It was a crush back then.
A simple awe over the other's constant smile and cheer.
He heard that many people worried about some of the people Antonio surrounded himself with as they could possibly hurt the happy go lucky Spaniard.
Antonio never seemed to be sad or pissed off over anything like that or those people that others worried about.
He was always smiling inside school; it was rumored that he had no problems of his own since he always seemed to be happy.
Lovino admired that cheery Spaniard for all of these qualities.
He didn't really know him back then, and now that he did, it was too late.
A few months ago, Antonio had committed suicide after years of depression.
No one had known that he was depressed or that he cried himself to sleep every night.
No one knew that behind that smile that they adored was pain.
Antonio had suffered all of that alone as he never looked towards someone to ease the pain.
If you looked past his cheery smile, you saw that it was fragile and was not always there, bright upon his face.
When you got closer to him, you saw that he had more emotions than constant cheer.
The problem is or was that no one looked past that cheery smile that hid his pain from the world.
They had mistakenly thought that he had no pain of his own as they bombarded him with their own pain, and now it was too late to apologize to him.
Lovino stared at the grave before kissing the hard rock that separated them.
He pulled away from the stone to see Emma waiting for him, and he wouldn't make the same mistake with her not after realizing what he'd helped lead on by not being there for the one person who needed him the most and was always there for him and for everyone else.