Love Letters

Love Letters (Part 24)

The next morning I woke up to Cass hammering on my door, ordering me to wake up and get ready for college. I mumbled something about not going in and she continued to pound at my door. I ignored her until she came in to my room and I immediately yanked the duvet over my head so as not to hear her rambling on.

Since I was still half asleep and Cass had already had her coffee for the morning she had a lot more energy than I did. So when she wrenched the covers off me I let her take them, remembering too late that I’d only been wearing a pair of grey tracksuits. I wasn’t worried about her seeing me in the nude, well I was, but strictly speaking, I wasn’t nude.

‘I’d almost forgotten about that.’ She whispered, and I pretended not to hear her. She was talking about my scar and it wasn’t something I was up for talking about, especially not after my day yesterday.

‘Leave me alone.’ I groaned into my pillow.

‘You’re not usually like this, you’re normally the first one up and ready for the day.’ She said, her voice softer than it had been in a very long time.

‘Well maybe today I don’t feel like being predictable and unoriginal like I am every other day.’ I muttered.

I heard her moving and started to feel relieved that she was leaving until something brushed the bottom of my right foot. Oh hell no, I thought, anything but that.

It had been Cass's duty to wake me up for school every morning since I couldn’t bear to be separated from my bed, and one tactic she’d adopted was to tickle the bottom of my feet until I surrendered. I couldn’t believe she was returning to old school tactics just then.

I bit the bottom of my lip and tried not to laugh or jerk my leg away from her as it would only encourage her but I knew she wasn’t about to give up.

She turned to my left foot and started tickling me there, strangely enough my left foot was more ticklish and I couldn’t contain myself any longer, my reflex action was to kick. I did kick, I kicked her right in the stomach and I heard her double over as she grimaced.

I sat up immediately, ‘Oh crap, I didn’t mean to kick so hard!’

She stayed in the same position for a moment and then stood up straight with a grin on her face, ‘Gotcha!’ she screamed, laughing.

I glowered at her and then fell back into bed with my eyes closed, starting to lose my patience.

‘I’m not going in today, just take the hint and bloody get lost.’

She went silent and then I heard my door shut with a click and I sighed in frustration, at myself and at Ally for getting me so worked up in the first place.

I spent the rest of the day moping around and watching mindless television and when a third re-run of Loose Women started to play I changed the channel and started to watch the DVD instead, anything was better than watching Loose Women yet again.

I became immersed in the story and found the servants of the Beast’s household to be hilariously entertaining. The song containing the lyrics Jem had quoted to me earlier came up and I found myself thinking of those same lyrics even after the song finished.

‘There may something there that wasn’t there before.’ I started to think of Jem and tried to place her face based on her writing and found that I couldn’t. ‘Something there that wasn’t there before.’ Like mine and Jem’s friendship, like the trust we’d established for each other and inevitably… the lack of understanding Ally and I currently had for each other.

Beauty and the Beast turned out to be a typical love story between not so typical characters. There was the brute and the dainty woman, but she was less of a damsel in distress than all the other Disney heroines put together, except for Mulan of course. She was somewhat inspirational, though there’s no chance of a pretty girl falling for a monster, especially not in this materialistic society. All the romantics would disagree, as would the optimists, but the realists would know what I was talking about.

For once, I decided to prioritise Jem over Ally since right now Ally was only adding to the things going wrong in my life. I wrote back to Jem with as much positivity as I could muster and forced that optimism to show in my writing.

Dear Jem,

You’ve met up with Ethan? That’s great; I assume you managed to track him down then? I can’t even begin to imagine how you can explain how Ethan caused a wardrobe to fall on you. You’re unrehearsed like that, spontaneous in ways I could never be.

And there it was, my bitterness was drifting into my writing. I had to be more careful in putting my words across.

To really believe in that quote by Eleanor Roosevelt a person would need to be really strong willed. A lot of people let things hurt them because they think they deserve to be hurt by those very things, like love.

It’s okay, thank you for your concern though. I never really think about losing my mum especially since I have three more in the form of my sisters, still looking for that silver lining, as always. Though I’ll let you know if I ever find myself struggling to cope with things.

I’m really happy for Alex and Jack too, they deserve their happiness. He went all out with the proposal, it was a movie moment. Yes, he did get down on one knee and propose. Who said romance was dead?

I know all about embarrassment, trust me. When I went to ask my girlfriend out I fell flat in front of her outside my college; it was extremely awkward. When I got up and asked her out she laughed for ages and finally said yes. I can still remember her laughing that day; it’s stuck like a loop in the back of my mind. So don’t worry about it, at least Benny only humiliated you when you were alone together, I’m sure my scenario was worse!

Thank you very much for the DVD, just watched it. Can’t believe I never got to watch this in my childhood, it probably would’ve had a bigger impact on me as a child. I quite like the little clock guy with the moustache! I can’t believe that Gaston though, how dare he try to come in between them and ruin their relationship?

Tyler

P.S I didn’t accept defeat, I let you win. It was the chivalrous thing to do.