“Think I like you best when you’re dressed in black from head to toe,
Think I like you best when you’re just with me and no one else.” — K
I was listening to “K” by Cigarettes After Sex when the above set of lyrics set off a pang of emptiness inside me once again as I can’t help but think of you. Scratch that, not you, but the memories of us and the seemingly limitless potential of what we could’ve been.
I fell in love with the version of you that I was able to bring out, and I took pride in that. I took pride in you telling me you’ve never felt so comfortable talking to someone before, and that you felt like we could talk for eternity if that even exists. I took pride in being your first choice whenever you felt bored or just needed someone to talk to/joke around with.
I took pride in, and missed how sentimental you’d get for me, how you took the time to remember my birthday, or when my flight is departing so you could wish me a safe flight. I missed you telling me you wish you could tell the whole world it’s my birthday today.
I missed how you’d stew silently in mild irritation whenever other people try flirting with me, and how you’d always brush it off as nothing but reveal when you’re drunk that you were, indeed jealous.
I missed our playful NSFW banters, with inside jokes that would probably get us cancelled if our conversations ever were to get leaked.
Most of all, I missed the version of us when it was just us two, with no one else watching. The version where longing gazes are exchanged from across the room, the version with gentle kisses peppered in the hidden crevices of one another when no one’s watching, the version in which you’d spent the last 1% of your dying phone battery on the phone with me, unwilling to hang up because you’d care more about hearing my voice than a dead phone.
I liked these versions of you I brought out, because it made me feel special knowing I could turn someone so seemingly nonchalant into someone that is capable of caring and falling so deeply for another.
Now that we’re no longer a part of each other’s lives, it’s moments as such that still linger in my memories. Out of the hundreds of interactions we had with one another, it’ll always be the memories of the version of you that only came out in my presence that I still hold so dear to my heart.
Forgive me for being selfish, so selfish that I only like the version of you that solely belongs to me. Forgive me for being jealous, jealous of others while they now bring out new, possibly deeper versions of you I’ll never have the privilege of ever experiencing.
