What was it? Sympathy? Pity? Whatever it was, damn it for all eternity.

You saw him, silently struggling after the breakup with his girlfriend. While she was trashing his name and whole reputation, he stayed silent, quietly destroying himself. You noticed it.

So, out of the goodness of your heart, you tried helping him, picking him up little by little. It took him a while for him to open up to you, but when he did, it was like finally seeing the light after being in the dark for so long. He wasn’t as bad as people described him to be, he was just angry. He could be a nice guy if he wanted to.

And maybe that’s the reason why your heart feels the way it does whenever you see him. You grew to like him—maybe too much. He could be a nice guy.

Until, y’know, he wasn’t. He got a new girlfriend, which stung, but you had to be happy for your friend, right? Expect, he seemed to be forgetting about you. His new girlfriend, a new preppy popular girl, had him on a leash. Maybe it was her fault for why things turned out the way they did, or maybe it was his for letting everything happen.

He drifted away from you—intentionally. He stayed away from you whenever he passed you in the halls and started making fun of you with his girlfriend and her shitty friends. You were replaced by someone who was going to totally break his heart again. And the cycle will just continue.

As you stare at them from your lunch table, watching as they laughed loudly and joked around, you wonder what he’ll do when she breaks his heart. You wonder if you’ll break his, just how he broke yours.