He'd asked her out more times than she could remember. It had gone on for years. Neither of them remembered when it started, it was just a blur of requests and denials. She wondered why he kept at it after so long. Why did he make his presence known every second of every day? "Hey Lily, will you go out with me?" he asked. "NO!" she said automatically. Then she wished she hadn't declined. In that moment, she realized why he'd always pestered her about going out with him. It was because he loved her, and knew that deep down, she loved him back. He was fighting and hanging on as much for her as for himself, and all of a sudden, she loved him for it. "YES!" she wanted to scream, but out of pride she kept her mouth closed. "There's always next time," she reasoned. But there wasn't a next time. He never asked her out again. He never said a word to her about them. He treated her like a best friend. She tried to ask him with her eyes, she pleaded silently with him to ask her, to forgive her past blindness. But he didn't hear her. He never came back, he'd let go of all hope that she would ever openly love him the way he loved her. She couldn't understand his stubbornness of forgetting the love he had so tenderly kindled. But he did, he left it alone and moved on in his life. They both grew up, but neither married.
They grew old, and then she got a message, saying that he was dieing, and had asked for her. When she arrived at his bedside, he smiled and said, "Red, I never told you, but I love you, and always have. I never married, because there could never be anyone else for me but you. I just wanted you to know that, before I go…to this day, Red, I love you with all my heart." And then he passed away. She never had a chance to tell him that she loved him too. He died thinking she didn't care for him that way and it tore at her heart until the day she died. Before she died, she'd made arrangements for her tombstone to read -
Red
1969 - 2070
I pass from this world with hope that somehow he will know… know how I've always loved him, and how I always will.
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