Prologue
The beginning of the end for everything I had ever wished Beck Montgomery and I could have been.
I’ll go back to the beginning though.
It started my second year of high school.
In tenth grade, about a month into school restarting after the summer break, I met this really cute guy.
Tall, dark, and handsome.
You know, the typical type that everyone goes for--but I digress.
I met him through a mutual friend when he decided to come up to our lunch table to say hi to her.
Our mutual friend introduced him to the entire group. "This is Beck Montgomery".
He smiled, politely said hi to us all, then he went on his way.
We didn’t have any classes together, so that was the only time I had seen him until one day he approached the mutual friend again, and asked to join our table.
From that day on, his seat was next to me.
A couple days after he joined our table was the first time he ever said a word to me.
The rest, as they say, was history.
A very long, very shitty, history.
At least for me.
We were fast friends. We started talking to each other in the hallways and at breaks any time one of us would see the other. We also began texting quite frequently, and befriended each other on our social medias. Everything was great, and it should have stayed like that.
But fast forward a few weeks, and it was my best friend’s birthday.
Ava, of course, threw herself a birthday party, and she decided to include our newest lunch buddy.
At the party, my best friend informed me that our new friend would be attending, and she also informed me that she had heard he had a crush on none other than--you guessed it--me.
Imagine my surprise when that rumor is seemingly proven true when he arrives and sticks by my side the entire night. Hardcore flirting, and even going as far as holding my hand during the movie Ava put on.
I was over the moon with happiness, because from the moment Gabby (our mutual friend) had introduced him to everyone, I was hooked.
So, what would be the next move when you find out someone supposedly likes you, and things they do, like flirting and hand holding, seems to back that up?
If you assumed that that would be the night we would become something more, you’d be wrong, just like I was.
Because no. Beck Montgomery didn’t ask me out that night.
Quite the opposite actually.
Instead, I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the weekend, and when I saw him at school the next Monday, he was making out with another girl that wasn’t me.
He didn’t talk to me the entire time they were together.
When they broke up, he messaged me and our friendship picked up again.
And it continued like that over the next few years.
You’d think after the second time of being led on like that, I’d realize the truth, which was that he obviously didn’t want me. But stupid me, I held onto the hope that one day--one day--he’d choose me.
I continued to hold onto that hope until things escalated when he heard me complaining about being bailed on by my prom date, and he offered to go with me in my previous date’s place.
I should have known that it was just out of pity that he was offering to go with me.
But I was stupid.
I excitedly accepted, and we had an incredible night with Ava and my other best friend Zach.
But like I said, prom night was the beginning of the end.
Even Zach and Ava were shocked the following Monday when we returned to school and found him with my arch-nemesis, a blonde named Bethany, hanging all over him like she owned him.
It was that day that I finally learned my lesson and I swore off Beck Montgomery for good.
I didn’t even respond to him when they broke up a week later and he tried his usual apology text on me.
I ignored him the entire two months of school that were left after prom, and didn’t speak to him again until I literally ran into him at graduation.
He apologized to me that day.
I could see he regretted it, everything he had ever done to push me away. But it was too late for me to care by that point.
I told him I was done, and I wished him a good life, then I got the hell out of dodge.
I had hoped that I would never see him again.
I started college in a new place, thankfully with Ava by my side so I wasn’t entirely alone.
I even met someone new my very first semester!
Josh was completely different from Beck.
He never led me on and actually asked me to be his girlfriend as soon as our first date was over.
Things with him were amazing, and effortless, and I was happier than I ever thought I could be.
We dated for two years when he proposed.
I said yes, obviously, and got married ten months after he proposed, and we lived happily ever after.
Until we didn’t.
I thought Josh could be my forever, and I guess he was for a while. But things never seem to work out for me when it comes to love...
