Trying to get myself writing again... failing miserably...
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
I sit next to him, letting my feet dangle off the dock. His jeans are rolled up to his knees and he’s wearing that baseball cap again—the one that I love.
“When did you get here?” My toes skim the surface of the water before I submerge my feet.
“About half an hour ago.”
“Early.”
“Yeah.”
I hate it when he’s like this. He’s so handsome, so desirable, and so shut up. His brown eyes are staring out over the lake, unseeing. I wonder what he’s thinking about, but don’t bother to ask. My eyes wander to a random tree nearby and my brows furrow just barely.
It’s a pretty massive tree, with roots big enough to count as speed bumps and branches low enough to reach standing on your tiptoes. If we were still in high school, I would have begged him to climb it. But now, in our freshman year of college, everything is different.
I was so proud of him when he was accepted to West Point—the university of his dreams. He’d always wanted to go into the military, ever since we were kids. I can remember one time in middle school when we were here, at this dock, and he told me that he wanted to join the army when he was old enough so that he could fight away all the bad stuff in the world. Neither of us knew at the time that bad things weren’t always on the outside.
“How’ve you been?”
I turn my head to look at head, leaning against my shoulder just barely. “Fine.” I had always been fascinated by his dark brown eyes, paired with his now army-short hair. He was tanner than he had been when he left last June for basic training, but it suited him.
“You look good.”
“I thought the army was supposed to teach you not to be obsequious,” I say, trying out my new word.
“They tried. What did you do to your hair?”
“Cut it.” I lean my head back and swish my feet back and forth in the water. “Nice sunset.”
He ignores my change of subject. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you cut your hair?” he asks. I want to snatch his hat off, but figure he wouldn’t like that too much. My fingers curl on the edge of the dock.
“Because it was too long. You like?” I flip it over my shoulder in an exaggerated motion, teasing him. He hasn’t done much teasing lately.
“Yeah.” He sits up straighter, taking his weight off his hands and touches my hair with one hand. I thank God I straightened it today.
“Do you wear it wavy anymore?”
“Sometimes. It’s softer this way.”
“I know.”
One of his fingers brushes my scalp before he puts his hand back on the dock. There is a tingling up my spine all the way up to the back of my head where he just touched me.
We're friends. Just friends. We’d always just been friends, no matter what anyone said, and I’d liked it. But when he left for basic last June, I’d missed him as more than just a friend.
We e-mailed back and forth and talked on the phone when we (well, mostly he) found the time. Six months passed before we saw one another again, over Christmas break. He wore his uniform to his welcome home party, and when I saw him I knew nothing was as I thought. I walked into the room and he was standing in the middle, surrounded by friends and family. He was carrying his hat under his arm and white over gray had never looked so good.
He kissed my cheek that day. He’d never done that before.
That was over three months ago, and it's March now.
I slap my calf, which is being sucked dry by a couple of mosquitoes. “I hate those things. Were they bad during Beast?” I ask, referring to his six-week training period.
“Not too bad. They said it was one of the hotter summers, but it’s not too bad compared to Texas.”
“Is it still snowing?”
“Here and there.”
My eyes drift to his hands, lying flat on the dock. They’re large and strong and I find myself wishing he’d hold my hand. But that’s stupid. He’s still broken up about his ex, the girl he was with for almost a year. She was a cute girl, but mean as hell. That one probably should have gone to West Point, though I doubt that an M16 would be as potent a weapon as her damn mouth.
I don’t know why he stayed with her. She was a witch, through and through. A manipulative, selfish, spoiled brat who liked him only for his looks. I was jealous of her. He had been the perfect boyfriend, and she’d taken him from me. I had to cancel his going away party at the last second because he went to her ballet recital instead.
“I missed you,” he says suddenly, making me jump.
“No you didn’t. You were too busy to miss me.”
“There was a girl in my Beast platoon who reminded me a lot of you.”
“You like her?”
“Yeah, she’s cool.”
“No, do you like her like her?”
He turns his head just barely and I smile at the sight of his t-shirt. “No.”
“Tina, you fat lard! Come get some dinner!” I shout suddenly, lying down flat on the dock.
He laughs as he lays back too, the first laugh I’ve gotten out of him in the two days he’s been home, and it makes me laugh too. “Did you forget how to laugh while you were in the army?” I ask, my feet swaying rhythmically in the lake.
“I laugh a lot. I just haven’t found much to be happy about back home.”
His parents are getting divorced, his ex-girlfriend is dating his former best friend because they ended up at the same college, and his younger sister keeps getting into trouble at school.
“Maybe you’re not looking hard enough.” My parents are divorced, my boyfriend cheated on me last year and then took my younger sister to our senior prom, and my brother’s wife just had a miscarriage.
“It gets harder as I get older. Do you ever feel that way?”
His shoulder brushes mine and once again, I have to resist the urge to rip his baseball cap off his head.
“Sometimes. I got proposed to last week.”
“By who?”
“A guy in my history class. Professor Stratten was talking about how many of the great men and women and history had succeeded purely because they went after what they wanted without caring what others thought. So then this guy that I’ve talked to maybe twice gets down on one knee in the middle of the lecture hall and tells me that I’m the most beautiful female he’s ever seen in all his life and he wants me to be the one at his side, to bear his children, to love him until we die.”
He laughs and I smack his arm. It’s ineffective, thanks to months of frequent push-ups, but satisfying just the same.
“He was sweet.”
“He sounds like a schizoid.”
My chest shakes with laughter. “He is,” I say. “I found out later that he suffers from delusions, which would also explain why he called me Laila. College is so weird.”
“Yeah, it is,” he agrees, rolling over on his side and propping up his torso with his arm. I follow suit, and a wave of heat blankets me for a moment when my face comes so close to his.
“How’s your mom?”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. A week before I got home she was calling me three and four times a day to ask me when we were going to get together. It took a lot of self-restraint to tell her to get lost. I’m trying to remind myself that she’s really not so bad.”
“Sounds like Trinity is making you nicer. First you think a schizophrenic’s proposal is cute and now your mom has lost her title of 'bane of my existence' and her place as the only reason you’d ever commit suicide.” He grins at me, and I can’t stop the blush that creeps up my neck and tints my face.
“I’ll work on my cynicism,” I say with a little grin.
“You ought to. This sweet crap has got to stop. You’d never make it at West Point. The nice ones are almost always the first to go.”
“You’re making stuff up.”
“A cadet will never lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. Cadet honor code. I live by it.” He raises one eyebrow at me. He’s still teasing, but I can tell he means it.
“Why did you really cut your hair?” he asks suddenly.
I shake my head, tucking a stray lock behind my ear. “I don’t like it when it gets too long.”
“What’s the real reason?” he asks, fingering a piece of my dark hair between two of his fingers.
“Mom likes it long.”
“I figured as much. You know, I really did miss you.”
He’s not teasing, not joking, not playing games. I reach up and lift his baseball cap off his head, plunking it onto mine.
“I missed you too.”
The first stars are appearing in the sky now, but I can't see them. My eyes are closed, and he's kissing me.
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139,521 Literary Works • 672,595 Reviews
Arrriiii (singsong voice)!!! Awesomeness job girlie! Keep writing like that! Everyone took care of crits about language and grammar and such. Great job!
I loved it, and I don't say that easily (Just Kidding)... But it really was great
.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks Angel, thanks Misty. Glad you liked it.
lovely. just that. never tamper with this, it's too excellent.
OMG THAT WUZ THE BEST STORY EVER!!! me and my friend are killing time in computer class and we dicided 2 read ur story!! it's soo good!! we almost cried
keep up the good work!!!
Hee hee. You people make me want to write! *goes off to do so*
Astounding.
I mean it, this is pretty powerful stuff, considering it is a freewrite.
Great romance stuff always ends up augmenting your repetoire of romantic stuff. In this case, I feel a strange and sudden urge to go to West Point.
I think I'll sleep it off.
Haah, you're welcome! I can see his (and your) take on the "list" paragraphs. I suppose I just like reading about people who are like me: emotionally attatched to anything and everything! (Otherwise known as "freaks"...)
Anyhow. Glad to see people are still reading this...!
It was brilliant! I loved it. It wasn't too mushy. I could totally imagine this in real life. I love Napoleon Dynamite, so the quote was hilarious to me. Great work!
Um...well, I am left speechless, since evryone else has already said and re-said anything I could possibly say, LOL. Anyway, this is the first thing I've read and critiqued on here in a while (not that this is really a critique, per se, since all of the critiquing has already been done by others) and I have to say it's brilliant. I started reading on a whim and then got hooked. ^_^
:thumb:
If I took the time to tell you my favourite bits I'd be here all night, so I'll just say it was all really awesome. Kudos!
*grins* look! Ari wrote something! *plops down in chair and reads the whole thing through*
*grins some more* very nicely done, Ari, more of the stuff that makes me wonder how I managed to win best writer in the YWS awards when you were nominated. I really enjoyed it.
My favorite part was:
“I laugh a lot. I just haven’t found much to be happy about back home.”
His parents are getting divorced, his ex-girlfriend is dating his former best friend because they ended up at the same college, and his younger sister keeps getting into trouble at school.
“Maybe you’re not looking hard enough.” My parents are divorced, my boyfriend cheated on me last year and then took my younger sister to our senior prom, and my brother’s wife just had a miscarriage.
It was a cool way to put this, though I can't really put my finger on why it struck me so much. I guess it was the parallel that you put between the two statements and the two points of view that you managed to get across so clearly, and yet in so few words. It was great.
And I loved the whole bit about the baseball cap. It's such a familar feeling to want to steal a guy's hat... lol...
Just in case I haven't gushed enough... this is really great, Ari...
Hey bard, how goes it? Glad you liked it.
Hey, there went that warm fuzzy thing again... Sheesh, guys.
Hey this is an old member, too lazy to sign in... It's bard of life, and all I have to say is wow. I hadn't read anything of yours before, and I LOVE IT!
Thanks for taking such an in-depth look, Lyndsey.
I think Bob's got it pretty close, though. I didn't really think about it as I wrote, but I'm pretty sure the point there was to show that those things were just water under the bridge. They both have their own problems, but that wasn't what was important right then.
Thanks for checking it out and as for:
I think it was also supposed to show some acceptance on the speaker's part. Basically, here's what's going on, that's just the way it is. Yeah, he's got problems, but I do too. It was also to show that they had the same type of problems. Parents (his are in the process of a divorce, hers have been for years), relationships (his girlfriend dumping him, her boyfriend cheating then taking out her sister), and worrying about siblings (his sister's hanging with the wrong crowd, her sister-in-law lost her baby).
Don't know if that made any sense. I guess that was rambling for no reason really, since everyone's entitled to their opinion.
Thanks for pointing out the typo, zel... I'll fix zat today.
Thanks Supermal! I think that's pretty much how I wanted it to come off, and I'm glad you liked it.
Aviator, I commend your trying something new.
Naturally, m'dear, naturally. Lately a lot of my work has been taking a more military spin. We can blame on my older sister, since it's her fault I know anything at all about West Point.
Again, thank you to all who have read and commented! Just knowing you took the time to read really means a lot to me. Every time I log on and click on the 'view posts since your last visit thing' and see that I've gotten another comment, I get all warm and fuzzy inside..
I rarely venture into the Romantic Fiction forum, but I then saw that this work was the "featured story" and came to take a look...
.
VERY good work,
Areida!!
Well written.
*bonus points for making the guy a US serviceman
It's wonderful! So sweet and romantic. It flows so wonderfully that it's almost like a poem. It's really good. I loved the last line!
you wrote: "West Point—the university of his dreams. He’d always wanted to go into the military, ever since we were kids. I can remember one time in middle school when we were here, at this dock, and he told me that he wanted to join the army when he was old enough so that he could fight away all the bad stuff in the world. Neither of us knew at the time that bad things weren’t always on the outside.
“How’ve you been?”
I turn my head to look at head, leaning against my shoulder just "
It shuold be:
"West Point—the university of his dreams. He’d always wanted to go into the military, ever since we were kids. I can remember one time in middle school when we were here, at this very dock, and he told me that he wanted to join the army when he was old enough so that he could fight away all the bad stuff in the world. Neither of us knew at the time that bad things weren’t always on the outside.
“How’ve you been?”
I turn my head to look at his, leaning against my shoulder just "
also when you said, it took a lot of restraint, that was wrong.
Other wise it was great! The end made me giggle.
I'm usually not one for knocking a person's critique of my critique...
So I won't.
Uhm. But what I said still stands. I guess it's just a matter of taste, because I prefer it more personal. Especially with the subject matter the characters were talking about... But whatever.
No! No! I have to comment again!
I'm not usually one for knocking other people's critique... but the whole reeling off a list thing was what sold that part to me. It gave the whole impression of being totally unimportant to these two people figuring out that they like each other, and that's *good*! It's background information, it's the past, and this is the important stuff. Keep it short, keep it impersonal, keep it cast-off and discarded. I love it that way.
OK, that's all
Ooh, I liked this. Like Muse said, it's a light read, which was refreshing in contrast with all the serious pieces out there now. I disliked the kiss at the end though--it was a little cliche for my taste. And though I personally wouldn't have used it to close this story, you wrote it well. The whole thing was well written, come to mention it.
I caught this typo:
"at his" instead?
Also.
Didn't like the way all these miserable life situations were tittered off as if they were a list. It seemed kind of cold and unfeeling. Since these things are sensitive topics for the characters, I would have preferred to read more into this--maybe as dialogue. Or you could have scattered the facts throughout the story.
My favorite line?
I like this line for a bunch of reasons. It is witty and definately gives insight into the character of the ex-girlfriend. It also stands in stark contrast with the light tone of the piece, being very angry and spite-filled. There's nothing wrong with that, though... You should keep "damn" in, it seemed very natural to me.
-Grins-
Other than that, nice work. I wish you luck with trying to get in the swing of writing again.
Thanks Mooz! I get really bored with description, so I have to make myself use more than I really like. Glad you liked it.
One of the things i really liked about it was that it was such a light read. People are so fixed on being overly descriptive etc it becomes so heavy and difficult to read. I was really sad when it ended because i was enjoying it so much. It was awesome dahling, so cute! You've got some real talent there. Keep it up boyo! *boogies*
Personally I don't consider "damn" as much as a curse, and I treated it normally. I wouldn't change it. I think you put it across perfectly as it is.
First: thanks for the comments. I really can't believe how many people have read this in such a short amount of time.
Anyone else have thoughts on this? I think it was mostly there for bitterness' sake, but I don't feel too strongly about it either way.
This was really good...
This was really sweet...
I was picturing it as if it were a little movie scene... I liked this! Wow, good for you. Beautiful *wipes tears away*.
I only thought that when you said her "damn" mouth, that just seemed like you just wanted to curse, it would be effective if you just said her mouth *referring to the boys ex*
Great piece of english romatic... I'm translating lame french mystery... I'll post up some of the stuff I've translated and let you guys see... -shudder-
anyways, ari you write wonderful, v. good job, don't stop... or else?
Wow. Thanks.
That made me laugh.
I wasn't really planning to mess with this anymore, but thanks to you people, I have something ELSE to edit. Gosh, guys...
I nod impressedly at the immensity of your writing skill. Ness.
Wouldn't "brow furrows" be a better way of putting it?Heh, seriously - I'm not a big romantic fiction fan, but this was a good read; not too soppy, and very funny.
HOWEVER! I *am* the nitpick King, and you will be nitpicked.
Two "she" sentances in quick succession; perhaps a semi-colon after "hell" and drop the second "she?"
You're tense jumping! Either "There is a girl" or "who reminded me a lot of you." I really like the way this is written in the present, you've got an excellent narrative voice, but when you're wandering between present action and past memories, make sure you keep which one you're in straight in your head
I'd drop the "older" - it's fairly obvious, and I think it'll flow better without the extra word.
Maybe you could change the word "laughing" to something else, just so you don't have the same root word right close together.
I think that should only be in inverted commas, not speech marks - '' instead of ""
Double use of "grin could do with changing." On the other hand, you could add "of my own" onto the end of that last sentance.
You're using "hair" three times close together - "a wayward lock" perhaps, or something like that for the second?
That's all my little suggestions - they're only minor bits (this was worth a really indepth look because of it's quality) and overall, I'm really impressed with this piece. Very, very well written, makes it a good read even though I've seen so many love scenes before. Get ahold of a really original idea, and I think you could write something absolutely exceptional.
*tackle hugs all the readers* My goodness, you people make me happy.
Just don't get a crush on a West Point cadet who has no interest in you. ...But those cadets are so pretty! *cries*
Sambo-- Didja post your new entry? You've got me all curious about it.
Shadowdancer-- Don't sulk! I do it far too often so I know it's not fun.
Trying to get yourself writing again and failing?
Pah. This is better than anything I've written recently. Good work. Keep it going.
I'm torn! no its not your peice i love that! its just the fact that I hate reading stuff with great, perfect guys in it cause it makes me start looking for one just like them! you just watch, or read soon ill be after soon GI joe, and it wont be hard considering my dad works with them every day and im going to work with him next holidays! It will be all your fault when the love of my lifes head gets blown off in combat, wait you have to be 18 to enter the army and im only 15, no army guys ganna want me. Oh look now you've made me sulk!
No great work, i really love it.
Lol, this was great!!!
Very sweet..... 
HAHA! YES!
Hehe. Thanks for making me crack up, too.
Ari, quite literally, your writing is 'so shut up'. Good God.
It was nostalgic and reflective but not overly Well-I'm-Eighty-Years-Old-And-Looking-Back-On-My-Glory-Days. YES!!!!
'He had been the perfect boyfriend, and she’d taken him from me. I had to cancel his going away party at the last second because he went to her ballet recital instead. '
You made him mean just for a moment, and I think that's what made the piece. He wasn't totally unattainable. And it rocked.
"“A guy in my history class. Professor Stratten was talking about how many of the great men and women and history had succeeded purely because they went after what they wanted without caring what others thought. So then this guy that I’ve talked to maybe twice gets down on one knee in the middle of the lecture hall and tells me that I’m the most beautiful female he’s ever seen in all his life and he wants me to be the one at his side, to bear his children, to love him until we die.” "
MWAHAHAHA! Reminded me of something...gotta go bloggo...
"The first stars are appearing in the sky now, but I can't see them. My eyes are closed, and he's kissing me.'
And she sticks the landing! I swear! You ended with a bang- and more importantly, resisted the urge to really go into things, as is the tragic trap that I mostly fall into.
Good job. Only one thing left to do now...