Who I Was Here To Find

Once I realized where I was in the library it took me less than a minute to find Eddie, because where else would he be but the Fantasy section? I found him wandering, finger on the covers as he traced the spines of them, and I watched from a distance knowing the man truly did have no idea that I was there at all. He was lost in his own little world.

He hadn't noticed me yet and I took the chance to keep my distance and try to figure out what to say to him, along the way coming close to the memories of him and the reasons why I'd wanted to be his friend in the first place. Because to say that we had history was to say only a small portion of the truth. It was to leave far too much unsaid. Eddie and I didn't just have history, we had a friendship that went beyond that.

I think both of us expected that life would be different for us in college. I certainly did. I had high hopes that in the halls of higher learning I'd find people who were more than a little beyond the petty squabbles of lower education and small city living. I had a dream of collegiate life as something that it probably hadn't been since Ancient Greece, people sitting around debating the finer points of philosophy while they developed good natured rivalries without hatred or malice. All of us dedicated to expanding our minds and humanity’s understanding of the world around us as a whole.

Of course it hadn’t been like that. And even a cursory glance at Ancient Greek History would tell you it never had been.

But that’s irrelevant to the point at hand which is that Eddie had proven to be the only person I met in college who had thoughts along the same lines, even if he was far more practical than that. He'd taken a major in engineering, or the early steps of it at least, and would go on to delve deeper into practical applications while keeping his mind open to higher debates.

All of the best talks I'd had at college had been with him. All of my best times were hanging out with Eddie. All of it, until we didn't anymore.

Until the moment it ended, Eddie was my best friend and my only friend. I don't think I ever connected with anyone quite as thoroughly as I did with him.

So to say that I was nervous was an understatement really. I stepped carefully, worried that the slightest misstep could ruin everything for me. I felt the full weight of everything, of all of the history and of where we all wound up, on my shoulders and I felt it with him deeper than I had with anyone else. More than the pull of Rachel and more than the repulsion of Blake, I felt Eddie draw me in as I stepped forward and stepped into his line of sight.

He jumped and I took a step back, indicating the book in his hands and I think breaking the silence between us properly for the first time, "That's a great book. One of my favorites."

Eddie narrowed his eyes. He looked to me and flipped the cover around to look at it, taking in the spires of the castle and the wings of the dragon illustrated across the surface of it before shrugging and jamming it roughly back into the bookshelf.

"It's alright I guess," he said, a little sullenly but hey it was progress.

"I mean yeah," I said, "It's a little generic maybe but it's a good book. The magic system is really ingenious, the way they tie it into emotional control and the method they've got for restricting people so they don't feel like they can just continually cast one spell after another really makes for some compelling moments where you think they just might wind up dying which is frankly a rarity in fiction these days. Too many authors are too terrified to kill of characters, to really put the stakes higher."

Those were his words, almost word for word. He'd tell it to me next week, trying and succeeding to get me to read the book. I hadn't bought them at all that time around and I'd only read the book reluctantly but by the end of it I was a ravenous fan, consuming all fifteen volumes in a row, sometimes at the expense of my actual school work.

So it made sense to go with that, to parrot his opinions back to him. I had hopes that it would be a shortcut to the shorthand that we would take our time developing. I hoped that maybe we could rush to the end this time and get there a little earlier and make me feel a little less out of place than I did right now.

Because if I could connect with Eddie, then maybe there would be hope for me after all.

So I waited, baited breath and hopeful and almost certain that he would see me for the friend that I was. I waited, almost certain that it couldn't go wrong.

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