LOVERBOY, STILL — a novel by Joseph Green
By the time I made it to the platform, I had everything. She was already gone.
No card required.
An Excerpt — Chapter 6
A few days before everything shifted, Kamila called me from the hospital.
Her voice sounded normal. That’s what I remember most. Not weak. Not strained. Just — her.
“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, like it was obvious. “I just gotta sit here for a little bit. They being extra.”
“What happened?”
“Just my asthma acting up,” she said. “I’m good though. Don’t make it a thing.”
I laughed.
“I’m not making it a thing. You the one in the hospital.”
“Valentine’s Day coming up,” she said. “You not about to do nothing regular either. I want the works.”
“The works?”
“Yeah. Chocolate. Teddy bear. And flowers. Don’t play me either — real flowers.”
“Aight. I got you.”
We stayed on the phone a little longer, talking about nothing. The kind of nothing that feels like something when you’re talking to the right person.
Then we hung up.
It felt like a normal conversation.
That’s how I left it.
And then a few days later — she was gone.
He was thirteen.
Who I Wrote This For
I wrote this for anyone who grew up in a house that had everything it was supposed to have — and still left them quietly reaching for something more.
For men who were taught to be strong before they were taught to be honest.
For the ones who kept choosing love and couldn’t understand why it kept choosing them back in all the wrong ways.
His story is fiction. His pain is universal.
— Joseph Green
Thirteen Chapters. Nine Loves.
Simone
She cost me my first understanding of what it meant to lose something through silence.
Marisol
I stayed in that comfortable cage long past the moment I knew the door was unlocked.
Asha
That was the kindest version of no I’ve ever received.
Kamila
She didn’t leave. She was taken.
Roxana
She showed me I could break my own heart by standing still too long.
Cassandra
I didn’t lose her because I wasn’t chosen. I lost myself because I didn’t choose me.
Zara
I mistook volatility for passion.
Brielle
She showed me who I was when I stopped being the man I wanted to be.
Naomi
She taught me that love without safety is just endurance.
Every woman left a mark.
None of them took my heart.
LOVERBOY,
Still
A Novel by Joseph Green