Crush Bang: The good ones always leave

I had a crush, a major crush on a girl at my college. Her name was Grace. Let me just say if anyone in my year did not know about it, it's a good thing they were never considering becoming detectives and if any one of them become policemen, good luck to them: they really need it.

Grace was that kinda girl, she had a beauty, you know the stuff that just comes with the genes not from 4 hours in front of a mirror. I liked that. I liked that because my definition of beauty is if a girl can shave off her hair and not end up looking like something out of Star Trek.

No, she was not a popular girl, not the most popular at least, she was not the prom queen type or head cheerleader type. Neither the type that go out of their way to draw attention from the opposite sex. She did not get a lot of it. I'm sure ALL the boys agreed she was a cupful and more but it was because you'd have to go on more than a couple of dates to kiss her lips let alone "other" things and getting a date wasn't exactly the same as drawing straws.

Basically she had principles and that put off a lot of the boys because they were in for the fast home run and she wasn't giving up any bases that easy!

She was a year ahead of me but when I first met her it was like some benevolent spirit, Jesus maybe?, had just turned on the lights in my dark cynical heart. Ever so rarely does this happen and I know that all too well.

First time it I saw her it was one lazy Thursday. Me and my buddy Daron and Tingsky were walking along the corridors, bored out of our minds, no work to do and we thought we could go hang out at the library. Daron was a person of intrigue, Tingsky was passionate about all things military and I have an inclination to all things shadowy. Naturally, we were talking about some silly stuff or the war in Iraq, them we came across this group of people making their way into the AV room. My eyes casually roved across the crowd, back and forth, back and...

There she was. I stopped in mid stride and I grabbed one of the guys going inside to ask what this club was and if I could join. He said yes, I could join right away, everything else he said after that was lost to the wind. I left Daron and Tingsky in a state of disbelief and curiosity in my sudden desertion and what I was up to. Their faces at that moment are preserved in my mind better than an kodak picture, priceless!

I had to go meet her. As luck would have it there was no one sitting next to her. I am not the smoothest of guys but I am high enough up the food chain so it wasn't long before she noticed me. A sleek introduction, flattery here and there. By the end of the meeting I was in the personal joke zone and that my friends is a lot of progress in one hour by ANY measure.

A couple of days into it there was casual, or you may say "playful" body contact. It was mostly of the welcome kind but it got a bit out of hand sometimes with the hitting. I don't know if she knew this but she packed quite a punch, but hey I always acted like they were paper fists. I loved talking to her. She was not conceited, even knowing how she looked, I bet you she knew. Yeah , it was real talk not something that sounds like some lines rehearsed from a movie, mixed with copious doses of feigned nativity. With her, we could talk for hours on end after lunch and before we knew it the siren for dinner would go off. Yeah, that is how good it was.

We usually met at the library and at the college club meetings. It ws ok. I could make her laugh, her eyes had this shine when she laughed and she made the most adorable gestures which was better than having a pretentious conversation with some girls. She liked teasing, it was playful and it was fun. Felt a bit like Darcy at the bowl. The walks down in the park after clubs were my favourite. I would listen to her talk as we strode slowly down the path, watch as the wind blew her hair in her face and how she gently stroked it away and tucked it behind her ear. The early evenings as she sat on a park bench against the backdrop of the setting sun, the far away look in her eyes. I saw beauty. I saw sexy, I saw love, I saw her.


But her heart belonged to another. Yes, I know, no one is that lucky, the silver streak has to run out sometime as dictated, without fail, ever so ruthlessly by Murphy's Law. I, forever damned to court pretentious pixies. Page 3 girls are not sexy, they are just half naked (or naked) embodiments of lust in skimpy garments. these type of girls come dozen a dime. Pretentious one are born every time a coin drops. No man or boy could honestly boast of seizing one of these painfully abundant specimens.
But this girl whose appeal was on a whole other level, the girl who would steal my own heart, the girl who would anchor me down-slipping away. Oh, a thousand damnations!

You see I am kinda like Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. I am not so open so I was no about to go spill my heart out like a can of beans and I am very good at emotional control. As chance would have it her heart belonged to a guy called Sean. He was in her year. So it appeared she was kinda looking along her own level, at par, on the same ground. I was down here, the freshmen, and she was up here, the seniors.

As much as I prevailed as dashing and charming I did not quite meet 'that' criteria. Besides I can be emotionally unavailable. That could have been another of my stumbling blocks. Even if I had bagged that one (made her mine) , it would have been kinda hard to maintain the "honey -honey talk" for long.

Grace was a romantic and I could see that, and unfortunately as with all romances tragedy always strikes. Sean was not yielding to her. Yeah, the guy was going on about how important "friendship" is and such stuff and how he does not want to loose that. I really felt like knocking him out witha strong fisted upper cut, don't get me wrong I liked the guy but him leaving the dame out to hang was kinda too much. Grace of all the dames, he just did not appreciate what was before him, maybe a mild concussion would have helped him along, maybe.

I saw her a couple of times after she tried to get him to act on her. She was smiling. But I could see something different in her. A hint of sadness in those shining light brown eyes. She laughed still but I could not fail to catch the undertone. She stood up and hugged me, I held her tight. I felt her small hand stroke on my back. I let go and she picked up her cape and went inside the hall.


She left after graduation. It was a moment in time, fleeting. After that everything seemed surreal. The days. The weeks.

The good girls always leave. I stood outside the college chapel, the sun was covered by rain clouds, the air humid and warm. Pathetic. I looked down the road to Maryward where the girls where-where she once stayed. The laughs, the smiles, the "hey"s : they faded away with the blowing wind. My eyes flinched from the dust blown up on the dirt road, blazer flapping loudly against my crisp white shirt, tie dancing in the wind. The church bells gonged like the herald of Armageddon. I looked at my shoes, I saw a dim reflection of myself. Dark and obscure, just like the inside.

"Fiddes, honey did you bring the chocolate I asked for yesterday? Lets hurry, the wind is messing up my hair" A girl come rushing beside me and grabbed my arm. I looked at her, I could think of a hundred reasons why this was not real but just keeping up appearances.I looked at her, I don't want to but I had to smile.

Pretentious.