Of Pride and Frearful Lips and Fingertips

How do you let go? How do you allow yourself to open up enough to allow help? to allow weakness? to allow acceptance? to let someone in?
How do you look past rejection and confusion, pride and fear of depedance? When do you grow past your insecurity and stand tall and naked and strong?
I was talking with an old friend. I really had a crush on him when I was younger. He was the first boy I'd been allowed to go on a date with, it was just after my 16th birthday. We went on three dates. He tried to kiss me on the lips on the third. I turned a cheek, scared to death that I wouldn't be good at kissing. Scared to death that I wouldn't be able to be what he was expecting.
I wasn't ready for french kisses and boys with deep voices and he surely was. I remember feeling confused during a night walk through his neighborhood (preceeding the fateful turn of the cheek) as he pointed out a star and "gave" it to me only to mention that he'd "given" another star to another girl he'd dated. It made me worry. He obviously had been on a date before and knew what to do whereas I was clueless.
I asked him to my homecoming the following week. He said he was busy and gave some bologna answer. I was crushed. It was the kiss I just knew it!
We still keep in touch. Through the years we rekindled our friendship here and there. A friendly date to a prom, a comforting late night chat online during finals week, a wave from across the church during a holiday mass, a cup of coffee over Christmas breaks, letters scattered across semesters and years until graduations and movements across the country took hold. Each time we interact I have this strange moment of "why do we still talk?" It's childish and yet entirely in line with my pride. I wonder why we still talk because a) we were never really close friends b) he was the first boy to make me feel total insecurity, to make me feel like the crap that is the stuff of high school emotions.
And then the e-mail appeared this week, he leaves in a little over a month to serve a yearlong tour in Iraq. He'd love me to write and send the occassional care package. He knows I'm a sucker for letters and feeling like someone needs my words. Our relationship will always befuddle me. Over the years our short interactions have barely scratched the surface though I always felt a spark between us when we were still in college. Today such feelings have dissipated into one or two obtuse e-mails a year that are worthy of mad-libs fill-in-the-blanks-mindlessly-answers.
But I can't help wondering about the past because I never could tell after we became friends again if he was hesitating to go in for a kiss because he worried that I would turn a cheek or if I was worried I was the only one wanting for a kiss and therefore turned a cheek just to be safe.
I suppose I'll never know.