Just My Luck

Hostage

Content Warning: Suicidal ideation. Eating Disorder.

Junior year started promisingly, rising to the top of my favorite school years.

I was single, legitimately unattached to a man, for the first time in years. My days were spent with close friends who loved me, and who I loved. My classes were treating me well, and I enjoyed my independent projects in art class.

Occasionally, I'd see Spencer walking down the hall, holding hands with Morgan. When I noticed they took the same path every day, I made sure to be in their way consistently.

My friends and I sat along the wall that they walked near before lunch. So my friends and I danced to the music that played every day, carefree and happy. I never looked him in the eye, and avoided looking at her at all.

Every day, we danced. We laughed. We lived.

I began to grow my hair out again, and I dyed it. All traces of who I was with him disappeared.

I even tried to write, to document my memories somewhere. I had texted Stephanie about it before I went to bed one night.

The next morning, I woke up to yelling from the other room. I pressed my ear to the wall, and heard Theresa and my dad fighting.

"She's probably out there by the pool drawing nude picture's of Stirling in her sketchbook and you don't even care! She's probably talking to him again!"

My mind raced, wondering how I was going to get out of that one. I really wasn't doing any of that, but that wouldn't stop me from getting grounded on suspicion. I ran to the kitchen and saw that they had read my texts with Stephanie about my diary and some random memory with Spencer. I grabbed my phone and retreated to my room, conjuring up the perfect message.

I said that there were no nudes in my sketchbook after Theresa had ripped them out, and that I was only considering writing about my own life, not him. Stephanie had just been confused on something.

They went quiet, and I went back to sleep.

Come November, Spencer reached out to me. After nine months of avoidance, the longest we had ever gone apart, he sent me a message. Just an apology, and an announcement that he had been single for a couple weeks at that point.

Obviously. Or he wouldn't have texted me.

He explained that they hadn't done good for a while. She treated him poorly, hitting him and talking to other guys without his permission. I wanted to say that he deserved it, and that I felt indifferent. I had started to sleep without thinking of him, he had fled my dreams, and I didn't need him anymore.

Instead, I showed him sympathy and allowed him back in.

He seemed to have changed; he had a different air about him. He no longer hid when he met up with me, he didn't care who saw. He stole kisses and hugs when he could. He told his friends, who heavily disapproved, that we were speaking again.

He lost his friends because of me. And he still didn't leave.

That was the final piece of the puzzle for me. I had been wary, cautious, walking on eggshells. He had betrayed me time and time again. Over and over, he would kiss others while texting me that I was the one. But when he left his friends behind because they didn't agree with him being with me- my mind changed.

For the first time, he had sacrificed in the same way that I had been doing for years.

In the week before Christmas break, I saw Morgan playfully shove Spencer as he walked out the school doors. Angered, I texted him that he had betrayed me again.