You, anyway

I don't have the beginning right. It was someplace in November. Love has always been this thing that made me see myself in places I avoided. And honestly speaking, the last time left me flinching at my reflection.

So when you showed off like a kid, I laughed in your face and with my friends. Cruel, perhaps. But I told Lily: if it becomes anything more than a joke, it becomes a hurt. I hated the way you said my name. Hated the way you told your friends you'd make me fold. In everything I did, I tried to hate you. But I never laughed with anyone more.

I'd never end up with you. But it's hard for Regina to like anyone. Still, I take her voice like reminders, pebbles in my shoe. I walk with them instead of taking them out. Because she sees what I'm trying not to. She says the things I push past in order to let myself to like you.

I brace myself for the day you move on. Tell me, if it's not me, it'll be someone else, right? Someone else round the block. You are just a boy. Just a boy. But boys like you carry wreckage like perfume. And I breathe deep.

And then there's the way you look at me, like every scrap was some kind of victory. Your grin, your celebrations. All your insecurities, your little tear- stained face. And how you never hide it from me.

It wasn't love. Maybe it wasn't even close. But I felt it anyway. In my stomach. In my throat. In the way I ruined every chance of closeness before you could. You didn't need to break me. I did it first.

I know I was never yours. But for a while, you were mine. In the smallest, stupidest ways. The way you looked at me when I made a dark joke.

It was nothing.

It was everything.

You were just a boy. Just a boy.

But I loved you-

you, anyway.