I Love Him, He Loves Her

I wouldn’t call it love. Maybe it was just a daydream, maybe just a crush. But, either way, I’ve been head over heels for Max Locklyn since seventh grade. We were both thirteen, and I was the same height as him.

In the years ’til now, he’s gotten taller and I haven’t grown since eighth grade. But that wasn’t the only thing that’s changed since then, not just because we had finally grown into our own skins.

I remember when it hit me. We had been paired for a project (cliche, I know), but we were both glad. I’d grown up with Max, ever since fourth grade, when he moved in on my street. It was always me and my parents in one house and Max and his family right next door.

But it was during that cursed project that it hit my preteen, hormonal self, that I didn’t see him as the little boy I used to play with.

That day, my heart started pounding and a fire started in my lungs, that almost brought me to my knees. Over the next few years, I’d lie and say that I don’t like him, say that I could see him yet again as my childhood friend. That I’d be able to breathe around him again.

It’s been almost five years since that seventh-grade project, but here I still was, not even able to convince myself of my lie, much less the others around me.

But the real kicker is that I’m still head over heels for a boy who was in love with my half-sister.

I wish that he could mean as little to me as I obviously did to him.