If

Dear Liz,

You might be surprised to receive this letter from me. Well, I wouldn’t blame you. We do meet in school 5 days a week! Why didn’t I just convey this message to you in person, right? Well, it’s not that simple. Sometimes speech cannot do justice to an emotion. Sometimes speech fails you in the most inopportune of times. Or maybe sometimes, people are just better in expressing themselves through writing rather than speaking. Like me.

Time to get to the point, as you once so politely said to a teacher who was going in circles educating about the ‘Birds and the Bees’. Well, here it is. Liz, I like you. Ever since I got to know you and your little quirks (like pinching others when you have a hiccup to pass it on), I always wondered if you have ever felt the same way about me. We know enough about each other to find ‘Truth or Dare’ between us boring. My friends have become your friends and vice versa.

I like you so much now that I look at your every action towards me with a glimmer of hope. “Did that smile mean anything more than usual?” “Why is she telling me that Cathy Jonson is so not my type?” It’s a question that cannot be held back any longer.

Do you like me too? Do you Liz?

Cause if you do Liz, I can bring something special to your life. I could

Jon stopped writing. Skimming through the hardest letter which he would ever write, he dropped his pen and sighed after reading the last paragraph. It was not that Jon felt his letter was too mushy or too honest-to-God truthful; in fact he’d want his letter to emit his exact emotion, nothing more or nothing less.

It was the effect(s) his letter (if he completed it) might cause when delivered to Liz, which worried Jon. That girl shared one trait with John; they both were honest people. Brutally honest people, that is. If Liz didn’t like a boy who was hitting on her, she’d go up to his face and make sure he got it into his brain that she did not like him, and was not playing hard-to-get. It was this trait which drew them close as friends, Jon often reasoned.

If Liz felt the same way about him, no problemo, everyone lives happily ever after, the end. If she didn’t…

She would ring him up the every instant she was finished with that letter. She would politely request for Jonathan Isaac Quentin if his mum picked up the phone, and would get down to business when Jon answers. Her voice would have a cordial tone, but her content would be serious. She would say that she appreciates his attention and is flattered that he likes her, but she does not feel the same way and that probably would not change in the foreseeable future. She would wrap everything up nicely by wishing that their friendship would remain strong and that Jon would find someone more deserving. Jon however, would know that in the conversations that they would hold thereafter, she would carry herself cautiously in the wish of not wanting to give him any false hope.

Jon sighed again, as if the very breath would relieve some of the tension building up in his head. If only he had the same power Mel Gibson had in the movie “What Women Want” and he’d have Liz staring at him with dreamy eyes and not the other way around.

Jon was not going to drag this on any longer. He was going to decide there and then if he should continue liking Liz. Finish the letter if he was going to tell her or drop it completely and cease all fantasies.

Rubbing the temples for the umpteenth time, he sat in serious contemplation. “Liz, oh Liz” he thought, “should I give you the choice to reject or accept me or keep silent like a coward?”

Moments and minutes passed and the stalemate ended with Jon picking up his pen again. He continued:

look at you with dreamy eyes and tell you with not a hint of lie in sight that you are the most talented and amazing and beautiful and funniest girl I would ever meet. I could hold you steady in troubled times. I could be your ‘Knight in shining armour’, however cliché that might be.

I could… but in all honesty, no. I can’t.

It’s more than our friendship at stake. I cannot possibly fathom a time where you would screen your every word just because of me. I am of no authority to force you to change who you really are just to shield me from pain. Who am I to change you, as a result of my selfish desires? You continue to be who you are; glib and honest.

Who am I to prevent you from making this decision yourself? No one I guess. That’s the advantage of writing an unsent letter; it hasn’t been sent yet. A handy tool, I must say, for those who suffer from cowardice.

Your honest-to-God friend,
Jonathan Isaac Quentin