If every story has already been written, then the chance that you’ve already read this is 1 in about 129,864,880 stories that exist in the world. And those are only the ones which have been published.
And as cliché as it is, this story, among the millions of others out there, starts with a boy; A boy whose heart was as beautiful and vast as the sky over the Grand Canyon. His smile was the top of a Ferris wheel, overlooking the city lights twinkling below. His eyes: stained glass windows of the deepest, richest, brown. And his dreams, his dreams, just like desert winds sweeping away sand in its grasp, wild and unlimited.
The most remarkable thing about the boy, not his humor, not his manners, was his loyalty and devotion to a girl. With work, and school, and family matters, they could go weeks without the comfort of so much as a hug, and still, even then, he would stay up until she was half asleep and whisper through the phone, “I love you”.
When she had needed space, he had given it to her, though it tore him apart. And when she hesitantly crawled back to him asking for forgiveness, he welcomed her with open arms. For that, was the way it was; Her, unsure and fallible, and him, committed and enduring.
How curious it was then, that she had made the promise to him to be always and forever, and he, with sweet words and smiles, never once said “I promise”.
And she waited, with her insecurities sitting in her lap, staring up at her as if to say, “I told you so”. But she looked away as if they weren’t there. He lingered, with his arm around her, as if she were a trophy, something he’d earned, and not something to cherish.
She wondered how long she could wear that pretty little smile, and he wondered how he was so lucky to have a girl like her, smiling up at him.
The boy lay awake in the silence of the night, trembling with an uncontrollable fear that he wasn’t loved. And her? She bit her nails and tapped her foot and cried in the bathroom until two in the morning because deep down she was terrified that she was loved too much. Opposites, but it all came down to the same root.
Neither of them thought they deserved to be loved.