Meant to Be

Our Life Together

I had hated him. I'm not afraid to admit it. I had hated him so much, so bloody much, that I had planned out different ways to kill him. I wouldn't have been able to actually act on my ideas, of course; I was far too much of a chicken to do something so awful. He knew it too, the smug bastard. He enjoyed making me suffer if it got a rise out of me. He would poke fun at me and then run away. I would usually try to chase after him, but I was not a thin child. I had always been quite chubby, borderline what would have been obese when compared to the other children on the playground.

"Oh, come on, Lisa Misa, Chubby Carly, you can do better than that!" he would always say to me as he ran around my pathetic form in circles.

"Why would I want to get near you, Jacob Martin?" I would always shoot back at him around varying amounts of panting and whale noises.

I knew I could, too, but I hadn't wanted to. I hadn't wanted to try my hardest and fail. I had been terrified of failure, of being left behind. By anyone, even by him. So I would let myself believe that I wasn't putting in all my effort and that was why he got away. Not that I was completely unable to do anything, including chase down one of the classroom bullies.

All throughout elementary school and even into middle school, he would incessantly harass me. He would alternate between calling me "Lisa Misa" and "Chubby Carly", and I didn't know which one I hated more. His favorite pasttime had been snatching my Sour Patch Kids, even though he knew they were my only solstice in the cruel world. He would always grab the blue ones, too, which were my favorites, and pop them into his mouth before I even knew what had happened. My retaliation would always be a kick to the shin or a slap to his face. I could not even begin to count how many times we had been sent to the principle's office, and then eventually just into the hallway, for "the disruption of class".

High school, however. High school had been rough. Throughout both elementary and middle school, it had been mainly just Jake who bothered me. No one else had really cared enough. But in high school, all the girls suddenly got 100 times meaner. People I hadn't even known would walk past and laugh or push me down or jeer at me. They would call me fat and worthless and pathetic, and sometimes they would even tell me to kill myself. They all acted like I was nothing more than the gunk on the bottom of their shoes, and it wasn't long before I started to believe the same thing. One day, I stopped trying to fight it and just accepted the inevitable.

To this day, I'm not sure what clued him in. Maybe it was the fact that I had only half-heartedly reacted when he snatched my blue Sour Patch Kids. Maybe it was the way I had barely flinched when he called me "Chubby Carly". I don't know, and I don't really care. I'm just incredibly thankful. He had stuck by me all day, trying to get a rise out of me, and then he had seen what happened. He had just been a few feet away when a group of girls confronted me and started throwing words at me. Each one hid struck me like a stab from a knife, despite all the effort I had put into building defenses around myself. I had even flinched from one particularly barbed comment, and that was when he swooped in. Like an angel from heaven, Jake had pushed his way between them and me and wrapped me up in his embrace as though his arms could protect me from the words. He then had said something particularly cutting to them and they left, but I do not know what it was that he said and he still refuses to tell me. In fact, I do not remember much else from that day. All I remember is that, from that day on, he stuck by my side. He protected me. He cared for me. He even applied to all the same colleges as I, so he could protect me there as well.

I don't remember when it was that I started developing feelings for him. Maybe it was when he gave me a bag of Sour Patch Kids, with only the blue ones inside, or when he started helping me to work out. Maybe it was when he came to my house to take care of me with ten pints of ice cream when I got god awful cramps and couldn't go to school, or when he stayed with me when I was puking my guts out. Maybe it was when he asked me to junior prom with bags of Sour Patch taped to a large banner, even though he had only done it so I wouldn't skip. At some point, however, I had suddenly found myself gazing at him whenever he wasn't looking. My heart would flutter when he looked at me, I would smile when he texted me, my face would flush whenever he made a joke at my expense. I felt like a fangirl for him.