Confessions

Confessions

I had no experience before you. If I seemed a little shy, this was the reason. Believe me – I wanted to touch you and kiss you just as much as you did me, I just held myself back.

We shouldn’t have rushed into things. You told me I wouldn’t be a rebound, but that’s what I ended up being, didn’t I?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really grateful you told me you missed her when you did, and stopped us getting too involved. But still, I wish you hadn’t broken up with her in the first place. Then my secret crush would have stayed a secret crush, and feelings wouldn’t have developed and I wouldn’t have gotten ahead of myself.

After 13 months of knowing you, even though you’ve been with her, I think I have fallen in love with you.

I still think we’d be perfect for each other.

Now that you’ve broken up with her, it’s driving me crazy. Do you still have feelings for me? Are you just not saying anything because you don’t think I still feel the same? Or are you still in love with her? Do you just think of me as a friend? Do you want more?

So many questions, but I’m afraid. If I ask them, and you don’t want things to happen between us, the friendship that’s taken nearly a year to build up again – the friendship that has only very recently built up to what it once was, right at the very beginning – will crumble. And I can’t lose you again.

If only I could read your mind.

I know you probably don’t feel the same as me. I know you’ve only been single four months now. And I know that you’re not looking for someone else.

But.

It’s just that little bit of hope. That ‘what if?’ It’s keeping the flame burning. I know I’m reading way too much into everything, but I’m a reader. A writer. I believe in happy endings.

The little, pointless facts you remember about me. Things most people would forget in an instant, like my favourite drink, and how I’m scared of frogs and pigeons, and how much I loved that view when we drove past it on the bus. So you took me back there one night, up to the hill to look over the town because of my one comment just to myself about the lights, ‘wow that’s pretty’, a mumbled comment that you over-heard.

It’s that way you look at me, green eyes shining, not breaking the gaze. The knowing smile you give me when other people are talking, telling me you know exactly what I’m thinking and that you agree completely. It’s the stories that you tell to a whole room, but when you talk you only look at me.

I’ll never forget that time we both saw the same shooting star when we weren’t even looking purposefully at the sky. The time we stayed awake the WHOLE night talking, then got dragged out shopping the next day and could barely keep our eyes open. Our little secret. The tiny little stroke of my hand when you gave me your key and told me to get all the girls safely inside because we thought something bad was about to happen.

All these tiny little memories that will stay with me forever. I hope you remember.

You got back together with her, and I thought I was okay. It had only really been two weeks, and we’d only know each other a month at best. Okay, living in the same flat was a lot more intense than just dating someone for two weeks, but still. I didn’t really know you. If I thought I was in love with you, I was just being stupid.

But over the next year, we got to know each other a lot better. And even though you were with her, I still looked for the signs. Reading too much into everything. And every new thing I found out about you made me like you even more.

You don’t understand how much it hurt to see you both holding hands when she came down to visit. How she was a genuinely lovely girl, and I couldn’t find it in myself to hate her.

And every song where the lyrics were just a bit too relatable to my situation made me cry.

Little things constantly took me back to fresher’s week. Tying my converse reminded me how at the start of the year I never used to do them up, but you’d told me off and made me change my ways. Folding crisp packets into triangles reminded me of your face after you’d just absent mindedly folded yours up, moments after I’d done mine, and I held mine up to show you, the first time we both realised. Seeing you sat at a desk reminded me of the feeling of you wrapping your arm around me when I used to stand behind you and read over your shoulder, hands messing up your hair.

I’m never going to forget.

And that night you came home from tennis initiations way too drunk, blood dripping off your head, I cried.

I was so worried. And then you ran off and my stomach dropped.

When you’re not in the house, it feels empty, even though four others live with us.

I can’t help it; when you walk through the door I’m suddenly bursting with excitement and happiness.

If this isn’t love, then I don’t know what is.

And if it is, then I hate that I feel this way. Because it’s not reciprocated. And however hard I try, I can’t change the way I feel.

Trust me, I’ve been trying for a year now.

So if you ever read this, please tell me.

Tell me what you think to it all.

Tell me if you can remember.

Tell me if I stand a chance.