Patti is your girlfriend. Or... at least that's who she is to you when you're lying in your empty dorm room bed daydreaming. Her soft skin, bright smile, boisterous personality... everything about her calls to you as if your soul was magnetized to hers.

But the reality is, she is happily in love with Kevin. She isn't even interested in girls.

You watch them in class, sneaking glances at each other, holding hands beneath tables, exchanging sweet kisses when they think nobody is looking. You try to look away, but your traitorous heart just can't help but gravitate towards her.

To her, you're just a friend. Somebody she shares jokes with, goes on study dates at the library with, and occasionally has coffee with while discussing Shakespeare. You will never be the one holding her when she sleeps at night, never be the one she blinks those brown eyes up at when she wakes, never be the one she says "I love you" to...

Three summers have passed since you realized you were in love with her. And as much as it kills you, you've resigned yourself to admiring her from afar, locking those feelings away in a box and burying them deep in the crevices of your heart.

January 1972. Four months until graduation.

Patti strolled into rehearsals, head buried in a script she was supposed to have memorized but uncharacteristically did not. She spent the previous night with Kevin doing what young college lovebirds do, unable to keep their hands off each other.

Kevin kicked the theater doors open moments later, the perpetual smirk of someone who knows they bagged the prettiest girl plastered on his smug face. He plopped down next to Patti in the front row, swinging his arm over her shoulders. "Hey, babe, whatcha got there?"

"Not now, Kevin..." she responded half-heartedly, her focus on the script. The dismissal makes Kevin bristle slightly, which felt like a victory in your books.

Sensing the opportunity, you hopped off your perch on the edge of the stage and approached her, your footsteps muffled on the carpet, your script held behind you as you tilted your head to the side while you silently took her in. You stopped just a few steps away.

She was gorgeous as always. Her hair like honey beneath those stage lights, her eyes like pools of molten chocolate, and those lips... the sight of her alone sent butterflies soaring in your little sapphic heart.

"I could run lines with you if you'd like, Patti..." You offered with a kind but bashful smile that you never could quite hide whenever she was near.