I wanted to tell you, but you were so happy.
It would have been selfish to ruin that, that happiness. I would feel the warmth radiate from you when you were with me but when you were with him it was a fire, hotter than summertime in Times Square. Even with my glasses off I could see how you were destined for him; how the subtle little smile you would give your phone, how your features would soften at the sight of whatever illuminate that screen, how your tongue cradled his name as though it was something fragile, how you could never mention him without taking that small little pause as though to ponder that it was a reality that he was in your life.
Who was I to mess with that? Who was I to you anyway, simply a friend, a good one but there wasn’t any competing. It wouldn’t even be a challenge. Kayden meant more. That was it, a fact, a truth like blood was red and the coffee was the second floor was shit.
There was something I wanted to say, but it was better left unsaid. It was something better left alone to rot inside, to be replaced by better infatuation, one that would be bare something for me. I was building shelter in a tree already entwined in another. So I’ll smile and swallow, suffocate that smoldering fire, drench in my own bitterness. It was better for me to cold than for you to be unhappy.
