MILEY: NICK JONAS AND I 'WERE IN LOVE'

After years of playing coy, Miley Cyrus finally speaks out about her ex-boyfriend Nick Jonas.
"We became boyfriend and girlfriend the day we met," Cyrus says in the September issue of Seventeen Magazine. "He was on a quest to meet me, and he was like, 'I think you're beautiful and I really like you.' And I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I like you so much.'"
The teen stars, now both 15, never went public with their relationship – Cyrus said they were "just really good buds" – though fans and reporters alike were onto them.
"Nick and I loved each other," Cyrus says now. "We still do, but we were in love with each other. For two years he was basically my 24/7. But it was really hard to keep it from people. We were arguing a lot, and it really wasn't fun." After they broke up at the end of 2007, Cyrus tells Seventeen, "At first I bawled for a month straight. I was so sad. I just went into this weird funk. And I dyed my hair black. When we were dating, Nick wanted me to get highlights – and so I did that, and I got myself looking great. And then, on the day we broke up, I was like, I want to make my hair black now – I don't want to look pretty; I want to look hard-core. I was rebelling against everything Nick wanted me to be. And then I was like, I've got to be by myself for now, and just figure out who I really am."
Cyrus doesn't rule out getting back together with the Jonas brother one day – though a source told PEOPLE he's now dating fellow Disney Channel star Selena Gomez, 16.
"Maybe he'll be my best friend for the rest of my life or maybe I'll end up marrying Nick Jonas!" Cyrus says.
But for now, she's happily single. "Since [the breakup], I've realized that I've met so many great guys, but I like being the girl nobody can have," she says. "No one can touch me, no one's mine. I'm myself. I think it's sexy to do your own thing."

People