Novella Ch1 - Lust Onset

📖 Chapter 1: Lust Onset – Suggestive Version

> Narrated by J



Her name was Lisa.
We met at church, one of those modern community places with guitars instead of organs and too much light for my liking. I was sixteen, awkward, insecure, and shrinking into myself — until she saw something in me.

She praised me. Again and again.
Not for how I looked — I was too small for that — but for how I thought. For how I solved problems at school. For how I spoke with passion, like I actually cared about ideas when most people only cared about weekends. Her words made my brain feel like it was on fire. My heart too. No one had ever done that before.

She was tall. Beautiful. Confident.
She made me feel both honored and humiliated in the same breath. Standing next to her, I felt like a child. Yet I wanted her to look at me like a man. The contradiction tore me in half.

I imagined us walking side by side. I imagined us holding hands, laughing. I imagined more, too — things I never dared speak. Every night, I fell asleep with her name inside me. Every morning, she returned like a fever I couldn’t break. There were moments when we were alone — after youth group, walking in the sun — when I wished the world would freeze, just for us.

But it didn’t.

She rejected me. Politely, at first. Then more clearly.
I remember her standing straight, eyes kind, saying something about us not being a match. She said it gently — she always was gentle — but her reasons didn’t need translation. I was too small. She was taller than me, heavier too. She needed someone who could lift her, protect her. That wasn’t me.

I tried to blame it on my height.
Later, I realized maybe it was also my attitude. I had a habit of correcting people. Even her. Especially her. I thought being right would win love. But what she wanted wasn’t a mind that judged — it was a heart that listened.

The worst part wasn’t the rejection. It was the longing that came after.

I still imagined her. Every night. Her skin, her voice, her breath. I tried to hold her in dreams, as if that could replace reality. Once, I gave her a swimsuit as a gift. I slipped a note into it. I can’t even say what I wrote without embarrassment now. I thought it was romantic. I see now that it was desperate.

In the end, I had to escape. The church had become a temple of pain.
I stopped going. I stopped believing — in God, in girls, in the idea that love would ever be simple for someone like me.


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