Miscellaneous Short Stories

The Paper Rose

Genre: Romance, drama

Date: Around May 2015

I jam the key in the ignition and fly out of the driveway with tears streaming down my face.

It's been half an hour since my life was destroyed.

It's been six months, since my life was shattered.

There's a difference.

When my life was shattered, it was painful, but brilliant and heavenly too. It was a queer feeling in the pit of my stomach, guilt mixed with a helium-like happiness that bubbled and fizzed and tossed my heart about like a boat in a hurricane.

After all, how could I be unhappy when Bennet looked at me with those soft blue eyes, so full of kindness and laughter and the sheer elation of having a beating heart and air in his lungs? How could I feel miserable when he touched my cheek like that, his fingertips as light as a brush from a butterfly's wing? How could I ever doubt the power of love when he showed me the pictures that he drew of me in his notebook?

"Is that really how you see me?" I would ask, laughing, as I examined the beautiful girl with shining blond hair and rose colored lips. She was attractive and delicate, like a china doll, but strong too, sure of herself and her place in the world.

"You sound surprised," He would smile and tuck a stray hair behind my ear, and I would sigh and lean into his chest. How could I ever feel bad about myself then?

But the guilt came when I Bennet and I were around Jess, or when I was around Jess, or when I was alone, or when I was alone and I knew that they were together. Because Jess was my best friend since second grade, and the single most extraordinary human being that I have ever met, and will probably ever meet.

Jess could whisk away tears with nothing more than a well-timed joked and a toss of her hair. She could get inside your head and make you realize that being dumped by this gorgeous popular kid that made you drool in class was seriously a great thing. She could see that those jeans really look great on you, and your smudged makeup actually makes you look pretty sexy.

How many smiles and laughs have we shared? How many billions of texts have we exchanged? How many hugs have we given each other? Too many to be counted, for sure.

How dare I take away the thing she loves most? I've had a hundred different rude, obnoxious, cute, sweet, ugly, lazy, wanton boyfriends in my lifetime, but Jess has had only one since middle school. My Bennet.

No, her Bennet.

What awful monster would seek to destroy that, and for no reason better than her own lust?

The preppy, blond, mean girls in the movies would. They are the antagonists, who care only about their looks and the boys who have crushes on them. They have shallow, pointless souls with no true friends. They are the obstacles the heroine has to overcome.

I have become the villain in my own life story.

My foot curls around the gas pedal, urging the car faster. My windshield wipers slide frantically over the glass, flicking raindrops out of view.

I bite a nail and think about how my life fell apart.

****

It was a Wednesday. Bennet and I had spent last night going to a movie and then roaming around the park under a cloak of darkness.  Jess thought that we were both in separate homes studying.

As I held Bennet's hand, thoughts of her crept into my head like ivy up a wall. What was Jess doing now? Was she hanging out with her mom, or shopping with those two senior girls that were on her softball team? Was she alone? Was she thinking of one of us? Both of us?