Settle For Less (A Before You Exit Fan Fiction)

For You I Could Be The Best

Loser! Loser! Loser! I was sitting on a swing in the park when I saw him. He was sitting alone at the far end of the park near the slide where most of the older kids were. He wore glasses which hid his sky blue eyes but I was good at acknowledging eye colors ever since. He was reading a book; I had to squint my eyes in order to see what he was reading—Harry Potter, classy, though I wasn’t really interested at the moment. There was something about him that caught my eye but I couldn’t figure out what.

            A girl about a year older than us was shouting at him. Though he ignored her, I could see his eyes were watery behind his book. She wore baggy pants and a big shirt. She was a bit chubby and was a bit bigger compared to everyone else. I had to look twice in order to determine if she was really a girl since she doesn’t look like one.

            “Loser!” she addressed the boy.

            She walked toward him, obviously didn’t like being ignored. She lifted the kid by the hem of his shirt and all the eyes of the crowd turned toward them. Before I knew for sure what I was about to do, I was already on my feet walking toward them. A squeezed my way toward the crowd of eleven and ten year olds, somehow, I was smaller than everyone else which made it harder.

            The kid’s nose was bleeding; baggy-pants must have punched him which only made me angrier. I had always hated bullying. I was standing in front of the crowd, opposite to baggy-pants. I was wearing my hands-on-my-hips angry look. “Hey!” I shouted.

            She looked confused at the moment but the expression quickly faded. She was laughing now, at me. I could see the boy shaking his head, mouthing no. But I couldn’t just let it go. “What is it, Barbie?” she said.

            Some kids around me laughed but I ignored them. I was aware that I was wearing a pink dress with a blue ribbon on top of my head since my mom was the one who dressed me earlier. “Let him down,” I said calmly.

            “And who are you to tell me what to do?”

            Before I could answer, I stomped my heel atop of her foot. She growled in pain, dropping the kid to the ground. In times like this, I thank my sassy mom for wanting me to wear an inch of heels at a very young age. To be a lady you must learn to walk gracefully with heels, she had always told me.

            I grabbed the boy’s arms and dragged him as far away from baggy-pants as we could possibly run with short kiddy legs. We ended up gasping for air behind a tree a few houses away from my house. The boy smiled at me and I smiled back.

            The scene shifted. All I could see was water blue for quite some time until my eyes focused on sky blue eyes. I’ve been looking at it—my eyes watery and my heart breaking. He was a year older now; his hair a little bit longer than usual and he had ditched his glasses which made his blue eyes more illuminating. His eyes fixed on me and I saw pure sadness in them. “Don’t leave me,” I said.

            “I will never leave you,” he said. “I’ll just be gone for a while. This won’t goodbye.”

            “Promise?” I could feel my eyes burning and tears were falling quickly. He brushed the tears away with the back of his hands. He held out a chain with a silver ring. He had put the necklace on me without breaking eye contact. He had bent his head forward so that our foreheads touch, resting his hands on my shoulder. I was lost in his eyes and I could feel the world stopping, leaving the two of us the only people there. That was when I first knew what love was. “Promised,” he had whispered gently.