I Crushed Him

By Yushan

When I think about my crush, I feel I was a stupid. How innocent and ignorant I was back then.  When I look back I regret…

  I was in kindergarten, a very single-minded girl, when I  liked a boy, Kai. I crushed him.

I liked him for so many reasons. If someone bullied me, he would immediately stand up to protect me. Sometimes I forgot to bring my homework and he would secretly write my name in the place where the“homework was submitted,” so that the teacher thinks I’d already submitted homework.

He never played with other girls, I was the only one by his side, he gave me all his focus, attention; he made me love him for so many years. How good he was to me…

I remember one time we played a game together. He ran really fast and he hit his head on the cabinet. It was very painful, he cried quietly. He didn’t want anyone to know he was hurt. This was the first time I saw him cry, how staunch and brave he was.

Although he was pitiful, I thought he was cute. I stroked his head and comforted him, the classroom was empty, just me and him, the sunlight coming through the windows, a spotlight on just the two of us.  I continued to stroke his head, he leaned on me, just like an old couple.

 He was good at sports, he was a boy with hormones running all over his body and his grades were so good. So good that he was the teacher’s assistant. He helped to manage the classroom discipline, even though he was a student himself, but the other students listened to him.

He was very good, many people liked him and had a crush on him. I never worried that he would be taken away by other girls, I was very assured of him.

All the girls wanted to make friends with him, but he just played with me. The other girls would ask, “Can we play soccer together?”

 He would say, “No… unless you can run faster than Kristin, then you can talk with me.”

I thought he played with me because I was a fast runner. Later I found out it’s just an excuse to play with me.

I liked Kai for 6 years, but I didn’t know if he liked me the way that I “liked” him.

Then when I had to leave China to come to the US, his friend secretly told me Kai “liked” me too, for the last six years. When I heard that, I felt a pain deep in my heart. I couldn’t say anything at that moment. It’s like the thing you’ve been waiting for a long time appears in front of you, but you can’t get it.

I had to leave him suddenly. I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. 

When I was on the airplane I felt suffocated. The air was full of regret, loss and sadness. I was so sad at that moment I lost hope. Our years of friendship and fate were about to end.

But now I’ve thought about it.  Although I didn’t know that our love was going both ways at the time, we had a romance. One that neither of us knew about.

Why did I say romance?

  We played soccer together everyday. Whenever he had time, he would ask me to play soccer  with him. Sometimes he helped me with tutoring because he was smarter than me. We were naive; we often compared scores about who was smarter. 

Everyday when he finished his homework he would wait for me downstairs.

 Every time I saw him in the window I would speed up doing my homework and looked forward to playing with him.

We were teased by his friends. We would be too shy to look at each other. They would shout, “Look! Your wife is coming to play with you again.” 

Although I was angry and scolded them, not to talk nonsense, I was actually very happy in my heart and I hoped they would say more.

If I had a good time with his friends, he would get mad and ignore me. I asked him why he was mad and he would just say he wasn’t mad.

 Every time I saw him acting bad I would laugh out loud.

We kept it like this for 6 years, gradually moving from a vigorous love period to a bland old couple.

Our love was like the sweet love story on TV that other people dream of. We have more sweet memories than most people.

Weren’t we a couple?

  When I think about him now, my heart still beats a little faster, because he is my youthful memory.