I make a vow to myself as I sob into my sheets. I won’t backtrack this time. While I’m in Pasadena, I’ll put my feelings for Endymion in the rearview, and I won’t look back. He had his chance, but I will never, ever let him have any more power over me than he’s had these past seven years.
Endymion means nothing to me.
I just wish I knew then that forgetting about him would be easier said than done.
Present—Six Years Later
“Luna, baby girl, shoes now!” I yell from the front door for the third time. I finally hear the pitter-patter of her feet, and when she rounds the corner, I see the attitude written all over her face. She slips her tiny feet into her unicorn Vans, whipping her long chestnut hair over her shoulder.
“I heard you the first time, Mommy.”
I prop my hands on my hips. “Then why didn’t you come the first time?”
She sighs as she walks past me, almost as though I should know better. And honestly, at this point, maybe I should. If there was ever a poster child for a kid with attitude, it would be my daughter. At just five, almost six years old, Luna is probably the sassiest child I’ve ever met. If I hadn’t birthed her, I wouldn’t even be sure she’s mine. She sure in the hell doesn’t have my features. She’s a clone of her father. I think that’s what makes looking at her every day so hard. It reminds me of that young, doe-eyed girl who harbored a crush on a boy who never returned said crush. Instead, he just unknowingly broke her heart at every turn.
My sweet Luna is my blessing and my painful reminder all wrapped in a beautiful, sassy package.
After that night at the creek, I thought for sure that was it for us. After all the years of trying to get him to notice me, I thought Endymion had finally seen me. In the heat of the moment, I’d given in to him, giving him everything I had to offer by losing my virginity to him. I was so stuck in the moment that I didn’t realize we didn’t use a condom. I was a virgin, so it’s not like I was worried about spreading anything, and I thought I could trust him. But I was wrong. The next day was a nightmare. The way he treated me as if I was a stranger, just a “kid,” and the way he could so easily forget about the night we shared together was a stab to the heart. How was I so infatuated with him that I missed his slurred words or unfocused stare? For someone drunk, he seemed so…normal.
A part of me died that day. A piece of my soul shattered when he kissed another girl right in front of me, forgetting about me entirely.
I don’t know why I convinced myself that night was any different. Why did I feel like it was magical? It obviously wasn’t because he acted as though I was invisible to him—just as he always did. I gave the guy my heart, my virginity, and still, he acted like I was that little kid from the bakery.
It’s taken me a while to look past the heartbreak and my anger to gather some perspective on the issue. He was drunk. To him, the night never even happened. I can’t fault him forever, and I know that, but it doesn’t lessen the blow of his rejection. I can still feel the phantom pangs in my chest. The organs squeezing in a bind. Sometimes, when the loneliness becomes so suffocating, I think back to that first time with him and all the chaos that came after it.
I was well into my first semester of college when I realized I was pregnant. The sickness, I chalked up to homesickness. The weight gain, I chalked up to the late nights and junk food while studying. When my roommate talked me into taking a pregnancy test and it came back positive, I cried. I sobbed so hard, it rivaled the night after losing my virginity. This was almost worse than a broken heart because this baby was a reminder of the guy who never noticed me.
I called my parents and broke the news because, even at almost nineteen years old, I had no idea what the hell I was doing,