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Superstitions

Girl & Guy Story

By Jayson RichPublished 6 years ago 10 min read
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The Girl sits in Guy's lap on the couch, enthralled by his latest nonsense filled with romance and horrible anecdotes.

"What's it like?" she asks.

"Well, it's… it's…" he starts, then stops almost immediately. "What is it exactly you mean?" he asks back.

"You know…" the girl says, stopping short, "Being like… UGH." She crosses her arms and pouts because she just can't find the words.

In the midst of her playful anger, she looks up and sees Guy smiling and waiting, his eyes alive with anticipation like a dog before a walk. She can't help but let the frustration melt away as she smiles back at him, leaving the air between them quiet, and she collapses, laying back on the pillows of the couch. After a moment or two, Guy sees an opportunity that he can't let pass.

He takes the chance and starts on another story. "Do YOU know…" he whispers, moving his head closer to hers, "that they say an awkward silence means an Angel is passing over."

To complete it all, Guy bops Girl on the nose, giving her the stare of someone who's just revealed life-changing information.

"SEE!" Girl jumps with excitement, her voice high. "That right there!" She almost screams as she sits upright, again stopping with her eyes locked in on Guy's and her lips mere inches from his.

"What is that like?" she asks in a whisper, imitating the exact way Guy had spoken to her just seconds before.

"Hmmmm," Guy responds, scratching his chin, mimicking deep thought.

All this while, abruptly getting up and walking into the kitchen, clearly not intending to answer, he flashes a smirk to Girl, who is gullibly watching him from the couch.

"HEY! HEY! HEY!" the girl yells, jumping up and chasing him. "You owe me an answer!" she says, while wrapping her arms around Guy mid-scoop of cookies-and-cream ice cream.

"I guess it's like… I tell you that if you cut your hair." Guy runs his hand through Girl's hair, enticing and drawing her in even more. "Then you need to take it all and burn it or else a bird will put it in its nest and you'll go crazy."

The girl laughs while Guy breezes by with a spoon full of frozen goodness in his mouth.

"Tell me another," she demands, following after him.

"If I was as pretty as you," Guy starts and kisses her on the cheek with his frozen lips on her skin. "I would carry an acorn around to stay beautiful forever."

She laughs timidly. "You're insane."

"Not as crazy," Guy says while leaning in once again, "as people who believe that if you make a wish on a falling eyelash, it will come true." With this, he motions, plucking an eyelash from her.

"Now you're just making these up," Girl says, intercepting his next bite of cookies and cream.

"Exactly!!!" Guy responds excitedly. "Everyone knows that you make a wish on 11:11 PM and THAT makes it come true."

Girl smiles, tantalizing Guy in a way that makes everything else pass away as he stares at her.

She starts laughing, placing her head in her hands, unable to control it. "It's a good thing that's as bad as they get," she says.

Guy grins. "Well, not really. There's the whole 'if you step with your left foot first when you get out of bed, you'll have a very, very unlucky day.'"

"No way," she exclaims, her jaw dropping.

"Or even that if you don't tell anyone about your nightmares, then they'll come true," says Guy.

His focus is completely on the ice cream container he brought with him from the kitchen. A few moments of solid silence pass except for his audible scraping of the frozen gold, followed by his clear noises of pain from brain freeze from every spoonful. The Guy does this somewhere near ten times before he realizes Girl hasn't laughed at him or even attempted to stop him from repeating the mistake. Panicking in his head, thinking that she might be recording him again, doing something she called ‘Why I Love You' videos, he looks up to see instead that she's lost in thought, staring at the blank T.V.

"Come on. I mean, you have to have heard of some type of superstitions or weird wives tales?" Guy asks after some thought.

"Mine are all about… I don't know — scary things, like, hmmm, stepping on a grave will summon the spirit and it will haunt you," the girl says with an odd smile, clearly getting more inspiration from the look on Guy's face.

As Girl speaks, she remembers the multiple occasions of which her "soul mate" had so lovingly demonstrated his, as he called it, "survival reflex." The three most important times sprang into her mind first. One night, while home cuddled together watching a movie, somewhere behind them, there had been a very undeniable slam that even shook the T.V. on its stand, right after Girl had asked if Guy believed in ghosts. After the noise, Girl had looked at Guy, waiting for him to acknowledge it, when with an unwavering concentration on the T.V., he responded with, "If you say something about it, then that means it happened." Another time, they had been walking to get street hot dogs for the experience of experiencing life, when Girl had teased that she had heard that someone had died and their ghost haunted an alley they were about to pass. After hearing this, Guy had abruptly turned around, proclaiming, "The hotdogs weren't that great" and he "was feeling sick, and left the oven on." The last was just two days ago. When Girl was on the phone with her family, fully aware that Guy was eavesdropping, she mentioned that sometimes she felt a strange presence when she was home alone, like there was not someone, but something else watching her. No sooner than finishing the sentence, Girl heard the front door open sharply and looked just in time to see it on the last inches of its arc and only the heel of one of Guy's shoes as he briskly walked through the doorway. In that last happening, she recollected calling his phone, only to find he had left it on the floor near nothing for it to have fallen off of, making her wonder if Guy had overheard her conversation and quite literally dropped everything to flee to safety.

"You've never stepped on a grave before, have you, darling?" she asks provocatively.

Guy gulps, clearly disturbed. "I mean, there was that one time… and it wasn't even a full foot over the grave."

Girl sees the chance and continues with another one. "Let's not forget that if you hear a knock at the door and open it with no one there, then you've just invited the ghost in."

The Guy looks at the door instantly. "So that one time that I thought I was being pranked?" He laughs nervously to wave it off.

"There's actually a legend that if you place your purse or bag on the floor, then you will run out of money." He raises an eyebrow to emphasize a point.

Girl gets up at this point, laughing, and throws a pillow at Guy in jest. "You are such a weirdo. You know that, right?"

The guy is staring down at his now empty hands, wondering how she could have stolen his ice cream so quickly, when the pillow connects with him.

"What if I told you?" Guy says, raising a pointed finger, "That if you let anyone sweep your feet then you will be single forever!"

"I'd say that, well, you are a loser and I should get the broom." Girl good-humoredly runs into the kitchen.

"Not to mention that some believe that at 3:33 AM is when the devil, demons, and anything evil is the strongest," Girl says laughing.

"Ya know, "Guy says, while glancing around nervously. "Somehow, I don't think you wanted to know what it was like being concerned about the potential for supernatural threats, because those aren't the same," he retorts.

"No. No. Actually, what is it like to be sooo… open? So free to all these crazy ideas?" she asks.

"I don't quite get what you mean," Guy responds, turning his head to the side with a quizzical look, like a lost puppy.

"All these crazy ideas. These insane things you say. It all just steals my breath away every time and I don't have a response better than to be shocked. Can you tell me what it's like? To see the world that way?" the girl leads on.

"It's like when people would believe that the seventh day after a full moon was the best time to look for or fall in love, or even better yet, how others would think that putting a wedding cake under your pillow would help you dream of your future husband, wife, or even lover," Guy says, sparking that familiar look in his eyes that Girl loves all too much and had been waiting on all along.

"I can't imagine believing in something so crazy and delusional — something so wildly insane that you would never hear of it anywhere else, all these irrational things that someone would never be able to prove or disprove just from hearing them. I mean, these are things that no one ever could come to the conclusion of on their own," she elucidates, her eyes narrowing.

"You see," Guy continues, caressing Girl's cheek. "Don't you get it? You already do. This thing that we have together between us is already more magical than anything. Any myth you could have ever read, any legend or superstition — none of it ever touches this bond we have. None of it will ever be able to sum up to anything we will have together. Just like all those other things, no one outside of this relationship could ever understand." A long silence passes with Girl amazed yet again.

"You get me?" Guy says, fearing that he may have been a little too confusing.

"It's like, hmmm, when people say that 13 is an unlucky number," Girl says, jumping.

"Exactly like that. It's a good thing we didn't share exactly 13 silly little superstitions… or did we?" Guy says with a mischevious grin, right before he looks into the ice cream container and frowns, realizing she ate the last scoop or so.

His words cause Girl to rethink their entire conversation, trying to recall every little detail.

She tackles Guy, yelling, "No, seriously, did we?"

As they playfully wrestle, ending up with her straddling him yet again, he looks up at his lover, cherishing it all down to the most very minuscule detail, and he notices there on the top of her lip is just the slightest bit of ice cream.

"I don't know. I'm sure I lost count somewhere along the way," he answers. She immediately gets lost counting on her fingers out loud.

She stops and gets off one last sly retort off. "You don't really believe in that 11:11 wish nonsense, do you?"

"Of course not. No, not at all…" The guy smiles as he cranes his head to look at the clock, seeing 11:10.

Then he sits up, bringing his head closer to hers for a kiss, and maybe just the slightest bit of ice cream…

literature
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About the Creator

Jayson Rich

People have always loved to read what I write, and I've always loved to write what people want to read. From research to romance...

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