I was always your girl

I remember it vaguely, mixed up with the rest of the story that is us.


‘Don’t you ever think about it? What it would be like to be my girl?’
I said nothing.

I was always your girl.

The night you offered me everything you had to give. I said no.
2 AM in May is a very cold time. Colder than you’d think. I had blonde hair then.
For the next two years I thought about that night.

My best friend looked at me shrewdly, ‘You’re falling for him, aren’t you?’
I blushed.

Together and not, with others and not, you were the one I kept coming back to.
I tried to brush it off as a teenage crush. It wasn’t eternal. I didn’t love you. You, who offered yourself to me in the weakest hour of the night, did not mean it.
Yet I didn’t want to see you moving on.

Before everything, we were friends. We worked better as friends. Those nights you’d come over and we’d sit and talk about everything, making jokes only we would understand. We had the same sort of humour.

When you’d leave, I’d go out to your car with you. Standing in the middle of the road, I’d look into your eyes and see a glimmer of something. I’d look away, scared.
I was always scared with you. I wanted so much, but the stars said something different.

One night I kissed you.

We used each other to validate ourselves. But I would always be the one to step back, to turn away, and to go home. I had brown hair then.
‘If you touch me I will rip out your spinal cord and use it as a whip.’
You just laughed.
I was serious.

I denied the existence of love, in favour of time and space. If I felt love, I would want too much.

You said you were sorry, that I deserved to be treated much better. One again you humbled yourself for me. We left for our own lives.

I saw you the other day, after over a year. I greeted you as the old friend you are, with a joke only you would understand and wild red hair.

It was different, this time around.
‘I think I’m on the way to knowing who I am. The visceral part, anyways’, you mumbled, looking straight forward at the road. I thought the same.
You bought me old books. I said I would pay you back.
I forgot.

The night before you left you walked me out to my car. I held your hand.
We stood in the middle of the road. I kissed your cheek; you wrapped your arms around me.
‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone’.

The roads are always quiet there.
You left this old town, as did I.

I cried at the train station when I realised you were gone, once again.
‘I know you love him,’ said my best friend.
‘Not in that way. I’m not in love with him. I just love him.’
‘I know. And he knows. You’ll see him again.’

And through it all, I have always been your girl.