#ashleycore

Unfortunately for us he got a gf pretty quickly, so one day after school my creepy ass decided to sneak around and check them tf out in the library behind some books. That backfired immediately as they took notice of me and gave me nasty looks and walked out of the library. The next day, j**n decided to call me out on it in class and my burgeoning friendship with him died right there. Some months later, we actually became friends after he forgot about it and while i had a crush on another boy at that time, i still found him very attractive. Meanwhile my bff k**tlyn was also friends him in their class together. Ninth grade soon ended, and with it my crush on the other boy.

Tenth grade is where this starts to get juicy yall. When i come back to school, i have another class with j**n and we’re assigned close seats to each other and everything is great so i decided to officially crush on him this year. I supposed this is where i should go into detail about him, since we actually got to know each other more. J**n is a cuban-american immigrant, an aquarius, had a tumblr (we followed each other!), often wore plaid and regularly smoked weed (i didnt mind at all). He was very flirtatious and a “feminist” and identified as pansexual. Right away, he starts to date a eleventh grade girl named Melissa (not gonna bother censoring her name tbh) and while i am sad about it, i still crush on him. Around the time of October/November i come to learn of their messy relationship from k**tlyn, apparently she cheated on him and threatened suicide if they broke up aka emotional manipulative af. I was so angry on his behalf but luckily for him, they broke up for good by December.

However after winter break, i start to notice that j**n and growing increasingly closer to k**tlyn. At first i shrugged it off but then I couldn’t ignore it anymore. K**tlyn knew full well how much i liked him yet never approached me about his obvious crush on her. One day in late January i snapped after seeing them together after school again, i texted her “so when were you gonna tell me that j**n had a crush on you?” With that, she immediately comes clean and tells me how he’s been actively pursuing her and had kissed her that day but she’s been rejecting because of ME. I felt sick but also guilty, who was i to come in between mutual feelings? I tell her that “we can’t control who we like and that if you really like him, don’t let me get in the way”. A few days later, i give them both my permission to date (he’s clueless to the matter) and I specifically asked for her to try and make this relationship last. In addition to that, i told her that I would also try to get rid of my feelings for him so that this would be easier for us. They become an official couple on February 4, his birthday.

Needless to say, I obviously do not lose my feelings for j**n and i distanced myself from the two in the time that they were together. I was pretty depressed during that time ngl. So one day, exactly one month later, j**n texts me in class if i talked to k**tlyn that day. I said no, because I hadn't, but his melancholic behavior intrigued me and i asked him if anythings wrong and he tells me that we’ll talk after school. When after school rolls around, he drops a bombshell on me: k**tlyn had broken up with him through TEXT during LUNCH that same day. I was in complete shock! not only did i never suspect that they were going through relationship trouble but I SPECIFICALLY told her to make this a long lasting relationship. J**n was pretty heartbroken over the fact that she didnt give him a real explanation as to why they broke up so he came to me, thinking i knew the answer because im her best friend and i had to swear to him that i didnt know anything, bc i didnt!! We walked around a bit and afterwards sat at a table with k**tlyn and mutual friends and i notice to my sheer horror, that she doesn’t give him a spare glance the entire time. I was shocked and confused, HOW could k**tlyn be so heartless as to breakup with him without a reason?? Before he goes home, i told him that I’d try and get a reason from her later. As soon as i got home that day, i text k**tlyn “why did you break up with j**n? he seems pretty cut up about it?” She texts back, (something mostly likely) “he’s boring and we never did stuff together”. Ouch. So I screenshot it, and sent it to j**n. He angrily texts back a rebuttal (something along the lines of) “IM NOT BORING AND EVERY TIME I TRIED TO SUGGEST WE DO SOMETHING SHE DIDNT ACCEPT IT”. Again, i was so confused and just happened to be in the middle of it all.

A few weeks pass, i become a little bit closer to j**n. I really really like him now, and want to tell him but im obviously nervous. One night during spring break, my sister came home from university and with a little coaxing, she helps me text him that i like him. J**n sympathetically turns me down but he says that he’ll always be there for me. Ouch. I was heartbroken and cried a little that night and tried to put it out of my mind for the rest of the break. One month passes, and after school i hang out with k**tlyn and finally persuaded her into telling me what went wrong during their relationship. She tells me that it started off great at first, but then apparently j**n started to go too fast for her liking, and pressured her into doing stuff she did not want to do. I absorb this information but I obviously didn’t process it at all because i told her straight to her face that i still liked him and i will continue to like him for the foreseeable future. In hindsight, i did not recognize the look of pity she gave me afterwards but she simply said ok and we were on the same page again.

Eleventh grade is where this story takes a turn for the worse. This school year, i had no classes with j**n but that didn’t deter me at all in my pursuit of him. Early on, there was a school dance right after school and we danced really close together and it was... really great. We both joined debate club that year and that meant i at least got to see him after school twice a week. K**tlyn used to be a member of debate club but she left when she noticed that j**n had joined. In debate club, they offered 3 overnight trips throughout the school year, the most important one being the trip to Washington DC for 3 nights to meetup and debate with other students from across the country (k**tlyn did it the year before). I signed up for it and so did j**n. k**tlyn disclosed to me that a lot of students used this trip and relative freedom to... hook up. But there was just one small problem, again: this school year j**n got another girlfriend. A freshman named Samantha.

I was vexed and horribly jealous, but hey thats ok, that meant 3 days of him by me and away from her. The day of winter break, me and k**tlyn were texting on snapchat and the conversation shifted to j**n again. I dont remember exactly how we began to argue, but the conversation got passive aggressive really quickly until she tells me “I don’t care what you do, have fun sucking his dick in washington, don’t talk to me again” at first i thought she was joking and it didn’t register with me that she had cut me off until a few days later. That was our last official face to face conversation and we havent spoken since. I was hurt but this ultimately fueled me more into pursuing j**n. Thankfully i had another best friend to lean on, jazmyn, who was pretty neutral about my crush on j**n which was fine by me. February came around we went to washington dc on a long weekend, the first two days planned looking at monuments and tourist attractions and the last day of the trip landed on Valentines day.

The first two days were great and I was by j**ns side for the majority of it, we even walked around the entirety of the Smithsonian during a free hour. The opportunity for it never came up, but i knew I wouldn’t have hooked up with him anyways, I didn’t want to be a homewrecker. So i decide to do something funny and cute for valentines day, send him some funny tumblr valenties day cards memes during the debate and hopefully he’d get a laugh out of it. So whilst sitting next to him, I send them to him and he does laugh and says thanks. But then, I look down at his phone as he saves the memes and sends them straight to his girlfriend. OUCH! YIKES! i start to silently cry (not full on sobbing but definitely tears) and he notices and he grabs my hand, does the thumb rubbing thing and lays his head on my shoulder in an attempt to cheer me up. it was simultaneously the most agonizing and soothing thing to ever happen to me. Eventually, i stopped crying and we packed up to leave to the airport. Before the plane took off, i get an influx of twitter notifs from jean. To my absolute horror, i noticed that he had spammed my twitter because i rted everyone elses tweets about the trip, so I figured he saw my absolutely pitiful tweet earlier that day “i’ll pretend he’s mine for the day”. I was beyond mortified and emotionally drained and just wanted to go home.

When I got home, after unloading everything on jazmyn and raine (another best friend), i decide to put my foot down with myself. Clearly this guy has no interest in me and i had to stop embarrassing myself for him. So i come up the ingenious idea of the May 1st Plan: basically, i was going to ignore, avoid, and not interact with j**n at all for until may 1st (of course, school ended in early june but i wanted to see if i could do this for almost 4 months, and hopefully the crush would disappear). And surprisingly, I actually followed through with it, all the way until the end of eleventh grade. I didn’t talk to j**n, i didn’t look for him in a room, i didn’t even talk about him excessively to my friends, only that i’ve been following the may 1st plan (they all supported me). Did the crush go away? Partially yes, but some stupid part of me still held on. However, during the time of avoidance, i started to get unlikely another crush on a boy named d*vid. D*vid honestly crept on me, I didnt expect i would like somebody like that but then i did and it surprised me. he was an in debate club, an aries (like me), funny (we shared the same sense of humor), so smart, witty, and was actually empathetic and “woke”. When i was around him, i felt like i could actually be myself and didn’t hold any parts of myself back, unlike with j**n. 

By the time senior year rolled around, I effectively had a crush on both guys, and only one knew that i liked him. I had 3 classes with both of them and 2 of them with each other. Around october/november, i’m in class, sitting next to a girl, and j**n is sitting in front of us. They start to talk about something and next thing I know, they kissed each other. on the lips. right in front of me. Remember when i said j**n was a flirt? Yeah, i wasn’t kidding. I went from calm to enraged in a second and went to the bathroom to cry. After that day, I knew that my half-crush on him was over. He’s a player and didn’t even give me the courtesy of giving me closure when i told him i liked him in tenth grade. From that day on, I only had eyes for d*vid, and all of my friends supported me in my pursuit of him.

One day some time later, after a debate club meeting, i’m in a discussion with two of my friends, tatiana and emily and j**n. Somehow, the conversation turns to the topic of crushes and tatiana and i talk about d*vid right in front of j**n. In the corner of my eye, i see him come to the realization that i no longer like him. Tatiana says something and i reply “i guess i just don’t have the best taste in guys.” J**n hears this, processes this, and promptly walks away... hurt? I felt bad and was scared he would snitch to d*vid so i shout after him “please don’t tell him” to which j**n only gives me the middle finger and keeps walking away. Wow, for the first time in 2 years, I ended up being the one to hurt his feelings, in the most unexpected of ways. Funny, we never discussed my feelings for him and he never gave me closure which resulted in me being hurt so many times but now i say something thats not even that far off from the truth and he’s hurt? Lol, ok. A few days later, I end up apologizing to him and he accepts. A few months pass, as j**n and d*vid end up going on the washington dc trip without me (i decided to save myself the money that year bc i already went the year before). 

When they come back, a few days later j**n approaches me in class and wants to tell me about something that happened during the trip. He tells me that he and d*vid had a bad falling out and that d*vid was still angry with him. Intrigued, i ask why and he tells me that they wanted to hook up with the same girl and j**n did it with the girl knowing d*vid would be upset about it. I was shocked about the situation bc i know you’d have to do something really bad to make d*vid mad and i was secretly angry on his behalf, i knew they were friends so how fucked up can j**n have been to do something like that? He lets me read the hand-written apology letter that he’d give d*vid later and I was just confused as to why he was telling me all of this. Maybe he thought since he knew i cared about d*vid a lot, he could get my approval on the matter. Once again, i just so happened to be in the middle of drama with j**n and somebody i cared for, only this time i didn’t have a raging crush over him.