We waited in silence for a few more seconds, and then she spoke again. “Josh, do you remember the first time we met?”
That was a weird question. But I can answer it for Grace. “No.”

“I do. We were in the same sixth grade English class. Our teacher let us choose our own seats, which I remember was a big deal in middle school. We were some of the first people in class. I didn’t know anybody. I had just come in from a new school. But I chose a random seat, and then you came and sat by me.”

Grace paused and I started to open my mouth. But she contin-ued. “Josh, I felt so alone that day. I had just came back from sitting by myself at lunch. And you sat by me.” She paused again and cleared her throat. “You know, Josh, you’ve changed a lot this past year. I don’t know if it’s been your dad, school, or something else. I don’t know. Maybe you aren’t even aware of it. But Judas, you have the capacity to love. It doesn’t matter how your dad treats you. You can still love him.”

That was the first time she had ever called me by my real name. It was weird, it didn’t bother me. She rubbed her eyes, but she was too late and missed a tear. It slowly ran down her cheek until she wiped it with her hand. “Judas, you don’t need to hate your dad.”

We sat in silence for a minute or two as she tried to hold in her crying. I didn’t know what to say. I’m normally good at maintaining conversations, but sometimes, if a person stops faking themselves and starts telling the truth, the real truth, I don’t know how to handle it. All I did was take my right hand and put it on top of Grace’s, which was now resting on the table. I have dreamed many times of holding hands with her. But at that time, there was nothing romantic going on between us. I held her hand out of pure, undefiled love. Not the stu-pid romantic kind, but the kind where I could have been married to another woman, and she could have been married to another man, and my love for her still wouldn’t have been inappropriate. I was one good friend comforting another.

We had nothing to say after that. We got up in silence, threw away our trash, and parted ways with a simple goodbye. I was walking back home when my dad called my cell phone. I answered reluctantly.

“Hey, Josh. I’m getting off of work earlier today. You want to do something?” His voice rang with insincerity. Maybe it was just me. But I was pretty sure that he would just leave me hanging again. He’d probably forget about our plans or something.

“Yeah, I guess. Did you want to see a movie or something?” Had I had any plans that night, I would have said no. But my friend had homework and couldn’t hang out, so I was left to be bored. Might as well give my dad his seventy-seventh chance.

“No, not really. I was just thinking of tossing a baseball around in the front yard and talking.”

“Dad, I’m in college. That’s what third graders do.” I was half joking and half serious. It sounded like a stupid idea. Baseball? Come on.

He laughed. “Maybe. I don’t really care. Let’s do it anyways.”
When I thought about it, I actually thought tossing a ball with my dad would be kind of fun. Maybe childish and a little pathetic, but fun. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you at home in like thirty minutes. Love you-bye.”

“Love you.” I don’t know where my words came from. I finished walking home. It took about half an hour.

I’m sitting in our living room now, looking out the window to the street. My dad should be home in about five minutes, but I won’t mind if he’s a little late. Our baseball gloves are on the coffee table next to me, comfortably propped against a large vase of roses my father bought my mom a few days ago. Next to that, in the center of the table, is a framed picture of my parents on their wedding day. My parents are twenty-five years younger in it, my mom is dressed in all white, and my dad’s eyes are twinkling.

I hope one day, twenty-five years from now, I’ll have a picture like that with me and Grace in it. I think I’m going to ask her out on an official date next Sunday. I’ll see what she says. I’ve never really been on a date before, but something changed in me today. I think I’m finally ready for commitment.