THE BEGINNING

High school: the era when having a boyfriend or girlfriend was the dream. The goal. Everyone wanted that couple status—the matching hoodies, the holding hands in the hallway, the inside jokes that made the rest of us cringe. Being the "it" couple was the high school fantasy everyone chased.

Except me.

Let me introduce myself. My name’s Kiki, and while everyone else was falling in love, I was... not. I used to think I was weird for not crushing on anyone, but eventually, I realized—people are just different. I wasn't broken. I just hadn't met my person.

Until Tyrone showed up.

He was the new guy. No one knew anything about him, and that made him even more interesting. He was leng—actually, no, that’s not even enough. He was peng. That’s the word. The kind of guy who looked like he walked straight out of a music video.

We started talking. Became friends. But let’s be real—that’s not what I wanted us to be. I dropped every hint a girl could possibly drop. I flirted. I texted. I complimented. But either he was completely clueless, or he just didn’t feel the same.

I remember sitting with my best friend, nearly crying. She’s basically a love guru—been through a thousand situationships, and somehow came out smarter each time. She gave me a full game plan: how to talk to him, when to act uninterested, when to accidentally bump into him in the hallway. I followed it all. Every stupid move.

There was this one time she told me to pull him aside and just talk to him—heart to heart, just me and him. I thought, This is it. This is the moment.

And that’s when I realized... he’d never seen me that way. I was the forever friend.

Fast forward 3 years after high school. I still hadn’t shaken the feelings. three. Damn. Years. Then one day, out of the blue, he calls me.

At first, I thought, This is it. He’s going to tell me he loves me.

Instead, he says: "I’m getting engaged."

My heart? Shattered. My brain? Numb. I just walked off. My best friend chased after me, because she knew. She knew I had loved him for years. And the girl he was marrying? The most annoying human being on earth.

Everything crumbled after that. And yeah, it was awkward—because technically, me and Tyrone were never even together. We “broke up” without ever dating.

Things drifted. We stopped talking. I healed. Slowly

It’s had been two years since Tyrone told me he was getting engaged.

And honestly?

I don’t even care anymore.

That version of me—the girl who waited years for a maybe—she’s long gone. I got my life back on track. I focused. I put everything into chasing the one dream that never broke my heart: becoming a fashion designer.

Now?

I have my own label. My own studio.

I signed a lease on my own place. A space that’s all mine, filled with sketches, fabric rolls, coffee cups, and ambition.

And Sasha—my ride-or-die, my therapist, my chaos manager—we made a promise back in high school: once we made it out, we’d see the world. And we did.

We traveled. Paris, Milan, Kenya, South Korea—we walked the streets with wide eyes and loud laughs, soaking in every ounce of freedom and beauty and growth.

We talked about the past sometimes, but never with pain anymore. Just memories. Like flipping through an old yearbook—familiar, but no longer defining.

Tyrone became a name I don’t flinch at. A chapter I’ve closed.

Because the truth is, while he was building a life with someone else, I was building myself.

And no love story—real or imagined—can top that.

Or so I thought.

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