Maybe if I had met him when I was older, I would’ve known that he was a beautiful disaster and that our so-called love was merely a one-sided obsession. But when you’re thirteen and you meet an older boy (he was seventeen at the time) with long, black hair who plays Beethoven in a way that makes your heart fall apart, well….you can’t help but feel like he’s the one.

I was a fellow pianist, such as him (although not quite as talented) and so that already made me feel as though we had something in common. So it was natural for me to suggest that he’d give me some tutoring lessons (which he had accepted to). My thirteen-years-old heart beat so fast you’d think I was close to a coronary. I was gonna be the first teenager to die of a burst-from-happiness heart.

Sadly, that happiness was very short lived.

Fast forward to when I’m seventeen. The Pianist and I are now not only friends, but I’ve managed to become a staple in his household. We’ve done Easter plays together, our families have spent holidays together, and we even planted a cactus together, my heart expanding every year when it’d bloom flowers, as though it were some proof of our unwavering love. But I was growing increasingly frustrated with my limited friend label. I wanted more. I wanted a mad love, stolen kisses, and passionate summer nights. I wanted ice cream dates, movie dates, and gazing at the stars.

Then his twenty-first birthday came around and for the first time that I had ever known him he was having a party.

“I hope you can make it tonight,” he told me, his dark eyes shining with a secret. “I’ve got something I want to tell you.”

My brain went through all the various scenarios of what he could possibly be wanting to tell me. Of course, the curse of being in love is that you’re always hopeful, and so I spent the day listening to a shitty love song (“Kiss Me”) on repeat while applying makeup and slipping into the very best little black dress I owned. I was determined to look memorable.

Fast forward to a few hours later when The Pianist is pulling me away from the crowd of friends saying that we need to go outside. I follow wordlessly. But nothing would’ve ever prepared me for what truly happened.

His girlfriend arrived and he wanted me to be one of the first people to meet her. I was too in shock to properly react. I numbly went through the motions of civil interaction as my heart cracked in two.

I then managed to escape the party. I didn’t have a car at the time and I didn’t want to tell my parents that I was abandoning the party, so I walked all the way home. And I couldn’t even cry as living in a small town everyone knows everyone and me walking down the streets in tears would’ve been all over town by morning.

At home the waterfall of tears fell in painful torrents. I pulled down all the photos we had together from my wall. And then I saw it.

The cactus.

In a fit of rage I hurled it against the wall.

If you were willing to kill my love, I was willing to destroy any evidence of it.

Years later, still in love, I found myself writing a lengthy email to the Pianist. I wanted to explain my love, how I never stopped believing cause I wanted to be that radical that Ola Salo sang about so much.

You want to know what he said to my emotional vomit?

GOODLUCK.

But I guess luck has never been on my side.

If I were lucky, I never would’ve met you.

By: Azzurra Nox