The Friend(Zone)

Diego is on his way to Keeya’s dorm. His heart thumps loudly. They’re going to work on the song they’re co-writing for the Wisconsin Christian University campus-wide songwriting contest. But he thinks there’s more going on than just that. 

He remembers how Keeya hasn’t wanted to work on the song in weeks – how every time he texts or asks about it, she says, “I’m just really overwhelmed with homework right now,” or some other excuse. But he knows what she really means is, “I’m having a really hard time right now, and I can’t think about songwriting.” And he wants to be sensitive to that. He wants to help. He wants to help her pick up the pieces. 

But if he’s honest, he’s also hoping this might be an opportunity. That sounds terrible. He doesn’t mean it like that. He’s not going to try to hook up with her. He doesn’t even believe in hook-ups, or any sex outside of marriage, for that matter. But he does have feelings for Keeya, and he’s hoping she’ll come to understand that. He’s hoping that she’ll see how he’s there for her. He wants a relationship, and he thinks that maybe she’s open to that. It just seems like there’s always been a possibility of something between them, and now that she’s single, that possibility is screaming to be recognized. And she’s the one who reached out to him. Maybe this isn’t just about the song. 

The cold November air bites at him as he hurries across campus. The sky is already dark and he can see his breath. And yet the sharpness of the cold can’t pull him out of his thoughts. As he passes Cunningham Music Hall, he remembers first meeting Keeya in MUSIC 175. He’d happened to sit three rows behind her and had been distracted all throughout their first class by her gorgeous hair. He had tried not to stare.

After class he’d made casual conversation with her and learned three things — her face was even more beautiful than her hair, their music preferences were remarkably similar, and she was surprisingly easy to talk to. Weeks later he had asked if she wanted to collaborate on the songwriting contest, and she’d agreed to do it. However, she’d also mentioned her boyfriend back home very soon in the conversation after that. He suspected that was meant to set some expectations and shoot down any attempts at romance before they began. 

He’d been very disappointed, and unsure what to do. He’d even discussed it with his roommate, who had cautioned him against the collaboration: “She’s got a boyfriend? Don’t waste your time.”

But he’d already asked her to collaborate. Taking that back just seemed shallow and mean. So he’d tempered his expectations and collaborated with Keeya, despite the dismal romantic prospects. Now, however, Keeya’s relationship with her high-school boyfriend had ended. She was single, for now. But who knows how long that would last. Campus was swarming with eligible bachelors. If he wanted to win her over, he might need to act quickly.

He heads into Lowe Hall, Keeya’s dorm. He steps inside and is immediately is sweltering. He rips his scarf and hat off as quickly as possible. It’s too bad, because he thinks he looks good in his scarf, so it gives him much needed confidence when he wears it. Impulsively, he takes off his coat and puts the scarf back on. Maybe he’ll survive the indoor heat and still look alright. 

He texts Keeya, letting her know he’s about to arrive, because he’s nervous and doesn’t want to feel like he’s intruding. Then he climbs the stairs to the second floor, where she lives. 

As Diego approaches her door, he takes a deep breath. Take it slow – that’s what he’s reminding himself. He can’t charge in there and tell her he likes her. He can’t be cringy. He’s got to wait for the right moment, and then maybe imply it rather than saying it. He’s never done this before though. He’s always hovered on the verge of asking girls out, never having the guts to do it. But this isn’t high school anymore. College represents a chance for reinvention, at least to a degree. He’s going to be confident Diego now. 

He knocks lightly on her door. Keeya rustles around inside for a moment, then opens the door. 

“Hey Diego,” she says quietly, her voice a little flat. She looks kind of beat down. But she does have makeup on. Could that mean she wants to look nice in front of him – maybe she likes him, at least subconsciously? No, those kinds of thoughts are exactly the cringy, clingy kind of thoughts that other guys would despise him for. He shouldn’t analyze so much. He shouldn’t care so much. 

“Hey Keeya,” he says gently. “How are you doing?” Wow, that was a pretty boring greeting. But what’s he supposed to say?

“Ehhhh… I’m okay,” says Keeya, not convincing at all. She moves into the room and slumps into her desk chair. She nods to a beanbag chair against the wall. “Do you like these things? My roommate says they’re uncomfortable because they try to swallow you whole.”

Diego smiles. “Your roommate is crazy – being enveloped by a beanbag chair is one of life’s great joys.” 

He plops himself down. He’d rather be sitting on a couch though. If they were sitting on a couch, maybe an opportunity to put his arm around her would arise, and maybe that would be the perfect way to demonstrate his feelings for her. Or maybe it would be awkward and she’d shoot him down. Maybe the beanbag chair was for the best after all. 

They start by talking about their song: “Summers in a Sinking Town.” Diego is pretty proud of it. It’s the strange story of kids investigating a series of disappearances in a small town that’s slowly, literally, sinking into the earth. They’d come up with the idea as a literalization of small-town restlessness, something they had both felt, growing up in their respective small towns. Just one more thing they had in common. 

She opens her laptop and they review their lyrics — three verses so far. It’s just a matter of figuring out the melody, writing a killer chorus, and getting the ending right. But they’re running out of time before the submission deadline. Keeya starts reading it aloud.

“When we were just children,

We thought it was monsters,

Eating the people, one by one,

In this factory town with no factory, 

Sinking down, down, down.”

She pauses, mulling the lyrics over in her mind. He’s not sure why she’s pondering the lyrics — they seem like a great first verse to him. He nods, ready for her to continue.

“When we were in high school,

We searched for a psycho,

Murdering people, under our nose.

In this strangling town with its entropy,

Sinking down, down, down.”

He nods again, hoping she’s not going to get stuck in perfectionist revising. They need to focus on finishing the song. 

“I feel like we maybe need another verse in there,” Keeya muses. “Maybe one more false explanation for the disappearances — some other theory they investigate.”

“Hmmm, maybe,” he says, feeling their momentum is about to die. But he doesn’t want to contradict her. He wants her to feel like they’re a team. “Should we try to get the end and get the chorus figured out first though?”

She nods her concession, and he wonders if she resents being pushed to hurry on the song. She doesn’t give him time to worry though — she reads their third verse.

“We grew up and realized, 

They all were just leaving,

Climbing the walls, running away,

From this stifling town with no destiny,

Sinking down, down, down.”

Diego zones out as she reads, noticing her lips moving as she speaks. He knows it’s stupid to think about kissing her now, but it’s hard not to picture it. 

“Hmmm,” she says, not satisfied. 

Diego comes back to reality with a pang of irritation. He doesn’t want to be irritated — he wants to enjoy every moment with her. But at this rate they won’t finish the song at all. Maybe that doesn’t matter though. He tries to remind himself why he’s really here: to be there for her in her tough time, and to show her how much he cares. The song has to be secondary.

“Don’t like it?” He asks emphatically. 

“I like it,” she says, staring at the lyrics on her laptop. “But it’s kinda hard on the town. You know?”

“Hard on the town?”

“Yeah like it makes it sound like this town is just… the worst. And doesn’t this town represent, like… our homes?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Diego pauses. “But isn’t it supposed to be a critique of small-town life?”

“I always thought of it more as an exploration of small-town restlessness,” Keeya says, thinking through the nuanced differences.

“Isn’t that basically the same thing?” Diego asks, not sure where she’s going with this.

“I don’t know,” says Keeya, looking suddenly tired. “I guess I just mean that maybe the big, bustling, exciting cities aren’t any better. Sure there’s more to do, but you’re still restless inside.”

Diego thinks about how Keeya’s boyfriend — or rather her ex-boyfriend now — is going to school in Chicago. Is Keeya thinking of him right now? Is she thinking of how the big city took him away from her? Is she thinking about how he grew restless in their relationship?

“That makes sense,” he says, though he really has no idea if a big city would be better or not. Arborville, Wisconsin — home of Wisconsin Christian University — certainly isn’t a big city. “Maybe we could add some ambiguity about that in the final section of the song.”

“Mmm-hmm,” says Keeya, staring blankly at the screen. 

“You okay?” Diego asks quietly. 

“Yeah,” says Keeya. She looks up and gives him a smile to prove it, but the smile looks kinda sad.

“It’s okay if you’re not,” he says. 

She looks back at him, uncertain. “Okay,” she says, and looks down. “I’m not super okay.”

And Diego has a strange combination of feelings. He feels glad that they’re not talking around the issue anymore — that they’re being honest and connecting and getting to the bottom of it. That feels good. But then he feels bad for feeling good while she’s feeling so bad. He doesn’t have time to think about it more though, because he needs to answer her somehow.

He gets up from the beanbag chair and steps over to her. She looks up at him from her chair, not sure what he’s doing. He gently takes her hand and draws her to her feet, then gives her a simple hug. 

His heart is pounding though. He’s never been this confident around a girl before. But that’s what all the people online always say — girls like confidence. And if she needs anything right now, she probably needs a hug. But he just hopes she can’t feel his pulse pounding — that would give away his nervousness. 

She hugs him back, just accepting that this is what she needs. “Why are you so nice to me?” she asks quietly, her chin on his shoulder. 

“Because you’re the best,” says Diego, and immediately feels like that was a cringy thing to say. 

She starts to pull back out of the hug and he’s afraid that he’s scared her with his forwardness. She looks at him as their hands fall to their sides, but she’s still fairly close to him. She looks like she’s trying to read him, to understand what exactly he means by such a compliment. Maybe she’s realizing he likes her. Maybe that’s good, or maybe it’s too soon, but it’s too late to change it now. So Diego knows it’s now or never.

“I really like you,” he says, ashamed of his own bluntness. “And I think you deserve to be treated well and… and like… treasured, I guess.” He adds the “I guess” to make it sound more casual but he doesn’t think it sounded right. 

She just looks at him for a moment, understanding, and for an instant he thinks she’s going to kiss him — that’s what would happen in a movie — but instead she looks down. 

“Thanks,” she says, destroying his hopes. “You’re so nice to me. I’m really glad we’re friends.”

“Me too,” he says, but he’s not quite ready to give up, even though part of him wants to run for the door in a panic. “But I think maybe there’s something here — something more than friendship.” He’s terrified by his own boldness. 

She keeps looking down. “I… I don’t think I’m in a good place to be getting into a new relationship or anything. I just need to…”

Maybe she’s not rejecting him. Maybe she’s just not ready yet. That’s good. That’s fine. He needs her to understand that he’s not impatient — a delayed relationship with Keeya would be much better than no relationship with her. She should take as long as she needs.

“That’s okay,” he says. “I can wait.”

“I… I can’t make any promises.”

“That’s okay.”

“I mean… I don’t think you should wait for me.”

He tries to understand why she’s saying that. Is it because she’s not into him, or because she’s scared? He blindly hopes it’s the second one. But she goes on, filling in the reason for him. 

“Because… that’s a lot of pressure… for me. That’s like… I wouldn’t want to string you along or disappoint you, so if I was gonna have you wait for me, I’d have to be really sure we were a good idea. And… I’m not sure.”

Diego wants to tell her that she is disappointing him — crushing his hopes — right now. It’s not a theoretical problem for the future: it’s what’s happening right now, in this moment. But he knows that would sound so self-centered to say. 

“What can I do to make you sure?” He asks, and hates himself for saying it. If the internet could see him now it would label him a “simp.” Maybe that’s what he is. But he wants to at least be able to say he gave it his best shot.

“That’s not what I’m… Diego, I’m so glad we’re friends. But that’s all I can offer you right now. Or probably ever.” 

It’s humiliating. All he wants to do is get out of there as fast as possible. He had put himself out there. Why had he put himself out there?

“Okay,” he says, and he shrugs, trying to be casual. “That’s okay. I’m glad we’re friends too.”

He checks his phone. 

“Diego,” she says, “I’m not just saying that to make you feel better. I’m really, really glad we’re friends.”

“Yeah,” he says, and knows he should pivot the conversation back to the song they’ve been working on, but sitting there and pretending everything’s okay sounds like torture. “I should probably get back and do my homework.”

“Oh. Okay.” She blinks.

He turns for the door. 

When he gets back to his dorm, he goes straight to bed, even though it’s only 8pm. 

For a couple days, he has no real contact with Keeya. What is there to say? He likes her in a way she doesn’t like him. He sees her in music class, and she gives him a tentative little wave, which he returns, but that’s it. Any hope of finishing “Summers in a Sinking Town” in time for the contest is gone. Any hope of a relationship with Keeya is gone too. He’d spent months trying to temper his expectations, and they’d still gotten away from him. 

Then one night, the night after the song-writing submission deadline, Keeya texts him. Her message says, “Hey. Sorry our last conversation was hard. Could we talk sometime tonight, just for a few minutes?”

For an instant Diego hopes she’s changed her mind, but he ridicules himself for that hope and crushes it out of existence. Don’t be silly, Diego. A small, petty part of him wants to leave her text unanswered. But he answers and agrees to meet her outside the library at 10pm that night, after his meeting for a group project is done. 

He walks through the cold of the open plaza, remembering the last time he’d walked through the cold to talk to Keeya, a few days before. He doesn’t understand her. What could she want to talk to him about? She’s already made her feelings very clear. 

As he approaches the library, he sees her sitting on the front steps, wrapped up in a coat and hat and scarf. The library is closed at this time of night, so the steps outside are deserted. She waves when she sees him, but doesn’t get up.

“What’s up?” He asks her, then realizes the lack of pleasantries makes him sound mean. He gives her a smile to try to soften his tone. 

“Thanks for coming,” she says. “Um… I just didn’t want to leave things the way we left them. Are we just… not going to be friends anymore?”

He thinks about that. Her vulnerability makes him want to say, “Maybe we can still be friends,” but his feelings demand he keep his emotional distance. Is that fair to her though? If ever she needed a friend, it’s now, dealing with her heartbreak over her ex-boyfriend. But is it a good idea for him to be that friend right now? She has other friends.

“I, um…” he fumbles for the right words. “I might need a little time.” He’s not sure if he means that literally — that he needs time to adjust his feelings and expectations — or if that’s a nice way of saying, “No, we can’t ever be friends.”

She nods. “Okay, that makes sense,” she says, but doesn’t look satisfied. “I…” she trails off. 

And Diego knows he’s probably making the right decision to distance himself a bit — otherwise he’ll be stuck in a cycle of emotions — but he also wonders: if he’d been less focused on Keeya’s attractiveness and on finding a girlfriend, could he have been a better friend to Keeya? Could he have been someone to help her through this hard time instead of possibly making it even harder?