2016 WATTY AWARD WINNING CHEATER, FAKER, TROUBLEMAKER SEQUEL
Written by Jenny Rosen & Kristen Maglonzo
For rehabilitated bad boy, Elias King, falling in love again means losing everything--including his life.
When a ghost from his past tears him aw...
*NOTE: Check out the Audiobook version of this chapter voiced by kaelking12 (Kristen Maglonzo)! Featuring music by Tegan and Sara.
Dear Nobody,
I'm pretty sure I'm being punished for murdering someone in a past life.
How do I know this?
Because only an arsonist, serial killer, or rapist would be cosmically cursed with the reappearance of Elias King.
Now, I know I said I wasn't going to mention him again, and I know I lead you to believe that I was turning over a new, non-Elias-related leaf, but obviously, my happiness was not meant to be.
Of all the classes in all the colleges in this world why did he have to walk into mine?
Catch the Casablanca reference?
'Cause if you didn't, you should totally watch it.
It's the kind of movie that's beautiful in all the ways my life will never be.
So there's this tough guy with a heart of gold, falls for a girl he meets on the fly, they have a whirlwind romance, and then they're separated.
Granted she ends up kind of sort of secretly being married to someone else, and that breaks the guy's heart when he finds out, but details.
I may or may not have fallen asleep during some of the movie, but I did see the most important moments.
The best part is, unlike me and Elias, these two get a bittersweet ending.
Even though they end up apart, he tells her she matters.
He tells her he loves her.
He actually TALKS to her instead of leaving things unsaid like a douchebag.
Not that I'm bitter about it. Or him. I'm just...perpetually irritated.
There's a difference.
A bitter person wouldn't help out a boy she hates.
A bitter person wouldn't sit in a medical center lobby while said boy moaned and dry-heaved over an empty trash can.
A bitter person wouldn't be worried the way I'm worried about Elias right now.
I don't want to be, but I am.
You see, Smart Alex knows that she shouldn't be here, that he's not her concern, that she should be sitting eating lunch with Indigo instead of being pulled back into Elias's brokenness again.
There were so many people who could've dealt with this. So many other people who could've helped him instead of me. Hundreds of other cafe-goers who could've offered to lend a hand.
But they didn't.
The reached for their cell phones and filmed us instead.
I'm a nobody, Nobody.
But he isn't anymore.
He's done the exact opposite of what I'd wished he'd do.
Disappear.
And now, he's everywhere.
His name's on the edge of everyone's lips, his face is plastered on fangirl posters, and his words are sitting on Barnes and Noble bookshelves for everyone to buy.
For everyone to see.
Even though he says he meant them for me.
And that's why this situation makes me sick, Nobody.
Why my whole body regrets still caring about what all this attention is doing to him, instead of worrying more about what it could do to me.
And Kai.
He wouldn't want me to be here right now.
He wouldn't want me involving myself with Elias like this.
He wouldn't want that book to exist.
And I shouldn't either.
I should leave--just get up and walk out on him the way he walked out on me. But even if I did, even if I sprinted out the door, dropped his class, and moved miles away from Quad 3, I couldn't run far enough to fix things.
Because he left the kind of holes that distance won't dissolve.
And now all I'm stuck with is the emptiness.
Life doesn't come with magic tricks, Nobody.
You can't snap your fingers and un-sleep with someone.
You can't bury your heart in a pack of cards and make it disappear.
You have to learn how to deal with the ugliness. The aftermath. The unexpectedness of an unhappy ending.
But that's where Elias and I are different.
He thinks whatever we started last summer still exists.
That it isn't over.
That he can write his way back into my life like he's living out some broken fairytale.
But he can't.
I fell out of feeling anything real for that boy when he left last summer.
He just doesn't know it yet.
-Alex
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(Next update will be up after the voting period ends on the #OnceUponANow contest aka after Tuesday the 21st!)
IMPORTANT NOTE: For those of you who don't know my story VIGILANTE GREEN is in the #OnceUponANow contest! If it makes it into the top 25 there's a chance it could be published! Only VOTES on the FIRST CHAPTER count so I would be extremely grateful to anyone (who has the time) to check out the story and vote if you haven't already! Thank you again!
