The Misfortunes of Lolita

10 | when lolita kissed

THIS IS AN UNEDITED AND SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT VERSION OF THE MISFORTUNES OF LOLITA. I AM PUBLISHING IT IN FALL 2021—PLEASE FOLLOW ME ON IG @/ls.akhter and GOODREADS (L AKHTER) TO STAY UPDATED. I am so excited to share TMoL with you again.

CHAPTER 10

"He looks at me like I matter. Like I'm something more than skin and bones and misery - he looks at me like I'm a story. I love that. I love him."

- Lolita's journal.

When Lolita sat beside Frank in the passenger seat, Frank noticed the ink smudge on the side of her pinkie finger.

She always had these little things about her. A little wisp of feather in her hair from her black jacket, a paint stain on her pants from an impromptu art session, an ink smudge from her pen. She wasn't aware of their existence, nor did she realize how beautiful it was that she was unaware.

"You-" they both said at the same time after seven whole minutes of driving, in which Frank had gotten them out of the neighborhood and onto the main road.

He was of course hyperaware of the fact that he should have said something, during those seven minutes. He was also aware of the fact that if he had tried to utter a single sentence, it would have fallen free midway, because his train of thought halted every time she looked at him.

Lolita laughed - but it was a fluttery kind of laugh. A nervous kind of laugh. "You look really nice, Frank. You look great in white."

"Thanks." He stupidly said. He didn't know what else to say, really. The logical, polite thing would be to say that she looked nice too. The logical thing would be to smile at her confidently like he had no care in the world. The logical thing would be to not be an absolute idiot.

Except. He wasn't sure if he could call Lolita nice looking, right now.

No, god no.

Lolita had her hair half up in a braid around her head, and it looked like a crown and the bottom half was flowing down and she was wearing what looked like a band T-shirt and blue skinny jeans and her lips were slightly red, as though she had just bitten a strawberry and her eyes were kind of smoky like the fog that clouded the roads to a mountain and goddamn-she did not look simply nice.

She looked... he couldn't do her justice by description if he tried. She looked like Frank's daydreams incarcerated inside a human body. She looked like what missing a heart beat felt like.

He wasn't sure that it was just her appearance, either - something about Lolita was just pretty nowadays, to Frank. The more he began to know her, the prettier she became. He remembered how his heart had felt like an alarm clock ticking inside him as she'd walked to his car. He remembered how he caught his breath as she smiled at him when he opened the door for her.

Lolita frigidly pressed on the radio button in Frank's car. "Does it work?"

"Should." Frank said, cursing at himself inside for being a complete idiot, again. He should tell her that she looked-

"Red light." Lolita said, and Frank stepped on the break, his breath whooshing out of him.

"Shit." He muttered.

"Are you okay?" she asked. He could hear the humor in her voice.

"Yeah." Embarrassed was what he was. He had been so busy looking at her that he'd almost run past a red light. That was just plain pathetic.

Dude. Get yourself under control.

"Green light." Lolita smiled, this time, and Frank looked back at the road.