A/N: This was going to be a poem, but it just didn’t work out very well. But it doesn’t seem enough like a story to classify as fiction, so yeah. …We’ll call it prose. ::shifty eyes:: Um…anyway, this is based on a true event. It happened to one of my best friends, and it inspired me to write. I hope she appreciates this and uses it to help her get through life without being bitter.

No disclaimer, because there’s nothing here that anyone could sue me for due to copyright infringement. XD Enjoy. R&R plz; kthxbi.

As she read the words, it was like a strange detonation went off in her brain. First a sort of numb denial, followed by a wave of hysterical laughter, then cold acceptance. But it brought no real problems, just…strange surrealism.

It wasn’t until much later, when she reread his confession, that it started to hurt.

They had dated. Nothing too serious, but she had liked him. Hell, she’d had a pretty decent crush on him. When they had broken up, she grieved for a day or two, and then got over it. Shit happens, we move on. That was her outlook.

But this was different. Everything had changed because of those two simple words: “I’m gay.” Suddenly the old feelings, the ones that had been stuffed into a box and buried in the deepest corners of her mind, broke free.

I was…a phase? That’s all I was to him. Nothing more. He used me.

She knew that wasn’t true; they were friends, after all. But…he had asked her out just to prove something to himself: that he was or was not gay.

She’d heard stories about it. She’d even written stories about it. Now it was actually happening—to her. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her; it was supposed to happen to other people. Like getting robbed or hit by a bus. It just didn’t happen to anyone but “other people”. Nonetheless, it was happening to her, not “other people”. And it tore her heart in two—even though they had broken up long ago, even though she didn’t love him anymore—because she did love him once, and he never loved her back. At least, never as anything more than a friend.

As she stared blankly at the confession, rereading it a thousand times over, she realized that she didn’t hate him. After all, they were still friends. That wouldn’t change. She was overreacting just a bit and she’d probably feel better in a day or two, just like when they broke up.

He was gay. She could forgive him for that.

But she had never felt so used.