The Rotten First Love

My cool, top-of-the-class childhood friend fell for a troublemaker.

She said he was alive and vibrant,different from everyone else in her monotonous life.

She skipped classes to date him.

Fought and raced cars for him.

She abandoned me without a second thought in a blaze.

My ten years secret crush burned away in that fire.

After that I left the country and never saw her again.

I never expected that ten years later we would meet at a business function.

I assumed she had married with that boyfriend from back then.

Instead she stared at me, tears spilling down her face.

"Do you know how long I've been looking for you?"

I saw Evelyn Hartwell again at a charity dinner.

She stood out immediately, lost in thought, head slightly bowed.

A decade apart, she seemed even more detached than before.

Perhaps only when she looked at Rhett would any warmth touch her eyes.

She hadn't noticed me, seeming only vaguely impatient.

The man beside me murmured,

"That's Evelyn Hartwell, sir. She came back from abroad and immediately took the reins. Oxford grad, top of her class. Not the kind of spoiled heiress who can't string two thoughts together."

"She's stunning, right?" he nudged, smiling suggestively.

"A real heroine-type! Rich, beautiful, smart! Want to go say hello?"

I said nothing, but memories of the Evelyn I knew surfaced unwillingly.

Seventeen-year-old Evelyn, her skin so pale she nearly glowed in sunlight, looking at me with earnest eyes carrying a hint of a smile.

"Gavin, let's apply to Cambridge together?"

It was a memory from too long ago.

One I thought I'd long forgotten. Yet now, it felt as clear as yesterday.

I set my glass down on the server's tray and said softly, "No, thank you."

"Shall we go?"

At that moment Evelyn's gaze swept over the room and abruptly stopped on me.

She froze.

Then, she hurried towards me, her heels clicking urgently against the marble floor.

"Gavin?!" she called, voice trembling in disbelief. Her eyes seemed to redden.

I pretended not to see. I turned and left.

Our families had been close since before we were born; we even entered the world in the same hospital, one right after the other.

A textbook childhood friends.

Evelyn was born with an air of superiority, convinced everyone else was essentially useless.

Love letters piled up for her even in elementary school.

She never read a single one, preferring to tear them up expressionlessly in front of the hopeful boys and toss them in the trash.

She had the right to be arrogant. Excellent family, stunning looks, a brilliant mind.

At three, she was already buried in books.

At eleven, she hacked her father's company firewall to access confidential files, making him furious yet secretly proud.

Only around me did she dial it back a notch.

She'd never skipped a grade. In her words, I was "so dim" that I'd be lost without her.

So, every day after school, I'd go to her house, or she'd come to mine. We'd play, and she'd tutor me.

Often, she'd tap my head with a pen.

"Gavin, how many times do I have to explain this? Are you stupid?"

Under her patience, my grades improved.

We were always first and second in class. Our lives were intertwined.

Her mom often joked we'd end up married.

Every time she said that I flushed and said nothing, but inside I was delighted.

Who wouldn't love Evelyn? Beautiful, brilliant, and she favored me without reserve.

If the story had stopped there, it would have been the kind of childhood romance people write abouta warm, predictable happy ending.

Then Rhett appeared.

Rhett Vance was nothing like any other boy I'd known.

Charitably, you could call him a nonconformist.

Less charitably, he was a troublemaker.

He transferred in during our junior year, rumored to have been expelled from his previous school.

He never paid attention in class, often skipping to hang out.

He favored tight black tank tops that hinted at defined abs and tattoos, drawing covert glances from girls.

He loved dating, cycling through almost every attractive girl in school.

And Evelyn noticed him.

They shouldn't have crossed paths.

Yet cross paths they did.

The first time he slid a love note under her locker, she crumpled it and tossed it into the bin.

He came back with a second note and cornered her, grinning and pressing her slightly against the wall.

"Evelyn Hartwell. I like you," he said, smoke curling from his lips. "Go out with me."

It was reckless, no one dared chase her like that.

I thought she'd reject him as mercilessly as she did everyone else.

But for the first time, she looked flustered, the tips of her ears turning crimson.

So they started dating.

Evelyn called Rhett "alive"like he was a flare of light breaking her monotony.

When I waited by the school gate, Rhett would come out with his arm slung around her.

"Your childhood friend's waiting, want to study with him?"

Rhett would jeer, and his friends would laugh.

"Come on, Evelyn, go home and study. Gavin's pining for you!"

I felt uneasy and watched Evelyn.

She glanced at me once, then looped her arm through Rhett's and left.

She didn't say a word.

Rhett threw a pitying, mocking smile at me and shut the door.

After that, Evelyn stopped finding me.

She stopped going to the library with me, stopped tutoring me.

She skipped classes to be with Rhett.

She fought street scuffles for him.

She even stole the family car to race with him.

That semester's finals were the first time I outranked her. Her grades crashed.

Her grades plummeted.

At her parents' pleading, my mother asked me to find her and persuade her.

I didn't want to. I knew she wouldn't listen.

But I went anyway.

For the girl who used to bang my head with a pen and promise to apply to Cambridge with me.

She was in a mini-skirt and fishnet stockings, her fingers adorned with skull rings, sharing a cigarette with Rhett.

in a back alley.

Then they kissed.

I pulled her aside.

"Are you going to lecture me like the others?" she snapped, annoyed.

I clenched my fist.

"Evelyn, didn't you say we'd apply to Cambridge together?"

I swallowed the pain and nearly begged.

"I know you like Rhettso I won't stop you. But can you wait until after the exams?"

She sneered, and Rhett moved in, looping an arm across her shoulders and kissing the corner of her mouth.

When he turned to me his eyes were cruel and provocative.

"Gavin! Evelyn is my girl! What Cambridge? Who do you think you are?"

He spat in my direction. I looked to Evelyn, but she avoided my gaze.

"Let her choose," she said after a beat. "Saves you always staring at other people's women."

I stood there through an afternoon that felt both short and endlesssunset a fierce, bloody red.

After a moment she lifted one corner of her mouth in a mocking smile and kissed Rhett deeply, then looked him in the eyes and said, "Is there even a question?"