Page 10 of Can't Take My Eyes Off You

Ouch. She’s never told me to shut up before. Not seriously, anyway. I drive through the city, towards the apartment she’s currently sharing with her sister, silently, as she’s requested, but my mind is wandering. I’ve loved this woman since I was fifteen years old. I fell for her the moment I walked into sophomore homeroom and saw her sitting in the back corner, doodling in her notebook. It was love at first sight for me.

I remember it like it was yesterday. She was wearing bright pink shorts and a white sleeveless blouse with colorful stitched flowers across the top. Her then long hair was colored pastel purple and pulled over one shoulder. She was adorable, and when I wrote the words ‘you’re pretty’ in her notebook after claiming the desk in front of hers, she looked me dead in the eyes and wrote the words ‘no thanks, Abercrombie’. I don’t know if it was the flirty smirk on her face or the fact that she made me laugh, but I was utterly smitten with her from that moment on.

Every day after that, I’d walk into homeroom, beeline right to her and try again. I’d tell jokes, compliment her, tell stories; I even juggled office supplies one day. Writing in her notebook always got her attention when nothing else would work. Each day it was some version of ‘you’re pretty’, then I’d wait for the words she’d write next. Once, she wrote, ‘fuck off, rich kid’. Another time it was ‘go away, dork’. But each time it was with a grin that said she didn’t really mean it. She seemed to like our flirtatious game so I continued on.

After weeks of mutual flirting, and her pretending to play hard to get, I brought her a present. I had Sylvia teach me how to make cupcakes, and after a few failed batches, I got some that were perfect. I spent forever attempting to keep a steady hand and write ‘you’re pretty’ in icing across the top of two. When I got to school the next day (early, that’s how excited I was) I sat the cupcakes on her desk and waited for her to get to class. After a silent moment of her behind me, she jabbed me in the shoulder with her pen, smiled and wrote the following words in her notebook: ‘you’re pretty too, thx’. Success! We’ve been inseparable ever since.

My eyes linger on her as I drive. How’s she still so gorgeous and getting prettier by the day? Five-three, slender but curvy in all the right spots, big brown eyes, light brown hair falling just below her shoulders that she now fades into blonde, and completely kissable lips. This girl can take care of herself, is well read, sweet as cupcakes and has a huge heart. I trust her entirely, with my life, money, everything I have, and I’ve just let her down so badly she won’t even look at me. It’s beyond painful.

I can’t give up, though. Hesitantly, I reach over the center console, slide my hand down her thigh and caress her skin with my thumb. She doesn’t look at me but lays her hand on mine, tucking her fingers under my palm. It’s not much, but it’s something.

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her. ‘I really am. I fucked up, but I’ll fix it. I promise.’

‘We’d planned our entire lives, Will. The apartment, my job, a future engagement – we’ve even named our kids. I guess that’s all off now.’ She cries, dabbing her eyes with her shirt collar.

‘None of that’soff; I’m just taking a couple years to focus on my career. This’ll be good for our future, Berkley.’

‘How exactly is you becoming some reality TV playboy good for our future?’

That’s an excellent question. One I don’t exactly have an answer for and considering my situation, it’s lame. The money. I can’t explain it, but I have this deep-seated need to be independent from my parents, which means making my own living.

Duh, the money! That’s right, maybe this will help. I pull the check I kept from my back pocket and hand it to her.

‘Take the money. This is nothing for them. Tomorrow, we’ll open a new account. One for our future wedding.’

‘I don’t want that money.’

‘Why?’

‘Because there is no future wedding,William. That’s the one part of us that we haven’t nailed down because I don’t want to ask a guy to propose to me and I don’t want to just decide to do it. I want the big, unexpected proposal. But now that dream is dead. By the time the show is over I’m sure you’ll be living your best life with your future wife, Mrs Felicity Adler.’

‘I’m never marrying that weirdo – we’re just working together.’

She groans in frustration. ‘Have you seriously never watched reality television, William? Once you become some heart-throb ass-face that every girl in America wants, you won’t even remember my name.’

‘Ass-face?’ I ask, a little offended. She’s never called me an ass-face. ‘Considering you’re my number one, forever, there’s not a chance I’d ever forget you or your name.’

As we pull into her apartment building, she lets out a heavy sigh. ‘I thought that too, but apparently I was wrong.’

‘What do we do?’ I ask, as I pull into a spot near her apartment and put my Jeep in park.

‘Well, I think there’s only one thing to do.’

I stare at her, waiting for her to spell it out for me because right now my head is full of what feels like cotton.

‘I’m setting you free so you can experience your shallow-as-fuck show as a beautiful single rich douche, so you can focus on your “career”,’ she says, air quoting ‘career’.

‘You’re setting me free? What’s that mean?’

‘It means I’m breaking up with you so you don’t break your contract,William.’

‘Will youstopcalling me William?’ I ask a little too aggressively.

She grunts, clearly not liking my tone. ‘Go,William.’ This time she says it just to piss me off as she grabs her bag from my back seat. ‘Go live life on this stupid, shallow reality show and fall in love with the most pretentious woman I’ve ever met.’

‘Berkley…’

Is she seriously considering leaving like this?

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