In June 2005 while selling merch at the booth of a local band I was friends with, I ran into two eighteen year-old's weeks out of high school who became members of our social circle. One of these people (Stacee) and I became friends quite quickly. Within six weeks of meeting her, we were sitting on someone's back porch with our arms around each other and spending several hours on the phone each week with each other. While driving home from her shift at a convenience store, she'd often call me to help her stay awake on her long drive home. After speaking daily, I didn't always have something to say, so I remember many moments of silence, hearing road noises on a flip phone from her end as I struggled to come up with something that I hadn't said to her on the previous day. We went through the experience of finding out we both loved a somewhat obscure singer-songwriter, finding out our friends were opening for her and then having our cars towed that October while attending the concert of that musician and the aforementioned local band was opening for. After the shock wore off, we were able to get a ride from the venue by her friend and to run into the musician and her band at a downtown Denny's.She was (somewhat) understandably manic about those events, and I remember calling my girlfriend of one day calling while this was going on and saying, "whose that crazy chick screaming in the background?"

I spent time keeping her company while she house sat a few times in the summer we met. I wrote jealous songs about her as she showed interest in the lead singer of the local band mentioned above. I even (in an, 'I don't know what I was thinking' moment) gave her a quick kiss (not on the lips) while we were snuggling on a couch under a blanket together on a hot August night on one of those house sitting nights, before she asked me to head over to a downtown studio where I watched her and the local lead singer kiss and snuggle even closer on a couch. I blew up at her in public, something I'd only done like that one other time.

There were a lot of big arguments. Some I handled in person albeit inappropriately (the argument after rejecting me and accepting him) and others were handled arguably passive-aggressively via blog posts on MySpace. Most of the time we'd have these discussions over it, she'd realize the way she made me feel, we patched things up temporarily and several months later, something else would arise. Just before Christmas in 2007, we found ourselves at the Christmas party the guy who lived in the studio I drove her to on the night I kissed her. I found myself sitting on the couch talking to a woman who was kind enough to listen to me discuss the latest stories with Stacee and told me "there's no crying on the couch" tonight before she left. Uncomfortable with confronting her, I wrote about it publicly and it lead to her apologizing, and a number of gatherings that winter, including getting coffee together twice, seeing Juno in the theater on Christmas and for her to call me on my birthday.

By late 2008, we didn't cross paths as often. I had stopped hanging out with the mutual friends on a regular basis, feeling unappreciated by them for the work I spent photographing them and paying my way into the show only to sell their merch. I photographed her and I remember her being at a show the band that brought us together played in early May (I think she and the singer were dating at this point, and I had attempted to bring a date of my own) but not much after that. In the fall, she quietly moved out of state and just across the border, and we began emailing, though messages were sparse. It usually involved me asking how she was doing, her replying a week or so later and the process repeating a week or two later. She gave me a call in April 2009 (the first time since she'd moved and the last time I remember her calling me) telling me that she appreciated my friendship and had kind words for how much I helped the band of mutual friends where we met. It felt great to get that appreciation from her when I hadn't received it from the band themselves. It was a great closing phone call, and with that, we seemingly vanished out of each other's lives.

I've wondered how Stacee has been. I did a social media search for her and found her looking nearly the same, only trading in the short brown 'do of a young Mia Farrow for a long golden brown look. Part of me wants to reach out, but it's been more than twelve years since we last talked. Too long? If she were curious about me, would she have reached out? Send a message first? Regardless of what I end up doing, I hope all is well with her, and I appreciate her for all she was for the just shy of four years I knew her.

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