Flutter by, Butterfly

Chapter 1

My name is Jani. This is my story. It starts my freshman year. I was just an ordinary girl. Nothing really special. Not in particular. I went to school. I studied. That's about it. I didn't do sports. I didn't do clubs. I was a social hermit; and to be honest, I liked it that way. I never really felt like I belonged with my peers. All they ever talked about were things I never really cared about: dating, sex, material things. (Somebody hang me PLEASE!) I was just Jani.

My classmates all called me the Ace of Spades, the asexual. I didn't really see it that way. I felt like I was more of a demisexual. I knew I could have had a relationship if I could just trust someone, and put in the time for a relationship with some substance. Unfortunately, that has rarely happened in the world. Nobody has the patience to put that time in anymore, not in the real world anyway.

In my dreams, that was something entirely different. It was where he came to visit me. He was known by the rest of the world as Alejandro Jones, the world's most popular poster boy. He could do anything, be anything. As a child, he won the world over with his singing voice. As an adolescent, he won the world over with his charming good looks and acting skills. By his early 20's, he picked his singing back up, mastered dancing, and continued his acting career. By the time he turned 30, he was a world-renowned writer as well with several published books. He was a man of everything. I guess Alejandro really was the first person I had an emotional connection to, even if it was imaginary and nonexistent.

The things that I dreamed of, nobody knew. I never told anyone. Nobody would have understood the things I longed for. If I were to tell them things that involved lust, they might have actually accepted it. It's common to lust after the celebrities. People do it all the time, but I didn't. I imagined things like walking on the beach and holding his hand, or warm hugs. Maybe he would lay his head in my lap, smiling, while I ran my fingers through his hair, things that most people took for granted. It helped to pass the time when I was lonely.

Why was I lonely do you ask? For one thing, I was an only child. My parents were rich, and anytime I ever became close to their hired nannies, they fired them. My father never paid attention to me. My mother only paid attention when it suited her.

I had one nanny that stood out among the rest. Her name was Maria. She was my best nanny. She did so much more than just follow orders. She would bounce me on her knee to make me giggle. She would twirl me and spin me to hear me laugh. She would dance with me to make me smile. When I was sad, she would sing to me. On one such day, I hugged her and said, "I wish you were my Mommy." Why did my mother have to hear that?

"You will never work here again!"

I watched Maria packing her bags with tears streaming down my face. I was six. Anytime I ever mentioned her name, I was either whipped, spanked, or put in a time-out. I couldn't dare let myself cry if I missed her. "I'll give you a reason to cry." The only thing I could do to remember her by was singing her songs. One of the few things I remember my dad saying to me was, "Why do you always sing that?" I didn't say anything. I couldn't tell him it was her song. I just hung my head. He replied, "If you are going to sing, you might as well learn to sing well."

The singing coach he picked for me was very particular. She snapped at me and criticized me to the point that I could no longer enjoy it. The only useful thing to me was when she introduced songs sung by young Alejandro. The songs he used to sing were the same as Maria's, mostly. They were slightly different. She once told me that she would sing them with her son, and they would duet together. Their songs kept me calm.

Eventually, my parents noticed I was always singing Alejandro's songs. They ended up buying me every kind of Alejandro memorabilia known to humankind. I guess that was when my obsession with him began.

When I was ten, my parents started throwing Alejandro teen things at me. By the time I was thirteen, I had seen every romance movie he had ever been in. I don't know what my parents were thinking, or what their excuse was. Some of them were not child appropriate at all. They weren't exactly porn, but..... One of the movies had him "fall" for an older, married woman. She didn't exactly give him a choice. Even if it was just a movie, sometimes he looked so scared.

At twelve, I had picked up the habit of reading novels. By thirteen I had read his all. At fourteen, my mother gave me a life-size poster of him, and a very life-like vibrator. I never took it out of the box. I felt ashamed my mother would even consider this. I wondered about her sanity. Did most people even do this with their daughters? I didn't understand her reasoning, at all, but I did hang his poster on my wall, right next to my bed. There was something about those eyes, those beautiful green eyes. They were so oddly familiar to me.

On one particular day, I turned fifteen. I never expected a party. My parents had never bothered before, ever. They never had the time; but this day, my mother came into my bedroom, unannounced.

"Get dressed. I'm taking you to see Alejandro."

"What!"

Why would my mother do that?

"You heard me, now go put on something that doesn't make you look fat."

"WHAT!"

"What? Are you stupid? Get up and change!"

She left my room, leaving me to deal with my shock. I fell back on my bed, rolled onto my belly, and screamed into my pillow; not from excitement, but disbelief. I looked back at his poster. How old was he in that image? I think twenty-one, maybe? How old was he now? Mid-thirties?

I looked at the bedroom door. Why was my mother even doing this? She never gave me anything unless she had something up her sleeve. I looked back at his profile. How did I even feel about meeting him? It was different to look at a paper image and wonder if he was as lonely as I was. I did that all the time, wonder that. By the looks of his eyes, he did; or was I just imagining it?

"Jani!" I heard my mother. Oh well, I guess I didn't have a choice about it. I looked into my full-length mirror. My mother always thought my dark hair should be stick straight. I don't know why she says that, but I would try to straighten them every morning anyway. They were already beginning to bounce back, resorting in soft black waves. I picked up my hair straightener and began to straighten it back. I put on a little lip-gloss. I checked my eye-liner.

"Jani! Don't make me come back in there! After everything I have done for you?!"

I sighed. I looked back down at what I was wearing. It was nothing spectacular: a pair of jeans and a pull-over top. I didn't THINK I looked fat. I suppose I was a little bit curvier than some. My abs were not exactly flat, let alone rock-hard. I was slender in most places, but my breasts and hips and thighs begged to differ. They were a generous handful. My face was the roundest of all, and my cheeks were chubby. Nothing I could ever do would change that. I learned to live with that, and I REFUSED to have plastic surgery of any kind. My skin was very pale, with jet black eyes staring back. At least I didn't have any fresh break-outs that day.

I looked at the poster again, taking in his image all over again. He wasn't a big muscle man like a body builder would be, but he still had a muscular form. His physique was more refined, on the lean side. His face had a timeless quality to it. He could be my age, he could be thirty. He looked like either. The trimmed facial hairs he typically kept with his slightly longer black hair he had usually longer than a standard haircut always made me think of an old-school gentleman, from once upon a time. His hair was jet black, his skin a sun-kissed bronze, and he had the greenest eyes you could ever see, of the deepest rain forests with their secrets unknown; but there was something more than just the unique color, something hauntingly familiar. It lured me, beckoned me.

Would I still want to keep this image when this party was over? Will I rip it off of my wall? I looked back at my own reflection. I didn't look fifteen at all. I could easily pass to be in my early twenties depending on how I was dressed. For just a moment, I wondered what we would look like if we were a couple.

"Jani! Am I going to have to drag you out of there?"

I sighed again. It looked like I was going to find out one way or another.