Those friendships of the early morning

I've got mail.

It came to me on New Year's, with a dreaded screen name and a stupid subject line, "Bored in Mexico." I still haven't answered it, but sometimes I double-click and read it, as if it's new. I won't delete it; I can't. Sandwiched between e-mails from my favorite professor and Jane Magazine, "Bored in Mexico" sits in my inbox, waiting for me to reply.

The e-mail is from a guy. We got together and got ripped apart my freshman year, and sometimes I think he knew me too well. "Bored in Mexico" was a different kind of friend. He wasn't a best-guy-friend or a friend-with-benefits. Instead, we were 3-a.m.-friends, the most exciting, most dangerous friendship of them all.

Let me explain: There are Marketplace-friends for food and lecture-friends for class. There are section-friends to hang with when you're drunk and hall-friends to play with late at night. But rarely will you have (or become) a 3-a.m.-friend, clad in a strappy tank-top, wearing yesterday's eyeliner, and talking about God.

The 3-a.m.-friend is not elusive, flirty or even completely awake. She is cold and afraid and way too trusting of the boy on the couch keeping her warm. "Bored in Mexico" kept me warm a lot. He saw me in my Only Hearts camisoles; he let me hibernate under a pile of Polarfleece; sometimes read me to sleep with Rolling Stone articles. We would rent movies and watch the sun rise through his cracked window in ghetto Durham, and as he whispered complaints that I never slept with him, I would curl up in his arms and sleep.

"Bored in Mexico" was my first 3-a.m.-friend. He lasted six months. Then he fell in love--but not with me. Apparently, I was great at 3 a.m., but for the rest of the time, he needed someone else. There were accusations on both ends. He said I spread rumors to his friends; I said he lied to me. Really, we were both at fault. I tried to turn my 3-a.m.-boy into a real relationship, and he tried to have his cake and also keep some ice cream in the fridge for 3 a.m.

And now for the e-mail. I want to write back and tell him he hurt me and never apologized. I want to tell him to go to hell. But then there's a little voice, curled up in the back of my head in a strappy tank top and yesterday's eye-liner. I don't want to throw this guy away. We shared too much--bedtime stories from Desolation Angels, boxed wine, bad dreams. We'll never be in love, and that's ok. But there's something about 3 a.m., and everything it makes you share, that I don't want to shake loose.

Last semester, I met this guy's girlfriend. We curled up on a bench at 3 a.m. and spilled our guts. She was great; it was weird. I stopped hating her for having him; I stopped hating myself for losing him. It seems timing is really everything: in the pitch black of the early morning, I was ripped open and healed up.