Short Story (fifth draft)

They were nothing alike. She was one of those "good girls." He was one of those "bad boys." Maybe it was because they were opposites that they were so good together. Or maybe it was just that reason why they weren’t.

He smoked. She hated the smell of tobacco. He drank. She wouldn’t touch alcohol. He rode a motorcycle. She considered them death vehicles. He skipped classes all the time. She had perfect attendance. His room was a mess. Hers was sparkling clean. He played the drums. She played the violin. He was always in bars. She spent her free time in the library. His drug of choice was whatever was around that night. The only "drug" she would touch was caffeine, in the form of coffee or chocolate.

She was "teacher’s pet." He was a professor’s worst nightmare. She was president of this association and that. He crashed school events and had been kicked out of organizations. She was always on time. He didn’t show up most of the time. She was everything he hated. He was everything she despised.

When they met, they clashed. He tripped her on her way out of the arena, and when she turned around to glare at him, he flicked his cigarette ash onto her shoe. He smirked while she sputtered angrily. They went out for coffee that night. The rest, well, was history.

Of course, they fell in love. And how they fell–well, that was the only thing they had in common. They both fell head over heals. Everything seemed perfect at first. Although they spent the majority of their time together fighting, they also spent it laughing and loving. They changed one another. He gave up the alcohol and drugs (but refused to give up the cigarettes), and she grew accustomed to him smoking after sex (although she found it too cliche). He started going to class, and she began dropping out of associations. She stopped taking public transportation, and he bought her a motorcycle helmet. They spent most nights in her dorm room (his was too messy for her liking), prompting her roommate to request she move into a single. She began missing a class here and there, often because he forgot to wake her when her alarm went off or he distracted her while she was getting ready.

But like almost all good things, it came to a slow and painful end. Neither could ignore how they used to be. She began to fall asleep waiting up for him at night and wake up alone in the morning. He would come in late some nights, smelling of alcohol and drugs and sex. But she loved him too much to comment. So she put up with it. He wouldn’t show up some nights, and she would find drunken voicemail messages from him, saying he was sorry he wasn’t going to be home that night. She wouldn’t speak to him for days after those. He would always show up begging, though, with roses and chocolates and jewelry. She would always take him back.

When she finally had enough, she stopped answering his calls. She didn’t accept the gifts. She moved back in with her old roommate. Eventually, he stopped trying. When she would see him in the streets, he was someone she no longer recognized. She had become someone she no longer recognized when she looked into a mirror.

She sat outside the arena and took a long drag from her cigarette and flicked the ash out onto some poor guy’s shoe. She recognized the shoe. It had spent enough time lying around her room, untied. She didn’t look up. She stared at the shoe for long minutes until eventually it moved on.