The last time

30: Him

It was all a waste of my time. I couldn't believe I'd spent months going after a girl that treated me that way. I don't want to think about any of it. I don't want to, but I still do. Natalie's last night of summer break 2018. I called her and she told me to come over. Her last night in the town we grew up in and she wanted to spend it with me. She was waiting on her front porch for me to get there. She was beautiful. Skittish and strangely nervous, Natalie took me inside and up to her room. And no, it's not what you think. Nat and I went to her room, sat on her bed, and watched that movie, P. S. I Love You. We sat on her bed with a foot of space between us. I wanted her to lean into me. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to kiss her. I couldn't stop thinking about kissing her. I did not kiss her. We watched the movie. She cried. She was beautiful. That was the night I learned that Natalie's foot shaking almost always means she's about to cry, this was something that I'd be glad I learned early as our relationship progressed. Her little tell that I could always watch out for. She pulled out a Polaroid camera she'd had for as long as I could remember and took my picture. Eventually I got up the courage to grab the camera off her desk and take her picture too. She was beautiful. We talked until it was morning and eventually I left. That's it. She walked me down to the porch, hugged me, and watched me go. I put the Polaroids of her on my dashboard and drove home. Eventually those pictures sat on my desk and were found by Aiden one night when he came over to my apartment more than a couple months later. That was the first time that I think he realized something was going on with us, even though at that point, nothing really was. Aiden and I weren't friends anymore by then and he was really only in my apartment because John was in town and we were both still friends with him, so we put our issues aside to see him. Things had changed since that first kiss between Nat and I. I didn't want Aiden to know. She was important to me at that point and I wanted her to be mine, separate from Aiden. I didn't like him knowing about my special pictures from that last night of summer.
I don't know why I'm talking about this. It doesn't matter. She hurt me. Nat was never going to be the girl I kissed freshman year of college or the girl I took those pictures of last summer again. She was just a girl who hurt me. A girl who kissed someone else. It's time to move on. I leave for California to see my family in a few days. I'm done writing these stupid stories about a girl who probably never loved me. At this point I don't even know if I ever really loved her. I don't know if I ever even really knew her.