5

When she texts me saying she really wants to see me, I light up inside. But moments are always fleeting. I just imagine her saying it to me because who she really wants to see doesn’t want to see her. He put her on the backburner and doesn’t need her right now. She needs me right now, because she can’t have him. I am a distraction. I make her feel warm inside, I soothe her pain, and when she’s around me she isn’t haunted and consumed by thoughts of him. I can briefly take away her pain, but moments are always fleeting. She can hurt me. Once she’s over him, she won’t need me. I’m dispensable and she’s broken. And this is the way our unfair world works.

She needs me. I want her. Everyone wants to be needed.

Everything she tells me: every thought, every dream, every feeling has already been told. The things she told him, he must have known everything about her. She knew him like the back of her hand. She loved him. She loves him. She needs me. Temporarily. I think of her, and can only think of him. I’m not him. Does she want me to be? Am I like him? Does she wish I were like him? Will she ever stop loving him?

I don’t know if I want her if I can’t have all of her. I know that’s a lie, of course I want her. I just don’t want to want her. When she looks away and is distant, is she thinking of him? I can’t see us together. Thinking of her, hearing her name, brings butterflies to my stomach, but it’s not right. I can’t see us together. It's as if the world was supposed to have her and him together. Like it was right. It is right. It’s just not the right time.

We connect though. We have chemistry we’re comfortable in each other. We have become all too comfortably numb. What happens if he wants her back? I already know the answer to that.

Maybe one day she’ll love me. Maybe one day she won’t want him; won’t want me to be him. Maybe one day she’ll think I’m truly beautiful and look at me the way I look at her every time I see her. But then again, maybe one day I’ll get over her. Maybe one day I can look at her and say, “You’re so not worth this” and actually believe it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to think about someone else.