He was the type of guy your parents would warn you about;
his fiery red hair and the tattoos littering his arms made him look like danger
personified.
I was the type of girl mothers dreamed of their sons
marrying; my long, brunette hair and collection of simple tea dresses gave an
illusion of sweetness.
I had straight A’s and half of his teacher’s couldn’t even
match his name and face.
He spent his evenings in bars and pool halls; I spent mine
in the library or in my room.
I was tipsy after one wine cooler and he drank Jack Daniel’s
like water.
We couldn’t have been more different- which is why everyone
was so surprised when he asked me on a date. They nearly had a heart attack
when I said yes.
We balanced each other out. I kept him grounded and taught
him that he didn’t have to break every rule in the book while he taught me that
it was okay to let go sometimes and I didn’t have to constantly prove my worth
to the world.
He worshiped the ground I walked on and I held him on a
pedestal like a god.
And somehow it worked.
He didn’t even acknowledge his friends when they constantly
commented on him being whipped and I just ignored my parents whenever they told
me how much better I deserved.
Sure sometimes he carried my books and went out of his way
to walk me home safely. And maybe he did smoke like a chimney and swear like a
sailor. But none of that mattered to us. He would carry my floral folders and
pink bag without the bat of an eye and I wore his smoke infused leather jacket
like a medal.
I bandaged him up every time he had gotten himself into a drunken
fight and he picked me up in the middle of the night when all of my work had
overwhelmed me. He didn’t talk about his ‘work’ and I never mentioned my
parents. It was just about us in our own little world and that’s the way we
liked it.
He once drove for 14 hours straight because I’d confessed
that one of my biggest dreams was to meet Princess Belle and I can’t recall the
amount of times I ‘borrowed’ my parents car at 2AM to pick him up from some
bar.
And of course we had our fights.
Sometimes I would get sick of his attitude, or the drugs or
his filthy temper and sometimes he would get hurt when I refused to defend him
from my mother or when I bailed on another date to revise. We would scream and
curse, he would throw things and punch walls, I would slam doors and pack bags.
But we always got through it, the fights were fiery and passionate but would
be over as soon as one of us started to cry and after it would be like nothing
had ever happened.
People would tell him that I was too boring or innocent and
my friends never ceased to try and convince me of how ‘bad’ he was. But nothing
ever came of their words. The truth was he loved the little trinkets that littered my room and would choose a hot chocolate of mine with a Disney film
over a beer in a seedy bar any day. And
if I was being perfectly honest, his tattoos and all black clothes were what
ignited my interest in him in the first place and I loved all of the late night
motorbike rides through the city.
Some saw his
appearance or his switchblade attitude and all the trouble he got himself into
and assumed he must be a bad boyfriend and too much work for what he’s
worth. But honestly he could be Satan
himself and as long as he loved me the way he loved hell, I couldn’t care less
what other people think of us.
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