What a difference a year makes. I’ve said it before, a thousand times over and it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Fate deals you a cruel hand and you have just got to be the guy everyone thinks you are and bear it. Bear it because the cameras can see through you and if you value your fledgling career you’ll keep your mouth shut and smile an empty but reassuring smile that never quite reaches your eyes but is enough to sate the hungry masses and the equally ferocious team managers.

Yet, I still can’t stop thinking about him and despite my better or more rational judgement there’s an ever present, ever growing feeling of jealousy bubbling silently under my normally amiable surface. Dangerously simmering and there’s not a thing I can do to escape its reach. I cannot even begin to describe the why’s and the how’s of it all because I don’t know that myself. I’m not supposed to feel this jealousy; it’s not supposed to bother me the way you speak about him to the press because idle words don’t mean a thing, that’s one thing I should know beyond doubt. Neither do casual comments cast towards the cameras about something that doesn’t concern me and shouldn’t rile me up so.

It does though, doesn’t it? I think to myself that maybe, just maybe your innocent remarks betray you and let me catch a glimpse of what you are really feeling for a change. Perhaps all this talk is to drive me away in the kindest way you can think of. Cruel to be kind, is it? Then why does it feel like cruelty for its own frustrated sake?

Or maybe you just don’t realise; maybe that’s it. Maybe you completely misread my actions and my words as something utterly different from their intentions to ensnare and attract. Perhaps you never guessed that I was flirting so desperately with you in the guise of friendship and admiration, thinking it was nothing more than a mild case of hero-worship. Well, yeah it was sort of, even I admit that. And that’s the problem, the root of this mess I’ve gotten myself entangled. You were too perfect, too wonderful in my eyes and before long the adulation and respect I had for you was replaced by a sweet concoction of amazed adoration and desire, growing so gradually that I can’t even pinpoint the precise day when I saw you and realised that I no longer just wanted to be like you, I wanted you.

And it didn’t disturb or scare me as much as I think it ought to have.

I would do anything to be a part of your world, to be surrounded and absorbed into it as completely as I could be. Finding any little excuse to talk to you, savouring every one of your compliments when you talked to the press and, to my astonishment, spoke my praises. I couldn’t believe you had really noticed me that much and I rode my elation throughout the season, feeling on top of the world. And when I gatecrashed your championship party, we must have talked for hours about everything and nothing, enjoying the electric atmosphere, the free-flowing alcohol and each other’s company, and oblivious to the world around us.

Even when the winter came, starved from your presence, gnawed at by a hunger for the new season and the excuse to see you, I firmly believed I could win you over. I may have lacked the courage to tell you before but this season was going to be different. I was going to tell you, come clean about it all. And you were supposed to smile at me and ask me why I had waited so long.

It was supposed to happen this way, enacting the dream scenario I had worked out in my mind. Instead, I lost out by leaving it so late. It didn’t even cross my mind that I might have a rival for your affections, someone you could come to love before you even realise the game I’ve been playing all this time. He wasn’t part of my plan, and now you’re treating him with the same warm smiles, the same gracious praise that you gave me not so long ago. And it hurts, god it hurts more than anything and I don’t even think I want to know whether it’s because he’ll make good the opportunity I should have taken, or that it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had told you in the first place.

I feel like you’re cheating on me with every second of attention you lavish on him, whether it’s a conversation, a compliment or even a simple acknowledgement of his existence with a smile or a nod. You’re not though. You’ve never belonged to me; our only relationship is the imagined one in my head or the one between two colleagues. But I can’t help thinking that you are somehow betraying me with him and I wish I could hate him. Hate him for his ability to capture your attention and hold it, for the way he diverts your gaze effortlessly from me to himself and the way he so consciously acts around you. For the way your gaze will undoubtedly lock with his sickeningly innocent blue eyes and you’ll take what you think is a snap decision to kiss him but is really the only thing that’s been on your mind for a while because I know you don’t make rash, spontaneous moves that could leave you open and vulnerable.

I know you well enough to realise that you will fall for him sooner or later even if I don’t think you’ve yet fallen for him. It will probably happen eventually, his obvious interest in you will spark mild curiosity and a sense of flattery turning into a mutual desire. Will I hold it against you? Probably not. Him, maybe .. almost certainly but not you. I’ve had so many chances to tell you how I feel but I didn’t.

All I know is that I don’t fall asleep in your arms and wake up beside you.

Maybe you’ll surprise me one of these days. Perhaps you’ll turn around and shock me with a confession of desire. Make me feel as special as I felt last year with your undivided attention and your smile directly at me, for only me. And this time I’ll seize the moment.

But will I get that chance?

~The End.