One Shots | camren

not a love story

Not all stories about two people are love stories.

And just because it's a love story, doesn't mean it will last.

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"Love isn't real."

You close your eyes and take a deep breath as you try your best to compose yourself before turning around to what you assume is yet another heartbroken soul wanting to drink their sorrows away.

It's almost the end of your shift and you've been doing good this week, keeping the bar relatively incident-free, so you're not going to let anything – or anyone – get in the way of your squeaky clean record so far.

It's been a reasonably quiet last few days and you know for the most part, that's because it's finals week in a college town and your regulars are all still pretending they have a chance to salvage their semester by studying for finals. It's not until next week when those dreams have been inevitably crushed that everyone will be drinking a different kind of sorrow for the next few days. The kind that tastes suspiciously like hundreds of thousands of college debt.

So you turn around and you're ready to pretend you didn't hear the lone person that's hanging out at one end of your bar. But you get a good look at her and you decide, well - it may be worth entertaining the conversation after all.

She seems harmless enough and like someone who's just looking for a conversation and since listening to other people's life stories is essentially part of your job description as a bartender, you decide, why not?

It doesn't hurt that she's pretty too, of course. Striking green eyes canopied under long lashes. Sharp cheekbones and a jawline that'll kill you. All framed by dark-colored, soft waves – so you can't help yourself because you've always been a sucker for pretty girls in leather jackets.

"Yeah? Tell me more about it, please," you say with a smirk as you swing the bar towel onto your shoulder and lean your forearms on the bar, giving Ms. Green Eyes your full attention.

"Okay, let me rephrase," she amends after she takes the time to look you up and down, and you don't miss the hint of appreciation that graces her eyes.

"Everlasting love, like the kind you see in movies and read about in books. You know," she gestures vaguely in the air with both of her hands. "The kind of mutual love where you both stay in love forever and ever? That shit isn't real. So you can keep your rom-coms and your lies, thank you, I don't want any part of it."

"I don't think that's necessarily true."

"Yeah? Well, why do you say that? Where's the proof, hm?" she challenges as she leans back and crosses her arms across her chest, making her cleavage more prominent. But onto more important things. "I'm a science kind of person. I need some empirical evidence."

"Well," you muse as you tap a finger to your chin. "Mis abuelos have been together since the beginning of time, so there you go. There's your evidence," you exclaim in triumph as you watch her shake her head.

"Okay, but that's one relationship that you know that has lasted. How many more relationships do you know that didn't last, huh? Everywhere you look, people are breaking up."

"Well-"

"And! Get this," she adds with increasing urgency. "How many of those couples that 'last," she's doing exaggerated air quotes around the word and you don't stop the smile that forms on your lips at how skeptical she looks, "have stayed together because they still truly love one another. Like, think about it."

There's a pause as she lets her words settle in the air between you.

"How many of those love stories last because they actually stayed in love with one another, and how many stay together only because they got comfortable? Because they got too scared to venture out even if they know in their heart they might not be in love anymore? They think it's too late for them, that they wouldn't even know where to begin if they were to try dating again."