We were at a public lake. There are lots of them in Kansas. So many that those who live there probably don't think much of them anymore. They take them for granted, but when a weekend comes up, they probably say, "Maybe we should go to the lake this afternoon." In much the same way people in Albuquerque look up and see the Sandia mountains everyday, and then dismiss them as they go about their business. But on the weekends, many probably say, "Maybe we should go for a hike on the mountain."

It was one of those really good days. We'd driven around the Kansas country side (rolling hills, twisty roads, farms and then woods as far as they eye could see), picking up supplies and listening to the Black Crowes. I'd been staying at her house for the last week or so, and time was getting short. I would eventually have to go home to New Mexico, but we didn't talk much about that. The end was something we'd deal with when it came. Right now, we were at the lake.

The shower was rinsing my hair (still halfway down my back--this was the summer of 1991, when I thought long hair equated to rebellion), and she made the offhand comment that my hair smelled great, like apples.

"It's the shampoo," I explained.

This wasn't the right thing to say.

"Why can't you just take a compliment?" she asked, pissed off she'd said something really nice about me, and I deflected it to some product. I didn't know what to say to this, so I mumbled out a mixture of apology and acceptance of her comment.

While not completely spoken for, she was going out with a guy who was living in San Francisco. She'd said she occasionally dated friends or other random guys, but nothing seemed to click. She was counting down to the time she'd join her boy on the West Coast.

I wasn't really seeing anyone either. I was obsessed with a girl I'd gotten together with in the spring semester, who was in Alaska for the summer working in the fisheries gutting and cutting fish. Alaska girl was also the girlfriend of one of my best friends from high school.

Alaska girl would eventually (during the fall semester) tell me I had to learn to hate her. San Francisco boy would tell my friend--I actually don't know what he said or did, but she moved out there and broke up with him a couple weeks later. Neither of us knew the fates of our long distance infatuations when we were together that summer. We were, in a way, in the same place in our lives. We were both clinging on to something that would eventually devastate and cause great change in our lives.

Over the couple of weeks I was in Kansas that summer, we'd both nudge each other--glancing blows most would categorize as flirting--from time to time. Sometimes I'd say something stupid to ruin her chance, or she'd turn away when I took a shot. Our separate attachments, unreal as they ended up being, kept us from consummating our own close friendship into something bigger. Maybe, even though we couldn't see how stupid our obsessions were (mine with Alaska girl, hers with San Fran boy), we looked at each other and knew this wasn't the way it was going to go either.

I don't know any of them anymore.

Alaska girl broke my heart and my best friend's at the same time. She stayed friends with him (they were both studying to be pharmacists, and so most of their classes were together), but I only saw her a couple of times after that. My best friend became a shadow and then an occasional apparition. There are some things a friendship cannot withstand, and I'd broken one of those big rules.

My Kansas friend became my San Francisco friend. And then she lost her phone (this was a regular occurrence with her, the first thing she'd stop paying was the phone bill), and we never got back in touch. This was way before e-mail and the Internet and ubiquitous cell phones and all the ways people keep in touch these days.

I've gained and lost many friends since then, now way more than ten years gone. I've gone out and broken up with many girls as well. I've forgotten the names of more people than most probably think they need to remember in a lifetime.

So maybe it was okay we brushed off our awkward advances that summer. Maybe it's good she pulled me back to the barn party, rather than let me pull her into my arms that evening in the woods. Or that later in the night, as we talked close on her couch, it was decided I'd sleep alone in her bed and she'd stay on the couch.

Sometimes it's the things we don't do that define us more than the millions of things we actually do.

Sometimes we talk philosophically to cover up our worst mistakes.

Matt Worley isn't obsessed with anyone at the moment, which is kind of a bummer--obsession is very comforting. It makes you feel like you belong somewhere.