I hated you before I even knew your name.
You were the loud one. The confident one. The one who walked into class like you owned the place, while I stayed quiet and invisible. Every time the teacher praised you, every time people laughed at your jokes, it felt like you were stealing something that was never meant to be yours.
So yeah — I hated you.
You hated me too, or at least that's what I told myself. The way you rolled your eyes when I spoke. The sarcastic comments. The tension whenever we were forced to work together. We were enemies without ever agreeing to be.
Then jealousy crept in.
It hit me the first time I saw you talking to someone else the way you talked to me. Smiling. Soft. Real. My chest tightened, and I didn't understand why. I told myself I was annoyed. That I didn't care.
But I did.
I cared when you laughed without me.
I cared when you stopped arguing back.
I cared when you didn't look at me anymore.
Somewhere between the insults and the silence, hate stopped being hate. It turned into something confusing. Something heavy. Something I couldn't ignore.
The truth came out on a late afternoon when we were alone — no audience, no pretending. Words spilled out. Apologies. Confessions. The kind of honesty that hurts before it heals.
Turns out, we weren't enemies at all.
We were just two people scared to admit we saw ourselves in each other.
And when you finally smiled at me — not sarcastic, not guarded — I knew it.
I never hated you.
I was just afraid of how much I wanted you.