Chapter Text
It's time to confess: she's thinking about Caspian every second of the day, again.
She misses the days when didn't even remember the existence of that edgy guy, she won't say that regrets something, Maddie treasures every shared moment, every laugh, every little trip, every late call at night.
She just asks to not think of him, it's that too much to ask?!
Her love life didn't always revolve around him, she had some crazy moments, like that one time she had something with a married man (even if she didn't feel proud about it).
The thing is that believe it or not, she always seems to fall in Caspian, it's not like she's looking for it.
Well... their second encounter was totally her fault.
¡Sue her! She was curious, wanting to know how was he.
Besides Maddie always loved to talk with new people online and at that time she felt like so much need to talk with someone new, although, she certainly didn't expect to feel something again.
But! The third encounter had nothing to do with her, it was pure coincidence.
Whatever.
We better start from the beginning.
Maddie was around 14 years old when she first met Caspian. She says "met", but that's not completely accurate because they were in their early 20s when they saw each other in person for the first time.
She had this friend, her name was Annie, who was in love with a distant cousin of Maddie. They clicked right away. They didn't see each other in real life, but they talked almost every day. At that time the only real-life friends that you had were at school.
Maddie had left a comment on one of Annie's posts, it was something silly and insignificant (she doesn't remember anymore), but a lot of Annie's acquaintances reply her.
Between them, Caspian Keyes, some old middle schoolmate of Annie.
One thing led to another and, by the end of the day, Caspian and Maddie became boyfriend and girlfriend.
I know what you're thinking... “That is not enough time to have begun a formal relationship”. But things used to be like that back in those days, and they were so young and immature, so don't you dare to judge her.
Maddie was helplessly in love with him despite only knowing each other through texts and voice messages, they used to spend so much time talking on any kind of social media, they watched TV shows together (remotely), and played video games online. He knew her better than anyone in the whole world, and she surely hoped to also know him better than anyone.
She knew that Caspian was fascinated by computers, programming, dubstep, and Parasite (the comic); and he knew that Maddie loved romance movies and TV shows, robotics, the winter, and hated school because of the bullying that she was suffering.
They even change their status from "single" to "dating with..." on every social media.
That was like a big and serious thing, you know.
She remember vividly when that relationship started, in early November, she could never forget that, mostly because she had that specific date as her password in almost everywhere when everything ended.
Because she was a depressed teenage girl who wanted to, pretty much literally, die when they broke up.
Yes, so cringe.
Maddie remembers less vividly that everything ended in January when Christmas and New Year came and left.
Three months.
That's all it lasted, and, however, it marked her so much.
She could not love the same way, ever again.
She's not even sure if she ever loved again after him, and trust her, she tried.
A person has a lot of "before & after", a lot of inflection and breaking points throughout their life. When the bullying started was one of hers, her dad's death and her pet's death was another.
The brief presence of Caspian in her life was one of them, an important one.
She can't remember everything from those times, her therapist says that sometimes trauma blocks memories, and trauma also can make them blurry. Her memory was never the same, too much depression to handle it.
However, she always had some pieces of that relationship, like that one time that Caspian told him that he had small romantic feelings about this schoolmate of his, Hannah, Rachel, or whatever when they were still together.
Her tiny jealous and insecure brain was so mad, it kept saying: that's basically cheating, he doesn't love me anymore.
But she didn't make a scene because, after all, nothing happened between her boyfriend and that girl, yet (not that she knew at least).
At that age Maddie was so petty, there were a lot of things that she didn't understand, and she used to get mad because of it, calling it bullshit and being mean to people when something didn't seem to fit in the view that she had of the world.
So, when Caspian texted her again (a little bit after everything was said and done) to tell her that he was scared because he might like boys (maybe seeking her support and comfort, wanting someone that could tell him that it was okay), she was cruel with him, she doesn't remember exactly what she said, but she does remember her feelings to that revelation.
She was outraged, betrayed, used.
Her head was full of " Why would you tell me about this? Our relationship ended up not too long ago, did you even think that I could still have feelings for you? How do you think it makes me feel that you're basically telling me that you like someone else? A boy? Did you ever love me or I was just some kind of experiment for you?".
It wasn't until years later that she realized how mean and wrong was.
It took her years because, well… she had this lapse of time when she did not even remember his existence.
When she remembered she cried so much.
She cried because Caspian should have been so confused and obviously scared, maybe he wasn't even sure how his environment was going to react to the idea of him not being straight because, at that time, there still was so much rejection to the LGBT+ community, the negative opinions and comments so far exceeded the positive ones. And Maddie herself gave him a taste of what the world had to say about the community.
It certainly was fun and ironic to find out that she was bisexual and agender herself, all alone, with no support and comfort.
But all that downfall of regret and self-disgust until the second time their paths cross again.
In the meantime, Maddie had 5 years of disastrous love life.
It's funny how destiny works, she has always been a helplessly romantic, and still...
Let's just say that she didn't have the best of luck on that field.