Different (Short Story)

At first he'd fascinated her, this boy. With his stories, his ideas and ambitions.

It was hard to believe that people like him still existed in this world of today, brimming full with passion and hope.

And she wanted so badly to believe in those dreams of his.

To hold his hand while they both tried to reach for the stars with trembling, cold fingers.

But logic held her back and dragged her down.

Ambition alone wasn’t enough, she knew. A clear head and a calm heart were two vital things he should, but didn't possess.

Arrogance was also far more in abundance than his common sense.

Even so, it was hard to deny his talent for making things sparkle more than they're worth.

And she stopped herself from looking beyond and deeper.

There was still this secret longing that maybe, just maybe, cheap glitter might be stardust in disguise.

But it was harder to ignore the emptiness within him.

It called to her like a melody with no voice, haunting and dark.

She recognized it for it mirrored her own.

Like matching twin black holes that sucked everything down into a bottomless pit.

He told her she wasn't just like any other girl, that she was unique. But it soon became clear that he had an invisible, unspoken expectation of her.

Not sex, nor money, but love.

Or rather, his own definition of it.

Loud, clear and in your face.

And he didn't know how to interpret the way she showed it.

He was blind to the secret messages hidden between the lines, the 'I love you's slipped into little actions.

She tried her best to show it to him, but it was as though she was speaking another language he never bothered to learn.

'You're different from the others,' he repeats that same pickup line a year later.

This time round, she could hear the hidden accusation, dark and perplexed, as though she was a complicated question he was still trying to figure out the answer to.

'This time round, we'll be different,' he'd promised at the start.

In the end, he wants me to be the same, she thought to herself, with more than just a little sadness.

Still, it didn't, couldn't stop her from asking the unanswerable.

Why?

Far too many reasons were given to justify himself, far too many excuses.

In the end, she'd simply bowed her head in silence, the broken promises lying crushed underneath the weight of his lies.

It hurt to realize that she'd been foolish enough to assume what they had was real.

Yet, deep down within, she knew it was inevitable, unavoidable.

Two empty souls will not join if they cannot fit in the missing gaps.

She could never fill that emptiness in him.

Because he'd never truly loved her, only the idea of her, and that alone would never be enough.