moonbird
03-06-2011, 09:22 PM
Josh was my first boyfriend.
Honestly, he wasn't a heartthrob. His main romantic handicap was his weight. He wasn't fat, not really, but he was overweight, and often people (especially girls) judged him based on that knowledge.
I knew how that felt. My handicap wasn't really physical. I'm not saying I was a knockout––I had about as many curves as a yardstick, along with a head of frizzy brown hair––but I wasn't ugly. There were even a few pretty aspects about me: I had a nice smile (despite my braces), bright blue eyes, and attractive legs. No, it wasn't my looks that held me back, it was the fact that I was probably the nerdiest girl in my grade.
That's not an exaggeration. As a freshman I took junior-level math and sophomore-level science, and still managed to keep my grades at all A's and B's. At lunch it seemed like half the cafeteria, even upperclassmen, was asking me for help with their homework; sometimes I wondered how many of them even knew my name. So yeah, I was a nerd, and though I wasn't ashamed of it (hell, I was even proud of it), I sometimes longed to be just a little more popular, just enough to get a boyfriend. All I wanted was someone to tell me I was pretty and text me at all hours of the night just to saw hi. You know, the kind of things my friends talked about.
I was thirteen when I, as usual, signed up for rec soccer in the fall. It was my first time in U17, which was a semi-travel league, so I was a little nervous when I came to the first practice, especially since I'd had to miss the first two practices. To make matters worse, I ended up arriving too early and on the wrong field. Luckily, my coach found me and introduced me to my team. I recognized a few faces, vaguely, from previous seasons, but I wasn't exactly friends with any of them. In addition, it seemed nearly everyone was older than me.
I didn't talk much to anyone that first practice, including Josh, but I do remember noticing him. He seemed funny and friendly and had a nice smile. I judged him to be a sophomore. I did not, however, consider any kind of romance associated with him. I wasn't shallow, but I, of course, usually ended up crushing on the perfect, popular guys at my school.
It was a week or two before I really met him. I had, once again, arrived too early, although I was at least on the correct field. Josh was the only other one. I pretended to be texting, as I often did when I was nervous. Josh was balancing on top of his soccer ball, holding onto the goal with one hand. The awkward silence seemed to go on forever. Finally he spoke. “Your name's Mariah, right?”
“Yeah.” I glanced up from my phone, then quickly back down. “Um, aren't you, like... Josh, or something?” I winced at my own awkwardness.
“Yeah.”
The silence began to form again. I searched for something else to say. “Isn't there another Josh on this team?”
“Yeah, he's a senior. Everybody calls him Big Josh to tell us apart.”
“So you're Little Josh?”
He smiled. “Yup.”
I smiled back, shyly. “That's not very manly-sounding.”
“Yeah, well..” Then he stumbled, and toppled off the top of his soccer ball. He landed on the ground, clunking his head on the goal on the way down. “****!” he exclaimed, his face reddening.
I bit my lip but couldn't hold it in. A loud snort of laughter burst from my throat, and then I was giggling uncontrollably, one hand over my mouth and my shoulders shaking back and forth. For a moment Josh just sat there, looking embarrassed, but soon he was laughing too. As we laughed together I thought it sounded like music, my high-pitched giggles (which people often said sounded like a cheerleader's) coupled with his bass-like rolling laughter. We laughed until our faces were bright red. We leaned on the goal to catch out breaths.
After that more people started arriving, and we didn't talk much more during practice. Afterward, I gathered up my things and began walking toward the parking lot.
“Wait up, Mariah!”
I stopped and turned around. Josh was walking behind me. I allowed him to catch up. “What's up, Little Josh?” I said, smiling.
“Not much.” We walked beside each other. We were almost to the parking lot when he asked, “So... do you have a phone?”
“Yeah.” I didn't look at him.
He hesitated, then continued. “Can I have your number?”
“Okay!” As I reached into my bag to get my phone I realized two things: one, that I'd answered too quickly, too eagerly, and two, that I didn't need to get out my phone to give him my number, and I was making myself look like a total idiot.
“Are you sure?” My too-fast reply seemed to have caught him a little off-guard.
“Yeah.” I decided to get my phone out anyway. I told him my number, then asked for his.
“I can just text you, then you'll have my number.”
“I want to make sure you're not lying.” I smiled, praying he understood I wasn't serious.
He laughed. “Alright then.”
After we'd finished exchanging numbers we parted in opposite directions. “Bye, Mariah,” he called softly, pronouncing my name very slowly.
“Seeya!” I replied over my shoulder. I felt slightly giddy.
After climbing into the car I was quick to inform my parents about the recent development. My sister teased me.
A few minutes later a text popped onto the screen.
told you i wasnt lying :-)
I smiled.
That day I was still under the impression he just wanted to be friends––although that I have have just been trying to convince myself of that, after many similar disappointments in the past. Either way, I was happy. No boy, not even a friend, had asked for my number before.
I slept very well that night.
The next day I found myself checking my phone every ten minutes. With each “No new messages” I began to feel more and more sure that Josh didn't really give a damn about me, that it was all just some big joke. I wondered if the other guys on the team had been in on it. What were they planning for my next humiliation?
It was around 5 in the afternoon when I could stand the waiting no longer, and decided to text him myself. I asked him something nonchalantly about the upcoming soccer game. When he replied he said he'd been just about to text me. I giggled out loud with relief.
The rest of the day we chatted about nothing and everything; we discussed our favorite bands (turned out our taste in music was nearly identical), my orthodontist (he'd gone there too when he had braces), the camping trip he was going on tomorrow, the other teams in our league, I won't list everything else. Once I actually summoned the courage to ask meekly if he was only talking to me because of some sort of joke, adding that I wouldn't be mad if he told me he was, which was a lie. He assured me that this was not the case, and seemed shocked when I told him it had happened to be before with another guy.
I asked him if we had any classes together at school. He said he didn't know, and we established we did not, after discussing our school schedules for a few minutes. There was something of a pause, and then he said:
well maybe we dont see each other much at school but maybe we can like get together for a movie sometime?
It took me at least five minutes to reply. At first I was in shocked. I read and reread the message, over and over and over, of course I'd misread it, it was a mistake, he couldn't be asking me out, he couldn't.
After I'd established that I was indeed correct, I made a sound that was somewhere in between a squeak and a quack, one I'd heard other girls make but never actually made myself. Then I screamed to my mom, who was in the next room, “Josh just asked me to a movie!” Together we squealed and giggled in girlish hysterics.
I finally replied to the message, saying coolly that that sounded like fun. Later I would feel sorry for taking so long, imagining him sweating it out at his house, staring urgently at his phone for a reply. We set our date for Saturday of next week.
The next day, late at night, Josh asked me out “officially” through a text. I had promised myself I wouldn't date a guy who didn't ask me out in person, but my pride was far from my mind as I replied with a gleeful yes. He told me I'd made him the happiest guy in the world. I blushed and giggled, and felt happier than I had ever before.
I knew Josh was overweight, that he wasn't popular, but he was my boyfriend, my first boyfriend, and we texted each other all night long, and I felt like one of the girls I'd always envied. I changed the signature on my phone to his name with hearts around it; I texted my friends to tell them I had a boyfriend, and they immediately demanded to know every detail about him; Josh told me I was beautiful and smart and perfect and that he loved me, and I didn't even care I'd promised myself not to tell someone I loved them until I really meant it, I simply couldn't stop myself from saying I loved him too, because at that moment I couldn't even tell the difference.
Josh said he'd fallen in love with me the first day he saw me, that first day of soccer when I'd barely even noticed him. This was the completely opposite of every crush I'd had my entire life. Suddenly I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
Three days passed between when Josh asked for my number and when we saw each other for the first time as boyfriend and girlfriend. It was the day of our team's first game of the season. I made sure my shorts matched my shirt, the dog hair was brushed off my socks, and my ponytail was neat and perfect. I took a deep breath and approached the sidelines, where Josh was waiting for me.
From that moment on my life seemed like a slide-show of everything I'd dreamed of since I was little. I can still remember everything. I giggled an entire day over our first hug. We had “our” bench in the courtyard outside the school, where we sat together every morning and talked. Sometimes we walked aimlessly around the school, holding hands, showing each other off to our friends, laughing at nothing in particular, just laughing because it felt good to laugh together.
I remember watching the calendar as the day of the Homecoming Dance grew closer, waiting for Josh to ask me to go with him. I ended up asking him myself, which I later found out he planned deliberately. The fact that I asked him to the dance gave me self-confidence and a sense of pride. I picked out the perfect dress, black with blue and purple streaks. I fantasized about romantic slow-dances, swaying in the dimmed light, our foreheads pressed together.
What really made me fall in love with Josh were the small but beautiful things he did for me. He send me flowers on my birthday, a gorgeous bouquet that made me smile whenever I walked by its place in the kitchen and probably cost him a good fifty dollars, if not more. But what I loved the best were the sweet little texts he sent me on occasion, when he'd tell me again that I was beautiful and perfect and that he loved me more than he'd loved anyone ever before.
Like any perfect high school couple, we had a song that was “ours.” Josh heard it on the radio and said it made him think of me. I would giggle whenever I heard it, listening to the simple lyrics sung to an acoustic guitar, imagining Josh singing them to me: “That was the day that I promised I'd never sing of love, if it does not exist, but darlin you are the only exception, you are the only exception...”
Our first kiss was no more than a quick peck, but it was my first kiss ever, and it took me all day to summon the courage to pucker my lips and kiss him. We went to our date at a cheap little theater and saw a chick flick, and we sat in the back and it was almost empty and it was so dark we could barely see each other. He put his arm around me and told me I was beautiful and that he loved me, and then we kissed, really kissed, tongue and everything, just like people talked about. I discovered I knew what to do without having to be taught, and it wasn't disgusting like I'd always thought it would be. He was more experienced than I was at kissing, and I can remember how he scraped his tongue gently against my teeth, his hand in my hair, our eyes closed.
Those were the days I fell head over heels for my first boyfriend. He was all I ever thought about. But that movie date was the peak of our relationship. As a matter of fact, it was both our first and last date together.
The great fall Us started slowly, but then picked up speed and curved abruptly into a downward spiral, dragging us both along for the ride.
It began around two weeks before Homecoming, when Josh texted me to say he couldn't go. His grades had been slipping, and grounding him from the dance was his punishment. I was crushed, but tried not to show it when I was with him, since he obviously felt guilty about it.
After that he started ignoring me.
At first there were texts I sent him that he ignored. The replies he did send were often curt, sometimes almost formal-sounding. I stopped getting his sweet, random texts telling me he loved me and that I was perfect. Then he began ignoring me in person. We no longer got together in the morning to sit on our bench or walk through the hallways hand in hand. Sometimes he would pass right by me without a word or even a glance. At soccer games there was rarely a hello or goodbye. Days would go by without any kind of communication between us. What was happening to my perfect boyfriend?
Finally I confronted him. I asked him why he was ignoring me, why our relationship had changed to abruptly. He responded nonchalantly, as if he had no idea what I was talking about. Confused and disgusted, I walked away and left him standing alone in the hallway.
Not five minutes later I received a text from him.
what was that all about?
Suddenly I felt furious. He knew exactly what it was about. I was the clueless one.
I replied promptly, asking him when the last time he had said “I love you” to me was. He said that he'd been busy, didn't even apologize. My hands gripped the phone tightly in anguish.
I asked if he knew what it was like to be ignored by someone you loved and not knowing why. He repeated that he'd been busy; again, no apology. Then he told me to give him some space, that I was distracting him, causing his grades to slip. As if it was my fault he was failing the ninth grade.
I felt something snap. It was probably a good thing we were only texting and not face to face, because I very well may have slapped him. I knew right then that he had changed, and that I would probably never know why; I also knew I had to end it between us. My fingers flew across the keyboard, hovered for a moment above the send button, and then pressed it with a feeling of certain finality.
so im wrecking your grades, am i? fine. now you can have all the space you want. bye josh.
By then class had started, and I had to bite my lip to hold in the angry tears. There was no way I was going to cry in front of my class and teacher. Someone asked me if I was alright. I said I was tired.
Shortly before second period, I got a reply from Josh. He was now Mr. Romantic again, telling me it was okay, to enjoy my friends and my life because he knew he'd screwed up his, to go to Homecoming and have a good time with another date.
At that moment the school announcements came on over the intercom, and they played the Song of the Day. At first I thought I was only imaging it. But the words flowed like honey through the speakers on the ceiling:
“And that was the day that I promised I'd never sing of love if it does not exist, but darlin you are the only exception, you are the only exception...”
Our song.
I couldn't hold back my emotions any longer. I put my face in my hands and cried. I didn't even care that everyone was staring at me. All I could think of was Josh, who had called me beautiful and perfect and repeated over and over his love to me, Josh, the boy with the smile that could light up a whole room, the boy I had loved. How could I possibly feel this sad if breaking up with him was the right thing to do?
I cried quietly, soaking my hands, making mascara run in black rivers down my cheeks. I was lucky, as my good friend Danielle happened to be sitting next to me at the time, and she put her arm around me and told me it was alright, not having the faintest idea as to why I was crying but just knowing I needed some comfort. I don't know precisely how long I cried, but the sobs were just beginning to fade to sniffles when the daily announcements concluded. Danielle let me soak the shoulder of her shirt in my tears, walked me to the bathroom to clean myself up, told me it was going to be okay. I whimpered that I'd made a mistake, but she said no, no, Josh didn't deserve me, I had done the right thing...
My phone buzzed.
Through bleary eyes I read the text. It was from Josh.
and i never said you were wrecking my grades. so dont accuse me of **** i didnt do.
I may never had moved on if not for that text. Although it ignited a fresh batch of tears, it confirmed what I already knew: Josh and I just weren't meant to be. Yes, he once had seemed the perfect boyfriend, the love of my life, but he had lied to me, just straight-out lied. He had said I'd been wrecking his grades, even though we both knew he'd been getting D's since long before me met me. So I sat there in the middle of the hallway, sobbing on Danielle's shoulder, and wondering how I could ever pick myself back up and move on.
I went to soccer practice that night, after some prompting from my mom. Josh acted as if he didn't know me, but that was okay with me. I saw the confused stares several girls were giving me, and I returned them with sad shrugs. They understood me, lowering their eyes in disappointment. Many had thought of us a “cute couple.”
I never found out why Josh had changed. I considered if he had been cheating on me, but, although he had certainly been rude to me, I didn't think he was that cruel. Perhaps he was just immature. In the end I decided I didn't care.
In total, our relationship lasted only one month. But if you come up to me and say the name of that month of that year, not so long ago, you will see a look of faint sadness come into my eyes, because, as I'd later discover, I did not fall for boys all that often, but when I did, I fell hard, and never forgot about them. That month will always have a special meaning to me, the birth and death of my first relationship, and it will never cease to bring back that song, that one song that will always be ours...
“Darlin, you are the only exception, you are the only exception...”
Honestly, he wasn't a heartthrob. His main romantic handicap was his weight. He wasn't fat, not really, but he was overweight, and often people (especially girls) judged him based on that knowledge.
I knew how that felt. My handicap wasn't really physical. I'm not saying I was a knockout––I had about as many curves as a yardstick, along with a head of frizzy brown hair––but I wasn't ugly. There were even a few pretty aspects about me: I had a nice smile (despite my braces), bright blue eyes, and attractive legs. No, it wasn't my looks that held me back, it was the fact that I was probably the nerdiest girl in my grade.
That's not an exaggeration. As a freshman I took junior-level math and sophomore-level science, and still managed to keep my grades at all A's and B's. At lunch it seemed like half the cafeteria, even upperclassmen, was asking me for help with their homework; sometimes I wondered how many of them even knew my name. So yeah, I was a nerd, and though I wasn't ashamed of it (hell, I was even proud of it), I sometimes longed to be just a little more popular, just enough to get a boyfriend. All I wanted was someone to tell me I was pretty and text me at all hours of the night just to saw hi. You know, the kind of things my friends talked about.
I was thirteen when I, as usual, signed up for rec soccer in the fall. It was my first time in U17, which was a semi-travel league, so I was a little nervous when I came to the first practice, especially since I'd had to miss the first two practices. To make matters worse, I ended up arriving too early and on the wrong field. Luckily, my coach found me and introduced me to my team. I recognized a few faces, vaguely, from previous seasons, but I wasn't exactly friends with any of them. In addition, it seemed nearly everyone was older than me.
I didn't talk much to anyone that first practice, including Josh, but I do remember noticing him. He seemed funny and friendly and had a nice smile. I judged him to be a sophomore. I did not, however, consider any kind of romance associated with him. I wasn't shallow, but I, of course, usually ended up crushing on the perfect, popular guys at my school.
It was a week or two before I really met him. I had, once again, arrived too early, although I was at least on the correct field. Josh was the only other one. I pretended to be texting, as I often did when I was nervous. Josh was balancing on top of his soccer ball, holding onto the goal with one hand. The awkward silence seemed to go on forever. Finally he spoke. “Your name's Mariah, right?”
“Yeah.” I glanced up from my phone, then quickly back down. “Um, aren't you, like... Josh, or something?” I winced at my own awkwardness.
“Yeah.”
The silence began to form again. I searched for something else to say. “Isn't there another Josh on this team?”
“Yeah, he's a senior. Everybody calls him Big Josh to tell us apart.”
“So you're Little Josh?”
He smiled. “Yup.”
I smiled back, shyly. “That's not very manly-sounding.”
“Yeah, well..” Then he stumbled, and toppled off the top of his soccer ball. He landed on the ground, clunking his head on the goal on the way down. “****!” he exclaimed, his face reddening.
I bit my lip but couldn't hold it in. A loud snort of laughter burst from my throat, and then I was giggling uncontrollably, one hand over my mouth and my shoulders shaking back and forth. For a moment Josh just sat there, looking embarrassed, but soon he was laughing too. As we laughed together I thought it sounded like music, my high-pitched giggles (which people often said sounded like a cheerleader's) coupled with his bass-like rolling laughter. We laughed until our faces were bright red. We leaned on the goal to catch out breaths.
After that more people started arriving, and we didn't talk much more during practice. Afterward, I gathered up my things and began walking toward the parking lot.
“Wait up, Mariah!”
I stopped and turned around. Josh was walking behind me. I allowed him to catch up. “What's up, Little Josh?” I said, smiling.
“Not much.” We walked beside each other. We were almost to the parking lot when he asked, “So... do you have a phone?”
“Yeah.” I didn't look at him.
He hesitated, then continued. “Can I have your number?”
“Okay!” As I reached into my bag to get my phone I realized two things: one, that I'd answered too quickly, too eagerly, and two, that I didn't need to get out my phone to give him my number, and I was making myself look like a total idiot.
“Are you sure?” My too-fast reply seemed to have caught him a little off-guard.
“Yeah.” I decided to get my phone out anyway. I told him my number, then asked for his.
“I can just text you, then you'll have my number.”
“I want to make sure you're not lying.” I smiled, praying he understood I wasn't serious.
He laughed. “Alright then.”
After we'd finished exchanging numbers we parted in opposite directions. “Bye, Mariah,” he called softly, pronouncing my name very slowly.
“Seeya!” I replied over my shoulder. I felt slightly giddy.
After climbing into the car I was quick to inform my parents about the recent development. My sister teased me.
A few minutes later a text popped onto the screen.
told you i wasnt lying :-)
I smiled.
That day I was still under the impression he just wanted to be friends––although that I have have just been trying to convince myself of that, after many similar disappointments in the past. Either way, I was happy. No boy, not even a friend, had asked for my number before.
I slept very well that night.
The next day I found myself checking my phone every ten minutes. With each “No new messages” I began to feel more and more sure that Josh didn't really give a damn about me, that it was all just some big joke. I wondered if the other guys on the team had been in on it. What were they planning for my next humiliation?
It was around 5 in the afternoon when I could stand the waiting no longer, and decided to text him myself. I asked him something nonchalantly about the upcoming soccer game. When he replied he said he'd been just about to text me. I giggled out loud with relief.
The rest of the day we chatted about nothing and everything; we discussed our favorite bands (turned out our taste in music was nearly identical), my orthodontist (he'd gone there too when he had braces), the camping trip he was going on tomorrow, the other teams in our league, I won't list everything else. Once I actually summoned the courage to ask meekly if he was only talking to me because of some sort of joke, adding that I wouldn't be mad if he told me he was, which was a lie. He assured me that this was not the case, and seemed shocked when I told him it had happened to be before with another guy.
I asked him if we had any classes together at school. He said he didn't know, and we established we did not, after discussing our school schedules for a few minutes. There was something of a pause, and then he said:
well maybe we dont see each other much at school but maybe we can like get together for a movie sometime?
It took me at least five minutes to reply. At first I was in shocked. I read and reread the message, over and over and over, of course I'd misread it, it was a mistake, he couldn't be asking me out, he couldn't.
After I'd established that I was indeed correct, I made a sound that was somewhere in between a squeak and a quack, one I'd heard other girls make but never actually made myself. Then I screamed to my mom, who was in the next room, “Josh just asked me to a movie!” Together we squealed and giggled in girlish hysterics.
I finally replied to the message, saying coolly that that sounded like fun. Later I would feel sorry for taking so long, imagining him sweating it out at his house, staring urgently at his phone for a reply. We set our date for Saturday of next week.
The next day, late at night, Josh asked me out “officially” through a text. I had promised myself I wouldn't date a guy who didn't ask me out in person, but my pride was far from my mind as I replied with a gleeful yes. He told me I'd made him the happiest guy in the world. I blushed and giggled, and felt happier than I had ever before.
I knew Josh was overweight, that he wasn't popular, but he was my boyfriend, my first boyfriend, and we texted each other all night long, and I felt like one of the girls I'd always envied. I changed the signature on my phone to his name with hearts around it; I texted my friends to tell them I had a boyfriend, and they immediately demanded to know every detail about him; Josh told me I was beautiful and smart and perfect and that he loved me, and I didn't even care I'd promised myself not to tell someone I loved them until I really meant it, I simply couldn't stop myself from saying I loved him too, because at that moment I couldn't even tell the difference.
Josh said he'd fallen in love with me the first day he saw me, that first day of soccer when I'd barely even noticed him. This was the completely opposite of every crush I'd had my entire life. Suddenly I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
Three days passed between when Josh asked for my number and when we saw each other for the first time as boyfriend and girlfriend. It was the day of our team's first game of the season. I made sure my shorts matched my shirt, the dog hair was brushed off my socks, and my ponytail was neat and perfect. I took a deep breath and approached the sidelines, where Josh was waiting for me.
From that moment on my life seemed like a slide-show of everything I'd dreamed of since I was little. I can still remember everything. I giggled an entire day over our first hug. We had “our” bench in the courtyard outside the school, where we sat together every morning and talked. Sometimes we walked aimlessly around the school, holding hands, showing each other off to our friends, laughing at nothing in particular, just laughing because it felt good to laugh together.
I remember watching the calendar as the day of the Homecoming Dance grew closer, waiting for Josh to ask me to go with him. I ended up asking him myself, which I later found out he planned deliberately. The fact that I asked him to the dance gave me self-confidence and a sense of pride. I picked out the perfect dress, black with blue and purple streaks. I fantasized about romantic slow-dances, swaying in the dimmed light, our foreheads pressed together.
What really made me fall in love with Josh were the small but beautiful things he did for me. He send me flowers on my birthday, a gorgeous bouquet that made me smile whenever I walked by its place in the kitchen and probably cost him a good fifty dollars, if not more. But what I loved the best were the sweet little texts he sent me on occasion, when he'd tell me again that I was beautiful and perfect and that he loved me more than he'd loved anyone ever before.
Like any perfect high school couple, we had a song that was “ours.” Josh heard it on the radio and said it made him think of me. I would giggle whenever I heard it, listening to the simple lyrics sung to an acoustic guitar, imagining Josh singing them to me: “That was the day that I promised I'd never sing of love, if it does not exist, but darlin you are the only exception, you are the only exception...”
Our first kiss was no more than a quick peck, but it was my first kiss ever, and it took me all day to summon the courage to pucker my lips and kiss him. We went to our date at a cheap little theater and saw a chick flick, and we sat in the back and it was almost empty and it was so dark we could barely see each other. He put his arm around me and told me I was beautiful and that he loved me, and then we kissed, really kissed, tongue and everything, just like people talked about. I discovered I knew what to do without having to be taught, and it wasn't disgusting like I'd always thought it would be. He was more experienced than I was at kissing, and I can remember how he scraped his tongue gently against my teeth, his hand in my hair, our eyes closed.
Those were the days I fell head over heels for my first boyfriend. He was all I ever thought about. But that movie date was the peak of our relationship. As a matter of fact, it was both our first and last date together.
The great fall Us started slowly, but then picked up speed and curved abruptly into a downward spiral, dragging us both along for the ride.
It began around two weeks before Homecoming, when Josh texted me to say he couldn't go. His grades had been slipping, and grounding him from the dance was his punishment. I was crushed, but tried not to show it when I was with him, since he obviously felt guilty about it.
After that he started ignoring me.
At first there were texts I sent him that he ignored. The replies he did send were often curt, sometimes almost formal-sounding. I stopped getting his sweet, random texts telling me he loved me and that I was perfect. Then he began ignoring me in person. We no longer got together in the morning to sit on our bench or walk through the hallways hand in hand. Sometimes he would pass right by me without a word or even a glance. At soccer games there was rarely a hello or goodbye. Days would go by without any kind of communication between us. What was happening to my perfect boyfriend?
Finally I confronted him. I asked him why he was ignoring me, why our relationship had changed to abruptly. He responded nonchalantly, as if he had no idea what I was talking about. Confused and disgusted, I walked away and left him standing alone in the hallway.
Not five minutes later I received a text from him.
what was that all about?
Suddenly I felt furious. He knew exactly what it was about. I was the clueless one.
I replied promptly, asking him when the last time he had said “I love you” to me was. He said that he'd been busy, didn't even apologize. My hands gripped the phone tightly in anguish.
I asked if he knew what it was like to be ignored by someone you loved and not knowing why. He repeated that he'd been busy; again, no apology. Then he told me to give him some space, that I was distracting him, causing his grades to slip. As if it was my fault he was failing the ninth grade.
I felt something snap. It was probably a good thing we were only texting and not face to face, because I very well may have slapped him. I knew right then that he had changed, and that I would probably never know why; I also knew I had to end it between us. My fingers flew across the keyboard, hovered for a moment above the send button, and then pressed it with a feeling of certain finality.
so im wrecking your grades, am i? fine. now you can have all the space you want. bye josh.
By then class had started, and I had to bite my lip to hold in the angry tears. There was no way I was going to cry in front of my class and teacher. Someone asked me if I was alright. I said I was tired.
Shortly before second period, I got a reply from Josh. He was now Mr. Romantic again, telling me it was okay, to enjoy my friends and my life because he knew he'd screwed up his, to go to Homecoming and have a good time with another date.
At that moment the school announcements came on over the intercom, and they played the Song of the Day. At first I thought I was only imaging it. But the words flowed like honey through the speakers on the ceiling:
“And that was the day that I promised I'd never sing of love if it does not exist, but darlin you are the only exception, you are the only exception...”
Our song.
I couldn't hold back my emotions any longer. I put my face in my hands and cried. I didn't even care that everyone was staring at me. All I could think of was Josh, who had called me beautiful and perfect and repeated over and over his love to me, Josh, the boy with the smile that could light up a whole room, the boy I had loved. How could I possibly feel this sad if breaking up with him was the right thing to do?
I cried quietly, soaking my hands, making mascara run in black rivers down my cheeks. I was lucky, as my good friend Danielle happened to be sitting next to me at the time, and she put her arm around me and told me it was alright, not having the faintest idea as to why I was crying but just knowing I needed some comfort. I don't know precisely how long I cried, but the sobs were just beginning to fade to sniffles when the daily announcements concluded. Danielle let me soak the shoulder of her shirt in my tears, walked me to the bathroom to clean myself up, told me it was going to be okay. I whimpered that I'd made a mistake, but she said no, no, Josh didn't deserve me, I had done the right thing...
My phone buzzed.
Through bleary eyes I read the text. It was from Josh.
and i never said you were wrecking my grades. so dont accuse me of **** i didnt do.
I may never had moved on if not for that text. Although it ignited a fresh batch of tears, it confirmed what I already knew: Josh and I just weren't meant to be. Yes, he once had seemed the perfect boyfriend, the love of my life, but he had lied to me, just straight-out lied. He had said I'd been wrecking his grades, even though we both knew he'd been getting D's since long before me met me. So I sat there in the middle of the hallway, sobbing on Danielle's shoulder, and wondering how I could ever pick myself back up and move on.
I went to soccer practice that night, after some prompting from my mom. Josh acted as if he didn't know me, but that was okay with me. I saw the confused stares several girls were giving me, and I returned them with sad shrugs. They understood me, lowering their eyes in disappointment. Many had thought of us a “cute couple.”
I never found out why Josh had changed. I considered if he had been cheating on me, but, although he had certainly been rude to me, I didn't think he was that cruel. Perhaps he was just immature. In the end I decided I didn't care.
In total, our relationship lasted only one month. But if you come up to me and say the name of that month of that year, not so long ago, you will see a look of faint sadness come into my eyes, because, as I'd later discover, I did not fall for boys all that often, but when I did, I fell hard, and never forgot about them. That month will always have a special meaning to me, the birth and death of my first relationship, and it will never cease to bring back that song, that one song that will always be ours...
“Darlin, you are the only exception, you are the only exception...”