Dear Mr. Galloway,
I thought you were different, the type of person who wouldn’t take advantage of others. When you took off your coat to shield me from the rain on our first date I thought, “Wow, what a gentleman…maybe he’s looking for the same thing as me.”
Forget about the Saturday nights we spent sitting, watching fireworks on the beach. Me nestled between your legs, your arms holding me tight, protecting me from the summer breeze and the ocean’s mist. Forget the 45 minute drive to each other’s houses, and the albums I memorized with each trip. Albums you gave me. Albums I grew to love. Albums I now cringe with discomfort listening to. Forget searching through dusty boxes for records in thrift shops. Forget sitting by the bay, overlooking the Atlantic City skyline, eating greasy pizza from the local pizzeria. Forget about it all, I tell myself.
Occasionally I’ll transcend back to that late summer night. Lying on an old blanket you found in the trunk of your car, only street lights and the stars lighting the vacant park. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t expecting you to say these things. “This doesn’t mean I don’t see a future with you,” you reassured me. Like a broken record, it played in my head, over and over again, “I’m just not ready…I’m not over her.”
So, naively, I kept hope. “If I give him some space, maybe he’ll be ready soon?” I thought, but you were never going to be ready, were you? At least not for me.
I may forget the details of our interactions: the touch of your hand on the small of my back, the exact shade of blue your eyes transformed to during sunsets, the smell of you that lingered on in your fraternity hoodie, but I will never forget the feeling of heartache you made me experience. I will never forget the stabbing pain in my chest when I saw your relationship status change on social media. Three weeks. In the matter of twenty-one days you had found a way to not only get “over” your ex, but publically announce your relationship with someone I had never heard about prior.
I was never going to be more than a summer fling to you, I realize that now. Just a romantically, optimistic girl to pass the time with until you found someone worth claiming as your own. Words like “I didn’t handle this well at all…” and “There was something missing…” still haunt me as I try to move forward with new relationships. You have made me more skeptical of people’s words; I cannot trust a man’s words facevalue.
And as much as I want to end this letter to you maturely, there are a few observations I have made since taking a step back from our relationship that I would like to bring to your attention: You’re not as smart as you think you are, you WILL get kidney stones from the amount of iced tea you consume daily, and no, you’re not actually good at sex. Like, at all.
Sincerely,
The Girl You Took Advantage Of Over the Summer