I was a scared little kid when I first started college. I had chosen a school that was about an hour away from home, and none of my high school classmates went there. Most of them had landed their dream schools far away, or had settled on the state university in the next town over. Adapting to my new environment was extremely difficult, and I ended up going home every weekend. It seemed like everyone else was enjoying college life just fine, which left me wondering why I had so much trouble adjusting to my newfound freedom.

I ended up paying regular visits to the state university and met Oana as a freshman through some classmates I knew from high school. I soon found myself enamored with her. She was beautiful, confident, exotic (she had emigrated from Romania when she was eleven), and intelligent. She knew what she wanted to achieve in college and seemed to know exactly what she would be doing in ten years, but she made people feel so comfortable they even revealed their personal secrets to her.

We became fast friends, talking for hours on the phone when I was away at school. When we were not on the phone, I was eager to catch her on e-mail and instant messenger and chatted with her for hours into the night, staying up until it was too late to go to bed and get enough sleep for class the next morning.

Before long, she mentioned that she had met someone at school who was just like me. David became a permanent fixture in our relationship and came to view him as a threat. It was easy to fall in love with Oana. I knew I wasn’t the only person who was interested in getting together with her.

David visited her often with his acoustic guitar, practicing songs by James Taylor, Cat Stevens, and Eric Clapton. They eventually signed up for classes together and became study partners at school. I couldn’t help feeling threatened, but between my weekend trips home, I couldn’t do anything except hear about all the adventures they had together.

Thanks to David, Oana came to love James Taylor. I couldn’t understand why anyone would like James Taylor. I had heard his music as kid, and even then found nothing special in his music. His voice was bland, his lyrics were lame, and there were far better folk singer/songwriters out there who could evoke more emotion and excitement.

About halfway through our relationship, I had this nagging feeling that I was losing Oana and that I should just break up with her. It was becoming clear that the closeness we felt in the beginning had grown into a chasm between us. Our phone conversations were becoming shorter, and she kept telling me how far away I was, saying she just wanted to be close to me. She claimed I wouldn’t tell her everything I was feeling even when I had no words to express myself. I didn’t know what I was feeling. “Yes you do,” she said to me. Even now, I don’t think I can express my feelings to people if they ask what I’m thinking. It’s just not what I do. I kept holding on, though, hoping that everything would turn out all right and that we would live happily ever after.

James Taylor went on tour that year, and David wanted to go see him perform at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. Oana told me that I could join them, that it would be great to see him perform under the stars. I declined the invitation and stayed at home, knowing it would just be the two of them out at a concert on a cool summer evening. It wasn’t a date, supposedly, but I couldn’t help thinking it was a date and the date was not with me.

Oana and I broke up later that summer, sadly resigned to the fact that the distance had grown too great. She struggled to tell me that she wanted to break up with me and that she wanted to remain friends. “I kind of knew this was going to happen,” I whispered. My shoulders sagged as I stared at the floor of her room. She hugged me with a tightness and desperation I had never felt before, her eyes unable to hold back the tears. But part of me thought we might back together. Then, in the weeks after our breakup, she told me she needed to be honest with me. David had confessed his love for her. Surprise.

I didn’t take the news very well. Heartbroken and disappointed, I cut off all communication with her. I couldn’t even bring myself to see her when she wanted to return some of my CDs. I went an entire semester without seeing her until one evening I came home for a weekend before finals. I called her and asked if I could pick up my stuff.

When I showed up at her suite, the awkwardness hung between us. I hadn’t spoken to her for three months, which seemed like an eternity. She let me in. Her roommates were there. A couple of guys, David included, were hanging out as well. She sat close to him, and a good distance from me, for most of the evening. After an hour or so, I decided it was time to leave. She handed me a large garbage bag of my things. When I opened the bag, I found the two CDs I had loaned her, plus a stuffed Eeyore and all the trinkets I’d given her as gifts during our eight-month relationship. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I kept the CDs, but rushed back to her college dorm to return everything else that was left in that bag. I later found out from her roommate that she and David had been together for quite some time. It hadn’t mattered that we loved each other with an intensity that neither of us had felt before. Apparently I no longer had a part in her life, and she didn’t want any part in mine. I yelled. I told her I felt betrayed because she didn’t tell me about David. My calls fell on deaf ears; I left unreturned voice messages. I was like Rob Gordon screaming in the rain to his ex: “Charlie, you fucking bitch, let’s work it out!” I never saw her again.

It didn’t matter that I had never really listened to James Taylor. I resent him now because I will always think about how quickly my relationship with Oana began, and how it ended with bitterness, anger, and regret that I was not man enough to remain on friendly terms with her. I’ll always remember how she talked about that night she went to see James Taylor, and how she left me standing in front of her dorm with a garbage bag full of the gifts I had given her.