♠ Original Fiction; Average, Even
Average, even
rating/word count: m - 1999 words
summary: Two years, four months and seventeen days. That’s how long it’s been since she was loved back. After the nine-month mark, she started existing in a state of perpetual unrequitedness.
notes: for: fireworkfiasco @ inrevelations #5 ( prompt) I hope you like this. I had fun writing it, your prompt was really cool (I’ve since fallen in love with Jon Sands).
hey! Everyone else, let’s play a game called ‘Try and spot the place where what I planned totally fell apart’!
You sit in her bedroom, in the shadows cast by the night light, watching her chest rise and fall as she breathes. You flicked her light off almost an hour ago now, but still you sit in the chair next to her bed, watching her sleep and praying her dreams are good ones.
Without thinking, your gaze lands on the book of fairytales on the shelf above the bed - at the gold leafed pages bound in leather. As you remember the words printed inside, you sigh, knowing that she is only being set up for disappointment.
You think about the little mermaid, so desperate for a chance at love that she is prepared to sacrifice her voice, about the Beauty who fell in love with a personality and ignored the flaws. Of Snow White and Cinderella, saved by their Princes. Of the Sleeping Beauty, whose prince was ready to fight dragons and a fortress of thorns.
You think, as you do almost every night, about the one fairytale not in the book, the only one you can never tell your daughter. The one that she will eventually learn on her own, but she shouldn’t have to even contemplate.
Because, like any mother, you know this is the only fairytale that is true. And the truth of this hurts you, even now, nine years later.
So slowly, you lean over to run a hand down her cheek, wishing it weren’t necessary, and knowing that a subconscious cynic is the only defence she can have against heartbreak.
And you start to tell her the story, like you do with all the others, but knowing this one by heart.
“The truth is that Prince Charming isn’t real, he doesn’t ride a white horse, or sing to forest animals. The story has always, and will always go like this; the Prince never arrives. Everyone dies, sad and alone, eventually. The end.”
:::
Jenny was average in most senses of the word. Average height - taller than most, but maybe short enough for heels, average hair - dark blonde, but maybe a bit too red, average, average, average.
Even her loves, her job, her life weren’t enough to distinguish her from any other twenty-two year old working as a secretary at her Uncle’s law firm.
(The relation to the boss & occupation are flexible, of course)
¬
:::
Things that Jenny loves (please not, this list is not complete)
Coffee, rubicks cubes, vacuuming with her mp3 player in, the smell of shampoo, cookie dough, boys with floppy hair, the colour yellow, wallpaper, taps that don’t have labels for hot and cold water, finding new uses for office products, the way waitresses smile when she gives them tips, daffodils, her brother (most of the time).
:::
Things that Jenny hates (please note, this list is complete)
People who are rude to her just because she’s a secretary, when she forgets to return library books on time, washing dishes, boys with crew cuts, wearing eyeliner, the way her hair curls when she doesn’t wash it right, roses, her brother (only sometimes)
:::
She wasn’t a pessimist but she wasn’t overflowing with positivity either. She could fake it well though. She has to, sitting behind the front desk, computer to one side, phone and diary to another. She sits, with her legs crossed at the ankle, hands poised next to the keyboard, smile plastered on from the second she hears the elevator ding, waiting for the day that someone walks in and notices her.
:::
It happens, eventually.
:::
To be more specific; it happens one day late in October, when she is running late, because her car wouldn’t start, so she had to run for the last train, which was late anyway, and Jesus, is it so hard to find a coffee cart with a line less than ten people long?
When she finally slides into her desk (twenty minutes late), the first thing she notices is the blinking voice mail light. Moaning, she puts her face in her hands, trying to steady her nerves and praying that the day will only get better. She is so busy trying to remember if there even is a saint for forgetful people that she doesn’t notice Him approach her desk until he coughs.
Taking a deep breath, she turns to him, already starting her ‘Welcome to Henson, Abbott and Pike, how may I help you?’ reel, when she is cut off by this boy leaning over the desk and whispering like nothing in the world could ever be as important as what he needs to tell her.
“Unless it’s some new fashion trend that I haven’t heard about, I don’t think your shirt is meant to be inside out.”
:::
His name isn’t really important.
What does matter - while we’re talking about Him - is that he is three years older than Jenny, graduated with a combined Law and History degree and sometimes the sun hits his hair in just the right way to make his eyes look blue, when really they’re grey.
To say that he was special right from the start would be true in that he’s one of the few people to come into the firm and actually talks to the receptionist (the other being anyone born before 1945).
In the sense that Jenny fell in love with him right from the start would also be true - but it’s also the one thing that makes him ordinary - average even.
:::
Jenny falls in love a lot. Some times it only lasts a week, or sometimes only a day, but it happens quite frequently.
Sometimes it will be a boy she sat across from on the bus. Or the barista who gave her extra whipped cream that day her mascara was running.
Most of the time though it’s clients, or their lawyers, or the delivery boys, or the other Associates assistants. Most of the time they are boys her age. Boys she feels a connection with, no matter how brief a time she has known them.
Sure, it sounds crazy - she knows that.
But.
Two years, four months and seventeen days. That’s how long it’s been since she was loved back. After the nine-month mark, she started existing in a state of perpetual unrequitedness.
:::
He is hired as an intern.
She is promoted to Personal Assistant - which is like receptionist, but she only has to deal with one boss instead of fifty and she gets to do more than answer phones.
For six months, they work around each other. Sometimes they talk about movies they saw, or the latest news, or who is retiring.
She never asks him: what colour his eyes really are, why he sometimes comes to work smelling like woman’s perfume, what sort of car he drives, what his favourite dessert is, if he misses his home town, does he want to get dinner sometime?
He never asks her: does she know that her hair sometimes looks red, is ‘Danny’ anyone special, what does she really want to do with her life, what’s her favourite colour, has she ever thought about drinking decaf, does she want to get dinner sometime?
:::
She believes that everyone is fated to find love. And that there is always someone out there who is waiting to find you and love you.
He believes that love is earned, through good deeds and loving someone unreservedly.
In this story, neither of them is right. Or both. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
:::
One day, He walks into his office to find a loyalty card from the building café, with all but one of the squares stamped. Stuck to it is a note from Jenny.
‘This one’s on me.’
:::
And so, they have coffee. And they ask all those questions they never did before.
:::
Three days after the coffee, she wakes up in a strange bed, in a room that is far too clean to be her own. Her head is pounding and she isn’t quite sure what happened until a very masculine hand slides across her waist and suddenly - oh, it’s all so clear.
:::
But. There is a problem with real life, and being twenty-two, and in love and it maybe being mutual for the first time in a really long time.
You have no control over your life. You think you know the way the world works, that you have a say in how your life works.
There is, however, always someone further up the ladder, someone who is more important - boss, cops, whoever - that can make or ruin your life in a heartbeat.
:::
Two weeks later He gets transferred. There is a new office opening in Washington, or London or something. She never really listened.
He seems so excited, all grins and pride. “They need another intern there.”
Yeah, Jenny thinks, but what about what I need?
:::
Two months after he leaves, she is staring at a little white stick with a glaring pink plus sign in her hand.
Before she can even throw it across the room, the tears have started to run.
:::
She tells him. Eventually. When she’s six months gone, and he has a new girlfriend. It’s a mistake. He yells, and swears, and breaks so far down that he can’t speak and has to hang up.
:::
For the entire winter she sits at her desk and watches the phone, hoping to see his area code flash up.
And when it doesn’t, her heart breaks over and over again.
:::
The moment her waters break though, three things happen. She grows up, forgetting the childish person she was only an hour ago, realising it’s not just her anymore and she needs to be strong, because this is going to hurt. Two, she makes an unconscious decision to just stop thinking about him. Stop dreaming, praying, pining. Three, her heart mends - just a little. but enough.
:::
He visits her in hospital. He never says how he found out she’d given birth, or that he’d forgiven her, or how he was.
He asks her what their little girls (my little girl! she corrects in her head) name will be. (Teresa)
He asks her how her job is. (the same. just more stares)
If she’s staying in the City. (God no. Moving to Ohio.)
Jenny can tell that he’s happy. Both with his life (in Washington and the one here) and this new pseudo-family he will never escape. They hug and smile at each other and think, maybe it won’t be so hard.
:::
And they try, for a while. He visits when he can. Sends money every month. Invites them to his wedding. But eventually, it’s too hard. They become two different people. She is content to sit in her new bedroom, holding Teresa to her chest as she lies in bed, while he needs the excitement of big, powerful cities and the people within.
Jenny decides, that really, it would be better for them both if it just became about Teresa.
:::
Jenny is never bitter about it. Not really. She has Teresa, and a new husband, and another baby on the way. But a few times a year, she will see a man who carries himself just so, with hair just the right shade that she has to do a double take.
It’s never him.
:::
The year’s pass, and their child grows up. One day, Jenny wakes up from a decade long dream and finally understands the difference between loving someone, and wishing you did. For so long, he seemed so important that he became the pillar for everything to measure up to. As she realises this, the shadow he has left on her life seems to vanish and she can finally breathe again.
But still. Sometimes, Jenny wishes that for once, her life could have been easy and that she could have had a future with this man who noticed her shirt was inside out.
locked: april. 2010
© caitlin a 2010
feedback is always welcome.
join!
rating/word count: m - 1999 words
summary: Two years, four months and seventeen days. That’s how long it’s been since she was loved back. After the nine-month mark, she started existing in a state of perpetual unrequitedness.
notes: for: fireworkfiasco @ inrevelations #5 ( prompt) I hope you like this. I had fun writing it, your prompt was really cool (I’ve since fallen in love with Jon Sands).
hey! Everyone else, let’s play a game called ‘Try and spot the place where what I planned totally fell apart’!
You sit in her bedroom, in the shadows cast by the night light, watching her chest rise and fall as she breathes. You flicked her light off almost an hour ago now, but still you sit in the chair next to her bed, watching her sleep and praying her dreams are good ones.
Without thinking, your gaze lands on the book of fairytales on the shelf above the bed - at the gold leafed pages bound in leather. As you remember the words printed inside, you sigh, knowing that she is only being set up for disappointment.
You think about the little mermaid, so desperate for a chance at love that she is prepared to sacrifice her voice, about the Beauty who fell in love with a personality and ignored the flaws. Of Snow White and Cinderella, saved by their Princes. Of the Sleeping Beauty, whose prince was ready to fight dragons and a fortress of thorns.
You think, as you do almost every night, about the one fairytale not in the book, the only one you can never tell your daughter. The one that she will eventually learn on her own, but she shouldn’t have to even contemplate.
Because, like any mother, you know this is the only fairytale that is true. And the truth of this hurts you, even now, nine years later.
So slowly, you lean over to run a hand down her cheek, wishing it weren’t necessary, and knowing that a subconscious cynic is the only defence she can have against heartbreak.
And you start to tell her the story, like you do with all the others, but knowing this one by heart.
“The truth is that Prince Charming isn’t real, he doesn’t ride a white horse, or sing to forest animals. The story has always, and will always go like this; the Prince never arrives. Everyone dies, sad and alone, eventually. The end.”
:::
Jenny was average in most senses of the word. Average height - taller than most, but maybe short enough for heels, average hair - dark blonde, but maybe a bit too red, average, average, average.
Even her loves, her job, her life weren’t enough to distinguish her from any other twenty-two year old working as a secretary at her Uncle’s law firm.
(The relation to the boss & occupation are flexible, of course)
¬
:::
Things that Jenny loves (please not, this list is not complete)
Coffee, rubicks cubes, vacuuming with her mp3 player in, the smell of shampoo, cookie dough, boys with floppy hair, the colour yellow, wallpaper, taps that don’t have labels for hot and cold water, finding new uses for office products, the way waitresses smile when she gives them tips, daffodils, her brother (most of the time).
:::
Things that Jenny hates (please note, this list is complete)
People who are rude to her just because she’s a secretary, when she forgets to return library books on time, washing dishes, boys with crew cuts, wearing eyeliner, the way her hair curls when she doesn’t wash it right, roses, her brother (only sometimes)
:::
She wasn’t a pessimist but she wasn’t overflowing with positivity either. She could fake it well though. She has to, sitting behind the front desk, computer to one side, phone and diary to another. She sits, with her legs crossed at the ankle, hands poised next to the keyboard, smile plastered on from the second she hears the elevator ding, waiting for the day that someone walks in and notices her.
:::
It happens, eventually.
:::
To be more specific; it happens one day late in October, when she is running late, because her car wouldn’t start, so she had to run for the last train, which was late anyway, and Jesus, is it so hard to find a coffee cart with a line less than ten people long?
When she finally slides into her desk (twenty minutes late), the first thing she notices is the blinking voice mail light. Moaning, she puts her face in her hands, trying to steady her nerves and praying that the day will only get better. She is so busy trying to remember if there even is a saint for forgetful people that she doesn’t notice Him approach her desk until he coughs.
Taking a deep breath, she turns to him, already starting her ‘Welcome to Henson, Abbott and Pike, how may I help you?’ reel, when she is cut off by this boy leaning over the desk and whispering like nothing in the world could ever be as important as what he needs to tell her.
“Unless it’s some new fashion trend that I haven’t heard about, I don’t think your shirt is meant to be inside out.”
:::
His name isn’t really important.
What does matter - while we’re talking about Him - is that he is three years older than Jenny, graduated with a combined Law and History degree and sometimes the sun hits his hair in just the right way to make his eyes look blue, when really they’re grey.
To say that he was special right from the start would be true in that he’s one of the few people to come into the firm and actually talks to the receptionist (the other being anyone born before 1945).
In the sense that Jenny fell in love with him right from the start would also be true - but it’s also the one thing that makes him ordinary - average even.
:::
Jenny falls in love a lot. Some times it only lasts a week, or sometimes only a day, but it happens quite frequently.
Sometimes it will be a boy she sat across from on the bus. Or the barista who gave her extra whipped cream that day her mascara was running.
Most of the time though it’s clients, or their lawyers, or the delivery boys, or the other Associates assistants. Most of the time they are boys her age. Boys she feels a connection with, no matter how brief a time she has known them.
Sure, it sounds crazy - she knows that.
But.
Two years, four months and seventeen days. That’s how long it’s been since she was loved back. After the nine-month mark, she started existing in a state of perpetual unrequitedness.
:::
He is hired as an intern.
She is promoted to Personal Assistant - which is like receptionist, but she only has to deal with one boss instead of fifty and she gets to do more than answer phones.
For six months, they work around each other. Sometimes they talk about movies they saw, or the latest news, or who is retiring.
She never asks him: what colour his eyes really are, why he sometimes comes to work smelling like woman’s perfume, what sort of car he drives, what his favourite dessert is, if he misses his home town, does he want to get dinner sometime?
He never asks her: does she know that her hair sometimes looks red, is ‘Danny’ anyone special, what does she really want to do with her life, what’s her favourite colour, has she ever thought about drinking decaf, does she want to get dinner sometime?
:::
She believes that everyone is fated to find love. And that there is always someone out there who is waiting to find you and love you.
He believes that love is earned, through good deeds and loving someone unreservedly.
In this story, neither of them is right. Or both. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
:::
One day, He walks into his office to find a loyalty card from the building café, with all but one of the squares stamped. Stuck to it is a note from Jenny.
‘This one’s on me.’
:::
And so, they have coffee. And they ask all those questions they never did before.
:::
Three days after the coffee, she wakes up in a strange bed, in a room that is far too clean to be her own. Her head is pounding and she isn’t quite sure what happened until a very masculine hand slides across her waist and suddenly - oh, it’s all so clear.
:::
But. There is a problem with real life, and being twenty-two, and in love and it maybe being mutual for the first time in a really long time.
You have no control over your life. You think you know the way the world works, that you have a say in how your life works.
There is, however, always someone further up the ladder, someone who is more important - boss, cops, whoever - that can make or ruin your life in a heartbeat.
:::
Two weeks later He gets transferred. There is a new office opening in Washington, or London or something. She never really listened.
He seems so excited, all grins and pride. “They need another intern there.”
Yeah, Jenny thinks, but what about what I need?
:::
Two months after he leaves, she is staring at a little white stick with a glaring pink plus sign in her hand.
Before she can even throw it across the room, the tears have started to run.
:::
She tells him. Eventually. When she’s six months gone, and he has a new girlfriend. It’s a mistake. He yells, and swears, and breaks so far down that he can’t speak and has to hang up.
:::
For the entire winter she sits at her desk and watches the phone, hoping to see his area code flash up.
And when it doesn’t, her heart breaks over and over again.
:::
The moment her waters break though, three things happen. She grows up, forgetting the childish person she was only an hour ago, realising it’s not just her anymore and she needs to be strong, because this is going to hurt. Two, she makes an unconscious decision to just stop thinking about him. Stop dreaming, praying, pining. Three, her heart mends - just a little. but enough.
:::
He visits her in hospital. He never says how he found out she’d given birth, or that he’d forgiven her, or how he was.
He asks her what their little girls (my little girl! she corrects in her head) name will be. (Teresa)
He asks her how her job is. (the same. just more stares)
If she’s staying in the City. (God no. Moving to Ohio.)
Jenny can tell that he’s happy. Both with his life (in Washington and the one here) and this new pseudo-family he will never escape. They hug and smile at each other and think, maybe it won’t be so hard.
:::
And they try, for a while. He visits when he can. Sends money every month. Invites them to his wedding. But eventually, it’s too hard. They become two different people. She is content to sit in her new bedroom, holding Teresa to her chest as she lies in bed, while he needs the excitement of big, powerful cities and the people within.
Jenny decides, that really, it would be better for them both if it just became about Teresa.
:::
Jenny is never bitter about it. Not really. She has Teresa, and a new husband, and another baby on the way. But a few times a year, she will see a man who carries himself just so, with hair just the right shade that she has to do a double take.
It’s never him.
:::
The year’s pass, and their child grows up. One day, Jenny wakes up from a decade long dream and finally understands the difference between loving someone, and wishing you did. For so long, he seemed so important that he became the pillar for everything to measure up to. As she realises this, the shadow he has left on her life seems to vanish and she can finally breathe again.
But still. Sometimes, Jenny wishes that for once, her life could have been easy and that she could have had a future with this man who noticed her shirt was inside out.
locked: april. 2010
© caitlin a 2010
feedback is always welcome.
join!