You Were Mine

The last few weeks together were amazing, essentially unreal. I had never felt that way for anyone in my entire life, the feeling that practically granted invincibility with the sheer happiness of it all. The feeling I got when Adalyn’s lips touched mine was more than enough to make my hopes soar, knowing that essentially anything was possible when we were together.

But I couldn’t help but think about the fact that it was all coming to an abrupt and heartbreaking end only a few weeks into the future. It was next to impossible to say goodbye to her at night without dwelling on what that final goodbye would be like my entire way home. Being with her was enough to distract me, but I feared for the day that she wouldn’t be there to distract me anymore, and that panicky sadness would finally take over.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Adalyn told me one afternoon, the mid August sun beating down on us as we walked out of the front doors of my flat in London. The light shone on the crown of her blonde hair, causing a sheen of halo to encircle her head as she went ahead of me into the street.

“What’s to talk about?” I teased half heartedly, following her down the steps. “I’m only head over heels for you and we only spend basically every day together, and at the end of this month we’re going to be split apart. I don’t see anything that needs to be talked about.”

She glared at me over her shoulder, stone eyes sharp and foreboding. Normally she would put up with my teasing, but that moment was an exception. I’d pressed too hard. She didn’t want to talk about it; she didn’t want to even think about the looming future. We were strapped to the train tracks and the rest of our lives were barreling towards us, and there was nothing we could do but brace ourselves.



The sight of her room in boxes was enough to take the wind right out of my sails. The place where we had spent so many days, and so many nights for that matter, was now organized and divided, ready to be shipped away to her new place in Scotland. Adalyn sat on the bed, folding shirts into a translucent bin, a faint strain of Wu-Tang Clan playing from the iHome on her nightstand, the only thing left out in the room. I couldn’t help but smile when I heard the lyrics Adalyn had once quoted to me, all feelings of our first meeting now bittersweet in the back of my mouth.

“Ni,” she breathed, realizing that I was standing in the doorway.

“This is it, huh?” I hummed, the numbness of it all sinking into my skin, trying to ease the imminent pain I would feel upon parting with the girl I loved. “That didn’t take too long.”

“I’m a fast packer,” she mumbled with a shrug, tucking another shirt into the bin.

“Well, I guess you have to be when you leave tomorrow.” The words were bitter on my tongue and I spat them out as fast I could. She was leaving tomorrow. In twenty-four hours, she would be gone.

She looked at me for the first time, the sadness apparent in her beautiful, blue eyes, wide like saucers and glazed over in just the slightest way. “I wanted to push it as far out as I could. I’m not very good at goodbyes.”

I gave her a slight shrug, crossing the room to join her on the bed. Placing my hand on her knee, I rubbed the soft skin that I’d come to know so well over the past three months. She broke her gaze from me, returning to the shirts. It was as if she couldn’t bear to look at me, like it was too much for her thin frame to bear. It was apparent in the way she was breathing, like she was struggling for air. Like an anxiety attack was going to hit her with full force and there was nothing we could do to prevent it. It had been building for weeks now, impossible to avoid. The end wasn’t near, it was here.

“I mean, maybe it doesn’t have to be goodbye, you know?” she gasped, her voice wavering like it was pressured by the weight of heavy tears. “We can always write to each other. That’s kind of romantic isn’t it? We can call each other every day.”

Seeing Adalyn break down like that was too much for me. My heart ached like it never had before, every heartstring tugged with each word that left her mouth. She was always the strong one, the one who kept her head above water when it was so easy for me to drown, the one who was so aloof when I’d tried all summer to give her all of me. I’d never seen her in such a vulnerable state before, and it was tearing me apart.

“We both know that’s not going to happen, Ada,” I sighed regretfully, as much I wished it could. “You’re going to be having the time of your life in Glasgow, and God only knows where I’m going to end up. I’m going to be everywhere. Neither of us can commit to that.”

Her breathing was shallow, and I could see her hands trembling as she folded each new shirt into the bin. She was trying so hard to keep herself together, to maintain her cool composure she had grown so masterful at controlling. “I know, it’s just… it’s just…”

“We’ve had a good run though, haven’t we?” I suggested hopefully, trying to raise her spirits, wishing so terribly that she would just look at me. I was trying to remind her of all the amazing times we had, of all that she had given to me, of the confidence she helped me discover. “You’ve done so much for me. I’ve learned so much from you, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I only wish that it didn’t have to end.”

She finally turned to me, eyebrows curved and knit together like that was all she could do to hold herself together. I almost wished for her to turn away again because I couldn’t bear to see her so sad, to see her full lips tucked between her teeth and bitten hard, fighting the inevitable. But I knew that I needed to appreciate those beautiful eyes while I had them that one last time, appreciate everything about her before it was gone.

“Oh, Adalyn, I can’t stand to see you like this,” I murmured, running a hand through her hair because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. Her gaze was locked on mine, holding on for dear life, trying to memorize those very last moments. I wanted to remember everything about her when she was happy, the glint of mischief in her eyes, the playful smirk on her lips, her hair blowing in the breeze on top of that building the night I told her I loved her and never heard it back.

“It’s just that…” she stammered, her breath gasping in the middle of her sentence. “It’s just that…”

“It’s just that what?” I begged, taking her hands in mine. They were cold and clammy, absolutely quaking in my grip.

“It’s just that I love you, Niall. I love you so much.”

She loves me.

She flung herself on me, wrapping her arms around my neck tightly and sobbing violently into my shoulder. I was stunned, all words to calm her completely gone. Adalyn loved me. She finally understood what it meant; she finally could say it out loud without being afraid. And she said it to me. My heart pounded in my chest, the joy and regret overwhelming, as tears came to my eyes too. I fought to be strong for her, pressing them back, taking a shaky breath.

“I love you too,” I whispered. “I always will. And thank you for everything.”

“No, Ni. Thank you.”



Adalyn taught me how to breathe again. I had lost my confidence and she showed me how to be myself, one day at a time. Her hands helped shape me, restore me to the man I once was and helped me become the man I knew I could be. I heard a lyric once that went “your voice was the soundtrack of my summer.” That summer, I found myself in Adalyn. I found everything in Adalyn.

So I wrote her a song. And it ended up on the new record, with all these other people’s hands in it. But I hope that at its barest bones she recognizes it, and knows that it’s for her. All of it has always been for her.