The Cinderella Project (A Comedy of Love, #1) (13 page)

We talked in the park
while the moon fully swept across the sky. We shared happy stories, sad stories, funny stories and embarrassing stories. Mostly, we shared an unspoken camaraderie the likes of which I’d never felt with a girl. After we’d finished an unexpected tangent about cheesecake, she looked at me again with a smile.

“So,” she said, “you’ve got these great ideas about marriage and ‘Don John’ thinks you're lucky in love already.
You told me—and remember I already pegged you on it—about the hickeys. But can I ask you something personal?”

“
I assume that despite the fact that you’re currently an eligible bachelor, you've probably taken a turn in love before. I know better than to open old wounds, but I also know that sometimes there are things we need to get off our chest or valuable lessons we’re willing to share.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to bill me for this, aren't you?”

“You just put yourself on the clock. Now lie down on this couch over here...”

I choked, but recovered quickly. “Yeah... How about I just stay seated.”

She paused and then gave me a knowing grin. “So, that innocence is just a facade.”

I put my hands up defensively. “No. I’m perfectly innocent. I have no idea what you're talking about.”

She laughed lightly. “Uh huh. Your story?”

“Yeah. My story.” I pointed to the swing set. “See those?”

She nodded.

“That swing you were just in? It's the same one she used that night.”

“You habitually swing in the dark?”

“As much as you do, apparently.”

“Toupee.”

“Don't you mean 'touché'?”

“No. Hair pieces are more amusing than fencing.”

I stopped mid-word and then chuckled. “Gotcha. Anyway, I've been at this school here since my freshman year. I love this place. Not sure if that's a sane thing to say about a school, but it's true.”

“So, wait,” she interjected, “you're telling me that your lost love was an affair with an institution of higher learning?”

I grinned.
Her humor was growing on me. “Shall I go on?”

“Yes. Please do, Doctor Cairn.”

“Anyway, I've been here long enough to have experienced love. The first girl I ever actually
loved
was a girl I met here. We worked together. She was cute and we were both available. Naturally, I took a liking to her. We'd talk at work and eventually I got up the guts to ask her out.

“We had a great date and started spending time together. She was halfway hung up on another guy though—not about to rush into things. Still, she seemed like she was interested in giving me a chance.

“Well, I remembered all those times I’d tried to rush a relationship it never worked. So with this girl, I decided to try just being her friend. And you know something? It worked far better than I ever expected. More surprising, I found that what started as some little crush was blossoming into the kind of love I'd never really known before. I
cared
about
her
more than I cared about myself. That blew me away.

“O
ur second date ended in this park.”

Moiré leaned toward me and rested on an elbow. “Go on.”

My breath caught, but I pushed on nonetheless. “Right. Things looked pretty good as the semester went on. Then... then I screwed everything up.”

“Uh oh.”

“Nah, it was nothing really serious. It's just... well, my childhood had issues. But I got over them and decided to try clinical psychology as a way of helping other people through their problems.”

“Enough said.” She nodded solemnly.

“Yeah, I've spent plenty of time shrinking my own head. But back before I figured myself out, I was pretty thoughtless sometimes. That's what killed my relationship with her.”

She nodded again. “Gotcha.”

“The semester ended and she put a thousand miles between us.” I continued. “I didn’t cope well with that. In fact, I decided to one-up her, fleeing all the way to England, for a summer of ‘cultural experience.’ We half-way kept in touch by e-mail until I systematically killed our trust and friendship by being an immature moron. She was engaged by the time I returned. I deserved it all.

“Oddly, being thrown into a foreign culture helped me grow up really quick. When I met her fiancé, I was truly happy for her. Though I’d lost the best thing that had ever happened to me, I was able to close that chapter of my life and quit wondering 'what if'?”

A soft breeze carried Moiré’s scent to me, as if the universe were telling me I had been forgiven for being an idiot as a child.

She
sat up. “And you've been looking for a replacement ever since, huh?”

I shrugged. “I've had other interests. Even girls I've wanted to marry. So, there's my war story. How about you, Moiré? How many guys have you shot down over the years? Three, four dozen? Did you ever keep any of the rings?”

She looked uncharacteristically stunned for a moment. I instantly knew I'd hit a nerve. “Oh... Oh no. I'm so sorry, Moiré, I was just trying to be cute...”

She looked away. “No. You didn't know. It's all right. I didn't take it personally.”

I peered at her. “So you
were
engaged?”

Moiré's half-smile under those sad eyes made my heart do funny things. I wanted to reach out and pull her into a comforting embrace and tell her everything would be alright, but I knew better. I just sat quietly, waiting for her to continue.

“I guess I can say I've lost love twice.”

Wow. This was worse than I'd expected. Moiré climbed back into her swing and sat in silent stargazing. On a hunch, I quietly occupied the swing next to her. She reached out a hand and
I took it without thinking. Ella would kill me for this, but then Ella never had figured out how to connect to another person who was in pain. The warmth of her palm was soothing, I hoped I was helping her through the hurtful memories I had so carelessly dredged up. Eventually, her soft voice broke the silence.

“You know, Nick, I don’t make so many jokes because I don't take life seriously, but
because
life is so often so serious. I see the good and the bad, the joy, the pain... Sometimes it just seems like there's so much pain in the world.”

She turned misty eyes my way. “You're not the only one with a past, Nick.” With that, she let go of my hand. My arm stayed frozen in place until it started to ache, then we both swung in silence for a time.

“Have you ever had to watch someone go through pain,” she asked, “knowing you couldn't do anything about it?”

I half-nodded. “Kind of, but I was young. They put down our family dog. Buck was on death’s door and needed to die, but I was still sad to see him go.”

“Then I guess you can understand where I'm coming from.”

“You lost a loved one, didn't you?”

“My fiancé.”

I had no words for that.

“His life ended as a statistic in some traffic safety book. Wasn't his fault. He and his brother were coming home from a Christmas party and someone going the other way fell asleep at the wheel. I sold the ring to help his family pay for the funeral.”

A tear slid down my cheek. Why had it taken me so long to realize that she was trying to open up to me? I was speechless that she trusted me to be her listening ear. She sniffled and dabbed at her eyes before going on.

“Richard… Richard was someone special.” I could feel her smile and the wistfulness in her eyes. “Yeah, I was young and stupid and all that, but I think I’ve always been able to spot a truly
good
guy when I see one. Richard was one of those. It took me a little while to see it, though. I was blinded by stereotypes. He was the captain of the football team and was dating the head cheerleader, Ashley Rothchild. It was so cliché it made me want to hurl. Something straight out of a bad romance movie. Oh, wait—you’ve seen all of those.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Every last one, yeah. Go on.”

“I finally found out that he was a pretty nice guy despite the mask I’d put on him. More surprising, Ashley was an absolute angel—the kind the other girls love to hate. I mean, there was just
nothing
wrong with her. I can’t remember how many Ashley Rothchild pin-ups guys had in their lockers. She won her campaign for student body president by a landslide. She was valedictorian and picked up a full-ride Ivy League scholarship. I lost track of how many clubs she was in. Heck, she even did charity work on the weekends. Every guy in school wanted her. Richard was the only one that really deserved her, though. See, Richard was that same sort of person, not to mention the tall, dark and handsome type.” She gave a mock-dreamy sigh, feigning swooning at the thought.

And me with my platinum hair. Bummer.

“But high school ended,” she continued, “and their relationship ended with it. Ashley took advantage of her scholarship, but Richard wanted to stay out west. They parted cordially. For the life of me I can’t understand how either of them let the other one get away. Still, that worked out great for me. Like every other girl in school, I’d had my eye on Richard for years. But Fate locked him away from me as a distant dream. I was a high school freshman and he was a junior when I first saw him, so I had no chance. I still had the ‘bad hair and braces’ thing going and I was as flat as a board. Ugh. Not only that, I was fighting the shadow of another girl who was incessantly trying to catch Richard’s eye. I admit I was almost glad when he finally escaped her by going to college. Next thing I know, he’s off to college and it’s bye-bye forever, Richard.”

“Which school?”

She shrugged. “Little no-name junior college along the Oregon coast. Almost no one seems to have heard of it so I don’t even bother mentioning it anymore. No one could believe that he’d turned down all the top schools recruiting him. Alabama, Texas A&M, Michigan. Even Stanford tried picking him up.“

“What possessed him to refuse school like those?”

“He didn’t want the pressure. He figured that with a small school, he was more likely to be able to actually focus on an education.”

“High school football stars think like that?”

She laughed lightly. “Not always, no. But, see, one of his uncles went quite a way in college football back in the ’80s. I heard the NFL was even looking at him after his junior year of college, he was that good. Then he got a pretty serious injury during a practice game. His dreams died in a literal snap. Thankfully, Richard’s uncle went on to graduate after his recovery. Richard once told me the only thing his uncle kept hanging in his den was that degree, in a nice frame. All the trophies and pictures and other awards were boxed in his basement. That made an impression on Richard.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s unusually wise for an eighteen-year-old kid.”

“Richard was an unusually wise eighteen-year-old.”

“So I see. Go on.”

Moiré picked a blade of grass and twirled it between two fingers. “I guess I won Fate’s lottery. I put in for schools and one gave me a full-ride academic scholarship. It wasn’t my first choice—it wasn’t even my fourth choice—but Mom and Dad were tight on funds and my savings account was smaller than I’d hoped. So I took the scholarship. Next thing you know, I’m in Oregon. One day I was crossing campus and suddenly… there’s Richard. He was with a couple of girls, of course, but he noticed me as he walked by.”

“So what happened?”

She smiled big. “I honestly don’t know. I guess he saw me, post-braces and pigtails and figured I was worth asking out.”

“Just like that?”

“I guess so. Funny thing, I said no.”

“You
what
?”

“Yeah. I said no to him.”

“Wait, wait. We’re talking about the same Richard, right? Richard, the perfect guy from high school?”

She nodded. “That’s the one.”

“And you turned him down.”

“Yep.”

I blinked twice.

Moiré looked at me. “Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“I think that was implied by the blinking.”

Moiré laughed.
“Well, I was scared. Ultra-popular guy like that asking a nobody like me on a date out of the blue? Richard didn’t seem like the pranking type, but I’d been fleeced before in middle school and I guess, well, once bitten….”

“Middle school? But Richard asked you out freshman year. Wasn’t that… just last year?”

“Not quite. Before I transferred here, I took a year off of school to just ‘find myself,’ earn some money and enjoy life without school before plunging back in.”

“Lucky.”

“Yes, I was. But yes, I was still guarded. It just so happened that saying no to Richard was the best thing I could have done. He wasn’t arrogant, but I don’t think any girl had ever actually refused him. No surprise there. My rejection seriously intrigued him. He later told me that he wondered if he’d done something wrong; he was sensitive like that. He spent the next week trying to figure out how he had offended me so I was on his mind an awful lot. He discovered that he didn’t want to stop thinking about me. He came by my dorm room to apologize the following Sunday afternoon. When I realized my mistake, I just about died. Thankfully, we patched that misunderstanding quick. The rest is history.”