The Anatomy of a Broken Heart //Completed//

10. Caleb

At age five, I fell in love with a girl. Her walk was what first distracted my eyes away from the poor tiny ants whose home my chubby fingers were mercilessly destroying. Had it not been for the fire I saw crowning her head, I might have looked back down, ending the lives of countless fire ants. But one fire burned brighter than the other and so I got up, dusted off my pants and went to pull her hair. Thus ensued the beginning of a very painful twelve years.

Farrah hated me. She wanted nothing to do with me when we first met. I remember begging my parents to let me transfer schools so that I could be with her and see her daily instead of once a week on Sundays when we were forced to dress up and go to church and have lunch with the St. James and the Uncle Jamison and his family. Sunday became my favorite day. Sure church ended up actually mattering to me, after a few years of being subjected to numerous tedious lectures about sin and the nature of my evil, I ended up discovering that if I ignored my Sunday school teachers, and read about it on my own, I really did believe. But that wasn't why I loved Sundays so much.

Sundays were Farrah days for most of my young life. Then, by some miracle from God, I was sure, her parents transferred her to my school when we were thirteen. They claimed they liked this district better but I had my suspicions that they wanted her to spend more time with me. Unlike her, they adored me. Still, she continued to ignore my doting nature and blew me off to be with guys I knew I didn't stand a chance against. Disillusioned, I finally took the hint and moved on to other girls just as pretty, but they would never compare.

At fourteen I had my first serious girlfriend: Marguerite-a foreign exchange student from Paris. She was fun, but we couldn't really hold a proper conversation so we mostly just made out. Our love lasted a solid three months before she had to move back to Paris. With promises to write to each other, she left, and I never heard from her again.

During the summer before I turned fifteen there was Callie, ebony skinned and sweet as honey. And boring as hell. Still, we lasted five months before she dumped me. Apparently I wasn't 'interesting enough.' Go figure.

Finally, there was Marlow. I was still fifteen and I was at a point in my life where I hated everything I was supposed to like and loved everything I knew my family would hate. It was a weird transition into who I'd become for the rest of my high school career. Marlow had always been shy and quiet and kind. But strange. One day, she'd wear dresses with flowers on them, and the next she was sporting a mini skirt and fishnets. We lasted about a week, but it was an interesting one. We never kissed, and her tiny hand never fit right in mine. People would stare at us funny and I realized I couldn't take it. I couldn't bear to be the center of bad attention. When I told her so, she just gave me a sad look and told me it was okay. She didn't like being the center of any attention so we parted ways. Still, out of all the girls I'd dated, she was the one I wished I'd have stayed friends with.

There were other girls in between, but none of them important enough to mention. After Marlow and I ended, Farrah became a little nicer to me. It started off slow, with her sitting next to me at Sunday lunch. Then, we started texting and hanging out at school. By the end of my sophomore year, we were in love and everything was perfect. One day, she confessed that she'd seen me with Marlow-on a fishnet stockings day-and she thought it was all wrong.

"Together you two looked...incompatible," she said. "It didn't feel right. Then I wanted to know why you did it."

"There wasn't really a reason. I wanted someone different. I liked her, but like you said. It felt wrong."

She always claimed she saved me from myself. "I was afraid that if it hadn't been for me, you'd have ended up with someone like Santana," she shuddered.

Now I was the one who was afraid. Afraid I'd end up with girls like Marguerite and Callie, with the face of an angel like Farrah, but not her. Never her again. That wasn't an option.

I sat on my bed, shaking my head, my fingers typing out a message to Farrah. Groveling. Before I hit send, I took a deep breath.

Farrah, I miss you so much. Please call me, or text me, and tell me this is just a nightmare. I need you back.

No. She'd read it and think I was pathetic. She hated weakness. If I sent her this, she'd ignore it and I'd lose what little footing I still had.

I deleted the text and called Ansel to come over. We played video games until midnight while I talked about Marguerite and Callie and Marlow. He told me about Isla from summer camp and how she dumped him for his best friend, who happened to be me, but I had never even heard of this girl. "She said she wasn't going to ask you out, but was going to wait until you noticed her," he confessed.

"Guess she's still waiting."

"At least you aren't the only one that got dumped, bro." His tongue was sticking out in concentration as he proceeded to kick my ass.
"Oh, yeah. Your favorite girl got dropped like a bad habit," I said, throwing my controller onto the bed in defeat.

"She didn't look too good yesterday." He turned the game off and jumped onto the foot of my bed.

"What do you even care how she looked. Have you seen how you look? She did that to you."

"No, that douche did. She saved me, remember?"

"Maybe you should go to her rescue then. Be her knight in shining armor," I mocked. He stayed quiet, playing with the button on his jacket. "Why did he hit you Ansel?"

"Actually, I shoved him first."

I rolled my eyes and threw my pillow at him. Of course it was his own fault. Ansel was the embodiment of bad decisions. Although lately I'd seen him behaving a little more seriously, thinking twice about anything before acting. It was weird.

"He wanted to charge me double! Dick ended up taking a hundred bucks and leaving me with half the coke."

"I can't believe you do that crap. It's disgusting."

"Yeah, well, you should be happy to know, I've given that up. I don't want a repeat of that night."

Good. At least it did some good. Again Ansel went quiet, but I could tell he was trying to say something by the way he looked from me to the bed and back.

"What is it?"

"No, nothing. I should get going. I'll see you tomorrow." He left without another word, though I knew he had way more to say than what he did.

I love Ed Sheeran. Expect many of his songs to head the chapters haha