AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
Elle
It feels strange, being at my dad’s place and trying to make it feel like home. My parents split when I was a kid and I hardly ever spent time with him growing up. Now, I’m spending a week at his place, taking care of his apartment while he’s on vacation, and I feel like a stranger breaking in. Even though he’s catered the spare room to my needs, putting in a desk so I can study, and decorated it to my tastes, it still feels like I shouldn’t be here at all.
And that’s not the only reason I feel out of place here. I’m not used to being in an apartment. I feel like I can hear everyone in the building.
It’s like I have a window into the lives of the people around me. I can hear the couple upstairs arguing, the baby down the hall crying, and whatever the neighbor next door is up to, making a constant racket. It’s driving me crazy.
I mean, I guess I should be grateful.
This kind of humanity should inspire my stories. It’s raw and real, being able to see how people’s lives unfold naturally when they think no one is listening.
But it’s all too much.
Even with my headphones in right now, I feel like I can hear everything that’s going on. All I want is a little peace and quiet so that I can get back to writing my final story for my college class. I’ve been studying creative writing, and this final piece has to be emotive, provocative, and exciting. Yet so far, all I’ve done is stare at a blank screen, hoping the story will write itself.
But I can’t help honing in on the sounds next door.
There’s some kind of scratching on the walls, and it’s making me uneasy. I wonder if maybe it’s mice in the walls or something, but this is a nice building and it doesn’t seem likely. I can hear something whining too, a high-pitched noise that is making me even more uncomfortable. I have no idea what it is, but I just wish it would stop.
I sigh.
I know deep down that my inability to write has nothing to do with the noisy neighbors, though they’re certainly not helping. My problem is that I’m lacking a muse.
In my first year, I wrote about my grandparents, which earned me a top grade in my class. But last year, while everyone in my class was writing odes to their lovers, I felt stuck on what I wanted to write about. I ended up writing a story about divorce and the effect it has on family, but that only served to make me feel incredibly lonely. It made me feel like all I’ll ever have in my life is the dregs of broken relationships.
I’m a realist in many ways. My parents getting divorced drummed it into me from a young age how easy it is for love to fall apart.
But it also made me desperate for something different. It made me want what they never had together. True love. Because really, if they loved each other enough, it would’ve worked out. And since then, my mom has remarried and found someone that she truly wants to spend the rest of her life with.
That’s what I crave more than anything. A man who will stick by me through thick and thin, and not just because he has to. I want a man who is obsessed with me, a man who makes me feel special like no other woman exists. But whether a man like that exists, I have no clue.
I think of that ideal man in my head, and he has no face.
The thing is, as much as I’m desperate to fall in love, I’ve yet to feel even a glimmer of attraction to a man. Men my own age seem so immature, so unable to dig deep, and have the same feelings that I desire. I feel like when I find the man I want, it’ll all fall into place so easily. Both of us will know it’s right from the moment we lay eyes on one another. Maybe I just need to be patient, wait for all the young men to grow up a little and get a grip. Then maybe one of them will be right for me.
Or perhaps I’m too picky, but I don’t want to settle for someone who isn’t right for me. Why should I? I know my worth. I know that even though plenty of men would turn their noses up at me, a curvy, shapely woman, there is a man out there who would fall on their knees for me…
I shudder when I remember the one man who truly obsessed over me, and not in a good way. I was working at a diner last year to make a little money when a customer got overly attached. He started coming around the diner every day, trying to make conversation with me. He told me that his name was Matt, that he was thirty years old and he loved to read. On the surface, maybe he seemed like a nice guy, but something about him made me uncomfortable. After I quit my job there, I would get the feeling that someone was following me. Watching me.
