Under the First Mistletoe

Not Meant for Loving

I'm about to.

"It means nothing," Lizzie mumbled to herself. "I doesn't mean anything to him. It's stupid of me to think about it that way. I should just forget about him. No one would be interested in a girl like me," she finished staring at her face in the mirror. Her long black hair had reached past her shoulders. She titled her head. "I'm boring."

Ever since, the night before, she couldn't stop thinking about what Jordan had said. Or basically, she just couldn't stop thinking about Jordan. Now that she discovered, most importantly the loss of his best friend, she was starting to understand him more.

Or maybe less.

Lizzie wasn't sure, but she realized that Jordan was the type who was afraid of falling in love because he might lose the person he loved.

Or maybe he just isn't interested in me, she thought bitterly as she dropped herself on the carpeted floor of her room. She played with the hairs sticking out from the carpet, just thinking. She didn't know how Jordan had survived that time of his life. Losing someone, and a very special someone at that was devastating.

And he was so young.

Lizzie kept remembering how his face had looked so forlorn, and she knew that only a few people knew about his best friend's death. He must be starting to trust her now, to think of her as a friend that he was able to tell her about it. Lizzie had wanted so much to hug him and comfort him.

Jordan was holding back, and now she knew what it was. A wound like that wasn't easy to heal, but maybe, Jordan was in the process of healing. Maybe…

Maybe I'm dreaming, Lizzie thought sarcastically. There was no way Jordan was in love with her.

Maybe she was being too hard on herself. Everyone around her was in love and maybe she was jealous. She wanted to experience the kind of things that she could see or hear from her older siblings. Except maybe Sally and Spencer.

She realized she was being mean to Spencer. They had two days to go before the wedding. She knew she was like a pebble, against a tidal wave. She could do nothing. And, she admitted to herself that she was being too judgmental on Spencer's behalf. Sometimes people change, and she knew that her parents wouldn't allow Sally to marry him unless he really did love her.

Thinking about it, Lizzie became even more depressed.

She wasn't sure if she envied Sally. After all, Sally's heart was broken by Spencer to be repaired years later, still by Spencer. But sometimes, Lizzie could see the love that was shining from both of them. It was the more physical things like Lizzie would walk in on them just standing with their arms around each other or how they said 'I love you' to each other almost all the time.

She'd never experienced something like that. She'd never experienced having a serious boyfriend, which only made her even more depressed that she already was. She was used to being the dateless dork, but sometimes, she got tired of it. And this was one of those times.

Her parents had told her once, (well her and all her siblings) that the true test of knowing if you were truly in love with a person, was when you could side by side with him (or her) and feel comfortable with him.

No feeling of awkwardness.

No feeling of having to say something.

Just the knowledge that the person was there was enough.

Lizzie hadn't felt any of that with Jordan. But she kept telling herself it was too soon to tell. And anyway, she, herself, wasn't sure if she was truly in love with him. Maybe she was merely in love with the idea of being in love.