I am 21, and I have a crush on a guy who is 6 years older than me. I have known him since I was 12 or 13, and I have liked him since I was 15. We first meet at a family reunion retreat sort of thing and he came because he is a friend of my older cousin. This family reunion is held every year around September and every year my cousin invites him. That is the main time that I usually saw him for several years. My cousin would always bring all of her college friends with her to the retreat every year.

I developed the crush on him when I was 15 and I was thoroughly embarrassed that I liked an older guy. I got to know him a bit better over the years, but I knew he would never see me in that way. When I was 16 my older brother decided that he wanted to go the same college that my crush had recently graduated from. My brother got to know him better and later on even ended up living in the same apartment that my crush used to live in.

When I graduated from high school I decided to go to the same college as well (for completely unrelated reasons). I was only there for a year a suffered academically (I wasn’t sleeping at night because there were mice in my dorm room) and ended going back home to go to the local community college. Back home I learned that my crush had bought a house near where I live and used my dad as the real estate agent.

Every time I would see my crush that one weekend of the year I would think that he only saw me as the same old little high schooler cousin of his friend. My brother had over time become closer friends with him than I had (I was shy because I had a crush on him). One day back when I was 19 my brother was hanging out with my crush. It ended up that my brother’s car broke down and he needed a ride home from my crush’s house. At this point I had never had a reason to go to his house before so I didn’t actually know where it was. I used to GPS app on my phone to try to get there, but I still got hopelessly lost. After driving around for a bit and finding a house I thought might me his I pulled into the drive way. I called my brother and said that I thought I was at the right house, but I wanted to be sure before ringing the doorbell.

So I tried to think of the best description I could for the outside of my crush’s house. The most noticeable feature was the really tall grass in his yard so I asked my brother, “Is his grass really overgrown?”

My brother said yes and I went to ring the doorbell. My crush opened the door and grinned at me laughing at my description of his yard. I laughed and said I was the best I could come up with and I explained about getting lost. We laughed about my not being able to find his house and I asked how long it had been since he had cut his grass. I had expected that my brother had wanted to leave as soon as I got there, but he actually wanted to hang out for a bit longer. I was awkward around my crush and I sat on couch for a while talking about goodness knows what (seriously I have no recollection of the topic of this conversation at all) with him and my brother.

After about 30 minutes my brother and I left to go home. The next time I saw my crush at the family reunion I jokingly asked him if he had cut his grass. Now I am 21 and at this years reunion something interesting happened. Every year on the last night we play mafia as a big group together till about 1 am. Well this year we had the most intense game of mafia I think I have every played.

In the last game of the night I was an innocent townsperson and so was my crush and we had been sitting next to each other all night. We both managed to stay alive till the very end of the game and it was us versus the very last mafia still alive. We sat next to each other facing the last mafia across the circle. The moment the narrator tells us who was killed in the night and my crush realizes that he has to figure out who the mafia is between me and his friend he loses it.

He jumped up flipping his chair in the process and yelled in frustration. The reason he flipped out over this is because he was also the deciding vote in a game last year where the same girl was the mafia. He also last year made the wrong decision and ended up voting to kill the other townsperson. Thus this year here he was again having to side with someone and he couldn’t decide.

After he sat down again he looked at me and asked me if I was the mafia. I was still laughing at his and my predicament so I tried to calm down as he stared at me. He was hoping to figure out if I was lying or telling the truth. I calmed down and told him to his face that I was not the mafia. He continued to be indecisive going back and forth between who he believed. Seeing as all the other players were already dead and omniscient they knew that I was the innocent and the other girl the mafia.

As he tried to decide I went from trying to convince him that I was a townsperson to annoyance at his indecision to frustration to apathy knowing he would end up choosing wrong. He just couldn’t decide and we were both highly emotion about it all. The girl who was the mafia never raised her voice and was a calm and collected as could be. I was highly vocal oscillated between different emotion. I told him to make up his mind, that he was an idiot, that I hated him, that he was going to make the same mistake as last year, and too just look at her cool as a cucumber poker face. This went on for a long time and in the end I just told him I didn’t care anymore and he was going to make the wrong decision no matter what I said. He finally made his decision and chose wrong just as he did last year.

I just looked at him and told him now he knew I was telling the truth all along. Both of our emotions had been very high during that game. In the morning I joked with him about making the wrong decision again. I mentioned how I have never seen him around where we live and he said he doesn’t get out much. I agreed and said I didn’t either (I may have also implied that we should get together some time) because I am a shy homebody. That was the last day of the reunion and for several months afterward I didn’t see him. I next saw him at my brother’s graduation from grad school on the 10th of December.

He was there with some other people who went to the same college as my brother and him. I said high and jokingly told him that next year he should believe me when I say I’m not the mafia (I’m not a good liar anyway). He laughed and grinned and said he would. That was the last time I’ve seen him and I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. He probably never thinks about me and doesn’t like me. I’m still in college and he has graduated and has a job. I doubt he will ever like me, but I still harbor this crush after all these years.

I keep thinking back on that emotional night of playing mafia. It was intense and I want to know what he thought as he looked into my eyes. He obviously didn’t see if I was telling the truth, but could he see that I like him? That I have liked him for several years now and that I wish we were better friends and maybe something more. The next time I hope to see him is at my brother’s wedding in March. I sounds silly of me, but I hope my brother chooses him as a groomsman and I want my brothers finance to choose me as a bridesmaid. It might help him to see me in a different light and maybe I could have a chance with him. The next time I could definitely expect to see him is in the fall again before school starts at the reunion.

So I like a guy who I will probably see only two times in the next year. Who also only sees me as his friends little cousin and my brothers little sister. We may only be about 6 years apart, but it feels like so much more sometimes. I remember being 15 and sitting with a good friend of mine confiding in her that I liked an older guy. So I guess in the end I want advice about if there is a chance he could see me in that way. I don’t want to randomly show up at his house, but there is probably no other way for be to see him before March. I want to get to know him better and for him to get to know me better. Sorry this is so long winded, but I have’t actually confessed this since I was 15 and told my friend in the high school bleachers.