Who Was the Secret in This Relationship?

I didn’t know her, but I thought I knew him better than this.

Photo by Ilya Shishikhin on Unsplash

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had ended up with my first it-felt-so-real-so-was-it-the-real-deal love. Mostly I think of how unhappy he probably would have been. He’d carried all kinds of torches for other girls — so many because he let me know how popular he was — but he might still be out there searching for someone to fill up all his hollow spaces.

The problem came, I think, because he kept himself like a locked diary with no key to be found. We were great friends, but there were aspects of his life he didn’t like to share at all. He barely mentioned his parents, and most of our communication involved our work lives. If I were to speak to him now, I’m sure it would be a lot of the same. There were pieces of his life I wasn’t allowed to touch — even if it was by words alone.

I kept my feelings to myself, of course, because I didn’t want to muck up a good thing — mainly the friendship we’d sparked over scattered years where we’d lose touch and then reconnect at a later date.

But the worst part of it was the day I found out he had a girlfriend. Something in me broke — not because of the facts (though, yeah, they sucked) but because I didn’t hear the details from my friend…