The one that got away...

The first time I really noticed him, when he stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight, so to speak, he was dressed as Mr Darcy. Enough said.

I never had a chance.

It was two years before I noticed him again. I was in my senior year of highschool and taking advance level English. There were only two other students in my year at the same level, so rather than hold classes we had several one-on-one sessions a week. He was my teacher.

I lived for those sessions, I couldn't get enough of his brilliance and for the first time I found someone I could talk to at my level. We never really got around to the English. We just talked.

He'd read every 19th century romance novel worth reading. He loved Shakespeare, Dickens, Coleridge. We talked about my boyfriend troubles, my life, his life, politics, religion, there was barely a stone left unturned.

I've never met anyone so poetic. It was like stepping back a hundred years and meeting one of those reserved, gentleman-types you see in movies.

When I heard he was engaged I congratulated him but secretly hoped it would fail. They'd broken up once before, maybe it would happen again. 

Sometimes I just didn't know what he was thinking. We'd have research nights where we'd just sit and chat, and he'd come and make banal conversation just for the sake of it, while the other students studied. I always felt like it was bordering on inappropriate, I could feel the lightning bolts but never knew if he could. It just seemed a little too close for someone getting married.

He invited me to the wedding, and I sat there in the church, next to my boyfriend, wishing it was me he was waiting for at the altar.

That was a year ago.

Now I'm not looking for lightning bolts, I don't mind who I end up with because it doesn't matter anymore. Because it won't be him. But I'll always wish it was.