Love arrives at sixteen is not really about love at all.
Sixteen is the age where attention feels like validation and proximity feels like destiny. When someone older notices you, especially someone already admired, it feels earned even when it isn't. I wasn't chasing love; love appeared already formed, already confident, and I stepped into its gravity without knowing the cost.
It happened very naturally. We had a college fashion show and the committee members needed more members. College is a funny experience. Nobody has the confidence to be part of a fashion show except maybe the prettiest of the girls and the hottest of the boys. I am neither.
Yet, when somebody literally begs you to join a fashion show team, how shocked would you be?
And that's how I met love. At sixteen. Via a college fashion show.
He wasn't just a boy; he was an idea—of romance, of being chosen, of being seen. He was the captain of the college football team and I was a netflix nerd. So this was going to be my college romance, I thought. That's nice.
His football captaincy, his final-year status, his ease in the world made him invincible. And somehow, amidst the fame, love was kind. Almost too sweet. To me. Why? I wasn't just younger in age; I was younger in experience. That imbalance mattered, even if it didn't announce itself loudly at the time.
Love stayed near my house, 200 metres away. Was this meant to be? We took the same bus to the college and went out for walks in the evening. College life was turning out to be more perfect that I could have hoped for, and that was fabulous. People started noticing me, because I was hanging out with a popular guy. I went for his matches. Cheered for him, a bit too much.
That attention felt intoxicating. I would pretend it didn't matter, but it did. Suddenly, I wasn't invisible anymore. I was someone's someone. People knew my name because they knew his. I was introduced as an extension—his friend, or at least, the girl who's always with him. At sixteen, that felt like an arrival.
We would sneak into his house and do what couples are supposed to do–without being official. Thinking about this now makes me want to throw up. Yuck!
But anyway…
Love had a best friend. Everyone knew that too. She was always around, at matches, during breaks, in conversations that didn't pause when I entered. She laughed at his jokes before the punchline arrived. She knew stories I hadn't heard yet. She was clingy, I told myself. Annoying, maybe. But mostly just… there. Constant. Unquestioned.
Nobody ever told me she was his girlfriend.
And I didn't ask.
Because why would I?
Nobody taught me about this, either.
So, what the fuck?
That's the thing about being young is you assume honesty by default. You don't think someone would let you build something on a lie simply because it's easier than telling the truth. I trusted the absence of information the way only a sixteen-year-old can: fully, foolishly, sincerely.
Our relationship unfolded quietly. Stolen time between lectures, evening walks that felt cinematic, messages that made my phone glow brighter than it should have. It only lasted a month, but months are long when you're sixteen. Long enough to imagine permanence.
Long enough to get attached.
Long enough to believe this was real.
And then it wasn't.
The truth didn't arrive gently. It came as confusion first—changed behaviour, awkward pauses, looks exchanged that didn't include me. Then it came as a confrontation. Suddenly, I wasn't the girl who had been invited into something. I was the girl who had invaded it. The narrative flipped so fast I barely recognised myself in it.
I was made into the problem.
The seductress.
The other woman.
The one who wanted love.
College was becoming worse… and worse… and this is not how I'd imagined it was supposed to unfold. It didn't matter that I didn't know, and that I was innocent.
It didn't matter that no one had warned me. Silence had protected him long enough, and now it was protecting itself by pointing at me.
What hurts most, even now, is that he let it happen. Love, it turns out, was very good at disappearing when accountability arrived.
Eventually, the girlfriend realised the truth. That I wasn't malicious, just misled. That I hadn't stolen anything—I had been offered something that was never his to give. That moment mattered. It didn't erase the damage, but it restored my dignity.
Looking back, I don't think Love ever intended to hurt anyone. But intention is irrelevant when impact is real.
Love arrived at sixteen.
But so did disillusionment.
And maybe that's why this story stays with me; not because of the boy, or the betrayal, but because it marks the moment I learned that love can also be a lying piece of crap.
On a side note: I did happen to bump into him a year ago–eight years after college–and he apologised for it profusely. I agree, with age we do become wiser, and maybe somewhere down the line he did regret it.
But that changed nothing and I did not forgive him.