“You never talk to me,” she would say. “You never say anything at all.” The truth is, he did talk. He talked all the time. He could talk for hours about camera and movies and games, about his friends and about his family. He could really talk about anything, except for her.

“You never talk to me,” she’d say, as they would lay down in the dark, entangled in each other’s arms. “You never tell me why you picked me, out of everyone else.” She always wanted to know, when she was flat and drab and he had the most charisma of anyone she had ever met. “I’ve just never thought about it like that,” he would say, hoping that would tide her over just for a little while.”

It’s not like he was lying; he never really did think about the way her hair fell over her back when she laughed, or how she’d try so hard to be serious but couldn’t hold a straight face for more than five seconds. It never occurred to him that she’d pretend to be cold just so he could hold her, or that she nearly sprinted just to catch up to him in the school hallways. “Why did I pick her?” he would always think, scanning over every memory of her loud, boisterous laugh (the type that made everyone around laugh too), her crooked, never-perfect-but-always-adorable smile, and the way she slept in class but still got straight A’s. Her clothes never matched, like all of the other girls, but she found a way to look put together. She claimed to have her life in order- and he believed it, sometimes- but she could break down and cry at any moment.

He didn’t know why he picked her. In fact, he barely even knew how to describe her. How could you describe someone who made it so hard to breathe when you were around them?

Sometimes, she’d catch him off guard. She’d say something like “Oh my God, all I do is make mistakes. I’m a horrible person,” (it happened quite often) and he would bounce back, saying “No you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met,” which caused her to go red in the face and look away. It scared him, really, when he let out feelings like that. He was supposed to be tough and nonchalant and he was never, under any circumstances, supposed to show such an explicit display of his feelings, which, of course was the only thing she really wanted.

“You never talk to me,” she’d say when they were at dinner. “I want to know how you feel.”

She already knew how he felt about a lot of things, like Disney Movies (“lame”) trigonometry (“actually impossible”) and The Shining (“there’s just a more complicated meaning”, she never understood that) she wanted to know how he felt about life. About her.

“Well,” he’d say, while looking away, “I like you, you’re nice to me.” He’d turn back and face her, trying as hard as he could to look confident. He didn’t want to even begin realizing the thoughts in the back of head, about how she lit up a room and carried the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. She always tried to make him smile, and always asked if he was okay, even when it was more than obvious that he was. She only smiled when she was looking right at him, which made him go even crazier in the head. One day, he thought to himself. I’ll tell her. But I can’t, not now. How could he tell her when she made his brain go into overdrive, so hard that tit would just crash?

Crash. That’s what he mainly did. It had come down to a science; he wouldn’t think at all and sleeping came easy, and stayed as long as it needed. Not thinking about her was the better, that way he had nothing to worry about. Like how there could very possibly be no future and there would have to be a goodbye. And how her hair fell over her back when she laughed…

“You never talk to me,” she said, for what might’ve been the last time, “you never tell me why you picked me, out of everyone else.” “I’ve just never thought about it like that,” he said, forcing a smile for what was definitely the last time. ?