For a while, she believed James was still hers. Distance had changed the relationship, but she held onto the memories of the boy who once called her seventeen times a day, the boy who made her feel wanted when home felt like a place she couldn't fully understand. She didn't know that somewhere along the way, something had begun to change.
Then the rumors started.
At first, she ignored them.
Someone mentioned that James was dating Lawrencia, one of their former JHS classmates. She laughed it off. Rumors had a way of spreading quickly, especially among people who knew each other.
"Don't believe everything you hear," she told herself.
But then she saw something that made it harder to dismiss.
A birthday party.
James had held a party for Lawrencia.
She saw the pictures and the celebrations, and something inside her went quiet.
She stared at the screen for a long time.
It wasn't simply the party that hurt.
It was what the party represented.
She thought about herself.
James had never done something like that for her.
She remembered the conversations they had had about gifts and celebrations. He had told her that he wasn't interested in gifts and things like that for someone.
Yet there he was, celebrating another girl.
The contradiction hurt more than she expected.
She didn't immediately confront him angrily.
Instead, she asked.
"James, what's going on?"
He denied it.
"No. I'm not dating her."
She wanted to believe him.
She wanted to trust the boy she had spent so much time talking to.
So she accepted his answer.
But something had already changed inside her.
The doubt remained.
And rather than fight for an explanation, she stepped back.
She stopped chasing.
She stopped asking questions.
She stopped trying to understand.
If he wanted to be with her, she thought, he would prove it.
So she stayed away.
And slowly, the contact between them disappeared.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
The person whose calls had once filled her days became a memory she tried not to think about.
She missed him.
Of course she did.
But she was tired of feeling like she was the only one holding onto something.
She had already spent so much of her life begging people to choose her.
She didn't want to beg James too.
So she let the silence grow.
And in that silence, her heart began breaking in places nobody could see.