Enclosed part 13 (short story)

"Jamie?"

"Hm?" Mitch was quiet for a minute before saying, quietly, "I'm sorry." I turned to him, surprised. "For what?" He looked me straight in the eyes, "Leaving you." And he meant it. I could see in his eyes, he meant it. After Mitch, my love life had been kind of a joke. People always got mad at me for breaking the dating and friendship rules-stealing guys from friends, leaving them for other guys, leaving them for another girl's guy again...it was a full circle. It was just me moving through a crowd of people, trying desperately to hook onto one of them, to hold them and love them, but eventually falling away from them, leaving them hating me and me regretting. I never felt about anyone the way I had felt about Mitch. And we had gone out in ninth grade-before we really knew what love was, before we could even drive ourselves to our dates. But somehow, we had connected in such a way that it was almost unreal-when I told people about how I felt about him, they didn't believe me. They said I was too young to know what love was. And for a while, I thought maybe they were right. But then I experienced "high school love", the kind where you feel completely and utterly attached to someone, where you can't stop thinking about them, and then once you get them, for a while you enjoy it. But then you lose interest. Then someone else catches your eye. I experienced that plenty of times, and even though I told myself it wasn't true, I knew that what I had felt with Mitch had been different. He didn't want anything from me. I didn't want anything from him. We just wanted to be together...to make each other happy. When he broke up with me, I didn't protest, because I wanted, more than anything else, for him to be happy. I cried for hours on end when I found out about his cancer, but I kept a happy face around him 24/7 because I didn't want to make it worse for him. I didn't cry to him, begging him to come back to me, to let me spend at least what was left of his life with him, though I couldn't stand the thought of being without him. I didn't have my friends tell him what a jerk he was for leaving me. I didn't say the classic, "This is hurting me, too, you know." When he called us off, I just left. When I saw him in the hallways, I smiled at him and kept walking. When I was assigned the seat next to him in class, I worked with him. When he asked another girl to the dance, and I bumped into them with my date, I smiled and walked away. I wanted to tell him how much all this hurt me. I wanted to try to get him back. But I didn't. Because I loved him...and I wanted what was best for him, more than what was the most pleasing for me.

© 2010