17 | Burn Notice
1036 Words
Stella
College. Sophomore year. Spring semester.
The sun blazed unseasonably bright that day, casting golden rays over the campus, even for an April afternoon in the South. Students lounged across the quad, each lost in their own worlds of procrastination, laptops splayed open like forgotten dreams, textbooks strewn haphazardly on the grass, and condensation-flecked iced coffees melting beside them.
I perched on a weathered bench outside the English building, my gaze flickering over the pages of a book I wasn't reading, all while I waited for him. Nick strolled this path after his psychology class with a leisurely, unhurried demeanor, always taking the time to stop and chat, most often with a girl, their laughter weaving into the warm breeze.
I despise that I noticed these moments. I loathed that I cared so much. But deep down, I couldn't help it. I did.
We weren't a thing, not officially, not even unofficially, if I'm being honest. Just study buddies. Friends, maybe. Though friends didn't usually sit so close that you could feel the heat radiating off each other's skin. Friends didn't share playlists and go on midnight ramen runs. Friends didn't look at you the way Nick sometimes looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention.
I told myself it was nothing, that it didn't mean anything.
But it did.
We were orbiting each other in that messy, electric way that happens when you're young and terrified of naming what you want. He made me feel like I wasn't invisible. Like someone truly saw me.
So, I started sitting on that bench more often, waiting, wondering if he'd notice. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he sat with me. Other times, he waved and kept walking. Each interaction felt like some test I wasn't prepared for.
And then, everything changed.
I was walking back from the library, earbuds in, half-listening to a podcast I'd already forgotten. My tote bag was heavy with books, and my brain was fried from too many late nights cramming for finals.
That's when I heard him.
His voice carried over the low hum of campus noise, confident, teasing, coming from behind the hedges near the frat house.
I didn't mean to stop. I didn't mean to eavesdrop.
But I did.
"She's hot, though," one of his friends said. "You two have been hanging out nonstop."
Another laugh. A beat. He has to be talking about me because Nick doesn't just hang out with girls more than once.
"I'm telling you," Nick said, his voice clear. "I'd never f**k her."
My heart stopped.
He said it like a joke. Like I was a joke.
I stood there, frozen. Heat rushed to my face. My stomach twisted. The words echoed louder than the actual noise surrounding me. I didn't hear what came next. I didn't care.
I turned around and walked away.
My hands were shaking by the time I made it back to my dorm. I sat on my bed for hours, my phone buzzing occasionally with texts from him.
"Where were you today?" "You good?" "Want to grab food later?"
I didn't answer any of them.
I stopped going to our study sessions. Stopped hanging out. Stopped being where he could find me. I told everyone I was just stressed, burnt out, and swamped with finals.
But it wasn't school.
It was him.
It was the way his voice sounded when he dismissed me like I meant nothing. Like the way he made me feel wasn't real.
He cornered me two weeks later in the hallway after class.
"Hey," he said, grabbing my elbow. "What the hell happened? You've been ghosting me."
"I've been busy," I said, avoiding his eyes, pulling my arm away from his grasp. "Midterms. You know how it is."
He looked at me like he didn't believe it, like he wanted to push for more. But he didn't. He let me go and that told me everything I needed to know. We drifted. Or maybe I pushed him away. Either way, we were never the same after that.
I never did tell him why, and he never pushed to ask.
Years later, I sometimes find myself wondering what would have happened if I had told him the truth. What if I had called him out right there in front of his friends? What if I'd asked him why he said something like that about me, someone who, up until that moment, thought maybe he felt something too?
But I didn't. I knew I wouldn't survive the answer. Instead, I swallowed it, buried it under excuses, and pretended I didn't care while my heart ached with every text I ignored and every bench I walked past alone.
When graduation came, we barely spoke, just a polite nod at parties and a faint smile from across campus. And when the diplomas were handed out, that was it. We became strangers.
Sometimes I wonder if he remembers me the way I remember him. Does the ghost of what we almost were ever keep him awake at night? Does he ever replay that day and realize what he said and what he lost?
But maybe he doesn't. Maybe to him, I was just a girl on a bench.
Yet I remember. I always will. Because the thing about being young and in love, even when you don't admit it out loud, is that it leaves marks, invisible ones, lingering ones. Some hurts never fade, no matter how much time passes.
That’s why seeing him now, older and still frustratingly beautiful, still capable of making my chest tighten with a glance, feels like being dropped back into that moment.
The sting is different now, quieter, duller - but it's still there. He doesn’t know that day broke something in me. And the worst part? I never told a soul. Not Sarah. Not Grace. Not even myself, not really. I let it sit like a bruise under my ribs, hidden and untouched.
Then this wedding forced me back into his orbit, and all the carefully built walls started to c***k.
I don’t know what happens next, or if there even is a next.
But this time, I won’t pretend it didn’t matter.
- Writer
