A Little Bit of Lovin'

A Cliche Kind of Love

Ours was a story many were familiar with. It was one of those silly cliches that caused girls to swoon and boys to scoff. But I wouldn't change it for anything, because our story ended with us together. And what could be better than that?

                                                      ***

Cole was the towns loner. He kept to himself. He never caused trouble. He was my next door neighbour. And he was gorgeous. But of course he was, because what's a cliche story without a gorgeous loner?

I had always been curious about the boy who spent most of his free time sitting on the pier by himself. I had known him my whole life, I guess known of him my whole life since we had never actually talked, and in the nineteen years we had co-existed I had seen him talk to a grand total of ten people. His mom, dad, two sisters, the principal at our high school, two teachers, one ex-girlfriend, his boss and his former best friend. I guess we couldn't consider him a loner if he had socialized with a whole bunch of people. What kind of cliche loner would he be if he had a ton of friends?

The reason why I was so curious about him was because he always looked so incredibly sad, which doesn't sound particularly interesting in itself, but it was odd for him. Since his family lived right next door, I got an inside scoop on what their home life was like. It didn't hurt that our moms were really good friends.

I had hung out with and baby sat his sisters countless times, so I knew they were the most happy girls on the planet. His mom and dad were exactly the same. And so were the rest of his family, from what I could tell by the few family reunions I had spied on, in which Cole talked to no one. So I found it incredibly intriguing that the oldest son was miserable.

Of course, being an incredibly shy person, I'd never been able to actually walk up to him and ask if he was okay. I'd never been able to talk to him at all, but I'm sure you gathered that by the fact that I wasn't in the aforementioned list of people he had deemed worthy enough to talk to.

I'm not going to lie, I had a huge thing for Cole Ashwood. I mean, who wouldn't love a gorgeous boy that cloaked himself in mystery? I was incredibly jealous in grade ten when he dated Molly Fitzgerald, because I had wanted to be his first girlfriend. Stupid, and a little crazy, I know. Later, I was glad it had been her and not me. The kids in our school hounded her for information on our mysterious loner. She never spilled a single drop.

Not that I needed it. Living beside someone for nineteen years and having first row seats to their bedroom window offered plenty of insight into ones personality. I could confidently say that I knew quite a lot about Cole without ever having to speak a word to him.

And I'm sure your wondering "if you know him so well, how come you don't know why he's so sad all the time?", right? Well, I do. Kyle Mathison, his former best friend. But you'll learn about that later.

I knew that he liked to draw and that all the pictures on his bedroom walls were done by him. I knew that he listened to old school rock and roll. I knew that he was incredibly sweet when it came to his sisters; there were many times he let them stay with him because they were scared of the dark (I only knew this because I had seen it on nights I stayed up late to study for a test). I knew he was smart and a hard-worker. I knew that his favourite colour was midnight blue, because that was the only colour he had in his bedroom and that was the colour of his car.

I'm not a stalker, I swear. I was just a young girl infatuated.

                                                        ***

It was summer and I was home from my first year away at college. I was currently trudging up the stairs to deposit all of my bags in my room and maybe catch a quick nap before going out to re-explore the town. I dropped my bags on the floor and spun around, absorbing the feel of home. A glimpse of purple in the window had me whirling around and staring in shock at the house beside mine.