seaycee (A Collection of Short Stories)

Make Believe.

edited :)

She always managed to look beautiful.

It would sound pretentious, and frankly bordering stalker-ish if it wasn't so obviously true.

She simply was, the same way her effect on the people around her couldn't be denied. She carried herself with clear poise, her dancers walk meaning her movements were graceful no matter what. For someone so terribly clumsy, it was a real feat.

She was quietly confident. The sedate but everpresent cloak; never feeling the need to be boisterous in compensation for insecurity.

This wasn't to say she was conceited, quite the opposite. She just was. She emitted a constant hum of light that lit any room she entered, as though her energy was so inexplicably good that you couldn't help but be drawn to her. Like a bee to pollen or a man starved of nutrients, she enveloped you in her layers of beauty. And those layers felt so wonderful when they were focused on you.

She was a daydream of warmth and comfort, and sometimes he found himself thinking if this was what dreams were made of he would willingly live in his subconscious for the rest of his life.

He loved her.

The confused her. The wrong her (even when she refused to admit it). The inspirational her. The imperfect her. The clumsy her.

Just her.

And there he sat off to the side, watching as she kissed another man.

The man was the typical suave kind. Cut from the same cloth outlined by the same standard pattern drawn in the same damn blueprint as all the other 'rugged' Hollywood fuckers. The same 'perfect' cheekbones and that same stupid 'smoulder'. Sure, he was good looking if you were into that kind of thing. But he obviously knew it. His walk was the swagger of a slimy man accustomed to all that came with those looks. Used to the screaming fans willing to offer him anything on a silver platter, more often than not their bodies.

Though, with all fairness it would be difficult to remain unaware of one's own impact after being voted the hottest man in the world only the year before.

He hated him anyway.

"Sean?"

She waves a hand in his face worriedly, gesturing as if to clear the cobwebs from his occupied mind. She had approached him in his direct line of sight but his absent gaze had looked right through her, a disgruntled glare pinching his brows.

"Sean."

Knocked out of his unpleasant reverie, he blinked in rapid succession before focusing back, surprised to see her standing almost knee to knee with him.

Gripping the hand she had outstretched, he pulls until she tumbles into his lap sideways, sighing in relief when her other arm circles his shoulder.

Ignoring her pointedly quizzical looks, he locks onto the silken hair that falls down her back, twirling a piece around the length of his pointer finger.

"You're playing with my hair Sean, either in appreciation of my new conditioner or more likely, as a nervous tic," she asserts authoritatively, "what's going on? Is everything okay?

Logically he knew there wasn't anything to worry about. He trusted her more than he did himself at times. But when it came to her, he'd never be able to claim Mensa status, his better judgement and intelligence often was reverted back to that of a gorilla. Thoroughly incapable of rational thought and reduced to beating his chest like a possessive idiot, good only to scratch his asshole.