If He Had Been with Me

by Laura Nowlin

If he had been with me, everything would have been different.

We called ourselves The Clique.

"What is the group called?" "The Click" "Click or Clique?" "The Click" That's the only thing going through my head right now

I realize as Jamie begins to grind his pelvis against mine.

Arent they not like 14 if they are a freshmen in high school?

“Fifteen,”

No that's just crazy. 15 and these are the conversations they're havin? Hinestly find it so weird that the author would be writing stuff like this at their age

None of us have had sex, and we are young enough that this is not embarrassing; it is simply a fact that time will remedy.

Why is this author so obsessed with making all the conversations they have about sex? Is it just cause she is or is it setting up for something more?

Tipsy for the first time in our lives, we begin to dare one another to kiss. Brooke and Angie kiss. I kiss Noah. Sasha kisses Jamie. And then we decide that each of us must kiss all of the others in order to seal our eternal bonds of friendship. We giggle and cluster together. Did I kiss you? Have we kissed yet? Oh my God, I kissed Alex twice.

I'm actually struggling cause why would you do that?

Sometimes I am disappointed with love. I thought that when you were in love, it would always be right there, staring you in the face, reminding you every moment that you love this person. It seems that it isn’t always like that.

I tell myself relationships are hard work. No one is perfect. There’s no such thing as happily ever after.

That night we fight on the phone. Even though I cry, he still does not forgive me until I tell him Brooke’s secret.

That is a terrible boyfriend, like why are you actually guilt tripping her and making her cry just cause you're so nosey and play victim when nothing goes your way

“No, I’m frustrated,” Jamie says. His voice is hard and sounds as if it’s coming from very far away.

Be so fr. Accept and respect your girlfriends feelings, stop pushing her

I love him in a way I cannot define, as if my love were an organ within my body that I could not live without yet could not pick out of an anatomy book.

Jamie wants me to tell everyone at school that he gave it to me to see their reactions. He thinks it will be funny.

Right....

I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever. I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.

“Try to marry your first love. For the rest of your life, no one will ever treat you as well.”

I’ve loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn’t change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing in my body and desire in my heart until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me.

My love for Finny is buried like a stillborn child; it is just as cherished and just as real, but nothing will ever come of it. I imagine it wrapped up in lace, tucked away in a quiet corner of my heart. It will stay there for the rest of my life, and when I die, it will die with me.

And I know that winter is supposed to end, but things are not always the way they are supposed to be.

This is friendship, and it is love, but I already know what they have not learned yet; how dangerous friendship is, how damaging love can be.

Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life;

Death happens to him more suddenly than I can describe to you or even care to imagine.

But the temptation to be close to him one last time is too great for me to resist.

No way

Just because something seems impossible doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try.