His Ex-Best Friend
By Mona, age 16, Philippines
"You're my ex-best friend!" he said. Since this is a real life story from my personal life, I would like everyone to know that the character's real name has been changed. Let's call him Sean. I met Sean during my freshman year in high school. He was always with me, mainly because my cousin was his best friend. We became closer and closer, but we never had any "feelings" for each other. Yeah, he was my friend ... actually, he was somewhat my best friend.
I had a rough freshman year. Led by this mean girl, the girls in our class all fought me, so I didn't really have a girl best friend. It was always guys with me. Walking around the campus, eating lunch together, and so on, Sean was always there to listen to my problems. We even had this memorable event once. We had this social studies project, and we went to our group mate's house. He got out of the car and then I followed. When my right leg was out, the car started to move and I was dragged on the side of a public road. I got a bruise, and my guy friends including Sean helped me up to our group mate's house. They treated my bruise, and all that Sean could do was be annoying in a really funny way by constantly touching my bruise which made me cry. I would never forget that.
We even went to sleepovers together, but I didn't sleep over because I was the only girl. When I was a sophomore, suddenly everything changed. He was not my classmate anymore. We had different friends and we slowly drifted apart. We would only see each other during one class. I was glad he let me sit beside him. During that one class we were together four times a week. We talked, but not like we used to talk. We became more shy with each other, and little by little the sentences we shared grew shorter. I realized that he did not consider me a very close friend, but just a classmate. He had a different crowd now, a very different crowd. Sean and my cousin drifted apart too since they weren't classmates anymore, and during their sophomore year their closeness ended. They would just say hi and go in opposite directions. There was never really a conflict. It was just the time they spent together was already cut down to zero.
We drifted very much apart until I was a junior. Then we became classmates again, but to my dismay he was also classmates with his new friends. We never really talked in class. It was all arguing and daily rants, but not really harsh ones. We didn't talk about things from before and we never really did anything together anymore.
That's when I started to have "feelings" for him. How ironic, don't you think? It's just that I noticed that he became more mature and more like a man than the little freshman boy I used to know. He had changed a lot. He became somewhat of a bad boy in class. The only problem was that we never talked in class. I guess he was too embarrassed to talk to me or something. I really don't know.
Now, I am finally a senior. I've kind of forgotten about him. I had other crushes during my junior year, and even now I have crushes, but they are the not serious type crushes. It's just "the looks" I like.
Anyway, my friends all agree that even though I've had other crushes I am still in love with Sean. I don't want to agree, but I think they're right. He chats with me, but not very often. One day I was surprised when he talked about the good old days. I was giddy when we were chatting about that, then he said, "You're my ex-best friend!"
I don't know if he knows that I am in love with him, but stating those words made me realize that we are never meant to be. We have different lives now and we never speak in school. He only speaks to me when he needs to borrow a calculator or a math book. I thought to myself, Why do I like this guy? My answer: I don't know, but all I can say is that wherever we may be, whomever we may be seeing, one thing is for sure - he will always and forever have my heart.
