Secret love

When I was seventeen, I was crushing hard on this guy.

My family wasn’t rolling in dough, so I’d been saving for a year to buy him a birthday gift. The day my mom had her accident, I’d skipped out of school early. That’s when I heard him, laughing with his buddy.

“This thing? Man, a participation prize at some diner would be better than this,” he'd said, all smug.

His friend cracked up. “Knowing Ray, he’d never use it. Give it to me, I could hock it for some internet time.”

“Whatever, take i