When I Think of You

by Myah Ariel

Here I was, a girl who’d been obsessed with yet simultaneously starved of culture in her stifling hometown, who’d beat the odds and made it to New York City to study the movies.

Back then, I was chasing myself—so obsessed with who I wanted to be that I missed the chance to get to know who I was in the moment. I still miss that girl. But I wouldn’t want to be her again.

zzzzoooohmahgod

If the author can see this, never write this in your novels ever again.

Someone had to be the collateral damage on his journey of self-improvement. And I guess that someone was me.

Me asf omg

This constant navigation of highs and lows with her made the quiet consistency of my grandparents feel safe. Their little redbrick house on the wrong side of town was like my own haven.

There was the one guy who asked if I’d be interested in taking him on as a sex slave. Let’s subvert history! he’d said.

Bro author is actually funny asf

Gently, I push forward to signal to whoever’s on the other side that someone’s trying to come in. But there’s resistance. Celine’s head pops through the crack. “We’re good in here, Kaliya. Thank you,” she says, attempting to once again shut me out.

I actually fucking hate this bitch...

“Because it was my shield,” he blurts out, cutting me off. He begins to pace, his honey-and-lemon scent clutching me from all sides. Confused, I press him further. “What does that mean?” “It means I’m attracted to you, Kaliya. Of course I am. That never changed.” He stops short with an agonized sigh that strips away any chance I’d be flattered by what he’s just admitted.

I scroll back up to read it again, and again, until I’ve memorized every word. I imagine that somewhere some fourteen-year-old version of me is lying in bed staring wistfully up at the ceiling. All the “cool kids” are probably out necking in the parking lot after a football game. But she’s at home dreaming of the day her own version of a Danny Prescott sends her a love letter like the one that’s just appeared out of the ether and into my inbox.

She’ll spend too many years pining after the boy to whom she feels invisible. She’ll fall asleep at night with fantasies of being wanted and desired by him, and in the daytime watch him walk on by with his arm around someone else. And one day in the distant future but at precisely the right time, she’ll find herself completely breathless at the words spilled out of him for her, embossed in electronic blue light . . . you are perfect to me. And because she waited so long to see her own desire reflected back, she won’t rush to satiate his thirst. She’ll bask in the glow of his affection in private, keeping it to herself if only for a little while.

“When Danny arrived that next morning, I was sick with guilt. If only I’d taken less time at the store, I could have found Nathan before it was too late. I don’t think I could speak for hours and when I finally did, I asked Danny to distract me. To tell me something good, anything that made him happy. “He told me about you,” she says, looking me in the eye.

Theirs was a life that love made beautiful.