PEYTON
“With time, you'd get over your infuation”
“I know” I would voice out to myself every once in a while, convincing myself, although each time the words fell off my lips, the lie left behind a bile green taste on my tongue.
And my doubts stayed the same. Even during the nights I layed in bed, sheets rumpled and wrapped in the arms of yet another man, with a single motive in mind–hoping he’d be the one the reclaim my sanity, and quench the thirst and longing I had for you–but that had been and would always be a fail, a total bluff.
Like every word you said to me eight summers ago.
“Where have you been my whole life, Peyton?”
“I want you to want me’’
“I would be here for Thanksgiving, I’d be here before you know it, Peyton’’
“I’d call you every chance I get, and during every break, it’s you I’d come running to, just wait for me’’
And I waited just as you asked.
But your calls stopped, and you grew too busy. And I never got a response to the ninety-seven emails I forwarded to you.
Not a brake light of you, not even while you were in town.
I was the closest thing you could discard. I was swiped out of your life, barely a sign that I ever existed.
Even now as I watched you from afar, as my heart thumped loudly in my ears, despite the deafening sound that blared from the enormous speakers as you danced along to our song with your bride.
She just wasn’t me.
“Each time I hear it, it reminds me of you, our song’’ You would say each time we consequently made love to the rhythm.
It was gut wrenching, but I knew for sure, I would never be the girl you considered, or loved. To you, I would always be what you’d leveled me to be–even when we bumped into each other last august, eyes locked for what seemed like eternity–the casual summer fling.
Even though with every part of me, I loved you.
Even though I realized a little too late that to love you was to be hurt by you.
It changed nothing, my feelings stayed the same, and it made me loathe myself even more.
I hated the girl you made me into.
