Long Before You Knew

Everyone thought she was in love with him.

They saw the way she wrote about him. The way his name kept appearing in the margins of her notebooks, in half finished sentences, in letters never sent. It was easy to assume the story was simple. Girl meets boy. Girl falls harder. Girl chases boy. Boy was always a boy. End of the story. But that was never the case for them.

Because he never asked to be chased.
And she never planned on falling.

What they had lived somewhere in between. In conversations that felt too personal to be harmless. In pauses that lingered longer than they should. There were things he never said and things she learned not to ask, yet somehow, they understood each other in ways no one else did. After all, they met at an age where feelings were still confusing and everything felt heavier than it should.

There were words she held back, afraid they would ruin whatever fragile thing existed between them. And there were words he chose not to say, believing silence was the kinder choice. Somewhere along the way, what remained unsaid began to matter more than what was shared.

And maybe that was the problem.

Because some stories don't end when people walk away.
They end when the words are never spoken.

These are the words I should've said.