I was still in my pajamas when I met her, still trick-or-treating and playing football on the common after school. She wasn’t my teacher or anything, but she was older, and for a lad like me, she was everything. And apparently, I wasn’t the first. Probably had other lads like me on the go, but I didn’t know that then.
It started with a few texts, then more. She’d message me at all hours, and I’d reply like a lovesick fool. She kept telling me I was special, that she couldn’t be seen with me in public because it would ruin everything. I believed her.
I believed every word. Then one night, she said she wanted to meet. I snuck out, heart hammering, and she took me somewhere quiet. It felt like all my fantasies coming true.
She told me not to tell anyone, and I promised. I was hooked. It went on for weeks. I’d wait for her texts, skip plans with mates, lie to my parents.
She’d say she loved me, then disappear for days. I convinced myself it was real. But it wasn’t. She was just using me, and I was too blind to see it.
Then came the day I found out the truth. A mate of mine, older, pulled me aside and said, “You know she’s doing the same with someone else, right? ” I didn’t want to hear it. I said, “No, she wouldn’t.
” But he told me about the texts, the same ones I’d been getting. I felt sick. I confronted her, or tried to. She laughed it off, said I was being paranoid.
But I knew. I’d seen the messages on her phone when she left it lying around. She’d been stringing me along the whole time. And that’s when I realized I was just another lad in a long line.
I’d been stupid, and I’d never be able to say anything without looking like a fool. No one would have any pity for me. So I kept quiet. I bottled it all up and carried on, pretending it didn’t matter.
But it did. It shaped everything. I never told anyone the full story, not even the lads who teased me about her later. I just let them think I’d been lucky.
Years passed. I got older, tried to move on, but the memory stuck. Every time I saw a couple, every time someone mentioned her name, it all came flooding back. I wasn’t her first, and I sure wasn’t her last.
But she made sure I felt like I was, just long enough to get what she wanted. And that’s the thing about being young and desperate for attention—you’ll believe anything. You’ll ignore the warning signs, the lies, the way she checks her phone when you’re together. You’ll tell yourself it’s love because you don’t know any better.
I know now. But knowing doesn’t make it hurt less. It just makes you wonder how many others fell for the same story, and whether any of them found a way to pick up the pieces. I guess I did, eventually.
It took years, but I learned that being wanted isn’t the same as being loved. And that’s the lesson that stuck with me longer than any of her texts ever did.
