I didn't want to be the first one to let go. Yeah, it seems rather stupid, to keep on remembering, hoping, loving, after the other person was long over it. People usually think it is shameful, sad. Not me, I think it is respectful, of myself and others.

Either that, or I'm just trying to make myself feel better. Less of a sucker. After all, I've never had another girlfriend after you.

The thing is, however, that I have all these memories and experiences that I just don't want to forget. Ever. In fact, when I am particularly weak (I mean, wistful), I try to remember about what we have been through.

I remember when I first met you, on your kitchen. The polite, clipped smile you gave me, due to the stress you were subject to. The goofy look in my face, because I thought you were the prettiest girl I've ever seen. I still think that.

I had to fight my best friend of a whole life for you. He didn't like for us to be together, overtly because of some made-up bro code that I thought absolutely ridiculous, and judging by what I wore back then, it was saying something.

At the time, I thought he was afraid you were encroaching on his life. Friendship jealousy, I guess. It is a real thing, I swear. I mean, you were denying him much of the freedoms he enjoyed being the top dog in the house. He wasn't as eloquent back then. Neither was I, to be fair.

After a physical fight (which I totally won), and a scathing dressing-down from you, he relented, and we got blissfully together.

I was fucking happy.

I got to be honest, though, it wasn't perfect. It was tough, really tough. I was so inexperienced, I mean, I've liked girls before and I've kissed some (OK, one, at some party), but I've never dated. Not even casually.

All day long, every day, I stood next to him. It's hard to resist the instinct to compare, like it is hard not to read a text in front of you, and I usually fell short. I was sporty, but not that sporty, I was handsome, but not quite, I was cool, but not really. I was smarter and kinder, but who cares?

It made it hard for me to stand out, be my own self and attract girls that I was attracted to.

You've noticed back then, but let me clear that out definitively. I didn't know what I was doing.

The funny thing was, you knew. I don't know if you had dated before, but you were always so decisive, tempestuous, self-assured. You knew what you wanted, and I tried to rise to the occasion, but I always fell short, and I couldn't understand, even when you explained it to me.

It wasn't like that with him, nor with any of my other friends. To me, it felt unreasonable, like I was being cheated out of the pleasure they enjoyed. Especially, I felt stupid and naïve, like I was again the lesser one.

Then, it also was the problem of stress. We were both in that terrible period of our lives, our awkward years, when everything was dramatic and intense and confusing.

I had the advantage of having two parents happily married and four sisters with whom I had little conflict, of having lived in the same sleepy suburb my whole life and with friends I knew inside and out.

You… You were fucked. Parental divorce, absentee parents, responsibility over your younger siblings, a drastic move, and a teenaged sociopath hellbent in making your life miserable. Not to mention a personality that, while I loved back then and love still, was very alienating to teenagers.

It was difficult being the one to whom you looked to alleviate the weight, and you needed that desperately. I couldn't handle it.

So, we broke up. We couldn't deal with each other. We continued friends, though, we continued to hang out.

I regretted the break-up in a week.

Life continued, though. You seemed fine, over it like a snap. Hundreds of break-ups did that to a person, I just never understood them as a break-up, to me that was the first time. Ever, actually.

Yet, I soldiered on. Every Wednesday afternoon, we would hang out, have a milkshake on a joint out of hand, in the other side of town. Like we were doing something wrong.

I loved the feeling. Something out of Casablanca, a forbidden romance in a faraway land. It was something just for us, the very opposite of our relationship, that always had to account for three people or more.

There, we would talk. Just talk, tell each other about our week, what was going on.

At the beginning, you would talk mostly about him. All the time, you would just complain about him. Over time, though, you kinda stopped talking about him so much. Other stuff became more important, and he wasn't as much of a terrorist to you.

I got to tell you, I've never did much over high school. I went to parties and got drunk, and tried all the stupid shit teens did, but I never went far with a girl. Just some kissing and first base.

I lost my virginity to a call girl in freshman year in college. Yeah, not my greatest hour.

Anyways, we finally graduated, and went our separate ways, but we continued to talk. Every Wednesday, over milkshake. God bless the cellphone.

Over the time you were at Queens, however, you began talking about him again, but differently. It stopped being so much of complaints, and more something endearing.

You'd talk about life alone together, about your rituals, what he was doing at the university, about his movies, and you'd say it with such admiration. I've never thought you would ever recognize value in him, much less out of your own volition.

I hoped I didn't suggest as much of a secret when we started our milkshake meetings. I wished I was decisive enough to face his mockery, my own shame of being stuck where I was, being the captain that went down with the ship.

I wished, once again, that I had stuck with the three-people relationship thing, because then I would have laid claim, and everything wouldn't have slipped from my fingers so fast.

The thing is, I thought it was the only way I could have you around, close to me, so I made it work. There was nothing else I could do, really.

Sooner than I could keep up, you and him were dating, and I was left biting the dust.

And now… I cannot do this anymore. I can't keep it up. Yet, I'll never say it, I'll never just let go.

I guess I'm just chained to you. This is it for me.

You could have been marrying me.