Yet that’s what I’d done. That’s the kind of friend I was—the arrogant little fuck that thought if I could put distance between Lee and me, act like I was better than her, that maybe other people would believe it, too.

It worked. Overnight, I became Mike Carson, Ally’s boyfriend, star athlete, the best-dressed kid in school, and all around prick. No one saw Mikey, the scrawny little boy with scraped knees and braces anymore. Except for his best friend. She overlooked every despicable thing I’d done because all she saw when she looked at me was the boy I had been. I wanted her to hate me, because it was easier than seeing the hurt in her eyes every time they met mine. So I did the unthinkable and tried to make her.

For years, we didn’t talk, instead settling into a routine of avoidance. We had classes together, but she’d sit in the back, talking to her groupies, acting as if I didn’t exist. I’d laugh when my friends commented on her clothes, how she wore her hair, or her taste in music. I could lie to them all, but I couldn’t hide the truth from myself. My eyes constantly found her in the crowd, watching her every movement when no one was looking. A part of me wanted to protect her, especially from herself and the stupid mistakes she kept making. I missed my friend, and even though I didn’t know it then, I can see now that I was looking for a way back into her life.

The chance came when Nathaniel Kelly walked into our lives. We’d just started our junior year of high school when I heard the rumors that the answer to our football playoff prayers had come in the form of some hotshot defensive tackle from down south. Coach invited him to practice, but he never showed. When my team and I saw him getting ice cream with Lee, I saw my chance. I walked up to him and introduced myself, knowing it would be the one time she couldn’t run away.

Kelly, as much as I didn’t want to admit, was a cool shit. He was a kick-ass football player and an even better friend. I’d never bonded with someone that quickly, but within a week, he was like the brother I’d never had. He and Lee were inseparable, which meant that I got to spend a shit ton of time with her, too, giving me the chance to get to know the person she’d become. She never acknowledged our past, so I followed her lead, but I never stopped trying to gain her trust and make up for everything I’d done wrong.

Kelly made his move before I could. I’d been so wrapped up in trying to figure out how to get her to forgive me; I’d missed the signs. I never saw it coming. He claimed her first. As much of a screw up as I was, I would never poach a friend’s girl.

I wanted to hate him. Fuck, I wanted her to hate him. They were my best friends, though. And once again, I had to make a choice. This time, I chose to protect her. To be the friend she’d always been for me.

Not a day passed where I didn’t wish things had been different. Kelly was the better man, though, and I happily filled the best friend role, taking any piece of her I could have. The two of them became my family, friends I would do anything for. I loved her enough to want her to be happy, even if that meant she wasn’t with me. If I could go back and do it over again, I wouldn’t change a thing; those were two of the best years of my life.

Then we grew up. Teenagers should never be expected to make adult decisions. They might feel like they’re grown up, and they might act like it, but they really don’t have the faintest idea what it’s like to be an adult in the real world. In a blink of an eye, everything changed.

Nate and Lia had a nasty breakup, both going their separate ways. I joined the Navy, determined to serve my country and do my part to protect the people I loved. I married my high school girlfriend, Julie, because we’d found out she was pregnant not long after I’d graduated from boot camp. By nineteen, I was a dad, a husband, a man torn between his two best friends, and fighting in a war not many people believed in.

Lee should have been the furthest thing from my mind. She wasn’t. Sometimes, the letters she faithfully sent were the only ones I got, and I looked forward to reading whatever nonsense she filled her pages with every week. She did her best to distract me, telling me about the college classes she was taking, the friends she had made, her job, and life back home in general. She never mentioned Kelly.

Every time I was stateside, I spent as much time with Lee as I could. It wasn’t much, because I didn’t want to leave Julie or my son, Jake, not even for a minute. If I’d had my way, I’d have taken them away and shut out the world the entire time I was home. But Jules was adamant that they had to stick to their routine so that it wouldn’t be so hard to adapt after I left.

It made sense at the time. Being a Navy wife and son was hard enough, and the last thing I wanted was to make life more difficult for them. Lee warned me, insisted something was off, claimed that Julie’s distance didn’t make sense, but I didn’t want to hear it. Whenever I brought up Kelly, she’d changed the subject. We agreed that our relationships were off limits and settled on much safer topics. Somehow, we forged through, and our friendship became even stronger. I’d looked forward to each second we were together.

They say time flies as you age, that suddenly, you realize your life is just a series of images, memories that feel closer than they actually are. The days and years didn’t speed by for me. No, they moved at a snail’s pace until the day I woke up in a hospital in Germany, lucky to be alive with no life-altering injuries, but with a few years missing from my memory.

Lee, once again, was the one to charge in and rescue me. She insisted I stay with her when Julie wouldn’t let me come home, and listened to me while I sorted through the pieces of my existence and tried to put my life back together. Just like the little girl who dumped water to hide my humiliation, she put her life on hold for me and did her best to protect me from the truths my mind was hiding from me.

It came back to me slowly. First in flashes, then in vivid, full-color detail, the way you’d watch a movie, I saw it all. My career over. The family I’d lost. The only life I’d ever known, gone. Even now, years later, part of me wished I’d never remembered. It had been hell, facing the things my mind wanted me to forget.

With the help of my friends, though, I’d pulled my shit together and created a pretty decent life for myself.

Nate had moved up in the music world, and needed help with his security. He said it was fate that I needed work when I did. I don’t believe in fate, but I will agree that it was one hell of a huge coincidence. The job let me be myself, and gave me a chance to get to know the man I loved like a brother while saving enough money to give Jake a decent life.

I stayed tight with Lia, too, never telling her why my new job took me away for months at a time, or why I was home for others. She never asked questions, too busy living her own life, and trusting me blindly. I stayed with her whenever I was in Maine, talked to her almost daily, and somewhere along the way, convinced myself that one day, she’d realize how great we were together. I had it all planned out. I’d retire when Nate did, which he said would be in the next few years, build a house halfway between Lia’s and Jake’s, marry the redhead, and give my son a few little brothers. It was a great plan.

But it fell to shit.

Lee will say that the heart wants what the heart wants. And hers craved Nate. The day I stood next to Kelly, watching Lee float down the aisle, glowing from head to toe as she became his wife instead of mine, surprisingly wasn’t the hardest thing I’d ever done. Fuck no. The hardest thing I’d ever done was make the conscious choice to walk away from her, to leave the life I’d built from the ashes, so she could have the one she wanted.