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Memories of Lauren
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When I moved to Myrtle Beach in seventh grade, I had a hard time making friends. I've always had that problem, actually. Anyway, during recess about a week after I moved, I was hanging around alone when group of three girls came up to me. They introduced themselves as Lauren, Mary Frances, and Courtney. I quickly became friends with them, and spent most of my free time at school with them.
Because Lauren was the one who was in most of my classes, I spent the most time with her. She was smart, funny, and had a bit of a quirky personality. The sort of girl who wore tacky shirts and loose neckties, and would use phrases like "spiffy" and "neato" in everyday conversation.
While many people seem to believe that male-female friendships don't really exist, that it's just a guy who got stuck in the "Friend Zone" or something, I never really thought about going out with any of them. At least, not originally. But eventually, because I spent so much time with Lauren, students being the nosy creatures they are, we were suddenly pestered with, "are you two going out?" or, "you two ought to go out." Both of us always responded with "we're just friends." Obviously, that didn't do anything to help.
Around the end of eighth grade, there was a school dance. I went alone, but ended up, as usual, spending most of my time with those three girls. Surprisingly, both of her friends kept insisting (whenever she wasn't around) that she really liked me and wanted me to ask her to dance. I'm not sure why, but I doubted them. So I put off asking her till the last dance, and right as I was going of doing so, a girl who lived next to me at the time came up and requested the dance. As I doubted Lauren would accept anyway, and this girl was quite attractive, I accepted. Things never went anywhere with that girl either, but this isn't about her.
So, things with Lauren continued unchanged into high school. I spent lunches with them, and whenever I had classes with Lauren I'd sit near her. Rumors and such continued about us, but we both stuck with the "We're just friends" responses. By this time I was starting to think I might want to go out with her, but she still seemed uninterested in me except as a friend. I didn't want to ruin a perfectly good friendship, so I just let it go.
Then one day in tenth grade in history class, someone made a comment about the two of us, and Lauren just sort of snapped. She declared very flatly (and somewhat indignantly) that there was nothing between us whatsoever, told me that she had no intention of going out with me and asked if I wanted to go out with her. Put like that, I really couldn't help but respond negatively.
After that, I ended up keeping my distance from her and we never really talked much after that. I do slightly regret that now what stands out most in my mind when I think of her was being flatly rejected without ever asking her out, and I greatly regret losing a good friend out of the whole ordeal.
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