"We're not!" I always tried to explain.
"We're only neighbors." At that time,
I hated my parents for making us live next to
him.
"My standard is not that low." He
would say. "Who wants her to be a girlfriend??
It's not like I don't have eyes."
"Yes, I know your eyes are on top of your
head." I really disliked him. "Better
than having eyes on the bottom of my head like
you." He implied that I couldn't judge
guys. At that time, I had a crush on a senior.
I didn't think that his sarcasm had a hidden
meaning. After a while, I found out that the
senior student had lots of girlfriends. When
I cried about it, he silently passed me a handkerchief
and awkwardly held me in his arms.
"I told you he wasn't any good."
He roughly comforted me. I cried in his arms
the whole night, and began to see him in a different
way. Things began to change between us. We still
fought all the time, but he started to look
at me differently. And I blushed and my heart
beat faster when he was near. We both knew:
we fell in love with each other.
Even with this knowledge, neither of us said
anything. Even though we would not be able to
resist and kissed each other constantly. Even
though we cared about each other's every moves.
Both of us refused to admit our love.
Time flew by quickly, and it was time to face
separation. I chose to study medicine, and he
chose physics. Yet we still couldn't separate
from each other. Our parents worried that we
didn't know anyone in Taipei, so they forced
us to live in the same apartment building. Once
again, we became neighbors. We still fought,
but sometimes we fought into the bedroom. Alright,
we became lovers, but we still wouldn't say
we loved each other. We didn't even spend Valentine's
Day together until he saw me share dinner with
a man one Valentine's Day. That night, he waited
for me in front of my door and said that he
would take me out to dinner on Valentine's Day
from then on. I have to say that he was very
arrogant. But I nodded and accepted his request.
Since then, we spent every Valentine's Day together.
After graduation, I became an intern. He started
a small computer company with some friends and
became a programmer. We were busy with our own
lives and had no time for a relationship. Three
years later, I became a doctor, and his business
began to boom. We separately moved to bigger
apartments and stopped being neighbors. On the
surface, we left each other. In reality, we
were still together. We spent every Valentine's
Day together but each year became more dreary
than the next because he never told me he loved
me even with all my hints.
Facing the empty in-box, I suddenly grew very
angry. He wouldn't say it and wouldn't send
me a card. What did he mean? Who did he think
I was? I called his cell phone.
