I got a visit

Last night Bradley’s brother Shane came over (Shane‘s a musician and lives here in NYC). He was stopping by to drop off a large box of winter clothes I had left at his house when I took off so abruptly a few weeks ago. When I opened the door I could barely see him over the box he was carrying! The second he put the box down I wished he hadn’t. He looked EXACTLY like Bradley (which of course I was expecting, but at the same time I still wasn’t prepared) and I was instantly ready to cry, BUT I DIDN’T!

The time I spent in Santa Barbara with the Bradley clan had given Shane and I a lot of time to get pretty close. Out of all the Bradleys, Shane had the hardest time being at the hospital. He, his girlfriend, and myself, used to spend hours upon hours sitting on the beach talking about everything. In the end there was no stopping it, we had become friends.

Shane smiled at me and then walked over to give me a hug. It wasn’t one of those stupid double pat “guy hugs“, it was a real “I care about you” hug. He hugged like Bradley, he SMELLED like Bradley. I couldn’t take it. I started crying. And he let me.

I haven’t really verbalized my feelings with anybody since I broke up with Bradley. After it happened I got into my car and drove straight to SD to my house because I knew it would be empty. I called Kyle about the job, and I stayed in SD until 2 days before my flight, then I drove up to LA to give myself just enough time to let everybody know I was going. Of course I told Tyler that I had ended my relationship, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it and Tyler knows better than to push me to talk about something I don’t want to talk about. Ever since arriving here in NYC I haven’t really said anything beyond, “I broke up with Bradley” to anybody.

The abnormality of spilling my guts out to my ex-boyfriend’s older brother ABOUT my ex-boyfriend was not lost on me. But Shane made it so easy for me to open up to him and he was such a good listener that I couldn’t help but telling him everything! When I was done I felt WAY uncomfortable! I couldn’t even look him in the eye for the longest time. He suggested we nosh and I jumped on the opportunity to do something that wasn’t contingent on me discussing a breakup with my friend’s little brother.

It was pretty late by the time we left my apartment, and I live in the DEADEST part of the city when it comes to nightlife. Its nice for me when I take my 2am walks because I get to pretend I am Will Smith in, I Am Legend, and I am the only human left in NYC. But when I am trying to find a quick bite @ 11 in the evening and everything is closed, it kind of sucks. We settled on McDonald’s, I have plenty of horror stories about this McDonald’s in particular but I choose to keep them to myself because I feel that everybody deserves to eat their chicken nuggets without worrying about food poisoning.

So we finish eating and we went back to my place to say our goodbyes. As he was getting ready to leave Shane said something to me that really caught me off guard. He told me what I was thinking but had never actually had the guts to say out loud, and then he told me it wasn’t going to work out that way. He was right of course, it’s the main reason I wasn’t actually SAYING it, but a guy can always hope. He asked me if we were still going to be friends. I told him I had 2 months here in NYC, and we were going to take this time to see if it was possible. Despite the awkwardness and obvious reasons why we shouldn't, I really do want to be his friend.