When Kelly was younger, her mother sat her down to give advice she never forgot.
"No man will ever put you first, and that is okay," her mother had said, smiling at her from across an island. "You have to be the one to put your own self first."
The advice hadn't really come from a good place. It'd been three months into a long argument her parents had been engaged in, weeks of them tiptoeing around each other's tempers and trying to keep it together in front of Kelly. Their voices would hush as soon as Kelly would walk into a room, tired eyes watching her with an even more fatigued smile.
They didn't know Kelly knew. They didn't know Kelly saw their sharp glares and the sheets set up on the couch late at night.
But she did. And she saw the burnt anger in her mother's eye as she nodded and smiled, kissing her cheek and running out to play again.
Relationships had never been Kelly's strong suit.
She's not ashamed to admit that she's been in a lot. Many have tried asking her if she does it out of a place of insecurity, if the need to be with another person and feel loved is so strong she can't live without it.
But Kelly's never been like that. Her relationships makes her happy, but she doesn't rely on them for happiness. She's just never been the type to shy away from an opportunity, always keeping open to the possibility that anyone and everyone can be the person she finds love with.
Most of her relationships ended the same way. She'd casually state something about herself that would rub them wrong, drive them insane, and drive them to upsetting her. It was never anything she said on purpose, either. It'd be a completely mundane fact, whether about a movie she liked or a book she'd read or a post she'd liked or a celebrity she'd admired. Her boyfriends would work themselves into a tizzy then lose it, telling her how stupid what she thought was.
She'd never apologized for being upset in turn. In her mind, it was a weird kind of test, to see if any of her boyfriends were decent enough people to actually apologize for upsetting her. So far, none of them had been.
Kelly's surprised when Jonah Simms ends up being the first boyfriend to apologize. His hand lingers on her hip as his mouth shapes an apology, and Kelly tells herself that this must be what love feels like.
So she tells him, late at night in the parking lot, with their hands swinging between them and the streetlights illuminate his face. And she tells herself he'll repeat it to her.
He doesn't. Of course he doesn't. Of course he doesn't see her when his infatuation with Amy Dubanowski blinds him to all but her.
She takes the bitter advice a bitter woman had told her to heart. She wonders if what had become a life philosophy for her had just been a throwaway comment for her mother.
Kelly spent year telling herself the comment was meant to indicate that Kelly's boyfriends would be terrible people. But watching as Jonah and Amy air out their private affairs globally, she wonders if the advice was really supposed to mean that Kelly would never have the worth to be someone's biggest priority.