Chapter 1
My name is Emma Swan. I am going to tell you a story that I have never told another person, except for in bits and pieces. No one else knows the details of this story. So here goes…
When I was a sophomore in high school, I found out that a boy named Neal Cassidy had a crush on my best friend, Ruby. Ruby sort of liked him back, so I told her to give me his cell phone number so I could find out more from him. It turned out that he'd had a huge crush on me since the beginning of freshman year. I wasn't too interested, but I'd never had a boyfriend, and Ruby didn't mind (she had a crush on plenty of other guys), so I decided to give him a shot. We started dating the June after sophomore year.
Things went pretty well. We went to homecoming together that fall, and even were crowned prince and princess at junior prom.
Fast forward to March of senior year. I found out that a very important awards ceremony I was invited to happened to be the same night as senior prom. I told Neal, and he said I should skip the awards ceremony and go to prom with him. I said no, and tried to explain what a big deal the ceremony was. He threatened to take another girl, Tamara, to the prom. A freshman, no less. I compromised and told him I would come late to prom after the ceremony. He was still unhappy, but seemed to be appeased for the time being.
Neal was in the school musical, as was the girl he threatened to take to prom, so they became close friends. He was constantly texting her, but every time I asked, he refused to show me the texts. Neal was acting very distant as well, so I was always suspicious. I could always see through his lies, but I never had enough proof to confront him on it. I could see his feelings for Tamara. He even texted her during class.
Then one day, at the end of April, Tamara's best friend came up to me, and told me that Neal hadn't exactly been faithful to me. I told her that I suspected something, but asked her what happened. All she knew was that Neal and Tamara had kissed once. I confronted Neal about it, he denied everything. A few days later, Tamara came up to me during my study hall. She showed me screenshots of text conversations between her and Neal. Finally, I had enough proof. I asked her to send them to me, so she did. Maybe she finally felt enough guilt that she wanted to help me. Maybe she was just trying to get me to break up with Neal so that she could be with him. I don't know. Anyway, I showed the pictures to Neal, and he finally admitted the whole thing. I found out most of the details (at least I think I did), but couldn't talk to him for the rest of the day after that. Later that evening, I texted him, and our conversation went something like this:
E: I can't believe you.
N: I'm so sorry, it didn't mean anything
E: How can you say that? You told her you loved her!
N: I didn't mean it
E: Then why would you say it? You never say anything you don't mean
N: I don't know
E: I can't believe this Neal. I can't be with you anymore. I should just leave
N: No! Please don't leave me :'(
E: Why shouldn't I? You cheated on me
N: Because we've been together almost two years. I don't want to lose that.
E: Maybe you should've thought of that before you cheated.
N: I know. I was stupid. But I want to be with you Emma
E: You need to tell her it's over then
N: I already did
E: I want to see you do it
N: Fine
E: Good
The next day, I tried to act as if nothing had happened. I was my normal, smiley self, but inside the betrayal was eating away at me. "Don't forget to tell Tamara it's over," I told Neal.
"I already did. I don't want to break her heart," he said.
I couldn't believe my ears. "Her heart? What about my heart? You broke my heart pretty good."
"I know; I just don't think the extra confrontation is necessary. I already told you I'm choosing you, and I told her it's over. Isn't that enough?"
I decided that it wasn't worth the fight, and that fighting wouldn't help our relationship improve like we wanted it to, so I just let that one go. The rest of the school year went by mostly normally, though there was only a month and a half left for the seniors. I never told anyone about what had happened, and neither did Neal. He said it would be easier to repair the relationship if other people weren't judging us. For some reason, I believed him. I also didn't want other people to know, because I thought they would think that I had been a bad girlfriend and had pushed Neal away. That's what he implied, anyway.