When We Were

by Diana Elliot Graham

He was maybe the only person who ever really meant it when he said, ‘We can be friends.’”

HE WASNT READY TO LET GOOOO EITHER

clever, thoughtful, and insightful

Just like he is <3

Even at nineteen, I had so much respect for him. His maturity went beyond his age; it was his confidence and self-respect that made him feel worthy of admiration. That didn’t change over time, no matter how much we both did. He

BIG HINT ON THE IDENTITY OF HIM

sent me of a bright orange tabby cat sitting on a kitchen counter staring directly into the camera in dare and defiance, the message beneath it, ‘World’s Worst Cat 13 years running.’ It was a running joke between us, he had told me when he got the cat about a year after he broke up with me, we broke up. When he adopted it and brought it home, he was

can't believe reid is a cat person

I always sign my name with my initials. It feels like a subtle feminist power move. My initials are ungendered and detached; they let me email with the power of a man. A habit I started a long time ago–the anonymity behind initials, protecting a bit of yourself, and also, as someone once told me, it ‘just sounds cool.’ So it stuck and my initials became my moniker in my

Girl is going on about her initials but we missed it

I don’t know what would have happened if we had taken a minute to understand each other that night.

Crying already

I thumb open my book, the comfort read I often carry around because it fills any void I have in time or interest.

a mood

Hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t really encourage me to read romance.

he is so real for this so real

Bringing my hands from where they lay on the table and resting them against my stomach so I can feel the slow, long breath I pull in from the abdomen and deep into my lungs.

Hint to pregnancy

And when I do let them get me, it’s whichever part I am willing to expose, usually only skin deep, whichever part they are in search of.

My princess

‘Tell me, Miami, do I have to worry about you finding some douchebag boyfriend?’

LMAOOOO DIE JOSH

the expressions, the topic was soccer. I’ve learned to spot those looks on their faces and to never get involved.

lmaoooo

The one that started before our romance ever did, but she needed the full context to try and understand how everything ended.

Hint to it being reid as he isnt a part of the story yet

But she spoke in such a way, as if mentioning an old love was inviting a curse on a new one.

HINT TO ARDEN BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP AGAIN

“Yeah. I loved him. Whatever that even meant to me back then. Whoever I was... yeah, I loved him.” I take a slow steading breath as I think about it. “I just don’t think I always made it easy for him to love me.”

NO BABY GIRL YOU WERE EASY TO LOVE

way. I’m not that person anymore, and looking back, retelling this story from the beginning, made me wonder how much of that was because of him. Eventually getting to a place where I no longer needed the external superficial validation and finding freeing peace within the silence. The only expectations

He changed her

I know that.” And I do know that. We have shared enough texts, emails, coffees, and even lunches to look into each other’s eyes and know there was no great unrequited love there. It was mostly just us sitting on the outskirts of friendship.

Going to end it all

How, in all my self-righteous glory, I thought it would be better to let her go. That she’d made up her mind. All that ‘when you love something set it free’ bullshit. I loved her, I set her free, and she flew off, and we all know how that worked out.

alexa play let her go by passenger

We’ve had about three-thousand miles, fourteen years, and a big fucking misunderstanding between us.

Four jobs, three moves, two dogs, and... fuck this is a stupid game to play.

So I'm pretty sure this is going to say one boyfriend and will is the person arden met after him

be sitting at this desk right now? After what happened, I finished my degree and left, taking the first job I could get in New York, eventually leading me here to San Francisco.

This makes me wonder if they'd gotten back together if he had another year of college left at the time they broke up. How much did long distance between them play into them not mending their romantic relationship? Or was ending up with other people always in the cards for them?

My regrets are few and far between. In general, I live my life in such a way I don’t often look back and lament things of my past.

New motto???

And lastly, I think imagining the alternate paths of your life could only do more harm than good.

she is right

But there’s no way to know what to expect. And if you don’t know what to expect, prepare for it all anyway.

solid advice

With midterms over, we can all relax a bit more. Which is such a funny concept for me because my mind never really settled. I can never clear it out long enough to truly relax.

SCRWAMING. HER MIND COULD NEVER SETTLE BUT REID COULD CLEAR THE THOUGHTS IN HER HEAD

Unable to escape into sleep the way normal people do, books have been a comfort, the security blanket, therapy I refused to go to. They ask questions but don’t require answers. They make me think but expect nothing in return. And when I wake up in the middle of the night, they are companions that never complain,

books are my best friends

The notes I leave written in the margins are my exchange, a way I can return to the pages that have given me so much of themselves.

I wonder if he has one of those brooding literary names, like Heathcliff.

this makes me laugh because william is very much a brooding literary name guess arden manifested will

I’ve never met anyone so young that just seemed to be so naturally confident and transparent, in a way that wasn’t aggravating. His face is readable, and I wondered if that’s a choice he made, to let people just see him and what he was thinking.

I love him I love him I love him

or if he had been too deep into his reading to truly pick up on what I was doing.

he noticed oh he noticed you

“If the number is underlined, it’s the whole page I wanted to reference, otherwise the number of vertical lines and dots tell you the paragraphs and sentences.”

cool annotation system - might try it

Like a code to access parts of him, that’s what it would be for me, sharing the notes within the pages of my books.

true

“It’s a reminder how quickly you can wake up and everything is different.”

FORESHADOWING????

Reaching in my bag, I pull out the more loved copy of the book that I had read dozens of times in my life and place it gently on top of

SHE IS A MOOD. Though if i were her, I'd get the annotated one signed

But there is an eagerness I have being in his presence, that has words tumble out of my mouth without the normal calculation.

she is more herself with him, more at ease.

“No matter how much I want to know what you wrote, I don’t expect any part of you that you don’t want to share.”

I’m not considered short, but he had to be at least a couple inches above six feet.

omg??? boy is 6"4???

The axis of myself tilted in response to being near him. Leaning me into a version of that was less concerned with perceptions and expectations of others. Instead just tilting me towards him.

“Actually... I’ve seen on the blogs that you are going to write a sequel to your debut novel, even though it’s been fifteen years since its first publication, but there’s so much speculation around it, and there are rumors it includes an alternate ending to your first, but no one has anything confirmed, and I just, I really hope that’s true, because I think you’re incredible.” Great, I’ve gone from speechless to rambling.

Am i reading too much into this??????

“I love hot chocolate, but rarely drink it. It’s always been more of a special occasion drink. A making memories drink. A comfort drink.

SO RELATABLE

“I think this is a ‘making memories’ kind of day.

he has no idea

There is an intimacy to this place; even with other people here, it feels private in a way like you can get lost here behind a stack of books or in one. It’s somewhere only we know, a secret garden where he has the key.

poetic literature

He wears his emotions, we are different in that way, but something about being around him makes me want to lower that guard just enough that he felt it was an even exchange,

There is something about his sincerity, and assuredness, that makes it clear he feels he can be exactly who he is without regret, and it’s contagious.

I love him

“I won’t need to keep score to know if I’ve won, because if I walk away from this table knowing you more than I do now, it won’t matter how many points I have.”

SCREAMING

“How about I keep score, and you can just focus on kicking my ass.” Teasingly, he slides the pen and paper away from me. Pops the pen in his mouth to uncap it, leaving the cap hanging there as he draws a vertical line down the center of the page, and a horizontal one intersecting it at the top.

the score card 😭😭😭😭😭😭

“Alright, AB, you’re up.”

And the nickname is born

He played the word T-R-A-V-E-L, and we spent thirty minutes talking about all the places we would like to go. Like me, he was more of a museum traveler than a resort traveler, though he loved any opportunity to get away.

trying not to read too much into this 😭😭😭 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

We went on like that, learning the big and small things through little wooden tiles. He eventually gave up keeping score, setting the pen and flipping over the paper pushing them off to the side.

He isn’t just interested in getting me, but in getting to know me, and in sharing himself with me. And he has no reservations in doing so.