I need some advice. When I was very young — I’m talking toddler here — I met a girl my age, and we became fast friends. We grew up together, spent countless weekends with one another, had all of our big adolescent life experiences together. Her parents were divorced, and she spent the weekdays during the school year with her mother in another town. During the summer and on the weekends, she lived next door to me with her father. If we didn’t see each other, we’d call each other, and write letters.

When we were in our teens, we grew apart a little, but we were still great friends. Then, things started to get sort of odd between us. There would be “accidental” touches that were more than friendly, on both of our parts. (No pun intended.)

One night during the summer, we were hanging around her house, and to make a long story short, we ended up getting extremely high on marijuana. Things got very sexual between us, but the next morning, neither of us mentioned it. We both claimed to have no recollection of what we’d done after we’d smoked the pot.

We’d had conversations about sexuality before, and I know at that point in her life, she was against homosexuality and thought of herself as straight, even though she’d had sexual contact with other female friends.

Things between us got a little more strained, and then bounced back, and we were back to “normal.” Until one night some time later when, stone-cold sober, we ended up doing the proverbial deed. There wasn’t much talk of it that morning, and after that day, neither of us mentioned it again.

Needless to say, things got even more weird between us. We’d go days and weeks without talking to one another. There were a few times we got together to visit after that summer, and we’d have a great time together, but then it’d be back to not speaking again.

I haven’t seen her, or heard from her, in well over two years. But I still think about her often, because the best memories of my childhood involved her. I don’t want a sexual relationship with her at all. I chalk the whole thing up to teenage experimentation. I just miss the great times we used to have together before that.

Anyway, my question is this: I want to write her a letter (because I don’t have her current phone number, and because it seems like rejection is less likely to be painful — she can’t hang up on me, she just wouldn’t reply) to tell her I miss her, but I’m not sure what to say. I don’t think I should mention the “encounters” we had…but I’m deathly afraid that I’ll slip up and make it seem like I’m hinting at something.

I’m going to be moving soon, when I “reach the age of majority” — out of my parents’ house, possibly out of state — and it seems like it’s now or never. It’s all very uncomfortable, and I realize that she’s probably changed as much as I have in these last few years, but I’d love to talk to her again. What should I do? Has it been too long for it to be anything but weird? Should I just let sleeping dogs lie?

Thanks for any advice you can offer,
Nostalgic Nina

Go ahead and write the letter — and try not to worry too much about “slipping up” or “hinting.” If she chooses to get all hectic about a hook-up that happened years ago, there’s nothing you can do about that; you can’t control what she reads into it.

Pursuant to that, you might consider just bringing it up right off the bat and acknowledging the elephant in the room. Again, if she wants to make a federal case out of it, you can’t really stop her, but I don’t see anything wrong with saying straight out, “Look, I know we had This Thing That Happened and maybe you feel weird about it, but that’s in the past and this letter isn’t about that — I just miss you as a friend.” If you make too heroic an effort not to mention your flinglet, that’ll come through no matter what you write.

Just write what you feel; tell her what you told me. If she doesn’t respond, or freaks out, well, that would suck — but at least you’ll know. A woman who gets all bent out of shape about a little teenage pink action probably isn’t someone you want in your life long-term, but you genuinely miss hanging out with her, so you should say so.

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