Never Had a Chance

This is a story of thwarted love. The antagonist is time.

 

 

***

It was a typical Sunday morning in that little desert I call my home. The old folks were piling into their old cars to make their usual trip from church to the local diner. The sun was just then making its way over the horizon, and the air had already begun to cook. It was always hot. The type of dry heat that makes your lips crack. Ignoring the beams of sun streaming through the trees, I pushed open the white picket fence and made my way up the cement path.  One, two, three steps is all it took me to reach the door; That old door with flaking white paint. I turned my head to look at the lawn and saw that it was dead, like everything in this dammed town. It was turning out to be a typical Sunday, nothing out of the ordinary. I turned back and knocked three times on the door.

I had moved out from my mother’s house when I was a teenager, like most smart teenagers will do. And for the same reason: To save what little sanity I had left. It seems to be a natural occurrence in life for two people to grow tired of one another after a certain amount of time. And that’s exactly what happened with my mother and I. If I had grown up under my father’s roof, my story would be quite different I would think. I might have grown tired of him, and moved in with my mother. And maybe the events in my life would have gone differently. Maybe… Maybe. Regardless of what could have happened, what did happen is that I got away from my mother before we killed one another. And if there is anything I’ve learned from life, it’s that all people ever need is a little time apart. And this has proved to be true. Because a mere 2 years after moving out my relationship was mended with my mother, and I now visit her every Sunday morning for breakfast.

I knocked three times on the door, and then let myself in. The house was dark inside. The broken drapes blocked more sun that they were supposed to. I stomped my black boots three times against the wood floor to break loose the dirt stuck in the soul. The house looked as it always had, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. How deceiving it was. The unused brown couch was a breeding ground for loose cat hair. Hundreds of flies lay dead and forgotten under the window sill, collecting dust like forgotten memories. I walked through the living room and headed towards the kitchen. The floor through the living room was coated with days old dog urine and cat hair. With every step I took my boots would stick to the floor and be pried off again. Luckily I made it to the kitchen in three big steps. Once there I could see that the oven light was on and a pizza was cooking, but no mother. The stove was filled with pans crusted with pizza sauce. Everything in the kitchen wore a light coat of flour. The only free space in the entire kitchen was a small portion of counter between the toaster and coffee pot. And that’s where I set up camp.

“Hello Hello Hello?” I said aloud. But no one answered.

Thinking back to how it all went down, I can’t really recall whether I was initially concerned about the well being of my mother. For all I knew, she could have been dead in her room. Maybe a small thought crossed my mind at one point to go search her out in the house, but was overruled by another part of my brain that had to follow protocol. And that protocol started with coffee.

I turned to the coffee pot and put in three level scoops of that black dust. The aroma of caramel-coffee filled my nose. I grabbed the pot and walked over to the sink to fill it with water. As I did, I nearly jumped at the sight of my mom entering through the door leading down to the den.

“Hey honey.” She said.

“Oh my god, you scared me!” I said. “Why were you down in the den?” I asked.

She didn’t even make eye contact with me, but rather kept walking past me towards the bathroom.

“Oh I was just playing cards with Chloe.” She said.

“Who?” I asked.

“She’s a coworker’s daughter.” She explained. And that’s all I could hear before she shut the bathroom door. Everything after that was muffled.

I walked over to the bathroom door, with the coffee pot half filled in my hand and the water still running from the faucet.

“A coworker’s daughter? You didn’t tell me there was gonna be company today.” I said.

The faucet was running. “Oh it’s not like that honey, she much too young for you. I’m just watching after her while her parents have a night alone. You know how those young parents are always going out to movies and such. Have to find babysitter, can’t take kids out with them on movie night. When I was a new parent, I took you kids everywhere with me. Dressed you up in nice button-up shirts and crisp pants, combed your hair…” She went on rambling. She had a tendency to go on and on about our childhood. It’s an Italian thing.

I had to cut her off, the water was still running. “Ok ok ok mom, I got it.” She finally stopped talking and all there was to be heard was the sound of the kitchen faucet.

Before that day, I never liked when people would come to have breakfast with us on Sundays. I always felt like I couldn’t quite act myself around strangers; because at first, people don’t understand me.

When I was about seven years old my mom finally noticed something about me that I had seen all along. At the age of four it could already be noticed that my brother and I led very different lifestyles. While his room would be decorated with scattered clothes and toys exploding out of the toy boxes, bed unmade and laundry basket overflowing, mine would always be in ship shape. There was never a single thing out of place. Always the bed would be made, and toys sorted by color in the boxes. At eight years old my brother was becoming interested in basketball and teasing girls. Whereas I, age six, was more interested in chess and the algorithms of the Rubik’s Cube. Then finally, at the age of seven, I was taken to the doctors for a thing my mom called “Very odd behavior”. I had developed a tendency to do things in sets of threes: Snooze my alarm three times, no more, no less. Wash my hands three times before every meal; three meals a day, no more, no less. Three steps from my bedroom to the bathroom, three showers a day. I’d clap my hands three times at random points in the day. “Very odd behavior.” That isn’t what the doctor called it though. It sounded more like “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” My mom denied it at first, and then cried about it later. As for me, I already knew what I had. I had researched it before the doctor visit. So it didn’t shock me the least bit when he told me what was wrong with me. I think I might have amazed both the doctor and my mother with my reaction, because they proceeded to lecture my about the disorder for the following hour, thinking that I didn’t understand it.

My mom is the type of Italian mother who is always trying to find her sons a nice woman to marry. And she does a pretty good job at it. Every girl my brother had dated since he was fourteen years, he met through my mom. Of course all she had to do was bring them to the house and it was over. They would instantly melt once they got a good look at my better looking brother. With his toned body and love for everything manly I practically became invisible at that breakfast table. Luckily for me though he finally got tied down by an equally attractive woman, and had stopped coming to breakfast around one year ago. At that time I had just turned eighteen and was looking forward to finally having a fair chance at meeting a nice girl, with my mom’s help of course. It worked out pretty well at first too. With my brother out of the picture all of my mom’s focus was on me. She would talk me up so good to those unsuspecting ladies, of course leaving out the one aspect of my personality that could ruin everything. And it eventually did ruin everything. The only two relationships I managed to forge with my mom’s help drew out the same way: Initial attraction to my dark hair and green eyes, innocent curiosity towards my cleaning habits, outright shock at my doing everything in three’s, and finally the “I think we should just be friends” speech. And in both cases I never felt sad or depressed afterwards, only frustrated. After all, I only have three chances to get it right.

My mom had finally stopped rambling through the bathroom door. I looked down at the coffee pot and noticed a black ring on the inside of the pot had formed from old coffee. It occurred to me that the pot probably had not been cleaned in quite a while. Then it occurred to me that the kitchen faucet was still running! I turned my body left and made three huge leaps towards the kitchen sink, swerving around the island and practically slipping on arrival. I slammed my hand down on the faucet to stop the water, and looked at the startled young girl to my right.

Her eyes were very wide and staring at me, head tilted slightly to one side in amusement. Oh her eyes, so very very blue. Very blue. Blue diamond shards captured in shiny white balls. So mesmerizing were her eyes. They stunned me like a tazer. Ever nerve in my body shot off like fireworks. My mouth filled with cotton, and my eyes too went wide. Her body was short but those eyes were so very big and loud. She could have never said a word to me, and those eyes alone would have crushed me to dust with their beauty. It was almost too much to handle. Her dirty blonde hair cascaded down around her shoulders and those big blue eyes, appearing like golden spiders web in the beam of sunlight gleaming through the window pane. She had on a purple tank-top shirt, and white short shorts. The tank top was too large, and the shorts were way too short; the types of shorts little girls wear when they don’t know any better. So short that when she turned away the part where the leg meets the butt could be seen. But she wasn’t turned away from me. She was right there, staring me in the eyes. The faucet had stopped and the room fell silent. I had to say something, anything to break that silence.

I cleared my throat. “Oh, uh, hi. Whats your name?”

“Chloe.” She said while leaning back against the kitchen table. Her hands were cupped neatly behind her back, possibly holding on to the table.

“Chloe huh? That’s a pretty name.” I said, clearing my throat once more. And it was at that exact moment that it occurred to me I might have just attempted flirting with a girl who looked very young; Much too young for me. I could feel the blood rushing its way up to my face so I averted my gaze away from hers, and began to fill the coffee pot once more. And still to this day I am uncertain whether she giggled at my compliment, or the way my face turned apple red and my hands fumbled with the faucet.

I filled the pot to the top with water and continued over to the coffee machine.

“What are you doing? She said as she sauntered over my way.

“Making coffee,” I said, “do you want some?”

“No thanks, I don’t like coffee. That stuff’s gross.” She said.

“Who doesn’t like coffee?” I said with a smirk.

“I don’t.” she said.

“Well what do you like then?” I asked.

“Kool-aid.” She said.

Once again the thought crossed my mind; Just how old is this girl? I had heard my mom say that she was too young for me, but what age is that? I had just barely turned nineteen at the time.

“Kool-aid is good, good good.” I coughed, trying to temporarily hide my problems. “Do you go to school? What grade are you in?” She was so close to me at that point, looking at me carefully pour the water in the machine. And judging by her height I would’ve said she was older than what she told me.

“Ill be fourteen in eight months.” She said as if she was trying to convince me of something. Almost like a child desperately pleading with her mother to let her have desert by saying “But, I ate all of my vegetables!” That tone that says ‘is that good enough?’ I could feel her big eyes staring up at my mouth. My face felt hot and I could feel beads of sweat forming under my hair.

I turned my head and looked her in the eyes. “So you’re thirteen?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders and simply said, “Yeah.”

Our eyes stayed fixed on each other. I couldn’t look away and I couldn’t think of anything to say. The room fell silent and all there was to be heard was my rapid heartbeat. Time seemed to stop. My gaze switched back and forth from her eyes and her lips; so soft and plump, slightly shiny from the remnants of lip gloss. They were slightly parted as if she weren’t done talking. I stared at those lips forever. My mind began to wander; I thought back to the previous two girls I had become close to. The times I should’ve gone in for the kiss, but never clearly saw the signal for the go-ahead. I began to think maybe that was the reason it didn’t work out. Maybe it wasn’t my tics that scared them off, maybe I had just missed the ever so crucial first kiss moment. Maybe I’m about to miss it right now. “Should I go in for a kiss?” I asked myself. “No, not yet.” My mind said back. “But what if this is the moment?” I asked. “You just met her.” My mind said. I was getting confused, and we were still staring at each other. I had no clue how much time had passed. This is it, this is the moment. Now or never I thought.

Just then the bathroom door opened and Chloe looked away. My mother came out and started talking about something with Chloe. They both began to move about the kitchen; my mother fishing for pots and pans, and Chloe trailing behind her. My mother may have been trying to teach Chloe the methods of good cooking, but I couldn’t hear. The sound of my heart was beating loud in my ears. I stood still, staring at her ghost in front of me. For Chloe it seemed as though nothing drastic had just happened. The previous moment meant nothing. She was able to shrug it off and move around the kitchen, whereas I was stuck frozen in place thinking about what exactly just happened.

I finished brewing the coffee without moving from where I stood, and poured myself a cup. The steam was billowing out from the mug into my face. The aroma filled my nose and calmed my nerves. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and turned so that my back was facing the counter. I opened my eyes and saw that Chloe was standing next to my mother and facing the stove. I exhaled and Chloe turned to look at me. The second she looked me in the eyes my nerves shot off again. I looked away instantly. My mind started racing once more and I forgot how hot the coffee was. I lifted the mug to my lips and took a sip, burning my tongue on impact.

“S**t.” I said under my breath.

She giggled.

I looked up and saw her smiling face, and got a smile myself. I took another drink and burnt my tongue once more.

“Damn it…” I cursed under my breath.

Her hands came up and covered her mouth as she began to laugh. It was such a lovely laugh, and such a terrible crime to cover that smile up. Her laughing filled me with warmth. I didn’t want it to stop. I needed it like a drug. There was only one way to keep it going: Burn myself again. I had to do it to hear that laugh. I had to do it again period. Burn once, burn twice… I took the last drink.

“God damn…” I said. My tongue was thoroughly burnt now.

Her soft laughter broke out loud and her hands covered her entire face for a moment. I hated that moment of not seeing her face. Then, the moment passed and her hands slowly moved down below her eyes and covered her smiling mouth. I looked at her and came to this realization: I would burn myself a million more times, just to see that smile.

 

 

 

In the weeks following that day, I began to look forward to my Sunday visits more and more. My mom was taking a liking to Chloe, and suggested that she was welcome at all times. Her parents more than agreed to let her come over every Sunday; after all that meant more time alone for them. Soon the Sunday visits turned into Saturday and Sunday, and eventually Friday as well. Chloe was becoming the daughter that my mother never had.

My visits on Sunday became longer and longer. After visiting in the morning for breakfast and coffee, I would drop back by around 9pm after work. For the first two weekends I did this, I would only stay until my mother felt it time to go to sleep. But on the third weekend I decided to stay over after my mom had gone to bed. That was the weekend that everything changed… but I’ll get to that later. The first two weekends are the ones that I like to remember.

On the first weekend visit I had dropped by on Saturday night. Chloe was still somewhat shy when it came to conversation, but then again so was I. We began by playing simple card games like speed and go-fish, all of which I let her win at. She would laugh at how bad she thought I was at card games, and I would just smile. I knew things that she didn’t. Every time her hand flew down to place a card in speed, mine would always be a second too late and land atop hers. She would tease me and call me slow. Little did she know that my hands were fast enough to solve a Rubik’s cube in less than ten seconds, and if I had wanted it that way, I could’ve had my had on and off of that card pile twice before she even saw me move. But I didn’t want it that way. I wanted to feel her small soft hand in mine. And I wanted to hear her laugh when I would say “Dang it!” I got exactly what I wanted every time, and she never knew the difference.

On the second weekend Chloe had begun to warm up to me quite a bit. Besides seeing her the previous Saturday night and Sunday morning, I had dropped by my mother’s house every day of the week. It was summer and Chloe had no school, lucky for me. It was a Saturday night again and we began by playing some simple video games. I had just come from working and I still wore my uniform. It was my turn to play and she handed me the controller. Being the obsessive person I am, I tried to get a perfect score on the game while sneaking peaks at her in the corner of my eye. She was focusing on the game and never noticed me noticing her. She sat on the edge of the couch leaning her elbows atop her knees. Occasionally she would bite her lip to, what I assume, keep them plump and pink. She was wearing low cut shorts again. The fidgeting combined with the friction of the couch was causing the shorts to recede up her thighs. The shorts became so bundled up that they resembled that of a bikini bottom. My face began to turn red. She didn’t notice me still; her focus was on the game. I noticed that color of purple underwear showing. I could feel beads of sweat forming under my hair. I looked at her face to see if she had caught me staring, but it seemed as though the only thing on her mind was the game. I looked back down at her exposed white thighs. They were swaying back and forth, knees softly rubbing up against each other. I wanted to be one of those knees.

“Ahhh!” She screamed.

I jumped out of my skin. I had been caught! My entire body tensed up, and I quickly looked to the television.

“You crashed.” She said.

The television read “game over.” I had looked away for too long and lost the game. But I had not been caught after all. My heart was thumping under my skin and the sweat was running down my temple as I stood up and restarted the game. For the remainder of the night I did not look over at Chloe, scared that I might actually get caught. Instead I focused all of my attention on the game. At times I swore I could feel her looking at me from the other couch, but I resisted looking back. That night I got the high score on the game.

 

The third, and final, weekend is the most confusing of all. Like the previous week, I had stopped by each day to visit with Chloe. And each day was better than the last. We were becoming very close friends. She was beginning to understand all of my inside jokes, and we could sit there in the silence without feeling awkward. Early in the week, around Tuesday, she had finally noticed my tic of doing everything in three’s.

Upon entering my mother’s house on Tuesday, I immediately took three giant steps inside without looking up. After I landed my third step I looked up to see Chloe standing two feet in front of me, staring me dead in the eyes. I practically leaped back from surprise.

“You do that a lot.” She said.

My smile dropped. “Do what a lot?” I asked.

“Do things three times all the time.” She said.

I swallowed hard. “Oh, yeah…” I said.

She shrugged her shoulders and pursed her lips and said “It’s no biggie.” Then she walked down the stairs into the den, and began playing with the cards.

I stood there with a blank expression. There was a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach; something I had never felt before. My whole body was warm and my palms began to sweat. My heart was beating fast again, but it was different this time. I didn’t feel nervous or confused or rejected at all. On the contrary, I felt accepted for the first time in my life. Chloe was the first girl I had ever gotten this close to that wasn’t completely turned off by my problems. She didn’t know it, but she had just put the final nail in my coffin. The old me died that day, and a better, more awake me emerged. I smelled the pollen in the air for the first time. The heat from the sun penetrated my skin like it never had before. Things began to taste better, and I awoke more energized each day after that. I was in love with a thirteen year old girl named Chloe.

For the rest of that week I had done nothing but thought about Chloe. She was the only thing on my mind and in my dreams. I was obsessed. By the time Sunday night rolled around I was ecstatic to get to my moms house. I rushed away from my work and headed straight for there, not bothering to go home first and clean up.

I arrived at the house around 9pm. My mother was just then deciding to go to sleep, a little earlier than usual. I told her goodnight and headed to the den, closing the door behind me. Chloe was sitting on the couch watching the television and didn’t notice me enter the room. I slowly snuck up from behind the couch and gently tickled her neck. She jumped up and let out a small scream, like a squeaking sound, then turned and looked at me.

She smiled and said “You scared me!”

I laughed three times. “Hi Chloe.” I said

“Hi.” She said in a soft voice. Her cheeks were filled with blush, I could tell she was beginning to have a crush on me.

We stayed up practically all night playing cards, and video games, and just talking. It was perfect. I got to caress her hands in go-fish, and hear her laugh when I would purposely fail at the video game. We drew pictures of stick figures and mountains and showed each other, and laughed at our crude drawings. I would tease her about her age, and she would call me ‘old man’ with her hands on her hips. At around 2am she took a stick of chalk and climbed behind me on the couch; I was forced to sit on the edge. She sat very close behind me on her knees and began to draw on my work shirt. At first I began to panic at the thought of a dirty, chalk covered work shirt. I could never wear it to work again, my boss would never allow it. “How many times will I have to wash it” I thought to myself. “Three times, three times, three times…” the thought was infecting my mind. I had to tell her to stop, before she ruined my shirt. But before I could say anything, she put her hand against my shoulder to steady her canvas. The second her hand touched me, my head was void of all other thoughts. A slow electric current pulsed through her hand into my body. I became hyper-aware of the existence of my shoulder. My mind and my body melted beneath her touch. I closed my eyes. The sounds of the video game disappeared. All of my focus was on the motion of her hand and the chalk. Time slowed to a stop, and so did my heart. The beating slowed down and became deeper, louder thuds in my chest. I could feel myself falling asleep under her hypnotic touch. But it couldn’t last forever. She withdrew her hand from my shoulder and the room became loud again with the sound of the video game.

She giggled. “Look what I drew.”

I stood up and took off my shirt to see what she had drawn. It read “Old Man!!”

“Oh, how funny.” I said, and laughed as well.

When I turned to face her behind me on the couch, I saw that she was staring at my bare chest.  Her face was slowly beginning to blush and her eyes were scanning my chest and stomach. I stood there for a second and didn’t realize what was happening. I thought that I was the one who stared at her, not the other way around. But here she was, staring right at me at not even acknowledging the fact that I had caught her. When I felt that I had been caught, I would stop staring, but she did not. She seemed hypnotized by me, unable to stop staring. Oh how young and childish she was, not knowing the rudeness of staring. She began to chew her lip. I coughed to get her attention, and she looked up at me with those big blue eyes. I slowly sat down on the couch right beside her without looking away. Our faces were so close. I could smell her strawberry lip gloss. She looked down at my lips. My heart began to pound behind my ribs. She leaned forward, put both of her hands against my bare chest and pushed me away as she hopped off of the couch. Then she ran around the coffee table, sat down on the other couch and began writing in silence with a smile on her red face.  I slowly pulled my shirt back over my head and turned to face her. We sat in silence for a good ten minutes while she wrote something on her sketch pad. I sat and thought to myself about what had just happened. My head and my heart were in the middle of an epic battle. On one hand, I knew that Chloe was much too young for me. Society would never understand let alone, allow such a relationship to be present. But on the other hand, I was in love with her.

After the day I learned how old Chloe was, I went home and researched what a pedophile was exactly. From an early age I was raised to believe that pedophiles are sick, thirty-five year old men who prey on little girls at school crossings. They are overweight and hairy, and have no morals. A pedophile is a sexually fucked-up human being with no feelings or emotions, I was told. They are the absolute scum of the earth, and should be thrown in jail for a long time. And as I thought back to all of those things I had heard or been told as a child about pedophiles, I began to wonder: Where does it start? Does a man get a sick craving for young flesh after his mid-life crisis? Or does it start earlier than that? How early? My questions lead me to a news article about a young man who was imprisoned for two years under the accusations of being a pedophile. He and his girlfriend had been dating since they were thirteen years old. On the day that he turned eighteen she was still sixteen years of age. The law states that anyone under the age of eighteen is considered a minor, while persons over that age are considered adults. So in the eyes of our society this adult was dating, and possible getting intimate with, a minor. Under those circumstances society could not, and would not, let such a thing pass. The ‘man’ was imprisoned for two years because of this, and forever will bear the mark of “sex offender.”

I read the article three times, unable to believe it. Young love had been torn apart by a glitch in our system. That young man will have gotten out of prison by now. What will he do? Will she be waiting for him? Two years is a long time to be wrongfully imprisoned. She could have found new love by then and forgotten him completely. Maybe she moved on and felt the soft touch of another young man, while he sat in a dark cell thinking about her. He will get out of prison and go to her, and she will not remember him. She was able to move on. He will be trapped in youth forever, constantly trying to regain that love he once knew. But he will never find it. It will never come. Society won’t let it. He’ll be thirty-five years old and grow a beard to hide his shame; shame that society has placed on his shoulders for him. He will buy a new house and have to go door to door telling his new neighbors that he is a registered sex offender, and witness the disgust that passes their faces as they judge someone they don’t truly know. His body will wither, but he will never truly age; a young boy trapped in a dying body, just looking for love like the rest of us. The only difference is that, unlike you… I will never find it again.

After ten minutes of debating in my head whether or not my family would ever look at me the same if they knew how I felt about this thirteen-year-old girl, I finally broke the silence. She was looking down at her notepad with intense focus.

“What are you writing?” I asked.

She quickly snapped shut the notepad and looked up at me with a smile that said ‘I have something to hide’. “Nothing.” She said softly.

I did not smile back, for I was too focused on fighting my inner demons.

By the time 3am rolled around I decided, for the first time, to spend the night at my moms. I’m not sure what convinced me to stay. Maybe it was because it was the third weekend, or maybe it was the way that Chloe asked, “Are you leaving?” with the saddest expression I had seen on her yet. Whatever the case, I decided to sleep over. I grabbed a small blanket and set up camp on the larger of the two couches. Because the couches were an interlocking corner piece, my head ended up where her feet were. The television provided a soft glow for the room as I faded off into a deep slumber.

I was flying. The city below me was a vacant shanty town. As I flew over an abandon gas station with no ceiling, I fell from the sky. The feeling was overwhelming; my stomach flew up and smashed into my heart. I landed softly on the ground below. The gas station was not a gas station at all, but rather a pile of rubble. The pumps were replaced by sky high piles of broken concrete. I walked around and tried to understand. From up above this building looked like any other regular gas station. The only thing that had seemed odd at first was a missing ceiling. But upon closer inspection I saw that there were many things I had not seen before. Along with having no roof to the building, there were also no windows anymore. Not broken windows, just simply not there anymore; square holes all around the building. The massive pile of rubble that lay in the center was constantly shifting. Giant blocks of concrete the size on cars tumbled down the sided, but I wasn’t afraid. I stood there as the massive block hurtled towards me. It hit me hard, but I didn’t stumble. It had disappeared on impact. I looked all around me, but it was nowhere to be seen. I had absorbed it. I thought this weird at first, but then I realized something. This pile of rubble was me, this gas station was me. From a distance it looked only somewhat broken down, but upon looking closer I could see that a battle had been waged here. A wrecking ball had broken down the top of this building and exposed everything it had to hide. My soul was exposed now, and my darkest most inner thoughts lay in a giant pile for everyone to see. There is no denying it, I am sick. Chloe opened a locked door inside me, and exposed me to what I truly am: A pedophile. A nineteen year old pedophile. Society will find me out in due time, and I would surely be judged by them.

When I awoke that next morning, her notepad was lying atop my blanket. I took it off and set it on the table, disregarding it completely, then went to use the bathroom. When I arrived back in the den it seemed as though a fundamental change had occurred within Chloe. She was quite and no longer made eye contact with me. I tried my best to make her laugh but nothing worked.

She gathered up her things quietly and got into my car. The ride was quite, filled only with the humming of tires. I could not explain what had come over her, and this lead me to believe that I had done something horrible wrong.

We arrived at me mothers work and I walked her inside. I waved hello to my mother, and said goodbye to Chloe for the last time.

 

***

That was three years ago. I never saw Chloe again after that. Money was tight at the time and my mom had to find better work. She left her job, and with my only lifeline to Chloe being severed, I never had a chance to tell her how I felt.

Throughout the years I thought about going to see her. I had heard from my mother once that Chloe could be found roaming around the farm while her mother worked. I made the drive several times to that farm for the first year, only to turn around and come back with my head hung low. I couldn’t get the thought of the last time that I saw her out of my head; the fear of rejection was too much to bear. Her silence that day lead me to believe that she didn’t share the feeling that I had for her. I wanted to see her so bad that it killed me inside, but my mind kept telling me “you sick pervert, she doesn’t even like you”. My head and my heart couldn’t agree on what to do. I became so distracted with thoughts of Chloe that my life began to crumble around me. Multiple slip-ups at my job caused me to be laid off, and my grades fell drastically at the university. I was so focused on ways of seeing her again that I didn’t even notice what had happened to my life until now.

After the second year passed I found out that Chloe had moved to another city. She was fourteen at that time, and was being moved to a better high school. It was there where she met her first boyfriend some two years after I last saw her. She moved on so easily with her life while I stayed here trapped behind bars, unable to move on. She will be sixteen in eight more months, and I still have not aged one bit.

The reason I decided to tell you my story three years later could be because of a number of reasons. It could be because it happens to be three years later on the dot, and I suppose I’m known for such antics. It could be because Chloe was the third girl I had ever had strong feelings for, and it was supposed to end with her; she completed the set. It could be because I never stopped feeling the way I do about her, and it could be because I never got the chance to tell her how I felt. But if I had to choose, I would say it’s because of what I just stumbled upon under the couch at my mother’s house: A dusty old notepad with a blue cover that reads “Chloe” on the cover. It appeared to have already been flipped open to a specific page. I wiped off the cat hair and dust, and cried when I read:

 

 

 

I like you... Do you like me?

 

Yes

No

Maybe

 

-Chloe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Z.A. B]

love the ending. intense, profound, but still in its child-like state.