The Ineffable Ruth Rhodes

09 she was perfect

vincent

Ruth Rhodes was not the type of girl you fell in love with.

She always wore her hair in a low ponytail and looked younger than she was, and when she drank water she would make these really obnoxious gulps like a drowning fish, as if she didn't care what people thought. Whenever she laughed she'd throw her head back and her mouth would open so wide, numerous people would turn and look at her and she wouldn't even blink. She had one dimple on her right cheek, just one, as if she didn't have a perfect bone in her body. She always applied lip balm a little too much over her lip line, but she did it on purpose because she wanted the line along her lips to be moisturized too, and the fact that she was aware made him want to pull his hair out. She was loud-- her laugh was even louder, the type of laugh you threw yourself into-- but every time someone raised their voice even a little she'd wince and plug her ears. She always wore these baggy jeans to class that she kept having to pull up even though there were buttons around the rim to tighten them, Vincent resided the urge to scream because it was right freaking there and she'd choose to just continue pulling her pants up all day than just tighten them and it was weird, oh it was weird as hell.

So, she's perfect, he thought. She was plain and weird at times— so he wouldn't fall in love with her.

He wouldn't fall in love with her.

So she was, indeed, perfect.

Nevermind the fact that she'd always wear her toque right above her ears as if the point wasn't to keep your ears warm, and she often came to school late because she was taking pictures of the sky because of course she did.

She was plain and odd, he thought.

He would not fall in love with her. So it was perfectly thought out.

At least, those were the thoughts he subconsciously tried to remind himself of as he watched her and his heart jumped into his throat, or when he saw her laugh at a joke Sumaiya made even though it wasn't funny in the least, and he watched her look over at him with that twinkle in her eye that drove him insane.

This feeling rising in his stomach he couldn't exactly describe was starting to eat at him, but not in a decaying sense, in a sense where he started to enjoy her company, starting to think maybe, through all this, they'd be friends.

The rising feeling stayed, and what Vincent Alderage didn't know was that the feeling would stay with him for a long time, and maybe even blossom to more.