The boy who stayed in my mind

Sometimes I wonder about the roads I never took.
If I had kept liking Brandon, would things have been easier... or harder? Would my heart have been less tangled? Brandon was my classmate, my seatmate for months, but Greg... Greg was different. He was my church friend, someone I grew up seeing every Sunday, sharing quiet moments after service, and exchanging smiles during choir practice. Our worlds didn't overlap in school, yet somehow he still managed to live in my thoughts.

I'm not even sure Greg likes me, and sometimes I wonder if he only sees me as his childhood friend �" or worse, if he's forgotten all the little memories that mean the world to me.

I always wondered how it would have been if I continued liking Brandon. I am not even sure that Greg likes me �" what if he just saw me as just his childhood friend? What if he had forgotten all our memories? It felt as if the more I liked him, the more we drifted apart. Our bond when we were younger was so strong that we were like two peas in a pod. I won't say that I had it easy when I was letting go of Brandon. I cried a lot. But finally, I stopped liking him and it was only Greg on my mind. But then I started to realize that Brandon began to like me. Just 70% sure.

If I didn't have Avery, he would have been my number one bestie. I guess it's because we were seatmates for long. Anytime we were asked to exchange our assignment, we always exchanged together. Any one he failed, I marked it good and vice versa. I know it wasn't good. But it felt like we shared the same secret. If I were to graduate, it's him that I would miss the most. We were quiet in class, that's why all our class teachers made us seat partners. Slowly and slowly, I felt my confidence coming from him. He was good in chess, I was good in chess. He was calm, I was calm. Maybe not too calm. He was also very funny. He really liked acting like Henry in Henry Danger that aired in Nickelodeon. He even consoled me when I felt that Avery was spending all her time with Amaya. He was a good fellow.

For the last six months of us sitting together, we treasured it until finally our graduation came (😭). I was planning to hug everyone and tell Mike (my last crush in primary school) that I liked him �" yeah, I know it seems I had a crush disease. Sha, I ended up not doing it and just enjoyed my graduation rocking my hair and dress, receiving gifts and collecting numbers. Then finally it ended. We came back to take our external exams and then that year of my life that I spent with all my classmates ended and I was to start a new session with different faces or maybe a few familiar faces. I just hoped to see them again, one day.

Even when I was busy feeling jealous over Mirabella, Greg's place in my heart never really shifted.
But even as I let Brandon fade into the background, Greg stayed.
He was never part of my class, never my seatmate, yet somehow his presence in my life felt constant. I could still picture the way he'd laugh at my silly comments after Sunday service, the way we'd walk together without really planning it, how he would notice the smallest changes about me �" a new hairstyle, a different smile, even when I was pretending to be fine.

Greg was like a quiet song that never stopped playing, even when the noise of life tried to drown it out. While Brandon's chapter had a clear ending, Greg's story with me felt... unfinished. And maybe that's why I couldn't stop wondering about him �" because deep down, I was still waiting to know if he was the one who would finally stay.

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