If you had the guts, maybe you would have told him face to face, maybe if you weren’t so scared about putting your neck on the line you would have pulled him aside and told him everything and you wouldn’t have even given a second thought to the consequences?

But this is real life and it isn’t that simple.

When you’re worried about opening up to people you don’t tend to put your heart on the line.

Actions have consequences and words can stay with someone for a very long time, maybe if you could tell someone how you feel and then instantly wipe their memory it would make things easier?

So in this pretend scenario where you’re not a coward and you’re not scared to take things into your own hands, maybe this is what you would have told him:

Maybe you would have told him that being around him makes you happy, that waking up and knowing that you’re seeing him makes your day feel less heavy.

You could have told him that in the moment when he does things that are a bit unconventional you just end up fancying him more, things that other people find weird and make them describe him as an introvert actually make you wonder if he’s got a space for you in his closed off world that not many people make the cut into.

Maybe you’d have said that if you were make him laugh every day then you would, because his laugh is infectious and makes you smile in a way that very few other things do.

Maybe you could have told him that he shouldn’t ignore how he feels about you because you feel exactly the same and what he’s tried to shrug off as a meaningless crush is actually deeper than that, even if he tries to convince himself it isn’t.

You could’ve said that when you see his name pop up on your phone first thing in the morning and as soon as you finish work, it makes you almost miss seeing his face because when he texts you stupid things that make you laugh you wish you could see the facial expressions he’s pulling, because his overly expressive face just makes everything seem even more funny.

You should have told him you liked him, but maybe it was more than that. You should have told him that you can feel electricity when you’re in touching distance of him, you should have told him that you can stop thinking about him grabbing your waist and kissing your neck, that after that one time it’s all you’ve been able to think about ever since and maybe that’s fuc**d up! Or maybe this is just what totally undiluted lust feels like?

Maybe you would’ve said that he’s not your type and that’s why this is so confusing for you because your head is telling you one thing and your heart is telling you another, but sometimes people are so similar it’s scary.

You could’ve told him that no one understands the controversial opinions you have like he does and no one listens to them while sharing similar opinions like him, no one gets it quite like he does.

Maybe you should’ve told him that you understand that the timing is wrong and that you’ve crossed paths at the worst point in both your lives, but you really hope that your paths cross again in the future.

There’s a lot you would’ve told him if you’d had the guts …. but you didn’t.

And now you’ll just have to hold on to your “what if” and the hope that this isn’t the end of it.