By the time the year started folding into itself, I had made a quiet decision... one only my heart could hear. I wouldn't date the famous boy. No matter how my chest tightened at the thought of him laughing with another girl. No matter how my mind replayed "what ifs" like a broken record. I told myself that some feelings are not meant to be lived out. Some are meant to pass through you like wind through an open window.
And life, as always, moved on.
That's when I met him. Not famous. Not whispered about in corridors. Just… there. Present. Tall. Handsome in a way that didn't try too hard. Kind in the way that felt unfamiliar. We became friends without effort. Our conversations were easy... about school, music, life, things that had no heavy meaning. I never once looked at him the way I looked at the other one. There was no fire, no storm in my chest. Just calm ground.
Months passed like that.
Then one afternoon, he said what I had pretended not to notice building up in the silence between us. He had feelings. Real ones. Gentle ones. And I… I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't want to lie to him. But I also didn't fully understand my own heart yet.
So I said yes.. not out of love, but out of curiosity.
I wanted to know what it felt like. I wanted to understand what the other girls whispered about, what movies made look so powerful, so world-changing.
And the year kept moving toward its end. Faster now. Like it was in a hurry to be over.
Then came a moment that I wasn't ready for.
A moment that was supposed to be special.
A moment I thought would feel like something out of a storybook.
But it didn't.
There was pressure hiding behind soft words. A rush I didn't recognize at the time. A silence inside myself that I didn't yet know how to listen to. When it was over, everything felt… the same. Empty.
Confusing.
No fireworks.
No magic.
Just a strange quiet.
And that was the moment I realized something very important.. that sometimes, the world sells us a dream that doesn't match reality. And sometimes, we go along with things not because we are ready, but because we don't yet know how to say no even when our hearts whisper it.
I didn't understand it fully then.
But a part of me shifted that day.
And I was never the same again.