It Took Long Enough...

The narrator had a crush on their friend for a very long time, but eventually moved on, and now has a crush on someone else. This has come just as their friend has developed a crush on the narrator, and worse, this friend can't stand the person who the narrator is hot for. Write a scene wherein this entanglement comes to a head; the narrator can go either way, but the friend's dislike and desperation must be apparent.

There was a time in my life when I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Tara… I could feel my stomach grip itself, and my breath quiver shallow with the rhythm of my heart. My entire high school existence was inundated with the single desire moving my body and mind to take her into my arms and kiss her gently, and whisper something sweet and cliché into her ear.

“You are the most incredible woman I have ever met.”

I never spoke those words. I was always a friend to her, and I knew even then that friends are not dating material. That… That was a rough time, but life carried it into memory, as it will move all things, and I finally moved on, finally gave up, finally accepted her for what I had already been doomed as: Dear Friend. What more could I have done? High school is the time for wallowing in gratuitous self-pity and angsty heartache, but college is the place where we learn to be adults, and I grew up and away from her, and found a new girl.

She was my first girlfriend in three years, a freshman named Elissa, and I a sophomore attending the University of California, Irvine. She was the prettiest little thing I had ever seen. She had a dazzling smile, and sharp blue eyes, almost slate in color, the focal point of a face that was perfectly, subjectively beautiful. She was of slender build, and slightly taller than most other girls, and I don’t mind saying she had the most incredible body I could have imagined.

She loved to talk, and she didn’t seem to mind my quiet nature—she filled the silent moments with comfortable banter and the smallest of talk. She was a friendly, powerfully outgoing person, and I imagined it did me some good to be around her. She introduced me to more people than I could remember, though I failed to make any friends in the exposure. Most were girls of varying attractiveness who liked to chew gum and touch their hair, and guys who shook my hand too hard and seemed to grunt and stare more than talk.

Lord, she was beautiful…

“She is a complete fucking bimbo.”

Tara said those words a little louder than I think she’d meant to, the soft paper shuffling silence of that cavernous library shattered by her outburst. Someone behind me cleared his throat, and a pair of badly made-up Mexican girls looked up from their studying to shoot nasty looks my way. I ignored them.

“I think I love her,” I said into the book I’d been reading, my eyes refusing to rise.

“That’s because you’re a God damned idiot.”

I looked up, slightly hurt, and dizzyingly surprised. Her eyes shined, and I wondered if it was the lighting. Something about her words carried a note I'd not heard from her before, and I was confused trying to place it.

“She’s an idiot too, but not the same way. I’m surprised she doesn’t drool when she makes those word-sounds she calls conversations.”

I felt my face grow hot. I was lucky to have Elissa. Damned lucky, and now this spiteful woman who had never given me a chance was belittling my relationship. She had no right, and no reason beyond ingrained possessiveness. I told her so, and she flinched as though the words had slapped her.

“That fucking whore doesn’t deserve you,” she whispered, the anger in her voice failing to mask the depth of the emotion. The shine in her eyes quivered like her voice, and began to spill down her long eyelashes. She looked exquisite then, beautiful in a way she had never been before. She looked soft, vulnerable, touchable like she had never been when she was my unattainable obsession. She looked at me, her large brown eyes trying desperately to lock with mine.

“I know she’s not the smartest person on the planet,” and at that she made a snorting noise, “but she’s good to me.”

Tara stood quickly, a strand of her sandy-brown hair tossing down over her face. She brushed it aside and quickly wiped the now apparent tears from her eyes. She gazed across the table at me again, and I realized as she captured my eyes that she had been looking at me like this for some time, though I'd never quite been able to figure out what had changed.

“She cheats on you. You must have guessed already. "

I'd only suspected, and done my best to dismiss it. Behind me, a book slammed closed and an exasperated sigh was lauched toward me. I didn't care.

"You’re not blind. I know you’re not an idiot."

Maybe I had been blind? Suddenly I could not fit enough air in my lungs.

"You say she treats you well, but I don’t think you know what that means. She treats you like shit. I…”

Sobs overpowered the words, wrestling them into submission for a moment as her shoulders seized and she hugged her waist. Another tear tumbled down her freckled cheek and splashed on her homework. Tara was beautiful too, more graceful and elegant than breathtaking, and her swelling eyes and running mascara did not, could not detract from that.

“I would treat you well. I would take care of you. She doesn’t deserve you. I do. I love you, damn it. I was just too stupid to know.”

My nose was stuffed, and I didn’t know why. My eyes were warm, and I was afraid to blink. I didn’t need splotches on my homework.

“That,” I said as the tears escaped my eyelids and slid down my cheeks, “is the cheesiest fucking thing I have every heard you say.”

Ireached across the table to grab her hand, and smiled.

The Other Side