She still thinks about him

When she was 11 she met him for the first time and she was shocked by his bruised knuckles and bruised knees and kind of scared by the emptiness she saw in his deep blue eyes. When he talked to her, though, his words were gentle and reminded her of starlight and dust and when he apologized for her bruised sore arm she felt calm and smiled and said it was okay even if it wasn’t really his fault but hers, because she was just a silly girl standing on his way and not paying attention to anything but the universe she found on the pages of her book.
When she was 12 they became friends and even though they were so different she could understand him better than anything. He got mad at her when she straightened her hair for the first time, because he liked it long and curly. She said: “at least I haven’t cut it” and smiled to herself because it somehow made her feel good to know he liked something about her.
When she was 13 she realized her heart would feel anxious and happy and calm and sad when she was around him and even if her friends told her he wasn’t a good person because of all the cigarettes and all the drinks she refused to believe they were right because she knew him better than anything and she knew about all the sadness inside him. And how could someone so wonderful be bad, anyway?
When she was 14 she woke up in the middle of the night while he knocked on her window. She opened the window and allowed him inside her heart, and it pounded when he said “I love you”, but he was drunk and tired and high and she really didn’t know how to feel about it because he wasn’t being serious, was he? And when her lips touched his for the first time she could taste the beer on his mouth and she knew she would never forget this taste, she would never forget this moment, and six months later tears were finding their way down her cheeks while she stared at a picture of him, knowing that now he would be young forever.
When she was 15 she got so mad at him for leaving her that she cut her hair short because she knew he would got mad at her when he found out, but he wasn’t going to find anything out, was he? She realized she wanted so badly to join him that sometimes she almost couldn’t breathe. The blades became her friends and she got thinner and sadder but then she suddenly realized how mad he would be at her if he was still there to care about her. She knew perfectly well he would yell at her for being so stupid but then soon after he would hold her in his arms and look at her eyes with that expression she knew so well and maybe offer her a cigarette that she would refuse with a smile. He would hold her hand and play with her fingers and tell her he knew perfectly well how it was to be broken and scared and sad, and her tears rolled down her face and fell on the open wounds on her legs and she cried and cried and cried but then after that she wiped away her tears and decided it was time to move on or do anything she could to get out of that prison of sadness and fear.
When she was 16 she decided to let her hair grow again. She put away the blades and tried to smile; she knew she would never be the same again but she was trying to be fine. And honestly she was starting to forget his face but she still loved him more than anything and she was kind of scared because she knew one day she would meet someone new and this person would make her feel like there were butterflies on her stomach. She knew she was so different from the girl she used to be that maybe if he was still there he wouldn’t even recognize her; and she ran her fingers through the scars on her legs and smiled and cried sometimes, but she was starting to be fine, you know?, and now they were the same age and wasn’t it weird that somehow he would be 16 forever but she would keep getting older and older? Every time she looked at a cigarette or a beer bottle it reminded her of him but now it didn’t hurt anymore; the tears became smiles and now it’s been years but she’s trying to live again, you know? She’s learning to live again.