jordana,
you are my kryptonite and i don't think you grasp the gravity of this situation. i fell in love with you without meaning to. sure, i wanted you the moment we met and even after i found out you had a boyfriend and even after i started something with gian, i wanted you and i wanted to want you. selfish as ever, you were the ultimate prize, the object of my fantasy, my lust, and my desire.
but it became more than that. so, so much more than that under the cloak of friendship, under the pretense of getting to know you better and slipping my fingers inside of you, of getting a taste. and then you and matty broke up. i realized just how genuine our friendship had become when my heart ached every time i looked into the rear view mirror and saw you lost in thought, looking out the window, and sadness clouding your usually sunny face. in that moment i wanted to fold you in my arms and never let another bad thing happen to you. i wanted to keep you safe.
and then we kissed. champagne, weddings, my mother thrilled and glowing-- but mostly you. we danced, we laughed, and i fell in love with your laughter, and then we kissed. i have to admit that it was so, so much more than i had been imagining. i remember thinking yes, this is a kiss and i remember thinking that i would never find another kiss that could compare. even then i had no idea. never before, not one time had my physical attraction and emotional attachment to someone left me wanting more. i couldn't have predicted how i would come to feel about you, i only knew that your kisses left me drunk and hungry and your friendship left me laughing and satisfied.
and then everything changed. then she died and i wanted to run, i wanted to ignore, and i couldn't. rox said she needed me because she couldn't do it alone and something inside of me said enough. i made a decision to become less selfish. i made a choice to involve myself more with my family, to be more in touch with emotions i had been ignoring, or shoving fervently away. and in all of this, you. i thanked god for you, every fucking day, i did. because during that time you were the light, you were the lifeline that i so desperately clung to. and still i didn't know. i couldn't know.
i don't know the big moment i realized i wanted more with you than i ever had with anyone. i think it happened over a million little moments that started with our first conversation and my first initial thought of you: god, she's cute. our first sober kiss, the soft, teasing way you would trail your fingertip over the skin behind my ear as we passed the bong back and forth on your couch and i thought never stop touching me. yoga in the mornings, watching your perfect body stretch beyond what should have been normal capabilities. mornings in general, smiling mornings, giggling mornings, perfect mornings. ridiculous conversations, serious conversations, and sharing parts of myself with you i thought i'd keep to myself forever. insatiable, i became with you. each moment left me craving more and more and fucking more.
every day i thought about you. how to make you smile, how to surprise you in ways i hadn't already. i thought to myself i need this girl and the doubting voice in the back of my mind warned me not to. it's safer to need no one but yourself, after all. i taught myself that lesson at seventeen and i lived it, i breathed it, like religion.
emmett. i knew he was fucking my sister, i knew he was fucking my friend. finding out that you wanted him, that his sexual adventures affected your emotions on several levels, was a knife to the gut but rather than throw a fit, rather than make a scene, rather than make it about me and my feelings... i wanted to focus on you. i cared about you, more than i cared about myself. i'll admit that i didn't want to feel my feelings, that i didn't want to be a stupid girl, that i felt foolish and ridiculous, that i swallowed whatever pain i felt and ignored it because i didn't want it. i'll admit that immediately i just wanted to be friends again, because i couldn't convince myself that i didn't need you. i almost had a panic attack thinking about cutting you out of my life. i'll admit that i was, most likely, emotionally unstable. i knew that you loved my friendship, i knew that you cared about me, i knew that my attention to you made you happy, i knew that what we had was deeper than the countless kisses we had shared, than the hushed whispers before falling asleep. i knew that i had lost so much, that it hurt so much... that if i lost you, too, i might break.
so i kept you... but i pulled back. i told myself never again. i lied to myself. not just that time, but every time. i loved you, i wanted you, i needed you. i didn't want to. i couldn't be near you without touching you, without kissing you. the chemistry between us could have set the world ablaze. magnetically drawn to you, enchanted by you. the little moments, the big moments, everything in between. no i told myself but not once did i listen.
then he hurt you again. again, i surprised myself by finding out how much it hurt to hear it and again i surprised myself by ignoring my pain and focusing on yours because i thought if i could make you feel better it would be worth it. each time you get hurt i think i can fix this and i do, for a little while, a temporary fix, a band aid on a wound much, much too deep. when matty hurt you, i wanted to take it away. when emmett hurt you the first time, all i wanted was your smile back. when he hurt you again, i wavered, i grew more cautious, but still all i wanted was your happiness. i thought if you communicated with him openly, honestly, freely, that he would have no choice but to see in you everything that i saw in you. i suspected then, i just didn't want to admit it, to give my fears life enough to be said aloud.
it was never me, for you. it might have been, it could have been... in a different time, maybe. if you hadn't been matty's, maybe. if you had never met emmett, maybe. but you were. but you did. because life is a series of moments that happen for a reason and the girl i fell in love with had been matty's, had developed feelings for emmett. because i love you, as you are, i would never have wished things to be different. even selfishly. it hurt, i left, i came crawling back. it'll be different this time. we can just be friends this time. but it wasn't and we weren't. you said that you'd probably change your mind about how you felt towards me, towards our relationship if we slept together, something i had been avoiding because i always leave emotions out if sex, because i didn't think i could handle emotional sex, and i was right. it was indescribable.
and then fucking goddamn emmett i don't understand. after that i had thought it was actually, seriously, genuinely change. that the awkward dance whose steps i never mastered was over. but it wasn't. i came to you and you told me again how upset you were about him and rather than feel my feelings, i choked them down. i didn't want to hurt. i didn't want to cry. i didn't want to break down and ask why. why him, jordana. why not me. because i was there, because i listened, because i tried so hard.
and then i thought wouldn't it be nice to be wanted genuinely wanted. and there was someone who wanted me. someone who had wanted me for a long, long time but hadn't wanted a casual sexual relationship with me in the beginning, someone who knew me when that's all i could conceive of myself wanting. someone that had been there with me, and for me, despite the problems it had caused in her life before. and i thought what could it hurt but it hurt a lot. because i missed you. because over you is not something i can conceive of myself ever being. because loving you opened an emotional flood gate and made me realize that i do love, and i have loved all along. i convinced myself that i didn't because it was easier. because being cold never burned but now i'm consumed by fire, haunted by the past, dreading the future, soaking myself in kerosene and praying for it all to stop.
i told myself i could sacrifice everything with remy if it meant i could have you. because spending that day with you left me breathless and aching and i knew it wasn't fair to her so when she wanted to fight, i let her have it. i held nothing back and i tried nothing to keep her. she pulled back and i shoved because i wanted it to be clean, because i wanted to hurt her, because if i hurt her then, i wouldn't hurt her worse later when i had to tell her that it was you.
it was bliss. smiles and laughter and fucking and kissing and perfection and i believed it again that this time it would be different that this time it was me that this time we had finally gotten it right. i was delusional. i was hopeful. i gushed, i sang out whole sentences, i wiped happy tears out of my eyes. i told her how much i loved you, how badly i wanted this, how i thought it was going to work this time. but i was wrong. because it doesn't matter what i do, how hard i try. it will never be me. wishing does nothing, wanting is pointless. it's not me and i know that now.