Micahinion

trust issues

Marilyn Monroe on the set of "Bus Stop" (1956).

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“I have too many romantic fantasies and they make me sad.”

— Graham Coxon

It isn’t that it’s Ellie Chu. Behind all of the letters, the text messages and the art vandalism. If she’s being honest, Aster knew from the first date that it wasn’t Paul. The way that he spoke to her? Even the way that he asked her out… All of it made Aster realize that it hadn’t been- that it couldn’t have been him.

Once she knew this, she had picked apart each letter, word by word and line by line until the truth sunk in. It was Ellie Chu. The way the words looped and swirled, Aster had seen Ellie’s writing before, she wasn’t an idiot… yet, apparently Paul was for not even trying to rewrite the letters in his own hand. One mistake of many that lead to the breakdown of their ruse. Ruse. What a simple word for such pain.

She wasn’t angry at Ellie for helping Paul… He was her friend, and he really was hopeless. There was no way that he had stood a chance in her eyes, certainly not before the letters started coming to her.

He was sweet, but simple. So different from Trig but very similar. He loved what she looked like, how sweet she could be. The only difference was that he was willing to try in gaining her love, Paul was willing to learn about her likes and dislikes, to study in order to be able to stand toe to toe with her in debate. Aster told herself that THAT was love, the fact that he tried his hardest to be who she needed.

Only a small flicker had taken shape, a hope, a wish… that maybe Ellie helping was more than just aiding a friend. If this was the way Ellie truly was, then clearly it was Ellie that Aster was in love with.

And so she had tried. Aster took Ellie to the spring alone, and Aster had insisted they go in, and Aster had initiated conversations… and Aster had taken Ellie’s shirt off, getting so close to the other girl that she was sure you could hear both of their hearts pounding in their chest. Aster had waited, had stared at Ellie, and bit her lip in nerves waiting, just waiting for Ellie to do something about it. To be bold. 

Ellie hadn’t been bold, and Aster kissed Paul for reassurance that HE was the one who wanted her.

Everything that followed had been a devastation. Paul trying to kiss Ellie was the scene that Aster needed to prove that he couldn’t love her, not in the way the letters portrayed. Neither of them could.

Aster Flores wasn’t angry at Ellie out of betrayal that she had written the letters. She already knew that.

It was the trying, and the reaching, and the failing that Aster Flores had done in her efforts to try to figure out Ellie Chu… It was that Ellie had lied to her about her feelings. It was that if Ellie had paid just one second to bother seeing Aster face to face (seeing her beyond those letters), that the two of them might have been able to experience a form of beauty that Aster didn’t even know truly existed.

What she had wanted to say was “You could have had everything,” “You should have seen that I knew all along,” and “You are the one that I am in love with, Ellie Chu, not Paul Munsky, not Trig Carson, but-”

“You.” Aster had said, voice trying not to waver and eyes trying not to tear as she left the church. 

Nethergrounds

“I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.”

— Jane Austen