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She hoped it wouldn't, but she knew this was going to happen at some point. High school wasn't the time or the place to believe they would last. She wasn't delusional. Not about this. Not about her.
But it didn't take away the stinging tears in her eyes or that really tight feeling in her chest, like she's run far too much after practice and she can't quite catch her breath.
She thought she had an idea, but she was never sure which hurt worse: to be the one leaving or to be the one being left behind. As she sat in the locker room with a bracelet in her hand identical to the one around her wrist, she decided then and there that being left behind had to hurt worse because she was sure nobody wanted to be stuck with the broken pieces.
She released a shake breath and she slumped down. She went over the words in her head and she wanted to pretend she didn't understand; that she didn't hear the string of words that would break her. But they echoed off the walls clearly and she understood every single one.
I'm sorry. I can't. I still love you.
The problem about having loved instead of not at all was that the love became a thing of the past, just a memory to bring up when you were drunk. The promises of always and forever lay forgotten by the wayside.
She thought maybe things would be different. She wasn't fooling herself, like everyone else assumed, but she hoped that this one would count. Most people were cynical about high school and high school romances, but it never hurt to think that they would beat the odds; that they were the exception; that they would make it because she loved her. She had that thought too but it was fleeting because she had hoped. Sometimes she even prayed, thought someone or something out there would listen to her and let her have this love.
She knew she wasn't much of anything, not really, but she believed in that. In them.
For as long as she could remember, she had loved her. She also knew that even as she sat alone for a long time, that she was loved back. It was the one thing she knew for certain and believed in more than the sun rising or the moon shining. Especially from the beginning.
She sat by herself on the bench, felt the suffocating hold of loneliness fall on her. Her shoulders slumped dejectedly knowing that she wasn't going to come back.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.