Cursed for Love

I’ve always believed that the first kiss is supposed to be unforgettable.

What they don’t tell you is that unforgettable can mean humiliating.

It was a Friday night in late October. The kind of night where the air smells like burnt leaves and you can feel the season shifting, a little colder, a little darker, like the world knows something’s about to change. Jamie and I had been best friends since seventh grade. He was the boy who passed me notes in math class, who walked me home even when it rained, who told me secrets like I was the only person in the universe who could hold them.

I thought we were written in the stars.

We were lying side by side on the trampoline in his backyard, staring up at a sky too big for the small-town lives we led. We shared a fleece blanket with holes in the corners and a can of Cherry Coke between us. My heart was racing so loud I was sure he could hear it.

Jamie turned to me, eyes shadowed under the moonlight, and smiled. That smile, it had always been my undoing. Crooked. Playful. A little tired like he’d seen too much of the world and still chose to smile anyway.

“I like nights like this,” he said. “Where nothing has to be anything.”

I nodded, trying to stay calm, even though my stomach was already flipping. “Yeah. Feels like anything could happen.”

He laughed softly. “Exactly.”

Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he leaned in and kissed me.

My lips froze for half a second before following his. I melted into it, into him. It wasn’t some perfect Hollywood kiss. It was awkward, shaky, a little too fast. But it was ours. My first. The kiss I’d waited sixteen years for, with the only person I thought I’d ever want it from.

And for one breathless moment, I was weightless.

But when I opened my eyes, everything fell.

Jamie pulled away like he’d touched fire.

He looked startled, not by the kiss itself, but by the fact that it had actually happened. His mouth opened like he was going to say something sweet, or even stupid, but instead-

“Don’t make this a thing,” he said quickly. “It didn’t mean anything.”

I blinked. “What?”

He shifted away from me on the trampoline, sitting up like the kiss had burned through his skin. “I wasn’t trying to, like… lead you on or anything. I was just messing around. It was a joke.”

A joke.

The word cut sharper than the cold wind that suddenly turned my skin to ice.

“I…” I couldn’t find air. “I thought- ”

“Yeah, well, don’t.”

His tone snapped, harsher than I’d ever heard it before. It made something inside me shrivel up.

I laughed. I don’t know why. Maybe to keep from crying. Maybe because if I laughed, I could pretend it was funny, too. But it wasn’t.

I wanted the grass to swallow me whole.

Jamie looked at me, then at the sky, and then stood up, brushing imaginary dirt from his jeans. “We’re still cool, right?”

Still cool.

God.

I nodded. “Sure,” I lied, heart pounding in my ears, shame flooding every nerve ending in my body. “We’re cool.”

He smiled again, like none of it mattered, and walked back into his house. Left me there on the trampoline with a cracked soda can, a dying blanket, and the cold.

I laid back down, staring at the stars like they had betrayed me. My lips still tingled from the kiss, the one he said meant nothing, and I wondered if I had imagined the way he looked at me all those months. The way he held my gaze too long, the way his fingers brushed mine like he didn’t want to let go.

Had I created it all in my head?

Was I so desperate to be loved that I’d fallen for something that wasn’t real?

The thing is, people always say you never forget your first kiss because it’s special.

But what if your first kiss is the moment that teaches you to stop believing in love?

What if your first kiss is the first lie you ever swallow whole?

I didn’t cry until I got home. I didn’t cry when my mom asked how the night went, or when I saw his name pop up in my notifications an hour later with a stupid meme like nothing had happened. I didn’t cry when I brushed my teeth or washed my face or tried to fall asleep.

I cried when I opened my journal.

I wrote:

October 21: I kissed Jamie and he said it didn’t mean anything. I think something inside me broke tonight.

Then I underlined it. Three times. Hard.

That night, I fell asleep clutching a pillow to my chest, listening to a playlist I’d made titled Hopeful Hearts, and felt like the universe had just handed me a personal rejection letter.

From then on, I carried it, that humiliation. Quietly. Like a bruise beneath my skin. I still smiled in the hallways. Still laughed at his jokes. But something in me had shifted. And every time he slung an arm around another girl’s shoulder or whispered secrets I couldn’t hear, I felt smaller.

I didn’t tell anyone what happened that night. Not even my best friend Isla. I was too ashamed. Too afraid she’d say what I was already thinking:

Maybe I was the problem.

Maybe I was unlovable.

Maybe I was too much, too emotional, too dramatic, too hopeful, too desperate for something real.

That’s when the curse idea first started.

Not a literal curse. Not at first. Just a joke I told myself to make it hurt less.

You’re cursed, Elara. No one will ever love you back.

It became my quiet mantra, the explanation I clung to whenever I was overlooked, ignored, or left behind. It was easier to believe in curses than to believe I simply wasn’t enough.

And that’s how it began.

Not with fireworks.

Not with soulmates.

But with one kiss.

One lie.

And a girl who started to believe she’d never be loved the way she loved others.