Used To

• Chloe Higgins, Grade 11, Melville High School
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'The Write Track 2015' competition

There’s this boy… he’s so amazing. He is beautiful, not like those guys in the magazines. He is beautiful for the way he thinks. He is beautiful, for that sparkle he gets in his eyes when he talks about something he loves. He is beautiful, for his ability to make other people smile even if he is sad. No, he wasn’t beautiful for something temporary as his looks. He is beautiful, deep down to his soul. But, things change. He changed.
He means everything to me. From the way he used to read to me, just so I could listen to his husky voice, to the way he used to dress me in his t-shirts before we went to sleep at night. I love his voice and I love his smile and I think about him way too much.
He used to drive me home from school every day and wait in the car out the front of my house until I was safely inside. I know because I used to watch him drive away from my bedroom window. He used to bring me Chinese food and movies whenever I wasn’t feeling well and he would spend all day lying beside me with his hand wrapped around mine. He used to drag me to the school oval every Wednesday afternoon just so I could watch him run around passing footballs between him and his friends. He always said I was his lucky charm. But what changed?
He was an entire story to me, and I was nothing but a sentence to him. He tossed me away like I meant nothing to him. Like all those years we spent together making each other laugh, smile and cry meant absolutely nothing to him.
But now here we are, ten years later at our high school reunion. You look good, I have to admit. Your hair is cut short, nothing like your wild brown curls when we were eighteen. Your striking green eyes have gotten darker over the years, almost fading into a lovely shade of forest green. Your height, however, is still the same; towering over me like a human shield. The one thing that has stayed the same, ever since I last saw you, is your infectious smile, shining bright in the school hall as you converse with our former classmates.
I smile, rubbing my swollen belly while my five year old daughter tugs at the end of my white lace dress. No matter how hard she yanks and whines I can’t seem to take my eyes off you, my high school sweetheart, the only man that will forever hold a piece of my heart.
I finally look down at my daughter and she asks, “Mummy, do you know that man?”
A million memories flash through my mind all at once, but I just smile and say I used to.