To All the Boys that Broke my Heart Before by Belén Domínguez (reading comprehension books TXT) 📕

a message on my last day there in Miami. I was about to board and told him something. When I was officially home I saw that he hadn’t replied yet. It was a six-hour flight; I should’ve had a reply at that point. But, when I checked our DMs, he had left me on read. It was the first time he left me on read, like ever. Call me dramatic, I’ll take it, but I wasn’t used to not having a reply from him. I won’t lie to you, I said I wasn’t going to because this book is supposed, to be honest. I started tearing up a little bit right there at the airport. I WANTED TO CRY BECAUSE HE LEFT ME ON READ.

I felt beyond pathetic.

Honestly, I never felt so low, so broken for anyone. He made me feel something I’ve never felt for anyone. Him completely ignoring my message just made me feel even worse because it was official—he totally just moved on. You might say: He was probably busy, chill. To that I tell you, that wasn’t the case at all. He literally just ignored my messages. So, I remarked to him that he left me on read, but after hitting send, I regretted it. I was being clingy, annoying, I was probably bugging him with my texts. Of course, he replied with: Lol sorry, I got distracted. He was being so cold and distant.

We didn’t speak to each other again for months. Then, one day, I saw his Instagram story. It was a selfie of him and the girl he claimed was JUST his friend. JUST FRIENDS. PLEASE, I knew that was bullshit. But, the selfie did have an impact on me, it made me feel so jealous, even though that picture wasn’t entirely confirming if they were dating or not.

That is until my brother—who also follows him on Instagram—came up to me and showed me Francis’ recent photo. It was yet another selfie with the same girl only this time, she was kissing him on the cheek. I silenced his profile because I was trying to ignore his existence completely, I didn’t want to unfollow him because that would make me look bad, so silencing his stories and new posts was the next best thing. Seeing him was a constant reminder of the pain I felt. It was a reminder of the tears that escaped my eyes because of him. It was a pain that I’ve never felt before, I didn’t want to remember him. One day he posted a few pictures with this girl, confirming once and for all that they were in a relationship since it showed them kissing and being all cuddly with one another.

He knew we couldn’t be anything, that we couldn’t be together. Distance played a huge part in all of this because we were not living in the same place, we couldn’t have the chance of becoming something more. Instead of stopping us, he kept going. When I went to Argentina, he kissed me, because he wanted me. Is not like I showed signs that I was going to make a move on him when we were alone in his car. He was the one to do it as there was only silence surround us, he felt like kissing me.

Though, months later, I understood that I shouldn’t have allowed him. Yes, indeed, I wanted him too, but giving in to kissing him was the worst decision ever because I fell even harder and deeper. It was the perfect formula for disaster and just now I understand that it wasn’t the best idea to let him have what he wanted.

Many times I wished I would’ve never met him. If I didn’t know about him, I wouldn’t have suffered for someone that honestly, wasn’t worth it. But, you know what? This helps for the experience; with that new knowledge, you start comprehending things way better than before. He’s a dumb boy and if he moved on, I should do too. I owe it to myself to finally stop recalling how he broke my heart. I should look forward to the future, who knows what awaits me? Or. . . Who awaits me. . .

THREE

The boy I will talk about in this chapter was someone I felt a small crush on my first semester in college. Ah, I’ll never forget it, though I wish I could. You have no idea how much I wish to forget this one. Just now I realize that it wasn’t okay that I fell for a guy like him. I am not taking away the fact that he could be a good friend, but to be something more, I don’t think so. Before anything, I must clarify that he’s a nice boy, always there to help and whatnot. The thing is, he sucks at relationships, or at least maintaining one.

There I was, a newby in college, eager to meet new people and to finally study what I like. I met all sorts of new groups and in no time I got to feel comfortable with them. They were all nice and open, so being friends with them was no problem. I was starting to feel part of something, after years of moving around, not being able to feel stable with a group of friends since I would always leave. I’m a shy person, so meeting people was always pretty difficult.

In my first semester, I remember I had no option but to take the night schedule for my classes, since the daylight hours weren’t available at the moment, so, I decided to sign up from 6:00 pm to 9:00. After class, my new group was hanging out outside of college, in a small place where you could eat, that’s where they tend to be after hours, and since I was starting to form part of that group, I decided to join them.

One of my friends was talking on the phone with someone, after a few minutes, he hung up, and kept the conversation with the rest of us, in the middle of it, commenting that two of his friends would arrive shortly. I smiled and kept listening attentively to one of the guys of the group sharing a funny anecdote. As promised, two boys appeared, walking and chatting as they made their way towards us. I assumed everyone knew who they were because no one made introductions. I shrugged it off and kept minding my own business. I did glance at them, it was sort of dark, with just a few street lights illuminating the place we were sitting at, but I could quite tell the features of these boys. One of them caught my attention almost instantly. He was cute, his face seemed friendly, and his smile had some sort of charm that was hard to ignore. He noticed my presence too, which was rare, I was so quiet I still couldn’t tell if the rest of the group knew I was even there.

But, he did. He stared at me a few times, then would go back to talking to his friend. They were just passing by to say hello but soon would leave somewhere else. In one moment, he grabbed my water bottle, which was similar to his, only that mine was pink. He joked about their similarities, making me giggle. He smiled pleasingly when he saw that he caused me a laugh, he tried to hide it though, but it was obvious. Then he commented about how his haircut and my friend’s haircut looked very alike, making me laugh once again, it was the way he would say certain things—he had this cute charm. For some reason, I wanted him to keep talking and smiling, because while everybody was joking around, his stare at times couldn’t leave my face, almost as if he was studying my features, also seeing if I was laughing along with what everyone was saying. After a few minutes, this boy and his friend said their goodbyes and left.

He started following me on Instagram weeks after our first encounter. I am pretty sure he found my account thanks to the fact that I commented on our mutual friend’s picture; an hour after I was having his friend request. I must be honest though, I did find his account way before he found mine. After we met, I wanted to see him better, since it was too dark and as I said, he had some sort of charm I couldn’t take off my head. You know that feeling when you see a random stranger who’s pretty cute and you suddenly feel sad because you realize you will never see him again? Well, I felt that same way, but to my advantage, we had a mutual friend, so finding him was not hard at all. I needed his name, which I got, then BOOM, I was seeing his profile.

I know, it sounds so creepy when I put it like that, but my curiosity got the best of me. I never followed him, even though I found his profile, I just scrolled through his pictures to see who he was because like I said—he caught my attention almost instantly. He eventually followed me first, because he didn’t have a problem with doing so apparently. I was glad though, kind of hard to admit that now because it makes me feel pathetic thinking about it, but he seemed friendly enough and was so cute that him following me made me feel some type of way. I feel like I did catch his attention too that night. I assume that because he couldn’t take his eyes off me, even though he tried so hard to dissimulate—obviously failed because I ended up noticing anyway.

We made our first contact through Instagram DMs probably like a month after meeting each other. I replied to one of his Instagram stories joking around, he replied in a friendly way, finding my comment funny and following it up by joking some more. That’s how we started talking non-stop during that period of time. He admitted that he was also going to reply to one of my stories because he always found me intriguing and interesting, but always held back and never did.

“Really? Why didn’t you just talk to me?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I always wanted to. I would type the message but then quickly erase it”

He clarified my doubts as to if I caught his attention.

“Yes. The first thing I noticed where your eyes, you have beautiful eyes”

That warmed my heart completely. It is so adorable when someone compliments something like your eyes. I love it when they do so, and I loved even more that he did look at me and was eager to talk to me first, but because he’s kind of shy he didn’t. He was so cute, honestly. I liked a lot of things about him. Physically, he had a really nice toned body. He’s tall, something I really like. His smile had something that you couldn’t ignore, it would make me blush. To be completely honest, when he smiled, I wanted to be the reason behind it. Whenever we texted and I joked around, he would send audios, there’s nothing