second best - chapter one: a rocky start

Be as mean as you need to be with your reviews, I need the criticism.

  I will never forget the look on his face the very first time I said her name. I should have realized right then and there that she was what he wanted, and that I would always be his second best. Yet, here I sit seven chapters into a Colleen Hoover novel, stealing glances at my phone screen each time it lights up with a notification, as the minutes between his responses seem to grow longer with each snap.

Nine months ago, to the day I broke up with the boy I thought I was going to marry. That relationship was like a tornado ripping through a farmhouse, it swept through fast, leaving only a fraction of what it once was. My whirlwind left me broken and bruised, literally. He destroyed me, and for the last nine months I’ve been trying to piece myself back together again. I tried weekly therapy sessions, but I found I do much better burying my emotions. Lifting heavy at the gym was more productive at bringing the old Reign back out to play. I stopped letting people walk all over me, discovered I am worth much more than what I was allowing myself to have, and stopped holding myself accountable for the emotions of grown-ass adults around me. In my own opinion, I am a much better version of myself now, still as stubborn, strong willed and independent as I was in high school, but if you ask anyone else, they will say “It’s like we don’t even know her anymore”.

And maybe they don’t, but truthfully, they don’t try to learn so what does it matter. We’re not here to talk about the people who turned their backs on me the minute I stopped letting them walk all over me though. We’re here to talk about the boy who tricked me into letting my carefully placed guard down. Jamie Greene.

We went to high school together, he was a grade above me, and I had a small crush on him when I was a junior. Meaningless really. We ran with two different crowds. He was a running-back for our football team, 4.0 gpa, college classes, preppy girlfriend… the list goes on. You know the type, the group of people in your school that everyone likes to hate just because they’re not good enough to be them. He was one of them. Truthfully, I think he was just friends with the preppy crowd because he was funny because he defiantly didn’t fit in. I’d love to get on here and say some shit like “He was different” then proceed to tell you how I, a member of the weirdos made the star football player fall madly in love with me, ask me to the prom and live happily ever after.

Actually, no I don’t, because I pride myself on my ability to tell the truth even when it’s hard and that’s not the truth. The truth is that I asked him during our third period Human Anatomy class to walk me to my locker and he said no. That was the extent of our interactions until two months later.

Parties were dangerous for me in high school. Largely due to the fact that I couldn’t handle my alcohol and I was always drinking like I had nothing to lose. The night in question was spent chilling on the basement couch of some Junior I didn’t know. I was as far drunk as one can be without blacking out because I can recall every detail. I was sitting on the sofa taking sips out of a fifth of Jack Daniels I stole from my aunt’s liquor cabinet, hazes of smoke from the 6 joints that were being dragged off circled around my head, giving me a stellar contact high. Maybe they were more than sips, truthfully, I was going through yet another “off-again” period of my relationship and was determined to get laid. I was getting up to go to the bathroom, I guess a combination of the cross-faded state I was in and Lauren’s well-placed foot caused me to fall backwards towards the coffee table, she always has been a bitch.

I don’t remember doing anything to stop the fall, my body just went completely numb as the alcohol took over. Just as I felt the edge of the table brush against my lower back I was jerked upright by my armpits similar to that episode of SpongeBob where SpongeBob and Patrick are playing with the fishing lures from the boats on the surface. I look up and start to swing because drunk Reign is feisty and doesn’t like to be touched without prior consent when his green eyes met mine and I knew I was in trouble. I see those eyes five days a week for 50 minutes in Human Anatomy. Wow.

The details of the rest of that night are foggy, but the fact that I awoke the next morning in a swirling pile of his sheets, my throat hot with bile and morning breath, allowed me to put the pieces together pretty quickly. I Irish exited my way out of that awkward “morning after” conversation before he woke up. I was reminded just why I decided to come home with J last night when my last meal of whiskey and pepperoni rolls threatened to make a reappearance when I rolled myself out of bed. It was a task getting myself dressed considering my clothes were…everywhere. As I was pulling my shirt over my head, wondering how the hell I was supposed to get out of this boy’s room without his parents seeing me. Defiantly a defining moment in my teenaged development when I threw dignity to the wind, grabbed my shoes, and crawled out his window throwing up everything in my stomach on his lawn as I dialed my friend’s number to come get me.

I didn’t have any real feelings for him. I avoided him in the halls, we left school in March, he graduated, it amounted to nothing. That was until two years later. when I walked into my college gym and there he stood. I was deep in the previously mentioned abusive relationship so entertaining the wandering eyes of guys wasn’t something I was allowed to do. So naturally I ignored him in that moment. I mean I did look different, that’s what trauma does to a person. Call me vain, but I’m pretty and I have the body type most girls would kill for. I was just about to break things off with Matthew, so my mindset was killer. I ignored him that day, every dm on Instagram, and every attempted add on Snapchat.

Wild to think almost exactly a year later, I was following him to every tailgate and falling for his piercing green eyes all over again.