Losing Everything: Creative Writing Student Highlight
“No, I didn’t want you… I wanted the idea of you.”
A writing sample from Inspire Summer 2024 Creative Writing.
Author: Elizabeth Cuthbertson
Grade: 10th
High School: Georgetown Visitation
Favorite Genre: Romance
Favorite Author: Anna Quindlen
Author’s Note: The perspective is from Celine (means heaven in French) and her best friend is Arella (means angel in Hebrew) and they both loved Apollo (destroyer) when they were younger.
I walk through the New York deli, ecstatic because my friends told me I have to try the famous bagel. As I walk through the doors, a bell, attached to the door by a string that looks like it is about to tear and a little yellow when it was probably white before, chimes. I look up to see a tall figure with the broadest shoulders I have ever seen. I can tell he has been working out and he has a tattoo sleeve. I know he thinks he owns the world with that tattoo sleeve. He thinks everyone should worship him and wave palm branches while he sits in a throne of lies. Seeing him makes my stomach swirl like soft serve ice cream, with a topping of butterflies, but not in a good way. There he is, the beautiful man with an ugly heart, the man who caused me so much pain, a devil in disguise.
Suddenly, it all hits me, his mom always wanted him to go to NYU when we were little, “the school in the city of bright lights,” she always said. The only bright thing I could see across the deli were his eyes, God I always loved those sea foam green eyes. Those holy eyes on that mischievous demon. Do I miss them?
When I thought of us being older together, I always thought we’d be married, sitting by the kitchen with our coffees, watching the news before we head off to work, leaving Lily and Travis with the nanny. I feel almost nothing now. I feel so grown up and mature, but at the same time, I feel sad that I’m leaving this childish girl with an innocent heart behind.
“H-hi,” he says in a stutter that proves that tattoo-sleeve doesn’t make him a king.
“Hi,” I say, as I have to strain my neck to look up and meet his face
“How have you been?”
“I have been doing good,” however, I wanted to add on to that by saying, “without you.”
“What are you doing here in New York?”
The awkwardness of the conversation makes the hair on my arm rise up like soldiers ready to go to war, as the room suddenly becomes chilly out of nowhere.
“I am working as a fashion-marketer with my best friend.” His eyebrows immediately curve downward in confusion because he thinks I’m talking about Arella. I don’t even know why he would think it’s her, he saw the fight. He saw the things we said to each other that could never be unsaid.
“Cool, cool, cool,” he says as if he were still the quarterback on the football team in high school.
The silence grows even louder. How I wish someone would open that door so that bell would chime and make some noise. It’s like Apollo can hear my thoughts because he immediately opens the door and pulls me outside.
We wait a good 30 seconds till he started talking again, I counted.
“Celine, I can’t take it anymore… this pain that has been weighing down on me ever since you told me how you feel. I lost the two most important people in my life…we all did. You can’t sit here and tell me that you don’t feel that pain, that you don’t miss me, that you don’t miss us.”
“There is no us.”
He immediately interrupts, “I miss us…I miss what we had. No one has ever made me feel the way you made me feel. You made me feel loved, funny, and charming. Let me charm you.”
“Well you made me feel stupid, unworthy, and foolish.”
This silence falls upon us again and takes me back to the same silence I heard when he told Arella that I loved him at our high school graduation. In. Front. Of. Everyone. People called me a home wrecker for months.
Suddenly, his voice goes up an octave but remains deep in a way that makes my heart pause like before the drop of a rollercoaster. He yells, “But you’ve wanted this your whole life!”
I respond, “No, I didn’t want you… I wanted the idea of you.”
Fifteen years ago, I never imagined my answer to him saying he loved me would be no, but then again it’s been 15 years. I used to wear bubblegum pink lip gloss from the drugstore, now I wear Chanel. I know he’s just trying to fill a void in his heart so he can move on from the situation and know he did something right, but me being with him now would never be the right answer. When I loved him, I wanted to claim him as mine, like a Ken doll with my name written on his back with sharpie, but all I had was to live for the hope of it all. All I asked of him was to give me what I gave him, but he couldn’t even do that. I don’t say anything, though, I keep quiet, something I wish I did when I was young and naïve so I never had to lose my best friend.
We sit in silence and I can see my reflection as a drop of water begins to fall from those breathtaking eyes. “I’m sorry Apollo, but you have to pay the price of your actions.” I walk away from the man I’ve loved for so long knowing that we were nothing, but somehow I still lost everything. And how do I feel now after seeing him…honestly, I’m just mad as hell that I didn’t get that bagel.