Luck

He was cute. I was tipsy. It was noisy. We started making out. It became a thing. We'd meet at parties and make out. Then we'd meet between classes and make out. I was young. I was sure it was just a matter of time before he introduced me to his friends as his girlfriend. I started drawing hearts in my notebooks. I started writing his last name after my first name, secretly, in my diary. I started staring out into space and smiling. I thought I was in love.

And then one day I baked him cookies and went to deliver them to him where he worked. He would undoubtedly fall in love with me after eating my cookies. He would say You're the best baby, let's go out to dinner tonight.

He was on a break, they told me, Outside somewhere. I went outside looking for him. But there was a strange feeling in my gut.

It's funny how we get a feeling before something happens- like we know we're about to see something that's going to scar us for life. Maybe that feeling comes from our heart and it's meant to protect us. Why don't we ever listen to it? I don't know.

There he was, with a busty blonde he worked with, their hips glued together, kissing as though they were long lost lovers. Every cliche I'd ever read suddenly made sense. My heart broke. My brain stopped. The ground beneath my feet disappeared. All of that.

He saw me and smiled, as though he were just playing chess with this girl and I had nothing to worry about. He called me over and introduced us, as if I were his friend and nothing more. Her name was Heather.

It's equally funny how we react in the most painful and traumatizing moments of our lives. I shook her hand. I froze my face into a smile. I knew if I stopped smiling the tears would gush down. I smiled as hard as I have ever smiled in my life. I said See ya later.

I walked away with my box of cookies. I walked until I was alone. I ate all the cookies I had baked for him to fall in love with me. Was I hungry? No, not at all. I was trying to get rid of the bitter taste in my mouth. I was chewing as hard as I could, because I couldn't smile anymore and I wasn't ready to cry yet.

I went home, crawled under my covers, and stayed in bed for two days. I didn't cry- I never cried- but I lay there, paralyzed.

I decided to confront him. I found him and asked him why he did that to me. He seemed calm. He said You didn't think we were exclusive did you? The words went from his mouth and straight into whatever it is in us that registers the great pains of our lives- the ones that even ten years later hurt us still. I said nothing. I walked away as fast as I could because I thought that maybe I could leave that moment there, maybe it wouldn't stay with me, maybe if I walked really really fast that pain wouldn't be able to follow me.

But it was too late. It had already happened. I would never trust a man so purely and innocently again. I decided right then and there that I had no luck whatsoever when it came to love.

The pain never left me, although the bitterness subsided. He even became a friend after a while. Several years later, in a drunken night, he apologized for treating me the way he did. It surprised me. I didn't know he knew he had hurt me. But he knew. I said Nonsense, we were kids, someone had to teach me that fairy tales aren't real. I laughed. But he didn't laugh with me. He said, Please, don't dismiss it, I know I hurt you, let yourself get upset. At that, I started to cry. The tears I had never let go of were still there, waiting right behind my cheeks, and they suddenly burst out of my eyes in relief. Hours went by, I thanked him for apologizing and for letting me cry on his shoulder about the wound he had caused himself. He thanked me for not hating him.

And then we lost touch completely. As though that was all we were meant to live through together. Our paths had crossed for just those reasons, so that we could each learn certain lessons, and then we each went our own way.

I never forgot him. Even as I write about him now, my heart feels both the pain he once caused me and the relief he later gave me. He lives there in the depths of my heart, and with him also lives the girl I used to be- the one who believed in Happily Ever After. And I like to see her every once in a while. She softens the guarded cynical woman I have a tendency to turn into.

She reminds me that I am capable of loving.

Lucky me.