Chapter 1: Regarding Smiles & Billing Cycles
Chapter 1
In my life, only two women have ever made me smile. A genuine smile, mind you, not a fake one, nor one caused by a confluence of happenstance in the universe.
No.
I mean that by the simple virtue of their existence, I smiled.
Repeatedly. T’was a miracle, given the dour visage I usually inflict upon the world. RBF has nothing on me.
I’m not necessarily that grim on purpose, it’s just the simple fact that “I give no fucks.” is perpetually emblazoned across my face in giant, dour letters.
I try to smile to be polite, to comfort those around me, to disarm them to my presence…
Usually comes out a grimace.
I laugh freely and largely, when merited… even when not. It’s a big belly laugh too. But that’s not a smile.
No.
Thus far in my existence, I have only come across two such remarkable people. Two with the strange power to make me feel that the world is an okay place that I want to be in and that it’s okay to smile.
Two.
I’m thirty-three years old. This number should be much higher, but it’s not.
The first I loved dearly. For a while. Before her I had had many crushes and thought I knew love, unrequited though it always was, but no. First love. I was going to marry her and move to Scotland to be with her. (Yes, it was a long distance thing…but dammit, when you know you know.)
Well, we knew. It hurt deeply when it ended. We still loved each other, but found ourselves just not liking one another. We didn’t want to be partners anymore. I suspect I’ll always love her, and she I. I still smile when I think about our time together. She had a beautiful smile. A smile that broke through on the dreariest of days. A smile I slowly took away from her. I’m an asshole.
The second I loved dearly as well and wanted to be partners with her. Her wry wit and sense of humor, making things awkward since the day she was born. I was quite taken with her. I wanted to travel the world and explore it with her at my side.
She rather wanted to kill me though.
Seriously.