Member-only story
Everybody Loves a Good Girl
Do you need a friend or a lover? She can be both.
Alex knew he wasn’t the guy most girls wanted. He looked in the mirror every day and saw a monster. The only thing he liked about himself was his eyes: blue, speckled with stardust like ocean waves, with the pupils like bullseyes in the centers. He imagined in a better world his eyes could have entranced the right girl; as it was, he was just the loser in the back of his dope head friends’ car every weekend.
Once, he had a crush on a girl named Betty. She had been the good girl, that perfect type of wonderful, vanilla with a drizzle of chocolate syrup. Whenever she came around, his heart would strum faster and faster. It was she who had kissed him first, her mouth lingering on his even though they had been just kids, before they exchanged paper rings and smiled at each other.
Then she went away for the summer at a beach house and fell in love with a guy named Sam. Supposedly he had a good voice, a handful of hit songs to his name, and a way with the guitar. But of course it didn’t last: Alex had heard Betty had gotten her heart broken through a friend of a friend.
At first, he hated every bit of her. He tore up her letters, burned pictures of her, and let his grief take over. It was easy to rage against the girl who had stomped on his…
