The Messy Love Story
The first boy who loves you will never look you straight in the eye, not until he asks you out at the beginning of your junior year - the first boy who loves you will wait. It’ll take him a while just to say hi, he’s shy, he’s genuine, he’s kind, he’s real. He’ll take you places that make your heart beat out of your chest and your eyes pop out of your head, it’ll feel as if you were five years old again without a care in the world. He’ll stand a few inches away from you, where he can see the ferris wheel lights reflecting off of your beautiful brown eyes - you know the ones you wish you could change the color of. He’ll look at you and give you chills that run down your spine, make your nose crinkle, your palms sweat, and your lips tremble. You think he’ll kiss you then, you want him to kiss you then but he doesn’t. He’ll just stare at you, soaking in the beauty and the purity of your innocence that’s left because he knows that touches your soul a whole hell of a lot more than his lips ever will.
The first boy who loves you will pick you up late. He’ll have an obscene amount of apologies rolling off his tongue the second you get in that passenger seat. Even before your hand reaches for the door handle of his old Chevy Silverado. He’ll shower you with apologies, literally shower you because he’s so nervous and so anxious that spit will project onto your face from talking so fast - he knows he messed up. But these apologies are genuine, sincere, the kindness behind his skin, and the loving household environment that he grew up in. These apologies are him. He’ll take you somewhere off the grid, somewhere only the two of you know, a place that catches your breath and makes you stop in your tracks. You’ll order something simple, something sweet because you’re afraid of humiliating yourself in front of him. You’ll probably make a mess because you might end up missing your mouth with a piece of chicken but he doesn’t care, instead he smiles bright and wide when you tell him it’s the best damn food you’ve ever had. He made you happy inside with such little effort and he knows this, and all of a sudden now you want more.
The first boy who loves you has an imagination, an imagination that makes you believe anything is possible. He stitches together sentences from the tip of his tongue that flow flawlessly. He’ll tell you stories, pieces that make your stomach hurt from laughing so hard, stories that build suspension and make your throat clench, stories with cliffhangers and you find yourself begging him to finish but all he does is just sit there and smile at you because he knows he’s finally got you. You’ll cut him off, multiple times without even knowing it, trying to finish his sentences because you’re eager and you think you know but he changes it last minute, and you’ll pick on him saying, “yeah right,” or “I knew that was going to happen,” trying to hide the fact that he made you think a little differently, think outside the box, avoid the fact that he made your own imagination grow a little more than you thought. You’ll talk for hours and you’ll never notice how fast time flies when you’re with him. He’ll ask you questions, so many questions that make you think, make you smile, make you wonder, daydream, make you reveal yourself, and slowly but surely you consider a future - a future with him placed along in it.
The first boy who loves you will say sweet things, funny things, he’ll always have something to say. He tells you not just what you want to hear but what you need to hear. He’ll push you but not too much, just enough so that you still have some ease to come back to this sad world. You forget that he’s the sad boy, lonely boy, weirdo boy, or anything else that you’ve heard around school. You know he’s different, he’s nothing like what they’ve said, he’s quite the opposite actually. He’s everything you never thought was real, he’s the prince in the fairy tales with a few flaws of course. He’ll show you the world, make your insides scream, he’s better than you expected and you never really expected much to begin with but now you’re stuck. You’re trapped, you’re attached and now the fear of him leaving is all of a sudden real and terrorizing. He has the ability to destroy you, rip you apart piece by piece, slowly and surely and you know this, and he knows this. But you don’t change a thing, even though he has the same capability as a gun to your head, you don’t change a thing.
The first boy who loves you will ask you why you never talk about your family, only glimpses of what your sad reality at home is really like. But now, now you open up - you talk about the divorce, the fighting, the screaming, the drinking, the chaos. How home started to feel a little less like home at the age of seven or that you began to pick up on the fact that love was game because the two that were supposed to show you the way, showed you instead how badly one could really hurt another. You tell him how you’d come home from school and slowly day by day in a room full of people you had never felt so alone, that two people with three kids made everything about love for seventeen years and one day I guess they just decided to stop pretending. And now he understands, he understands why you were so closed off and never really let anyone in - because those who meant the most to you let you down and that’s the messed up part about this atrocious world, all it takes is one and you’re fucked. But the first boy who loves you will hold you, hold you until all your broken pieces are put back together and that’s when you realize you want it all - the good and the bad, regardless of how horrible, how dark, because at the end of the day it’s him, and now he’s become a part of you.
But the first boy who loves you won’t be the last; and he knows this. He’s not a fool, he knows this will come to a close soon enough but he’ll never regret you, not for a second. Because the first boy who loves you is kind, gentle, and sweet; he’s the one who shows you that maybe this world isn’t such a bad place after all, that only if you let it, it’ll tear you down. He won’t let you push him aside when you need your space because he knows you need him even when you hurt him. He won’t let you break, he won’t tear you down, because when everything else falls apart, he is the only thing you know how to destroy and so you do. You’re pissed at the world and need some retaliation and so you take it out on him because you take for granted the fact that he’ll never leave. But when you finally ask him to leave, he will go, the first boy who loves you will go because even though you don’t want him to and you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, he’ll leave; he’ll give you what you want because he loves you. And when he stops yelling and loses the fire in his eyes, you’ve lost him - when he goes quiet, that’s when you realize he’s gone. And you’ll look back at him and remember everything - the nervousness, the apologies, the purity, the kindness and the honesty that he possessed - it’ll all play backwards like a movie in the back of your mind to the very first time you ever laid eyes on him. You’ll remember how he called you sweetheart when he was angry or used your full name as a sign of affection and even though it’s over, the first boy who loved you will be the only boy who holds your heart in his hands, feels it beat and breathe without possession or power and you’ll struggle to understand but the time will come for you to live again.
A year later I met another boy, he took me to that same restaurant where we had our first date - you know the night you shook so hard from nerves and I ate properly enforcing my table manners because I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you. I hadn’t been to that place ever since, never really thought I would go back because that was our place, but overtime, we modify the meaning of things and so that restaurant was no longer our place but your place because that’s all I saw when I pulled up in a different car, with a different boy, and now my mind intoxicated with bittersweet memories of you and I. Him and I sat about ten tables away from where we sat, I preferred that table though, you turn your head to the left and see the beauty in this dull city, the way you used to look at me. I skimmed the menu, remembering the chicken I ordered, I asked him what he was going to order and I looked up to make eye contact with him - it’s rude not to look at people when you’re speaking to them, but I heard a familiar laugh and so my eyes darted to the front door - it was you. She was beautiful, guess you had good taste after all, but I didn’t hear my heart break or feel tears rolling down my cheeks. No, instead I smiled at you and you smiled back and that’s when I realized you’re not my sunshine anymore because the truth is this: you think you’re in love so many more times before you actually ever are and you’re going to have your heartbroken so many more times than you’ll ever want. But the first boy who loves you will not be the last, and just because he leaves doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, it’s only just the beginning - you learn, you grow, and you move on. And you know what? You love again. Because the first boy who loves you will tear your heart out of your chest just to put it back in place so that you could live again.
