This is my first attempt at writing, and this is a very rough draft. As this is my first post and one of the first things I've ever written, please keep comments constructive. I'm a little nervous, but would really appreciate any help or support you're willing to part with! Thanks!
Love is a four letter word, but then so is Hate. Honestly though, I don't hate him, but it's close enough to cut the cheese. See, he never did anything precisely to me, so I can't hate him of my own volition. But I can extremely dislike him for what he did to my Sophie. The thing is, I never particularly liked him before that, but I've always loved Sophie. Since the day I met her, when she was just a little thing, no more than six, and me, so big and knowledgeable at ten. Fell for the little girl with those long pigtails and pink ribbons. . . .
"Hi! What's your name? My name's Sophie!", the blonde little girl practically yelled in my ear. "Andrew. . . " he replied shyly. Most people didn't speak so readily to him, they thought he was strange and mean just because he was big for his age and had a surly look about him. He couldn't help that though, it was just the way he was built. He supposed it didn't wasn't helpful that his head had a noticeable flat spot. . . . His mother wasn't what one would call particularly . . . . Maternal. She'd knocked him off the table that she'd set him on five minutes before in her drunken stupor, reaching for a bottle of whiskey. He'd already begun to suspect that she was going to taunt him with that deformity with her increasingly cracked voice till the day she died.
"So Andrew, whatcha doin?" Sophie asked, taking a lick of her half melted ice cream cone.
"Wha?", the nonsensical word slipped out of his mouth unbidden. "Whatcha doin sittin out here all by yourself?" He was still having trouble grasping that someone was actually being nice AND wanted to hold a real conversation with him.
That was the day I met her. That was the day I met the girl I fell in love with. She's always been the same, sweet, talkative girl to this day, nearly 15 years later. Sophie has stuck by me even though I resemble the famous "Chief Broomstick" brought to life by Ken Kessey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not many people initiate conversations with a man my size. Most turn away from my smile, hurry away when I enter a room, and cross the street when they see me coming towards them. Never Sophie though. She doesn't love me the same way that I do her, but I don't mind.
Well, I didn't mind. I do now though. Back to my little tale, before I got distracted with the past. See, most people don't think I'm very intelligent, and judging from my looks, I don't blame them. But that point of view is why I was able to get away with what I did. Please, don't get upset with them, or me even, although you will certainly have plenty of cause to. See, he hurt my Sophie. That was one mistake he never should've made. This is where the way people should have treated me my whole life comes in handy. I suppose I should tell you what happened in the first place, shouldn't I? It all started when. . . .
Sophie came bursting into the trailer house Andrew had inherited from his mother when she'd died last year, with tears streaming down her face. They called it "natural causes", but it was really just the whiskey finally catching up to her. He was glad to be rid of her. The only thing he'd wished was that it had been sooner and that she'd left him less debt to pay off. "Booze before bills" had seemed to be his mother's motto in life. "Sophie! What's wrong?!" He kept looking for signs of abuse, injury, anything that could possibly be wrong with her. Nothing caught his eye as he wrapped his ape-ishly long, but surprisingly graceful arms around her. And was a bit shaken, to say the least. This was totally unlike the usually bubbly and vivacious young woman who usually came traipsing through his door with a grin on her face. True, usually that grin was akin to the one the cat who ate the canary adorned, but it suited her all the same. The last time he'd seen her cry this hard was when her favorite dog had been killed by that bear.
