The Trouble With Boys

It’s guys like them — charming, sexy, and sweet enough to seem like they almost care about you.

Then you fall, and they don’t. Suddenly, you’re lost and confused replaying every night spent together over and over like your old favorite movie. “How could he?” “But he was so…” “I swore he was different.” You swear off dating, promising yourself you won’t fall again until someone proves their worth- that they’re the one who’s different.

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You go back a couple of times, a kiss here, a phone call there.

You blame yourself. “How could I be so stupid? I read it all wrong.”

But you didn’t. It was him.

When he kissed you and said “I really like you”, you echoed his words back to him- but you were the only one telling the truth. When you met his mom, she called you his girlfriend, and for a time, he didn’t object. Instead, he pulled you into a kiss- a kiss you thought was insurance of how he felt.

And maybe it was. See, maybe that’s the trouble with boys.

Maybe he meant every kiss, every moment stolen, and every word he spoke. But then he realized. He realized the magnitude of what he was starting to feel for you, and he realized he was scared.

He realized you were too much woman and he could never be man enough to compare.

So he lies.

He covers it up.

He leaves you wondering.

He brings the next girl around and laughs at you, as if you’re the stupid one for being confused by her presence. He looks you in the eye and says, “it was never going to last,” unwinding all the other pretty words he had whispered to you over the last several months. He quits replying, quits calling, quits asking to see you.

A week passes, and then another. He starts texting. He keeps calling. You reject his requests to see you. He does not get to decide to come back to you that easily.

The next time you see him, the spark is gone, replaced instead by laughter in your mind.

You see, my darling, you are an ocean and he is merely a drop of rain– too afraid to fall and get lost in you.