The frigid air bites my fingers, but the sun is warm on my face as I close my eyes and sigh.
“What are you thinking of?” his warm breath tickles my ear as he pulls me closer, and it’s all I can do not to sigh in bliss. This is where I want to be, all the time, in his arms.
“I’m thinking about how I never thought I’d ever fall for you,” I look into his dark, bottomless eyes, and he enchants me again with his smile.
Aaron.
My Aaron.
With his pleasantly messy dark hair, intelligent, dark eyes, tanned skin, long pianist’s fingers, and velvet voice.
He’s here, holding me close, in our spot in the park as we watch the sun go down over the city horizon.
“Did you know…” he murmurs, tucking a lock of my ever-messy hair behind my ear. “That you’re beautiful?” he kisses me sweetly, and I remember where I was a month ago, crushing on him as soon as he walked into the Second Cup café, but my heart falling as I remembered that he had a girlfriend. But she left him, and he admitted that he loved me.
“I’m not,” I whisper, playing with my own fingers. He captures my hands in his and pulls me closer again, so that my head is on his shoulder. He shifts me so that my legs are across his knees, and raises our intertwined hands to his lips, kissing my wrist softly.
“No. Accept who you are, because you’re the girl I fell in love with,” he murmurs in my ear. I smile, my happiness exploding in my chest, and I wonder if he can hear my heart beating erratically, as though it might jump out of my chest.
And as he leans closer, pulling me to his chest and into a kiss, I smile. He smiles against my lips, plants a quick kiss on my neck, then returns to kissing me. As the kiss deepens, I melt. This is where I want to be, forever and always…
“I love you,” he whispers between kisses. “I love you so much…”
Three months later
He slept with her tonight. Aaron slept with his new girlfriend. I scream into my pillow, and I almost want to punch myself. If I hadn’t been put into this stupid body, if I hadn’t fallen for him that day…
I scream louder, the pillow suffocating my sound and the salty tears that pour endlessly from my eyes. Still, I scream, knowing that nobody, especially Aaron, can hear me.
I raise my head slowly, and I can almost remember the sound of my heart shattering into a thousand pieces as he said those words…
“I fell out of love with you.”
I remember how happy I was to meet him that day, how simply seeing him walk toward me was almost too much for me to take. I gave him the Christmas gift I’d gotten him, which was a mix CD I’d put together with all our favorite love songs. He took it, hugged me, kissed my cheek, and then he dumped me. And kept the CD. He still has it, and even had the nerve to say it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever listened to.
I go back to screaming, my throat drawn almost to silence, the tears endless. Why was I so stupid? The memories come flooding back, and I’m powerless to stop them:
My first kiss, with Aaron...the first time someone told me I love you, Aaron…the first time someone held me and kissed my tears away, Aaron…the first time someone told me how special I was to them.
I lift my head to the ceiling, and I imagine him doing the exact same things with her, telling her he loves her, that he’ll never leave her, that she is his everything.
But I was his everything! I want to scream at the world. He told me that I was his everything! Not her!
But I know it’s pointless. He moved on before it even ended…
I can’t help it anymore. I stop screaming, lay down on my bed, bury my face in my pillow, and I cry.