Not So Hopeless Romance - Temporarily On Hold

Prologue-How It All Began

And so it begins...

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    Think about your best friend. It could be someone you helped out and stuck with, someone you met in school, or it could be someone you grew up with. Or maybe even all three. It's the person you can't wait to see, to talk with. It's that someone who understands who you are, they laugh at your jokes and deal with you when you're at your worst. Someone who you want to be there for and vice versa. The person that knows everything about you and who tells you everything.

    Now, imagine you had a secret. A secret that you couldn't bring yourself to tell your best friend. Something that could quite possibly ruin your friendship altogether. Would you tell him? Would you keep silent? Either way, you know nothing will ever be the same again. Because once you admit it to yourself, it's hard to ignore.

 
***
 

    I had stayed silent for a long time. And yes, I regret it. It hurt, seeing him with other girls. Other girls who weren't me. In the end, though, it was my fault; not his. I was the one that caused my own pain. I didn't speak up, I held my feelings back. I denied it at first. I hurt myself. I was the one to blame, not him.

    But then something happened. One of my closest friends helped me. She helped me see that maybe I should have told him earlier. If I did, if I hadn't of denied it for so long, maybe he wouldn't have been with anyone else. She gave me a shove in the right direction. The only thing I had to do was steady myself, and walk the rest of the way.

    Mine and Daniel's story starts all the way back in third grade. . .

 
    It was mother's day. Everyone in the class got to invite their mother - or mother-figure, depending on the home situation - to school. They would do activities with their kids then leave at around noon.

    Everyone's mother came. This was before my parents split, so my mom was there too. The only student's mother who wasn't there was Daniel Anderson's.

    When they had all left, our class had gone outside. I had been walking around with one of my friends at the time. We aren't friends anymore. She stopped being my friend when I became friends with Daniel. Her name was Sam. We had been talking about what we had given our mom for mother's day.

    I had given mine a picture frame that said 'I love you Mom' written unevenly across the bottom in paint. She had made her mom a batch of cookies; with the help of her father, of course.

    She had just started telling me her mother's reaction when I had heard a few of the students in our class laughing. It wasn't the that-was-a-very-funny-joke-you-told-there laugh, it was a you're-being-made-fun-of-and-we're-only-laughing-because-someone-else-is laugh.

    Even in grade three, I had already known the difference. My slightly older brother and his friends used the latter all the time. I don't even know if you could even call some of them friends. He only hung out with certain ones when he was bored. He had to leave the few that did stick when he and my mom moved.

    I had turned toward where the laughter had come from, unease had immediately settled in the bottom of my stomach. We had just turned a corner and as soon as I saw what was going on, my small fists had started to twitch and I had started to see red.