A Thousand Tiny Wishes // Ed Sheeran

Chapter Three - Secret's Out

Ed's POV:

Sometimes my life is like a blank page, with a cursor blinking over and over, nagging at me to plan something out. I can't seem to figure out the right way to do things. For the past few months I haven't been doing too well in school and the closer I seem to get toward graduation, the more I seem to take three steps back. It just doesn't make sense for me to sit there day after day and learn shit I'll never use, when I could be out working toward something that matters.

The day I met Madison, she helped me up when I tripped, and though it wasn't my proudest moment, I would go back and do it again and again. She had the greenest eyes I'd ever seen with a hint of honey surrounding her pupils, and wavy brown hair that fell neatly between her shoulders and elbows. I knew right away she was out of my league, but even so, I jumped at the chance to try and win her over almost a week after that.

She gave me a sense of calm and God I wished I could see her smile every single day. But I'm not good enough for her and even though we spend a lot of time together, I know she couldn't like me like that. Either way, I take the time out of my day to see her, usually ending up rubbing off some of my bad influence on her.

About a month after we first met, I couldn't hold in my feelings for her anymore, so during school one day, just before the last class of the day, I asked her to come with me to the park we usually went to. She didn't want to, and I felt bad for talking her into it, but I had to somehow show her that I was falling for her. I kissed her on her doorstep when I dropped her off at home, and I was the happiest I'd ever been.

Two months later, things were falling apart. It was my own fault because I continuously put up a wall between us, too afraid to let her see the truth. I fucked up by shouting at her, even in the moment I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't stop.

I couldn't understand why it was so hard for me to let her in and I hated that about myself. Maybe I was trying to protect her from worrying about me, or maybe I was just being selfish.

I never wanted her to know how bad I had it in school, mainly because I was embarrassed by it. I knew she'd seen once the day after we met when I was slammed into a locker, but it was the first and only time she witnessed anything like it. I didn't want her to see me as a target even though I was one because of the things I couldn't change about myself. I didn't choose to have red hair or a birthmark by my eye, I didn't choose to have to wear glasses to see the board in class, or even a few feet away. I didn't choose to have freckles and a slight stutter.

She didn't know that I had it almost as bad at home as I did at school.

When we started seeing each other more we would sometimes spend afternoons at her house, and it was so refreshing and comforting to see what it looked like to not just be loved, but liked. Her mother was excited to have me over, greeting me in the kitchen with a warm hug and I noticed then that she had the same eyes and smile as her daughter. I stayed for dinner that night, and since her dad wasn't there it was just the three of us. I smiled more than I had in months just being at her table, seeing Madison blush and hide her face in her hands when her mom told us stories about her as a little girl.

It's not that I'm not loved. I know that my parents love me, especially my mother, but my dad has a strange way of showing it. He can be supportive when he's sober, but most of the time he's not and he'd rather shout at me for something I'd done wrong or tell me I won't amount to anything, though I'm sure he's just being brutally honest. He's obsessed with me getting an education even though he didn't get one himself, and maybe that's why he's strict with me, but I know first-hand that forcing your kid to do something they don't want to do doesn't work; it only makes us rebel against them and their demands.