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Winnsome 05-13-2007 11:57 PM

Love Divined // An Entry for Yume's Contest (:
 
Welcome!

EDIT: Please don't read yet. xDD
Fixing errors;; changed a few things and screwed around with formating so a lot of the tense are wrong @[email protected] *fixfix*

This is my entry for Yume's VDay item writing contest. I'd really like some feedback, a bit of editting help, and critique! I really want to put my best foot forward in this.

The characters have no names, but if they were, they would be Zephyr Lee (the girl) and Janel Mackery (the guy). The old lady's name would be Fabriel Grove.
Those are characters from a plotline I'm developing, so this oneshot would definitely be considered in an alternate universe. x]

The rating is PG.

Summary: A hairpin and some old magic.

I'll be posting this in segments, because it's sort of long. xD

Winnsome 05-13-2007 11:58 PM

Walking down Shirosgrove Street at six has always proven to be a rather inevitable boulder in the stream of my particular monotonous life. A friend once asked me why I even kept my job; it wasn’t as though this job was particularly special or interesting, and I told my, “If it weren’t for the good paying job, cheap bus tickets, and the promise of two hours of blissful solidarity without letting go of the lifeline that was mass society, I would have quit long ago.” And then I cap it off with, “Besides, mass transit helps save the environment!” and then it doesn’t seem so terrible anymore. You know the drill: first convince them, and then maybe you’ll start believing it too.

There is a bank on the corner of 3rd and Shirosgrove. I like to call it the Anthill on days getting down the street is real tough because that’s where all of the workers start pouring out in waves, flooding the streets and the stores that lines the rest of the street; slipping in any one of the numerous cafés that dot in between drycleaners and boutiques with a friend after work often results in a shouting match and two cups of cold coffee.

Yet, today, today I am going to brave the crowd for a little boutique at the very end of the street. I can see it in the near distance, the little awning and flowers on the ledge that seems to relapse back to during the ages of Little Italy, a crowd of women, some alone like I, and even more with their significant others entering and leaving the store.

I situate myself at the end of the long queue that curls all the way down to the intersection and around the bend and fancies that I see an A-list star just a few persons ahead of me. It’s quite obvious I’m trying to hide my identity, with the scarf around my head, dark sunglasses shining dimly in the glow of the sunset. I don’t bother to disturb my, and I don’t believe anyone else around my does either, with the sly glances they shoot up at my, because who is to deny a fellow woman the right to admire an object of beauty?

Not I. Not even for the paparazzi shot that’ll let me retire five years early because my companion, clinging to my on my arm in a subtly intimate way, can in no possible dimension be a man.

Winnsome 05-13-2007 11:58 PM

We enter the shop two by two, just how the little old lady wants. I enter in a daze, staring at the sashes, belts, boas, and other beautiful one-of-a-kind items she’s created with her own two hands. It’s marvelous. I couldn’t believe true love could be woven in to crystal, metal, and leather, but here it is. Each item seems to sing a different love song, all beautiful, but the most beautiful song of all lay in the center of the room, cushioned among velveteen pillows in an open glass case.

My hands hover over the pin, yearning to touch it, and instead brush the rough skin of someone else. I look up and see a man.

He’s handsome. It’s all I really can think for that bare second, eyes lingering over blue eyes and a strong jaw, before he nervously shuffles and lets out a murmur that may perchance sound like a laugh.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” he intones carefully, eyes back on the magnificent hairpin.

“Yes,” I breathe, “The Hairpin of True Love. Valentine’s Hairpin. I can’t believe such beauty existed.”

There is a description on a simple white plaque under the hairpin. It read:

For thine true love divined,
Of two hearts entwined,
Let this eternal object bind,
The souls of lovers combined.

Together, we share this simple moment of admiration.

------------------------------------------

I find myself seeking out that shop on my daily treks down that street. Sometimes I enter the boutique, where the old, eccentric lady that runs it gives me a small smile and a wave as I stare at the beautiful hairpin. Sometimes I just search for sandy blond hair and a pair of blue, dashing eyes.

And then there is the hairpin. Glorious, glowing. Alone.

All the others had already been sold, but the old woman declares this one is special, and rejects the hefty million-dollar offers she had on it. I wonder if that star I saw made one of those offers. I wonder why she hadn’t received it, and imagine myself in her place, realizing that money couldn’t buy this simple pleasure, no matter how much I want it simply because my love isn’t true enough, that I don’t love deeply enough.

There is a familiar tinkling sound of the door opening, the soft voice of the old women greeting the man that enters.

“Hi,” he says and it takes me a while to realize that he’s talking to me. In his hands is a wooden box with a black lacquer finish, and inside the box lays the hairpin, grand in soft, black velvet.

There is a gnawing sensation of yearning, of faint and undeniable jealously towards the man’s significant other, and all I can say is, “Wow, you won.”

He blushes, looking down at the hairpin with unbelievable eyes and murmurs, “I guess so.”

The old lady is in the back tinkering with something; there is no safe outlet there.

“So, want to catch dinner with me today?” he says, looking at me.

“Wouldn’t your –” I wants to say wife, or girlfriend, but I stops before I does, and replies, “Sure. As friends, right?”

He grasps the box a bit too tightly and the wood creaks under the pressure. “Yeah. Milano’s?”

Winnsome 05-13-2007 11:59 PM

Dinner is pleasant under dim lights and some sort of pasta dish. There is a romantic glow around us as we sip our wine and talk of ourselves and others. He’s nervous, for some odd reason, but I am thankful his cell phone does not go off during the entire duration of the meal to shatter this semblance of a true date.

I find that he is witty and loves politics as much as I do. I find that he laughs at my corny jokes, and that although he is a dog lover and I am a cat lover, we both agree that birds are by far the best pets.

The dinner ends. I pay half; he does the same. Like friends. We set up a meeting date for next week, and for now, just to have this simple pleasure of spending time with this man, I am happy.

------------------------------------------

It has to be a felony to want somebody so much.

Sometimes I feel like a coveted secret, a kept whore chained by my love for him, but I remember that our hands never touch, no matter how badly my heart and hand wants to entwine with hands. He is courteous as always. Perfect. I cannot find a fault in him that I cannot forgive.

Some days, we go out to dinner. Other days, like today, he comes to my house and he brings takeout while I choose the movie. I’m considerate, I think. I do occasionally force him through a romantic comedy, but we watch action and Quentin Tarantino as well.

The bell rings, and I open the door to greet him and his tacos.

“What kind did you get?” I ask, setting the table in front of the television.

“Soft fish tacos, what else?” he replies lazily, pulling off his suit jacket and hanging it in my closet.

I pause, hands on the refrigerator door. “I don’t eat soft taco shells.”

He snickers, “Well, you are today. They’re delicious, I promise you.”

“No,” I state slowly, “I thought I told you clearly over the phone that I do not eat soft tacos. They’re vile, and I’ve tried them before so don’t even try to tell me to just taste it.”

I could feel it coming; our first fight. The one that makes or breaks our friendship. A nagging part of me wants me to just forget about it and eat the tacos, nasty or not, while the other desperately wants to simply end this sort of self-induced torture of spending time with someone who cannot love me the same way I love him.

He pauses, looking at me for a moment so that I want to shield away my face. “You know what?” he says, and I hold my breath, “I’ll go, and pick up some hard shell tacos right now. Alright? Don’t get upset.”

“No,” I hear myself say, “It’s alright. I can live with eating them just tonight.”

------------------------------------------

I finally gain enough courage one day to eat my pizza toppings first, then cheese, then crust, and he only laughs and passes me a beer.

------------------------------------------

He takes me out to one of the ritzy restaurants down on Main Street one day, one of those places with the hundred-dollar-a-dish restaurants. I’m concerned at the price at first, but I figure an occasional indulgence like this won’t hurt my budget too badly, so I agree to go with him.

There is no line to enter this restaurant because it is by paid reservation only, and for some reason I cannot believe that he can afford his restaurant either, despite his smart suites and perfect hair.

“Been here a lot?” I say after the waiter greets him by name and asks him if he wants his usual.

“Something like that,” he grins.

“Oh, you rich bastard, you,” I tease in between bites of scrupulous food, “Bring a lot of girls here?”

“Naw,” he says, gripping his champagne glass lightly, “Mostly balding guys and their third wives.”

We chuckle lightly, although if we were at my house we would be kneeling over in tears of laughter.

The dinner ends quietly and he has already signed the bill before I had the chance to pull out my wallet.

“This one is on me,” he says as though giving me a magnanimous gift, “Listen, I –”

“Wait, what do you mean it’s on you?” I quickly interject, “I’m fully capable of paying. I have a well-to-do job, and that’s just weird, paying for only a friend’s dinner like that at such an extravagant place.”

“Just a friend?” he mutters, a bit sad around the eyes.

“Not just a friend,” I add quickly, “One of my best friends, I would say.”

“Well,” he says and for a moment I think he looks like a wounded puppy, “Alright, then.”

The ride back to my house is quiet, as though a rift had formed between us.

------------------------------------------

Winnsome 05-14-2007 12:02 AM

He calls the next day. I tell him about the Anthill and he tells me that if that is so, then he is the CEO Ant and while I blush furiously at my confession, he invites me to a dinner party. A week later, I attend, and when people greet me and ask me if I am, in fact, his girlfriend, I deny it with a smile even if I sorely wish I didn’t have to.

I take him to my firm’s annual Thanksgiving Party and when Christmas rolls around I start seeing his name on the Christmas cards I receive and all that just reminds me of how I’m not his girlfriend, or anything close to that.

My time I spend with him is always the highlight of my week, but there’s always this nagging sensation of other woman creeping under my mind, tainting every encounter, every Saturday. He doesn’t ever talk about his wife – not girlfriend; a girlfriend would be far too jealous of this – and this only betrays his eternal love for his wife. He trusts her implicitly, without a shadow of doubt. I only wish that I can find a more perfect man than he.

Still, I carry on, voraciously in my hunger for any sign of love, until my mother calls and ask for any social happening in my life and all I can think of is him, the man who has a wife, and I find my utterly pathetic.

I cry myself to sleep, but can’t say no when he asks me if I want to go horseback ride next week.

------------------------------------------

“I really don’t know how you coerced me in to helping you clean out your car this weekend,” I laugh over the sound of the vacuum as I kneel to get the dirt off from under the backseat.

“Well, I think it started with you whining about how my car smelled like rotten fish. But I think it’s an excuse because you love me,” he winks.

I groan, wiping dirty hands over dirty sweatpants, “Aw, what an excuse! You know it’s because I love George Clooney and it’s really a disgrace to treat a Mercedes like that. Only a lunatic treats George Clooney like trash bin,”

He snorts, “Says the woman who names cars after celebrities…”

“Point taken. Oh great, I’ve filled up another vacuum bag again, could you go get one for me?”

“Yeah sure,” he says and I hear him walking up the driveway.

This is the inside of a man’s car, the scent of cologne and leather. There is that nagging sensation at the back of my mind again that always occurs when I think of his wife, but for once it is interrupted by a smooth wooden box. Curiosity grips my as I lift it up and open it, hoping it is what I think it is.

Crystal, beautiful crimson red and velvet ribbon greets my eyes as I stare in wonder. He hasn’t given it away? Why was it still here, rotting in the back of the car? I don’t dare touch it with my grimy hands, but my eyes shine brightly. It’s still so beautiful, after all this time.

“Hey, what have you got there?” he calls from the driveway, walking up and frightening me.

“It’s… just this…” I blush, quickly closing the box and shoving it back under the seat, “Why do you still have it, anyways? ‘For thine true love divined’, remember? What about your wife?” I blurt the questions out like angry accusations, as though he had kept a dirty secret from me, as though our relationship went more than mutual friendship.

“Wife?” he says, “I have no wife. Or girlfriend, before you ask that too. Where did you get that idea?”

I blanch, staring at him, an inner voice in my head that vaguely resembles the voice of my mother screaming, “This is your chance! SINGLE! SINGLE! SINGLE!” Instead, I just wave towards the box, hoping he would understand.

“I – well, I sort of got that for you,” he mutters.

“What?” I say breathlessly, getting out of the car, “And you couldn’t tell me this when we met, more than two and a half years ago?”

“I thought you knew! I was so disappointed when you said we should be just friends because I liked you so much! And I’m not the one who made those assumptions!”

“Well – that’s because – well –”, I sputter. I must be red in the face, looking ridiculous in sweat pants and an oversized white shirt that screamed T-Mobile! This is embarrassing – I should just leave, and –

“So…” he drawls, so calm while I am so nervous and I cling to his words like a lifeline, “Want to get dinner with me after this?”

Winnsome 05-14-2007 12:02 AM

My eyes are always greedily on the hairpin, but he says I must wait until our wedding day until I can wear it.

I tell him with all seriousness that we should just elope. He laughs, and takes me to his family.

When his little niece walks up to me and says, “Are you uncle’s girlfriend?” I proudly tell her, “Yes”. Then I show her my engagement ring – red rubies with a diamond center – like a little girl showing off her new toy, and suppress the desire to run to the car and show her the hairpin as well.

I take him to my mother the next day as a surprise, and all she does is raise an eyebrow and say how handsome he is. Then my mother begins talking of wedding plans, and we set a date for the whole future family to meet.

It’s a joyous day. I still have to walk that dreadful street every day, but I can always manage a smile when I see that little faux-Italian boutique at the end of the street.

And besides, I could always go in to the Anthill now.

End


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