Kissing Is the Easy Part

Chapter 59 The Gucci perfume (1)

Flora

I had been feeling rather crazy lately, and by crazy I meant the bad kind. While Sean aced at being in love as if it was a test, I struggled with balancing the role of a good girlfriend and a headstrong, hormonal teenager, which resulted in a lot of mood swings. I snapped at Sean all the time and I knew it was wrong. I wanted us to be two rare blue parrots soaring over the carnival in the sky of Rio, but really he was more like the house cat that was happy to stay at home and eat the same food every day. Getting angry at the cat for not being able to flap its wings was really unfair.

How miraculous is it to love someone and actually have that person love you back? I should be weeping tears of gratitude instead of picking stupid fights with him around the clock. When I thought of how ungrateful I was being I hated myself. I had been crushing on this guy all through my high school years, and now he was finally mine I didn't treat him the way he deserved.

I decided to adapt the famous JFK quote "Don't ask what the king can do for you, ask what you can do for your king" and make it my life motto. Here are a few things I (willingly) did for him:

1. I ate at his house and marveled over his mom's cooking when I really wanted to have a candlelight dinner alone with him. Sean thought he was doing me a favor by bringing me home, but what seemed like a warm gesture at first soon turned stressful. Yes, I did like his family, but in front of them I had to be on my very best behavior, like I was hosting the Ellen DeGeneres show. They expected me to be funny all the time and start conversations, when sometimes I just wanted to pull out my phone and check my texts.

2. Did we go to three-courses candlelight dinner sometimes then? Of course not. Sean said he was all for it, but he slipped once and said he found it exhausting. If that wasn't the most insensitive/ignorant thing I had ever heard then I didn't know what was. The sous chef and line cook were back there sweating and slaving away while all he had to do was pick up the fork. How could that be remotely exhausting?

3. We didn't try parties anymore. I convinced myself that couples didn't do parties anyway, since they were just an excuse for drunken people to get close to one another. Now that I "graduated" from singleton, I no longer needed dark, crowded, intoxicated places to meet guys (even though just hearing the words dark, crowded, and intoxicated made my heart race in the very best way possible). Parties sucked and I could live without them.

4. I had started working on his Christmas gift. At first I thought of buying him a Bottega Veneta wallet since it was low-key and seemed to suit him, but then I thought why bother. He had no money and credit cards to put in it anyway and I didn't want him to feel like I was mocking him. I ended up--don't laugh--knitting a scarf for him. I couldn't believe I was stealing gift ideas from Linda, but perhaps that was what the Foster family liked. Home-cooked meals and handmade gifts.

5. Whenever I didn't see him I was out with my friends and annoying them about how wonderful my boyfriend was, or I'd be sitting home knitting and checking the time, waiting for him to come back, like the obsessed fangirl I was. I deserved to have a bronze statue of me in the middle of the city titled "Flora Morgan, devoted girlfriend and role model."

Sean was appreciative of everything I did for him even though he constantly worried if I was happy. I assured him that I was, and in the process I assured myself as well. What was there not to be happy about? After all, we had everything a solid relationship offered: the stability, the trust, the security, and mutual understanding, even though it lacked everything else: freedom, possibilities, surprises, and unlimited choices.

When Sean smiled at me I still thought he was the greatest guy ever and I was really lucky to have him, and that was when I scolded myself, screw choices.