Love Horrors III: On Second Thought...

We’ve arrived at another Wednesday and do you know what another Wednesday means? Ah, another Love Horror! Hooray

This time around it’s our girl from 20SB, Ashley, at You’re the Charlie Browniest.

Sheesh, that’s a cute blog name, right y’all? It’s about as cute as this story she’s about to share with you! And, how in the heck did she know to include a moral at the end of her story!? So, lets get ready to learn our lesson;

Replicating the Boards: A Love, Actually Mishap


When Stephanie made the call for embarrassing stories about love or unrequited love, I knew this post had to be written. And you should know, blogosphere, that you’re privileged people because I rarely tell this story to anyone. If you weren’t there to witness it, chances are you don’t know it happened. But I’m coming clean now, all for the sake of the wonderful Stephanie (whom I thank muchly for letting guest bloggers take over her space!)


So…we’ve all seen the movie Love, Actually, right? The brilliant, amazing, sweetest movie ever? Do we all remember the scene between Juliet (Keira Knightley) and Mark (Andrew Lincoln) – as pictured? For those who don’t, Juliet is married to Mark’s best friend; all the while, Mark harbors a secret love for her.


In order to get over her, Mark decides to confess his love: using poster boards. He goes to her house, gets her to the front door without her husband, and proceeds to hold up multiple poster boards declaring his love. I promise the scene is actually much better, I’m crap at re-telling movie plots. I highly recommend it.
Somehow in all my viewings of that movie, I missed that he did it in order to get over her.


Pretty early on in my first year of college, I had a core group of friends: 2 other girls and 7 boys. If I was anywhere, at least one of them would be with me. And as all things go, I eventually realized I had a slight crush on one of the boys, who I’ll call Smith. Smith’s roommate was another one part of our group, and I’ll call him Matt. Now, I was often in their room. I mean, I had a thing for Smith, of course I would want to be around him all the time.

Have I mentioned I don’t do subtle? That might come in handy for later.

So I was constantly there, always hanging out with them. They were actually my friends too, so they didn’t mind (I don’t think…). I should have known it was trouble the day I realized I didn’t care when Smith was around…I was actually always looking for Matt. Just like that, my crush switched roommates: now I was all about Matt.

One of my best memories with Matt is when we watched Love, Actually together with a few friends; of course, all the girls had seen it and none of the guys had, so we forced them to watch it. In the end, they all loved it, and it seemed to really strike a chord with Matt.

I don’t know the train of thought, but somehow three of my friends decided that before we left for winter break, I would confess my love for Matt in the same way as Mark did for Juliet.You would think I would immediately veto the suggestion, right? Any sensible woman would.

The night I decided to go through with it was a disaster.

Only Smith and the other two girls in the group knew what I was going to do, so I can’t really blame our friend Ryan when he invited Matt out to a movie that same night and didn’t return until 2am. I briefly considered doing it when they got back, but I knew Matt would be tired. So then I considered not doing it at all, but for some reason—which I most valiantly wish I knew now—I decided I’d just move it to the next day. Even though it felt all wrong, I pushed it aside as nerves.

8pm, the next day. I’m in one of the other friend’s rooms, waiting for Smith to call me to let me know Matt was back in their room. Unfortunately, he was hanging out in a different room with some friends, so I was forced to wait until whenever he returned. Around 10:30, the call came. “Ash, he’s here,” Smith whispered to me. I could hear him closing the door behind him. “You need to do it now, I think he’s tired.”

Without any thought, I left the room I was in and retrieved the necessary supplies: poster boards and Matt’s Christmas gift. I went downstairs to his room, stood outside the door, and took a deep breath.

I knocked twice…Nothing.

Knocked twice more.

Nothing.

Now the panic sets in (about two weeks too late, in retrospect).

What do I do?!

I knew they rarely locked their door, so I quietly opened it and poked my head in. Where was he? I doubt he left—Oh, there he is.

Asleep.

This is sign #4 I shouldn’t go through with this, in case you’re keeping track.

I quickly back out and call Smith. Again, any sensible person would probably give up. But no, not I or my friends—we persevere!

Smith came up with the idea that he would go in the room and start banging things around to wake up Matt, while I stayed just outside the door so I could quickly get to him while he was in a conscious state.

Brilliant.

Smith enters, I hear a few things being tossed around, muffled voices, and Smith is back out the door. “He’s up, you’re on!” he whispers, dashing down the hall.

It’s not a wonder to me that Smith sounded like he was giving stage directions, because at this point, I’m pretty positive my life is one of those horrible chick flick parody movies you wish you hadn’t snuck into. I took two deep breaths, and knocked.

“Oh, hey Ashley,” Matt says as he pulls open the door, rubbing away the sleep in his eyes, “What’s up?”

“Um, can I come in? I want to talk to you. And I have your Christmas gift.”

“Oh, sure…sorry,” he says as he yawns. “I was sleeping, but Smith woke me up.”

“Is this a bad time?”

“Kind of…but you’re here, it’s fine, don’t worry.” He smiles at me, then sees the boards in my hands. “What are those?”

“Uhhh…nothing….well…no, nothing, really…here’s your gift!” I’m not entirely sure, but I may have thrown the present at him.

I have to explain that the minute he saw those boards, I knew he knew what was going to happen. He knew, and I knew, and still, I pushed on.

What number reason are we on that I shouldn’t do this?

After he opens the gift, he smiles and thanks me…and then the awkwardness sets in. I’m sitting on his bed, he’s in his desk chair, and the boards are lying on the bed next to me. It’s now or never, Ashley, now or never.

“So…here’s the thing…I guess I should do this…I mean…yeah, I’m gonna…you know what this is, you recognize it?”

He nods silently. I take a deep breath, hold up the boards…and start.

I wish I could tell you more about the boards, like what they said or his exact reactions, but I’ve apparently repressed it because I don’t have a memory of it. The only thing I do remember is the minute I started holding up the poster boards, I realized I actually didn’t like Matt.

Do you know the weirdness that sets into your body when you’re declaring your feelings for someone in a potentially super romantic situation (because, think about it, if I had liked him, and he did return the feelings, how awesome of a story would this have been?! I know, right?! I’m fucking awesome.), and all of a sudden you know you actually don’t have those feelings? It’s very, very strange. And a bit uncomfortable.

The only thing I do remember is him smiling at me after the last board was read, saying, “Thanks for the gift, I loved it, and you’re really nice,” hugging me…and then he lay down on the bed and promptly fell asleep. Without another word.

Thankfully, only those three friends knew what I was doing, so what happened was kept quiet. Matt never told, and the rest of us swore not to, either. I never admit that was the moment I realized I, in fact, did not have those feelings for Matt anymore; I just let it slowly die, telling them that knowing he didn’t return the feelings made it gradually fade away. Even though the awkwardness level between Matt and I increased significantly, the embarrassment had thankfully stayed relatively low.

That is, until one of our other friends found the boards in my room a couple months later and proceeded to show them to the every single boy on my floor. And the six boys on the floor below. And even two on the floor above. My only saving grace was my quick lie (white lie…a small fib…even self defense, if you will) that I was merely replicating the props used in one of my favourite scenes in one of my favourite movies. No one ever knew the full, true story…until now, anyway.

I still can’t say how I just knew I didn’t like Matt at that moment, nor can I say why I didn’t stop the boards and explain myself. I don’t know why I went through with the boards, but it at least makes a good story now. If there’s anything you should learn from this, it’s this little tidbit of wisdom: replicating movie scenes may result in the same outcome that happened in the movie.

Oh, and throw away the poster boards.

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