A Very Average Love Story
When Julie was in middle school (like every other middle schooler) she was going through an average amount of adversity. Along with dealing with family deaths, she was confused about her own self image. She wondered about who she was as a person, her sexuality, and grappled with this self-set idea of “enough”, and how she wasn’t. She questioned how much her friends, teachers, and family valued her presence, and in an attempt to drown out all her self implemented teenage angst Julie suffocated herself in as many activities as she could. So she couldn’t possibly have enough time to belittle herself any more, because despite Julie being average, and perfectly normal, all she wanted was to feel like it.
As Julie started middle school, she relied heavily on her oldest sister and roommate Ashley for emotional support and advice. Ashley couldn’t have possibly known all the stuff that was going through Julie’s head; Julie was notoriously bad at sharing her emotions, especially any negative emotion. So how could Ashley have known Julie cried herself to sleep most nights, when she learned to do it silently? But that all is besides the point here; the point is that Ashley thought the thing Julie needed most in her life was a crush- because what is more typical and average than having a cringy middle school romance?
Thus Ashley and her best friend Kaylee began (like evil villians in a cheesy movie) plotting their master plan. Kaylee had an equally average younger brother named Oliver who was just a grade older than Julie. They thought it was a match made in heaven. And maybe they were right. (See the foreshadowing I did there?) They brought up the idea of a blind set up to their younger siblings, and both Julie and Oliver rejected the idea in a mix of social anxiety, and for Julie, an attempt to step away from further complicating her life. Yet one day, as Julie laid in her room feeling sorry for herself and reading a novel, when she got a text. This text was from an unsaved number, and it said something along the lines of “Hey! This is Oliver, Kaylee’s brother. My sister told me to text you, lol,”. Julie was a little curious at this point, and decided to respond. This ultimately would change her life.
Over the next few months Julie and Oliver developed an extremely awkward, super cringy relationship. It was the kind where they tried to text each other every minute of the day, (and no, that isn’t an exaggeration- if one of the two were absent from their conversation they would apologize profusely). I don’t know what these two people with little life experience or creativity to come up with intelligent conversations even talked about for every minute of every day- but somehow they managed.
A few months turned into several, and after countless times denying it from themselves and their very nosey sisters, Oliver and Julie both realized their crush for each other. I honestly am unclear about who developed feelings first- as you might recall middle schoolers can be confusing. They both decided to keep this from each other, because they had such a good friendship going they didn’t want to risk ruining it. Even with Ashley and Kaylee reporting to each other as soon as their sibling fessed up to having feelings.
After about a year of keeping this from each other, Julie laid bored. See, now she didn’t feel average, but not in the “I am sad all the time” kind of way. This time she felt not average because she liked a boy. Because that’s a super rare thing. Also because she was questioning if she were asexual. But that’s a topic for a later time.
Because she “wasn’t like other girls,” Julie decided the best thing to do to spice up her life would be to tell Oliver she liked him. So, in her typical fashion, Julie sent Oliver a long text. The biggest take away from this text, (excluding all the embarrassing grammar mistakes and awkward half jokes to try and cover up her own vulnerability) (I would never force my audience to read something so bad) was that her, Julie Johnson, liked in a totally-not-friend-way him, Oliver Brown. After she sent that text Julie sat back in fear of his response on her bed, completely unaware of the effect and absolute chaos that single text caused poor Oliver.
He was cleaning his house with his family- probably mid scrub when he checked his phone that sunday afternoon. It threw him into such shock, he went and locked himself in his room to freak out in private. He eventually found the words to write back, and in short he had one message: I like you too.
With Julie only being in 8th grade, they couldn’t actually do anything with this new relationship potential because Julie wasn’t allowed to date until high school. But that didn’t stop Julie’s family from teasing her relentlessly after finding out. Let's be honest- they didn’t actually wait until after Julie told them about her crush to start teasing her. They already knew.
Remember when I said “But that’s a topic for a later time,”? Well- now is that later time.
At this point in Julie’s life a couple things were going through her head most of the time- A. Wow, this totally cute and awesome boy ACTUALLY likes me back, incredible, and B. How do I like him so much, but still I don’t want to actually kiss him or anything?
While Julie was only 14, and she knew she was still young to be worrying about wanting physical aspects of a relationship, but she couldn’t help but compare herself to her peers, who seemed so invested in all that kind of stuff. This all confused her, but Julie decided that she was simply too young to know anything about that, plus Oliver and her weren’t even dating yet so why bother trying to deal with it now?
Cut to a year later- Julie and Oliver are still totally crushing on each other. And now Julie has to actually deal with her feelings. Because now, Oliver has asked Julie to the Homecoming dance with a VERY cute sign, to which Julie responded with “took you long enough, yes!”.
Shortly after this- Oliver and Julie made it official and started dating on September 1st, 2018.
Now that they were officially in a relationship, Julie toyed with the idea of coming out as asexual to Oliver. Always a thought too terrifying to act on, Julie played out many different scenarios in her head. Many of them included Oliver out of character straight up dumping her on the spot, but in others he accepted her, and even in one fantasy of hers Oliver was asexual too, and just waiting for her to admit it first, just like when she told him she liked him. Julie was always better with words when they were thought about, and carefully placed together on paper. So one night, over a year after they started dating- after they had their first kiss, and after they started to hold each other's hands everywhere they went together in a show of equal amounts of “Oh my god everybody, look! I managed to convince this cutie to date me!”, and after they said “I love you”, Julie sat alone at home, with the built up anxiety from keeping this big part of herself a secret from the one person she trusted most. Too afraid to do anything to jeopardize what they had so carefully built after years, but also being slowly eaten away being a closeted asexual from her boyfriend became the biggest thing on her mind. Julie couldn’t think, sleep or eat without thinking about Oliver’s possible reactions. So that night Julie did what she did best when it came to uncertainty and wrote out her feelings. Julie wrote as if she was going to give these tiny notecards to Oliver, even though she knew she could never just do that. She was so certain they would not be in the hands of Oliver, she started to doodle, in sharpie, the asexual flag on the back of one of three cards, so that it started to bleed out to the other side. But that next morning Julie saw them on the table, and decided that they were safer in her backpack than sitting there for anyone to pick up. From in her backpack, they went into her locker next to her lunch. Then when it was time to eat lunch, she saw them there and wondered, can I really do it? It was as simple as turning around, handing them to him, and saying “here you go- read this!”. She decided to put them in her sweatshirt pocket, (but it was actually Oliver’s sweatshirt pocket, because Julie liked wearing it so she at any point could smell it and pretend he was there with her,). Because most of the time Oliver calmed her down- but not on this particular day. Not in this particular moment. Not when the conversation slowed down, and Oliver looked at Julie and asked “hey, is something wrong?”. Julie was sweating. In Oliver's sweatshirt. She had never been so nervous.
“I have a... surprise,” she responded, and Oliver got excited, for he loved surprises. Julie immediately regretted saying that, because one thing Oliver loves more than surprises is trying to squeeze them out of Julie. He asked over and over again all lunch, even as the two walked hand in hand to the music hall where they had band and orchestra class next to each other in the same period. As the bell was getting closer and closer, Julie tried to think of something else she could say to count as the “surprise,” yet came up with nothing.
“I don’t know if this is a fun surprise, or a sit-down surprise” Julie tried to stall, in reference to a previous conversation they had when talking about how they preferred to be told big news. And as the bell came a mere minute from going off, Julie knew she had no way out of this. She took off his sweatshirt cards still in pocket, and handed it to him. “Here, look in the pocket,” She followed that with a kiss as she handed him his sweatshirt back, and ran to class.
Julie spent the next hour not playing along, wondering if it was a matter of time before Oliver dumped her, while separated by a thin wall over Oliver sat, also not playing along to his music, wondering what it all meant. He was shocked, he didn’t know what it all meant, he was confused, and overall not feeling much better than Julie. To say their next meeting in the music hall was awkward would be an understatement. I don’t think as an author I am talented enough to explain in words the atmosphere between the couple as they walked together in silence- not smiling, and not holding hands to their last class. It was completely silent up until they had to part ways, where in at that moment the only thing Julie could work up to ask was, “Do you still love me?” To which Oliver responded “Of course I still love you, but we have to talk about this,” which Julie knew was the logical next step, even if she hoped he could hear the news, and then they could continue as if nothing were different. Even though they so were.
While Julie sat in her German class doing her best not to cry, Oliver was in math class, (so smart that he finished everything early, and had nothing else to do) and made her a Pinterest board of all the little things he loved in a relationship. He sent it to Julie, and asked her to go through and let him know which things she liked and wanted in a relationship too. This made Julie cry on the spot. Not of fear, teenage angst, or sadness this time- but of relief.
This was the first step of open and clear communication between the two, and over the course of the next several months Oliver and Julie would have deep and emotional conversations almost every night. They talked about boundaries, and life goals, and slowly it became less of a necessary conversation they had to have, and more things they wanted to. They wanted to talk about all this stuff, and all these differences and incompatibility because not in despite, but because of every bit of who they were they were so deeply in love with each other that it didn’t matter if it was hard or confusing to figure out- in the end it was worth it. They were worth it.
EMALYN PETERSON is a junior in high school attending UAA through the AMCS. She enjoys writing in her free time, along with a mix of sports and participating in the DDF program. She’s hoping to be an author and screenwriter after college.