“You can write our love story. Put all the fluffy romance you’d like. I understand I’m stripping you of all the fuzzy feelings you get from dating and marrying someone you actually fell in love with.”
Amy had blinked in surprise when she realized she was being given free reign to make up a beautiful, romance like the kind she read in romance novels.
“Anything?”
Jeriah had shrugged, as ambivalent as he seemed about everything. “It just has to convince my grandmother and the rest of the family.”
But she needed a story that would convince herself as well. An afternoon, in the park. She would be birdwatching. He—would a park be out of character for him? No, all the grad students seemed to enjoy doing their readings outside on the meadows of the Fair Ridge’s campus. It wouldn’t be a terrible stretch.
“Is there anything you’d like in though? A certain way you imagined the proposal or first date or meeting?”
“Not really. I can help think of ideas, if that’s what you’re asking. I just figured you would have your own ideal romance story.”
After a few days of late night chats just catching up about life since high school and just talking, Amy handed her supposed fiancé their backstory: how they met, how they dated over the past year from different schools, how he’d proposed.
Ryan had checked the stories and lists for sanity. She had grumbled throughout it, saying that Amy’s dreams were so ordinary, and half of them were based on what she and Cyril had done together. There was definitely someone else out there that would go birdwatching with her—why did it have to be some guy who didn’t actually love her and just wanted a trophy wife to get his inheritance?
“I’ve never been birdwatching before,” Jeriah commented when he examined the list and backstory. Amy fidgeted with her ring nervously. Would he have her rewrite it? “What do you do, walk around looking at birds?”
“You identify them,” Amy replied.
She mentally ran through what her first few times were like.
“It’s a lot of walking around actually, and we go to different places: nature reserves, city parks, regional parks, beaches, marsh preserves. Sometimes my neck aches afterwards from carrying the binoculars. But basically we’d just walk around, chat about whatever, and occasionally find and identify a bird. Maybe tell a story about it.”
“Sounds boring.” Her heart fell. “I’d like to try sometime.”
A smile blossomed over her face.
“Mornings are the best time, and since neither of us work in the mornings—“ she stopped.
“Mornings are terrible,” he groaned.
She giggled, remembering how he always threw the covers over his head and grumbled groggily whenever either of their alarms rang.
“Let’s go sometime though.”
He went back to reading. Amy watched carefully, learning more from gauging his reactions than she had writing it.
“What are you frowning at?”
“Proposal. It’s so…”
“Sappy?”
She had written a starlight evening out in the park after ice cream and a movie from home.
“Straight out of a romance novel?”
“Yeah.”
“Makes sense. That’s where I got it.”
Kinda. She had some reference from her ex. He had taken her on some pretty romance-novel-perfect dates. Almost too book-like. She tried to shrug it off now, but just shivered instead. Jeriah reached for the thermostat immediately.
“I’m ok. Is it too much?”
Jeriah crinkled his eyebrows but didn’t push the matter.
“If you think it’s believable. It seems in-character to the ‘us’ you’ve written anyways.”
He nodded at the page.
“My favorite ice cream flavors are coffee and mint. What’re yours?”
“Rocky Road—uh, but I change every few months. Rocky Road is a safe bet though.”
He nodded, jotting a note down.
“Also, I haven’t actually read or seen Under Black Wings. I have read the author’s dissertation paper on vampire history and physiology though, and they made a documentary-style film out of it; can that be one of the movies we watched instead?”
“You read Forsaken’s dissertation? Was the documentary any good?”
“The paper was fascinating; the documentary was crap. What about A Murder Most Fowl?”
“The TV series? It’s amazing! Although…I haven’t actually finished it.”
He frowned a little. “Want to watch it here? It’d be good if we actually watched it together if it’s going to ‘our’ show.”
She nodded excitedly. “Can we start from the beginning? It’s been a while.”
“Sure. What do you remember about it?”
“That the actor for Rothfeather is gorgeous?”
“Rot-feather’s terrible, but I agree the actors look good. Have you read the short story?”
“There’s a book?”
“It’s on Forsaken’s site. No plot spoilers then I guess.” He shook his head with a grin and made another note. “My cousin might want to watch it too.”
She beamed excitedly. “We’ll pretend the third-wheel isn’t there.”
He laughed, satisfied enough, and scanned back up the points. Finally, Jeriah looked up again, pointing to some line on the page.
“Have you been to the science museum by Dewmark? They added a robotics exhibit back in March.”
“Kinda. Ryan told me about the robotics exhibit and I volunteered there over the summers.”
“It hasn’t changed too much,” Jeriah commented. “Shall we have seen that together?”
“Sure.” She had pulled out her own pen and was making amendments as well.
“Great. Also, I was at the University at Ashnim in May for a symposium. You can add something about that.”
“What did we do? Walk around the campus?” She ran through Ashnim city’s popular attractions and things that she frequented. They couldn’t cite anyone from her lab, but maybe she could count on Ryan’s support? “Ate lunch with Ryan, then went to the virtual reality arcade?”
“Sure. You beat me at Battle Blitz so I paid for dinner.”
“You play Battle Blitz?”
“Not anymore, that’s why you beat me.” He scanned the page again.
“Other than that, this is fine. I’ll memorize it by tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. Oh. It’s Tuesday, isn’t it? I’ll be back late, so don’t wait for me.”
She nodded and texted Ryan. Late nights talking with her coworker and arranged fiancé were one thing. Studying up on business economics in her free time so she could convince her future Grandmother she wasn’t a useless ice-cream maid was one thing. Hanging out getting dinner with his annoying—albeit attractive—cousin though, was not what she had agreed to.
NEXT (Reasons)
Notes:
The first line, “You can write our love story,” was another of the lines from my original inspiration. I don’t really write myself into any stories, so I never thought of writing my own love story, and this was a really weird thought. Maybe it’d be fun though haha.
Forsaken is, of course, my friend xForsakenx and the stories are actual stories she’s writing. She’s not working on the dissertation paper on vampire physiology though :P Hopefully everything makes sense without actually having read Murder Most Fowl, buttt I do reference it a bit :x
Birdwatching is awesome.
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