A boy and a girl

This is the story of a boy and a girl. I am the girl. He is the boy. Spoiler alert: This does not have a happy ending, at least not for the girl.

The girl met him one night and was rendered speechless by him. She wasn't one who too put much stock in looks, but it was more than his looks--it was him. She was drawn to him. And the more she saw him, the less difficult it was to talk to him. The more she HAD to talk to him, even if she had nothing to say.

The boy was charming, but he was also beautiful, and she knew they would never be together. Except one day after work, he saw her walking alone, and he asked her to join him for dinner. And she went, and they ate (he ate, she sipped a Sprite) and talked and laughed, and he walked her to her car and hugged her tightly.

The days wore on. When he was talking to her, everyone else became fuzzy background, and he only saw her, and she only saw him. One night she met his parents, and his mother told her that they had heard so much about her, and she told him what the boy had been like when he was young.

And then the boy walked up behind them, and slung his arm around the girl's shoulders, and he whispered in her ear, "Did she tell you my deepest, darkest?" and she shivered. She was beginning to love him.

But the weather grew cold, and his job was over, and he was transferred to another state. The last day she saw him, she became pouty and childish. She hated that he was leaving, but she didn't want to be the first to say it. And the boy finally exploded at her because she was so annoying. and she said, "Sorry, but I hate this. You don't even care, but this is killing me."

He pulled her aside, out of the hearing of everyone, and he looked at her, his green eyes blazing, his hands closing gently around her arms, and he said, sincerely, "Don't you think this is hard for me, too?"

He left town as the sun was setting, a beautiful yellow sky, and she cried. She talked to him from time to time, but she assumed she would never see him again.

But then he was back, and she wasn't expecting it, and neither was he. She yelled out the boy's name, and he stopped, then ran to her and picked her up in the best hug of her life. He was the only place she felt small.

One night after work, he said, "I'm hungry. We're going to eat."

The girl said nothing, just nodded and smiled and felt like her heart was going to burst with happiness.

"A bunch of the guys from work are going out to watch the Blackhawks game. Or we could go somewhere else."

"Somewhere else," she said. And he took her arm and led her to the same diner they had eaten at a year before, and she ordered Sprite as they pretended to care about the outcome of the Blackhawks game. He threw a French fry at her face, then reached across the table with a napkin and swiped at her face. And then they locked eyes, and he said, "Your hair is my favorite," and she blushed, so unused to compliments, especially from beautiful boys with emerald eyes.

The boy called her one night, drunk, after celebrating a pretty great day at work. And he told her what he liked about her. She tried to remind herself that this was preposterous, that gods don't dwell among the peasants, but he said he wanted to see her again that weekend.

He had a change of heart the next day, said he needed to focus on work and not women, but that everything he had said when he was drunk was true. She didn't usually believe people, but she believed him.

She tried to act cool, but one day he didn't show up for work, and she was sure he was fired. He showed up late and she burst into tears.

"What's wrong?" the boy asked.

"I thought you were gone," the girl answered.

He took her face in his hands, wiped his tears with his thumbs, and said, "Stop freaking out."

Things were fine, but they weren't good. They weren't romantic. The girl became clingy and the boy became colder. Until one night, when the girl heard someone say, "I'm with The Boy."

The girl looked at the impostor, who was younger, smaller, more casual than she. She felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. The girl realized it had been over for a long time.

The girl cried in the car all the way home. She felt pretty stupid.