I don't think either of us had very much fun.

I never mentioned it to anyone but I always had a fantasy of how that night would go. I'd dance with my friends and have fun and be a teenager, and then I'd sneak outside and you'd be there and we'd share a slow dance. Almost like you're the guy at the end of Say Anything, standing there with a boombox. As if you had a boombox. As if my childhood could be represented so literally in any version of reality, fractured like a wishbone.

Instead you were at your sister's wedding. She's still married and has so, so many children, and her wedding was the same night as my junior prom, and you went out of obligation and wore a t-shirt and jeans because you're you, and you sat there, bored and uncomfortable, texting me, bored and uncomfortable at my stupid dance, the dance floor lights no doubt illuminating our faces in tandem, because we both thought to text each other in that moment. Because we're us. Or we were.

memories lol

I don’t think about it often anymore, but I used to. It was too real of a possibility not to dwell on. Now suddenly it’s in my dreams, and it’s so real that I wake up in a cold sweat and in my dream-heartbreak and delirium I send the worst text I’ve sent in a year or two.

But really, when I think about it, it’s all entirely selfish. I think, “That would kill me.” I think “I couldn’t go on.” And what of it? That’s just me, and you wouldn’t even know any different. When it comes down to it I just don’t have the right to fear such things. Really I should just accept it. There aren’t any other options, especially ones that aren’t self-serving. And what would be the point of that? My peace of mind isn’t worth destroying anyone else’s. Especially yours.