Romance is Boring

Jenna Viola Really Needs to Get Herself Together

People who write things better than I do always say to name the chapter after you finish writing it, so you can make it tie into the story and be really fancy and feel French for a little bit. To be honest, if I named the chapter right now, it'd probably be called "Jenna Viola is Singing Along to Her 'Good Day' Playlist Too Much and Needs to Admit That She's Upset."

But that's too long for a novel. At least, that's what Charlotte tells me. Then again, she's the whole reason I'm in this mess in the first place. But maybe I should go back a bit. 

Fuck, that's what they always say in novels. Especially teen ones. Then you're introduced to a quirky and awkward main character that is impossibly cute and also impossibly still-virgin, and then they meet someone in some random place and they stare at each other and instantly fall in love and then love things happen (I've never dated anyone so these portions are basically me accepting that these things can happen, that white heterosexual males can show up at your door in the middle of the night in the rain with flowers and say that they love you even though they had seen you multiple times that day and, really, it would have been much more logical to say it then, but I guess that coming back from math class isn't that romantic a spot to be like "Oh by the way let's bang," I'm not an author or anything), and then tragedy strikes and the love interest accidentally swallows the main characters hamster or something and chokes to death on Mr. Fluffers and then where are we. 

I'm not one of those girls who hates Valentines Day because I'm single, I promise. I'm not going to ruin anyone's fun. To be quite honest I wouldn't mind a girl showing up at my door with flowers and being all "Let's get married" even though I'd probably stutter and be like "I'm allergic to daisies" (which, while true, is not very romantic). I'm just here to tell you that I am not going to stare at any girls or be stared at by any girls and no girl is going to fall in love with me. They won't. Promise. I break promises a lot because I forget that I made them, but I'm pretty sure that this one will stay true. Don't get mad at me if it doesn't, but seriously, don't get your hopes up. 

The only reason I say "might" is because Charlotte is one hell of a mind-changer. But we'll get to that later, I guess. If that doesn't sound too cliche. I can make that less cliche, hang on. But we'll get to that later, when I fight ninjas on top of two fucking unicorns (not "fucking" the adjective, but "fucking" the verb, because that makes it really fucking cool, both usages to make a double entendre). 

Just so you know, that won't happen. 

I really love daisies. Even though I'm allergic to them, I can still look at them from a distance, and I do. I love daisies, for the same reason I love porn so much: it's pretty, and I'm also not really allowed to have it. 

So I sometimes cut class to go look at flowers. Look, I know that sounds really lame, but you're talking about a girl who knows all the words to Billy Joel's biggest hits and who's biggest dream as a child was to be a spy (more on that later). It calms me down, okay? Shut the fuck up. I think one of the things my creative teacher talked about was how you totally shouldn't tell your reader to shut the fuck up, but here we are. Whatever. You started it. Asshole. 

Anyway. If you'll let me continue. I was there, at the local flower shop (it's literally called Flower Shop so don't start thinking "oh man what a piss poor first time author she doesn't even leave the names of places," also if you were going to think that you're kind of a dick), and this girl was staring at my daisies. I don't have a place mat there that says "Jenna Viola's Space" or anything (and, yes, I know, it's a weird name, I get it all the time, no need to tell me), but who else stares at daisies? 

I didn't ask, in case you're wondering. I just stood next to her. That's when I noticed her name tag, and then I realized she worked there, and that I was probably a little bit stupid for not noticing the fucking gigantic box that said "CHARLOTTE." Then she looked at me, and I realized she was super tiny. She was a good two inches shorter than me, and I'm 5'1". I could probably pick her up and throw her a few miles if I really wanted to. 

"Are you looking for a bouquet?" She didn't smile, just kinda shuffled her feet and looked towards the daisies. 

For some reason, that question confused my brain, and I went "A tourniquet?"  If you're not sure what a tourniquet is (understandable, I don't really know why I know other than that I watch a shit-ton of movies), it's a kind of knot thing that you make out of cloth to stop severe bleeding. Like, if your leg got cut off and you were around Boy Scouts, they'd probably make you a tourniquet and you'd feel the soft, soothing feeling of cotton before dying alone.

That's what I thought that she thought I wanted. My brain works so well around pretty girls. She didn't even say anything. I know she heard me, because she stared at me and giggled really softly, but it was so weird that she couldn't even dignify it with a response.

So, at that point, I knew deep down in my heart of hearts that I really had to buy a bouquet. Even if the person running the store was a member of the Taliban and every little flower seed was secretly a chemical bomb, I still had to buy a bouquet. I just pointed at a few random daisies, and she grabbed them and went to the bouquet-ing station. As she was tying them up, I realized that I couldn't walk out with them and put them in my car, lest my car be infested with daisy allergens and I'd either have a stuffy nose for two weeks or die due to throat expansion (my pediatrician was never that clear on the effects of my allergy, at least to me). 

She put a big fancy pink bow on it, smiled a really cute smile, and handed them to me. "It's not a tourniquet, but it should work." That's what she said. She replied to my brain shitting itself with an actually humorous response. She made me laugh. Really loud. Probably too loud. She seemed shocked when I laughed and threw my head back. Maybe I was trying to impress her because my gay male friend said my voice is like sex, but I also thought it was really funny. Maybe I have a shit sense of humor.

I looked back at her, and noticed how her hair curls really softly around her shoulders, and how she didn't really blink unless she was laughing. So I decided to give the flowers to her. 

Now, listen. That sounds romantic. That sounds like "oh man, this author is actually kinda cute, maybe I'm starting to like her," but that's because I worded it as "give the flowers to her" instead of "stuck my hand out really far with the daisies and they touched her chest and it was really awkward and I kinda stared at her until she took the flowers because I didn't want to say 'these are your flowers' because I wasn't really flirting even though no matter what it would seem like I was flirting and eventually she took them." The first thing sounded a lot more romantic.

But, Charlotte kinda topped me. She looked at them, looked up at me, blushed, and said "Don't go falling in love with me, dork." 

Then she smiled.