Season 1, Episode 1 of "Before She Knew My Heart"
The first memory I have of Ayla isn't wrapped in cliché.
No violins played. No cosmic spark. No cinematic lighting.Just a five-year-old girl with uneven pigtails and a stolen packet of cream biscuits.
She banged on my bedroom window like she owned the world.
"Open up, grumpy! I saved the cream ones for you!"
That's how she entered my life —Loud. Messy. Radiant.
Like sunlight crashing through the blinds I never wanted opened. That day, I didn't know she'd become the girl who would shape the rhythm of my heart for the next 15 years.
We were next-door kids, with bedrooms so close our Wi-Fi clashed.Our balconies could touch hands. Our fights echoed across living rooms.Her voice was always louder. Her laughter, sharper. Her presence — magnetic.
Ayla wasn't just part of my childhood.She was my childhood.
We built blanket forts with mission maps.Traded secrets over mango candy.Watched the rain blur the streets, pretending it was the world crying for no reason.
But for me... it wasn't just friendship.Even back then, it was different.
I noticed when she got new shoes.I cared when she wore her hair differently.I panicked when she scraped her knee — and offered my favorite Pokémon band-aid, pretending it didn't matter.
But it did.She always did.
Middle school came and Ayla remained... Ayla.Loud. Late. Loving.
I, however, changed.I started writing about her in my journals.Not by name, but by smile. By presence. By the way she made silence feel like a symphony.
She called me her "constant."Said I was the one person who always stayed.
But what she never knew was that I didn't stay because I had nowhere else to go.I stayed because I couldn't leave her — even if I wanted to.
There were times I tried to confess.Messages typed at 2:17 AM.Deleted at 2:19 AM.
Letters folded into four.Burnt the next day.
Moments when she held my hand during horror movies — and I held my breath instead.
Moments when our palms used to touch during the passing of pickleball- I felt the electricity passing into me.
But I couldn't tell her.Not when she trusted me like oxygen.Not when I knew saying it might break everything we had.
Because sometimes, you love someone too much to risk the only version of them you get to keep.
She cried once — when her fish passed.She didn't call her boyfriend at the time. (Not even sure if she had one)She came to me.Sat beside me.Didn't speak for 20 minutes.
I didn't say anything either.
I just handed her a cup of water, wrapped her in my hoodie, and watched her fall asleep on my shoulder.
And in that stillness, I whispered to myself,
"If this is the only way I get to love her — silently, from inches away — I'll take it."
Now, years have passed.She's in med school.I'm building lines of code into dreams at 2 AM.But she's still the one girl who can unmake me with a smile.
They say love is loud. Explosive. Obvious.
But mine?
Mine was built in shared raincoats.In homework help and birthday cards.In every time I looked at her and smiled like I didn't feel a hurricane inside.
This chapter isn't a love story.Not yet.
It's the beginning of a war — not between people, but between silence and truth.
And before she ever knew my heart...
She was the girl beside my window.