❝ And even though I will never let you read this, I feel like you have to know. ❞
My entry for the #ToAllTheBoysContest.
Please vote and comment if you like it!
cover by AverySummers
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1 night - 1 party. 4 pastel colored walls teasing a frosty gray wooden floor. Hundreds of unrecognizable faces beneath a single white chandelier.
And of course, you. You with the burnt-caramel eyes. Maybe I had seen you before. You had one of those faces, the so easily recognized kind. Maybe I had seen you in the hallways, scurrying from class to class. But this was the first time I had really seen you. How long your eyelashes were. How your glasses served as windows to the calm oceans that were your eyes.
I tried not to look at you too much - God, what if you had caught me staring? - but I failed, Noah, and I am so glad I did. We locked eyes. You walked to me, each footfall a little less assured. I don't think anyone of the dozens of unrecognizable faces and voices knew the importance of your shaky feet. That meant the world to me. Maybe I had just imagined it but for me, your shaky feet told me that you felt it too. That there was even something to feel. I do that a lot, overthink every breath and blink and step. People say it's not a big deal, that I just need to push away my all-consuming thoughts.
But you didn't. Even though I was afraid to tell you the whole story for the same reason I'm too afraid to write it down. If I say it, it becomes real. Too real for me to handle. I don't think you really understood it, Noah, my all-consuming thoughts when we were sitting down on those flimsy party chairs.
I didn't care because we talked and we talked and we talked the entire night. You made me feel like I was the most important person in the room - like nothing really mattered apart from me, you, and our elbows touching on the punch table. I'm pretty sure that falling in love for the first time is supposed to be this fresh, new feeling; but to me, it felt like something old. Like I had fallen in love with you forever ago and my rapidly beating heart was just reminding me.
I don't think I want to be your girlfriend. I think being in love isn't the same thing as dating. When you're dating, you are someone's somebody, but when you're in real, true love there is nobody else in the world. And even though I will never let you read this, I feel like you have to know.
