Love Never Worked Out for Me

Before her, I didn't really know what love was.

Actually, I barely knew how to talk to girls.

My house was strict. I didn't go out much, so most of my world existed within the four walls of my home and whatever I saw at school. Then, one day, there was a girl who seemed to have absolutely no idea what the word shy meant.

Her name was Rose.

She was my classmate, and strangely enough, she was also my neighbour. Her house was just across the road from mine. But I didn't know what that would mean yet. At the time, she was simply the loudest, most extroverted girl I had ever met.

On my very first day as her classmate, she ragged me.

And I cried.

That probably isn't the most impressive way to introduce the first girl who would eventually become my first crush, but that's how it happened.

While she was busy being the fearless, outgoing girl she had always been, I was the quiet kid who probably looked like he had been dropped into the wrong classroom.

Our school had a strange seating arrangement. Either one boy sat between two girls, or two boys sat around one girl. Somehow, for reasons I still don't understand, I ended up sitting between two girls.

And Rose was one of them.

Every year, the seating arrangement changed. Everyone moved around. New people sat together. Friends were separated, new friendships were made.

But somehow, for seven years, I kept ending up beside Rose.

Seven years.

At some point, it stopped feeling like a seating arrangement and started feeling like the universe had simply given up trying to separate us.

And somewhere along those seven years, the girl who made me cry on the first day became one of my closest friends.

We shared tiffins.

We gossiped.

We laughed about stupid things.

We talked about classmates and teachers and whatever else seemed important to us at that age.

She became familiar in the way only someone you've grown up beside can become.

I was still, in my own words, a pretty useless fellow.

Rose, meanwhile, was becoming the exact opposite.

As we grew older, our minds changed. She became more popular, more confident, and eventually started dating. She was probably the most famous girl in our class.

And somehow, I became her unofficial PA.

Boys would actually try to befriend me just so I could talk to her.

Some would bribe me with things.

I found it funny.

I had no romantic interest in her then. None.

I was simply her friend—the quiet guy who happened to sit beside her for years and had somehow become useful because he could get her attention.

I even had a diary.

Not a diary where I wrote about my feelings for her.

No.

I had a record of every gift she received from every boy.

Who gave her what.

When she received it.

Probably information that nobody had asked me to document, but I took my position as her PA very seriously.

Looking back, it's hilarious.

I was keeping records of the boys who liked her without realizing that one day, I would become one of them.

Then, after Class 8, Rose left our school.

And that was when I learned something I hadn't expected to learn.

I missed her.

Not in the way I would later miss her.

Not romantically.

Just... her presence.

For years, she had been there. Beside me. Across from me. In my classroom. In my everyday life.

And then suddenly, she wasn't.

The seat was no longer hers.

The conversations weren't there.

The tiffins weren't there.

The person who had been part of my ordinary life for years had become someone I had to consciously look for.

And perhaps that's where my feelings really began.

Not with a confession.

Not with a romantic moment.

Not with some movie-like realization.

It began with absence.

She was still my neighbour, though.

So I could still see her sometimes.

And eventually, seeing her wasn't enough.

I started waiting in her lane just to see her coming back from tuition.

Sometimes that's what liking someone looks like when you're young.

You don't know what to do with the feeling, so you simply find excuses to be somewhere they might appear.

I waited.

And waited.

And somehow, those small moments became important to me.

Two years passed.

Two years of carrying feelings I hadn't really known how to explain.

Then eventually, I did what I thought I had to do.

I wrote her a letter.

I proposed.

She didn't say yes.

She didn't say no either.

She simply told me to wait for her answer.

So I waited.

For a very, very long time.

Two years.

I don't know what kind of person waits two years for an answer.

Apparently, I was that person.

When the answer finally came, it wasn't the one I had been hoping for.

She apologized.

She told me I was a good person.

She told me she was bad for me.

And then she started dating someone else.

There was no dramatic ending.

No screaming.

No hatred.

Just a quiet realization that sometimes you can wait as patiently as you want and still not get the answer you're hoping for.

So I moved on.

Or at least, I tried to.

But Rose didn't completely disappear from my life.

Whenever things went wrong between her and her boyfriend, whenever there was a fight or some problem, she would text me.

And I would reply.

I never really learned how to ignore her.

She would tell me her sad stories, and I would listen.

Maybe that was the strange thing about us.

Even after everything, we could still somehow find our way back to being friends.

Until one day, she heard that I was in a relationship.

She got angry.

She scolded me.

And then she stopped talking to me.

For years.

I never really understood why it affected her that much.

Maybe she had her reasons.

Maybe I had mine.

Maybe there were things neither of us ever said.

Eventually, though, time did what time usually does.

The anger faded.

The silence became less heavy.

And now, Rose and I talk again.

Casually.

Nothing like before.

Nothing like the friendship we had when we were children.

She's no longer the girl sitting beside me every day.

I'm no longer her PA.

And I'm certainly no longer the boy waiting in her lane for a glimpse of her.

But she remains somewhere in the story.

Because before I knew what heartbreak was, before I knew what it meant to love someone who couldn't love me back, before I knew how complicated feelings could become....there was Rose.

She was my first crush.

But before she became that, she was simply my friend.

The girl who made me cry on the first day.

The girl who sat beside me for seven years.

The girl whose tiffin I shared.

The girl whose gifts I recorded like an unpaid accountant.

The girl I waited two years for.

And perhaps most importantly—

the girl who unknowingly taught me my first lesson about love:

Sometimes someone can be a huge part of your story without ever becoming a part of your future.