Short Stories

Romance is a Struggle

I stopped paying attention to the lecturer a while ago, I knew that but what I didn't realise is that for the past half an hour, I had been staring at Lydia, the girl I have secretly liked for months. I only noticed the staring because my best friend Naya nudged me in the arm. I quickly teared my gaze away from the girl.

"What do you want?" I questioned her snarkliy, 

"Class is over, we should probably head home." She replied to my question as she picked up her bag and started to walk out of the room, following the flow of students. I took one last glance at the girl with long black hair, picked up my possessions and followed Naya out the classroom and to the carpark. Once I reached the carpark, I quickly found Naya standing outside my small beat up blue car which I need to get fixed. She looked extremely bored so I pulled out my keys and unlocked the car.

Once we were both seated, I started the car and Naya immediately connected her phone to the Bluetooth speaker I had in the car. When I pulled out of the carpark, noticed Lydia sitting on the grass area outside of the university building. She looked lonely, I thought about if I should stop the car and ask if she was ok or just drive home because if Naya doesn't get to our shared apartment by 4pm, she will complain to me all night, which is something that nobody wants

I decided that I should make sure if Lydia is ok. So just before I we get out of the carpark, I pull the car back into another parking spot and turn the car off.

"What the hell are you doing?" Naya questioned me just as I was about to step out of the car,

"I'll only be a sec" I quickly reply as I close the door to my car, I quickly looked behind me to see what Naya was doing, and noticed that she stayed in the car, I turned my head back to look where I was going, towards Lydia, when I reach her she is looking down while picking at the grass. I went to open my mouth but I had no idea what I should say. Ask her how she is? What she's doing?  After a few seconds of a mental battle I open my mouth to ask,

"Hi, how are you?" I ask Lydia with a kind expression. She snapped her head up to look at me, she looked shocked and caught off guard. So, I gave her a gentle to expression to tell her that I am not messing with her.

"I'm fine, just waiting for someone" she replied indifferently. I gave a questioning look, because I wanted to know who she was waiting for but I brushed it off. I nodded and responded with,

"Ok, I just wanted to make sure that everything was ok, you looked lonely just sitting out here" I hoped that she didn't think I was just a weird stranger or was just joking and messing around with her. I wasn't. she gave me a small smile and a wave so I said goodbye and walked back to my car.

When I sat back down in the drivers' seat of my car, I just stared out the window at Lydia, looking track of time because what seemed like hours but was probably a few seconds, Naya gave one statement.

"You like her." I wasn't looking at her but I knew she was looking at me, expecting me to respond. I didn't respond to her statement, just continued staring out at the grassy area near the walk path. Naya said another statement that crushed me internally more than anything else in my life has.

"You know she's straight, right Isla?"

After this sentence was said I just stopped working mentally. I thought about how I wanted to have a relationship with Lydia and be her girlfriend but that would never happen, she would never want to be in a relationship with me and would end up with a husband. Not a girl.

"Ok get out of that seat, I'm driving us home" I heard slightly from next to me. It sounded like I was under water, I numbly moved to the passenger's side of the car and Naya drove us back to our apartment where I spent the rest of the day, just numbly played music on my ukulele. Realising that romance and relationships are so much harder when you aren't straight.

A/N
This was a piece of homework I had, so it wasn't getting marked. The prompt was:

Prompt: Create an imaginative piece of writing that experiments with the expectation of genre
Written: 26/7/20