I've been dreaming lately

I'm not the kind of girl who has a lot of crushes.  In fact, between high school and now I've probably had only four, including Nate.  My friends always said that, while I didn't fall easy, when I did I fell hard.  So up until Nate, I hadn't ever really dated anyone (though admittedly there were a few drunken mistakes...it was college after all) and, before him, none of my crushes mattered to me quite as much as my High School Crush did.

He is the boy I've previously said we will never mention.  Ever.  I learned long ago that every single time his name crossed my lips it was apparently a clear signal that my brain could stop all rational thinking.  I babbled and said ridiculous things that left me cringing hours later.  I stared.  I probably drooled.  So the day I graduated from high school was the day I stopped saying his name out loud, stopped letting my emotions get the better of me when it comes to men, stopped dissecting words and actions like they were body parts.  HS crush was no longer in my vocabulary, and the way I acted when I was around him was no longer acceptable in my new and improved life.

So there.

I'm only breaking my silence now because something strange has been happening lately.  I've been dreaming about him.  I've probably had five dreams about him in the past six months.  That's more than I've had in the past six years.  The dreams mimic different parts of the relationship we had (which wasn't an actual relationship at all) as well as the relationship I'd wanted.  In the dreams we flirt like we did, he makes the same gestures he always made, we laugh at the same old jokes and I get the same butterflies every time he speaks.  Sometimes, we kiss.  I've never kissed him but I think I've kissed enough now to know that these are good kisses.

I wake up missing him and wondering what his life has been like since the last time I saw him, the morning after my self-imposed HS crush hiatus.

I wake up feeling seventeen again.

He never thought of me in the same way I thought of him.  I actually think he thought of one of my best friends the way I wanted him to think of me.  So like any self-respecting teenage girl, I completely blew everything having to do with him out of proportion until it reached suitable gargantuan levels of lunacy and drama.  But I left HS crush behind knowing that he'd always been that guy.  The guy that I would write about eight years later (God, has it really been eight years?), the guy I would surreptitiously ask questions about from friends I know who know him.  The guy I would search for every so often on Facebook.

The guy who got away.

Having these dreams makes me feel disloyal to Nate and our relationship.  It's stupid I know, but I feel that way in the morning when I wake up.  I shouldn't be having dreams of other boys, you know?

But I still wonder, and I still ask around.  I can't seem to help it.  He's just that guy.