My mother always used to tell me, “Sloan, if you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If not, then it was never yours to begin with.” I always thought I understood what she meant, until the day I lost Frankie.

Frankie and I met on the first day of choir class when our teacher sat us next to each other. We bonded over our mutual hatred for our teacher and confusion when sight-reading music. By the end of the school year, we were inseparable. We told each other everything. He was the closest thing I had to an antidepressant and was my biggest cheerleader whenever I had to do something that scared me. I loved Frankie with my entire heart and it took me until the beginning of high school to realize that the love I felt for Frankie was more than just friendship. I could never admit that to him, though. I needed Frankie and I couldn’t bear to lose him if he didn’t feel the same, so I just kept it to myself. 

Throughout my freshman year, I was asked out by precisely three boys. Each one of them I politely rejected. “How come you always reject every boy that shows interest in you?” Frankie asked me while we were eating lunch. His brown eyes sparkled in the sunlight shining through the window next to us.

 “What do you mean?” I said, pretending I didn’t understand. 

“So far Charles Barnett, Lucas Harding, and Ben Hughes have all asked you out and you said no to every one of them. Why?”

“I just didn’t like them I guess,” I said. That was the truth. I didn’t like them. I was hopelessly in love with Frankie, but he could never know that. 

“Oh come on, you never even gave them a chance!” He laughed but quickly stifled it, running a hand through his hair nervously. He hated the sound of his laugh. I always told him I thought it was a cute laugh, which was about as brave as I got when it came to telling him how I felt.

“I don’t even know why they would want to go out with me anyway.” I had never really thought of myself as attractive. I had curly red hair that no matter what I did always looked unruly and freckles sprinkled across my paper-white skin that everyone used to make fun of in elementary school. Not to mention I was scrawny like a toothpick. 

“Sloan, come on. You’re beautiful. Any guy would be lucky to go out with you.” I felt my cheeks start to turn red and looked down at the table. “If only you would stop telling them no all the time,” he teased. I forced a laugh. I knew he would never feel the same way about me as I did about him. He would only ever see me as his friend, and I just had to live with that. Things stayed the same for a long time. 

Three months into our junior year, Frankie left on a trip to California for a week with his mom. He told me before he left that he was going to visit family. I wished him a safe trip and asked him to tell me everything about it when he got back. He told me he would miss me while he was gone. I wished that meant what I wanted it to. The night he got back, he called me. I was sitting at my desk doing homework when my phone started buzzing next to me. Frankie. I put down my pencil figuring that my physics homework could wait and answered the call. “Hey,” I said, a smile creeping to my lips. “How was your trip? You have to tell me everything.”

“It was nice,” he hesitated. His voice sounded strange. “I never realized how beautiful it is in California.”

“Are you alright?” I asked. He just didn’t sound like himself. That was the thing about Frankie and I, we could always tell when something was wrong. Well, most of the time. In Frankie’s case, he was oblivious to the fact that I had been in love with him for the past two years. I guess I was really good at hiding it. 

“Listen,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”

“Okay, what is it?” I was starting to get worried. Immediately my mind was flooded with every bad scenario that could go down in the next minute. 

“I lied to you about why I was going to California. We didn’t go to see family… my mom and I were going there to look at houses. She wants to leave Michigan and move there.”

“Oh.” My mind suddenly went blank. I didn’t know what to say.

“Yeah, and we found one. She put an offer in and we just found out that we got it.”

“So when are you leaving?” I asked. I felt tears begin to well in my eyes and my stomach felt sick.

“Next month.”

“Oh.” That was all I could muster. I knew I needed to end the call before I started crying. “I, um, have to go. I have a lot of homework I need to finish. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said quickly before hanging up. My chest felt tight as the tears began to fall down my cheeks. I didn’t know what I was going to do without Frankie. He was my best friend and I couldn’t imagine not having him around anymore. I didn’t sleep that night. Instead I laid in bed, staring up at the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling and listening to the rain tapping on my window outside.

Frankie and I spent as much time together as we could before he left. I even offered to help him pack up his all of his things just so I could squeeze in a little extra time. I went over to his house the night before he left. We laid on his basement floor, our backs on the scratchy carpet. The only light in the room was a red and blue glow coming from the jukebox in the corner-- the only thing that remained in the otherwise barren room. The silence of the room was deafening and the room felt gloomy. The grey clouds that had been looming over our heads for the past month were about to unleash their storm, and no matter how hard we tried to ignore it, they weren’t going away. I turned my head towards Frankie and inspected his face. He had his eyes closed and he looked sort of peaceful. I had spent all those years trying to hide my feelings from Frankie and I was so tired of it. “Frankie,” I said. It was as if my brain went on autopilot. “Can I tell you something?” He opened his eyes and turned to face me. 

“Anything, you know that,” He said, looking at me expectantly. My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. 

“I, well, uh…” I could barely get the words out. It was as if I hadn’t known how to speak English my whole life. I took a deep breath. “I’m in love with you.” The words fell from my mouth before I even realized what I had said. Frankie stared at me with his big brown eyes and I immediately felt like I had made a mistake. “I’m so sorry I don’t even know why I said that. Just forget--” Before I could even finish my sentence, Frankie leaned over and kissed me. It was soft and sweet and made me feel so dizzy that I forgot what I had been saying. 

“I love you too,” he said, grabbing my hand. I wanted to live in that moment forever.

Frankie and I laid there for awhile longer, our fingers laced together, but eventually we had to say goodbye. I had never felt a pain so deep than saying goodbye to him. “I’m really going to miss you while I’m gone,” he told me. This time I knew that meant exactly what I wanted it to.

The next day, Frankie was gone. We decided to try to keep in touch as much as we could, but we both knew that would be difficult. As time went on, our daily calls turned into weekly ones, and then by the time we both graduated high school they were only monthly at most. I missed him more than I had ever missed anyone and I longed for the day that I could see him again. I wasn’t sure when that would be until one day when he called me out of the blue. We hadn’t spoken in a few weeks and I was excited to hear from him. “I’m planning a trip back to Michigan in a few weeks. I just bought my plane tickets. I really hope I can see you while I’m there. I’ve really missed you,” he told me on the phone. 

Time seemed to slow down in the weeks leading up to when Frankie was supposed to fly in. After what seemed like a year, the day finally came. I got a text from Frankie that morning. 

I’m about to get on my flight, I can’t wait to see you!

I spent the whole day feeling like a was floating on air. It had been a year and a half since the day he left. A year and a half since I last saw him. Now he was coming back to see me and I couldn’t contain my excitement. As the hours of the day ticked by, I waited for another text from Frankie to tell me that he had landed. When the late evening rolled around and I still hadn’t heard from him, I started to get concerned. I decided to text him, wondering if maybe he forgot to tell me he was here. 

Hey, have you landed yet?

An hour after I sent the text I still hadn’t gotten a response. Finally, I felt my phone start buzzing in my pocket. I pulled it out thinking it was going to Frankie. To my surprise it was Frankie’s mom calling me instead. I answered it. “Hello?”

“Sloan,” she said. She sounded as if she’d been crying. 

“What is it?” I asked. Something bad happened. I could feel it.

“It’s Frankie. His plane… it crashed.” She let out a choked sob. 

“Is he okay?” My hands started shaking. 

“He’s dead, Sloan. I know he was coming to visit you, I thought you should know.”

My phone slipped from my hand and fell onto the floor. My knees gave out under me and I crashed into the ground.

***

 I thought the first time I had to say goodbye to Frankie was the worst thing I ever felt. I never expected to feel pain worse than that, but that pain was indescribable. It has been a year since the day Frankie died. The pain has dulled since then, but every now and then it comes back full force. I loved Frankie, so I let him go. He tried to come back to me but he never made it all the way. Does that mean he was never mine to begin with?