By fifteen, James had become more than just a boy she was dating.
He had become the person she looked forward to hearing from.
The phone she had bought secretly had been taken away, but that didn't stop her from thinking about him. If anything, losing the phone made her realize how deeply she had become attached to the sound of his voice.
She missed his calls.
She missed his jokes.
She missed the way he could make an ordinary day feel different.
And most of all, she missed the feeling of being wanted.
At home, she was learning to make herself smaller.
With James, she felt like she could breathe.
That difference made her hold onto him tightly.
James was still young himself, but to her, he seemed to understand things she didn't. She was inexperienced and curious, and he introduced her to a world of relationships, attraction, and things she had never known before.
Sometimes she felt shy.
Sometimes she didn't understand.
Sometimes she simply trusted whatever he told her.
She thought that was what love meant—trusting the person you were with.
She didn't know that love also required boundaries, patience, and respect.
She was learning everything for the first time.
And James was becoming her teacher.
Their relationship had its sweet moments.
He could call again and again just to hear her voice.
Sometimes they would talk about school.
Sometimes about their friends.
Sometimes about nothing important at all.
They could spend so much time talking that she would eventually realize how late it had become.
"Go and sleep," he would tell her.
"You too."
"I'll call you tomorrow."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
She would smile after hanging up.
Those little conversations became precious to her.
They gave her something to look forward to.
When home became difficult, she thought about James.
When she felt unwanted, she remembered that someone was waiting to talk to her.
When she felt lonely, she imagined hearing his voice again.
Without realizing it, she was beginning to depend on him emotionally.
But James was not perfect.
Neither of them was.
There were moments when he became jealous.
Moments when he asked too many questions about the people she talked to.
Moments when she wondered why he cared so much about who was around her.
Still, she interpreted his attention as love.
She was young.
She didn't yet understand the difference between someone caring for you and someone trying to control you.
And because she had spent so much of her life feeling unwanted, attention felt valuable.
She didn't want to lose it.
So she adjusted.
She explained herself.
She reassured him.
She tried to keep him happy.
She didn't realize that she was beginning to make herself responsible for someone else's feelings.
At school, James was familiar.
He knew her before the relationship.
He knew some of her friends.
He knew the girl she was before everything at home became complicated.
That familiarity comforted her.
With him, she didn't have to explain every part of herself.
At least, she thought she didn't.
She could laugh.
She could tease him.
She could be silly.
For those moments, she forgot about the house.
She forgot about the fear.
She forgot about the things she couldn't tell anyone.
She was simply a teenage girl in love.
And perhaps that was why she held onto the relationship so tightly.
James wasn't just her boyfriend.
He had become an escape.
But there was a part of her that still felt empty.
She had learned very young that people could leave.
Her father had rejected her.
Her childhood had been marked by experiences she couldn't explain.
Grandma had been her safe place, but even that safety was no longer permanent.
Her relationship with her mother had become painful.
Her stepfather had betrayed the trust she once placed in him.
So when James came into her life and gave her attention, she didn't simply see a boyfriend.
She saw someone choosing her.
And being chosen was something she had always wanted.
She didn't know how dangerous it could be to make one person responsible for filling every empty space inside you.
She started imagining a future.
Nothing too serious.
Just small dreams.
Maybe they would stay together.
Maybe they would grow up together.
Maybe one day she would look back and laugh about how young they had been.
She didn't know what the future held.
She only knew that she wanted James to remain in it.
She wanted the calls.
The laughter.
The attention.
The feeling of being someone's favorite person.
She didn't know that relationships could begin with seventeen calls a day and eventually become days of silence.
She didn't know that the same person who made her feel chosen could one day make her feel completely forgotten.
That lesson was still ahead.
For now, she loved him.
And she loved him with the intensity of someone who had spent years searching for somewhere to belong.
One evening, she sat alone and thought about everything that had happened since childhood.
So much had changed.
She wasn't the little girl who lived with Grandma anymore.
She wasn't the child who waited for her mother's return with excitement.
She wasn't the girl who believed her stepfather would always protect her.
She was becoming someone else.
Someone who wanted independence.
Someone who wanted love.
Someone who wanted to be chosen.
James had arrived at exactly the right moment.
Or perhaps the wrong one.
Because when you meet someone while you're hurting, it can become difficult to tell whether you love them for who they are or because they make the pain temporarily disappear.
She didn't know the difference.
She only knew that when James called, she smiled.
And for a girl who had forgotten what it felt like to smile freely, that was enough.
She closed her eyes and imagined his voice.
For a few minutes, everything felt okay.
She didn't know how long that feeling would last.
She didn't know that James would eventually break her heart.
She didn't know that she would spend far more than money on him.
She didn't know that she would someday feel foolish for how much she had sacrificed.
She didn't know that another man—Benji—would later enter her life and show her a completely different kind of love.
She knew none of that yet.
She was fifteen.
She was simply a girl trying to find happiness in the middle of a life that had given her very little reason to trust happiness.
And for now, James was the person holding that happiness in his hands.
She didn't know she was giving him the power to break her.
But she was.
And the story of that heartbreak had only just begun.