“I’m never going to commit to you, but you aren’t allowed to be with anyone else. Now, do you want to go get some coffee?”

Aren’t those the words every girl wants to hear? The words that they have dreamed of being proclaimed to them since they were little and dreaming of Prince Charming? And here I was, the one lucky woman who got to hear them straight from the mouth of the man I had wasted two years on, yet still managed to fall more and more in love with every day.

Then one day, I woke the hell up and shut it the hell down. I was so fed up of devoting my every waking second to making sure he, let’s call him ‘Mac’, was happy, entertained, cared for, and on track with his life. I was tired of being the one that always cleaned up his messes without a single ounce of appreciation. Honestly, I would have been happy with an enthusiastic high-five.

Me and Mac met in my high school Pre-Calculus class. In a class icebreaker game, I had to tell everyone the name of my favorite movie, which was Napoleon Dynamite. I can still remember how he jerked his head up to look at me, like he hadn’t realized I had been sitting next to him for the last fifteen minutes. He looked up at me with astonishment: How could this “Prep” like a movie that I also enjoy? How could anyone else have my sense of humor? Who is this girl? As soon as the icebreaker ended, he turned to me and we talked like we had known each other for years until the end of class. When the bell rang, all the other students were scrambling towards the busses, the parking lots, and after-school activities. Mac; however, was slowly backing down the hallway, trying his hardest to keep the banter we were having going until it was absolutely impossible. Not three minutes after I finally told him to go or he would miss his bus, I got a text from him. “Yo, dis be Mac.” Little did I know that those four little words were the text message equivalent to Pandora’s Box. That night, we texted until I fell asleep mid-conversation, and I woke up with 52 messages from him where he was trying to blow up phone so I would be annoyed the next morning. Unfortunately, those 52 messages did the exact opposite of annoy me, and by the end of the month, I was a goner.

I spent the next two years becoming very close with his group of friends, spending time with his parents, taking care of him while he had his wisdom teeth out, being his groupie whenever his band had a gig, and going downtown every weekend because it was his favorite place to go. On those days, we would spend twelve hours minimum together, so naturally I grew to be an integral part of his life. I had everyone in his family’s numbers because they knew that if they couldn’t get him to answer the phone, I would. I drove his father to pick up his truck at the U-Haul. I took selfies with his mother. I picked four leaf clovers with his grandmother. I knew every single one of his secrets, his hopes and dreams, his fears, and his self-destructive ways. Everyone in his family saw how much I meant to him and how happy I made him when we were together. On one particular camping trip, when Mac had stepped out of the tent for his morning smoke, one of our mutual friends looked over at me and said, “I wish he would just go ahead and marry you. I only ever see him this held-together when you are by his side.” I knew, though, in my heart of hearts, that he was what had been slowly destroying me. He was the reason I was always coming home smelling like Marlboros and sitting quietly on the couch because I was pretending not to know that he was out with another girl. I gave him everything he could have ever wanted or needed for the next year and a half, clinging to every grin and promise of his love for me.

It is now September and I have not spoken a single word to him since the night I sat in my church parking lot so that I could cry and scream over the phone at him in privacy. He begged me not to do this- not to end what we had worked so hard to build. I reminded him that I had built it all. That it was too late for him to realize just how much he needed me.

He whispered into the phone: “I hope a few years down the line that we can catch up. I want to know what you’re doing. I want you to come back.” The last words I ever said to him, the boy I had worshipped, were, “Maybe. I’m not sure if I can ever do this again.” He sniffed. He let out a shaky sigh. His voice cracked when he said, “I love you. I will talk to you later.” I went home and ate a string cheese.