People look at me differently now. People love the new me.
I’ve never felt comfortable in my own body, so big that I bowl over everything and scare the people around me. I’ve never liked the way that people looked at me. The person they thought I was, it’s not the person I am inside.
I’ve always felt like her and now I get to feel what it’s like to be her. To be so beautiful that people want me. To be so stunning that people can’t look away.
And when he steps in front of me and smiles, I know just what he wants from me. He’s the star quarterback, the king of the school. He looks at me like I’m beautiful. He wants me on his arm.
This man has no idea that I’m on the team too. That I’m the big brute, the guy who hurts the other side. He has no idea how close we’ve been for all these years, and I have no idea how close we’re going to get.
I want him to want me. I want him to need me. I want to be his girl.
And I don’t ever want to be anything else again.
Excerpt
He knocked his shoulder against mine and grinned at me.
“You’re biding your own kind of time. You spent all that time wishing you were someone else and now I find you like this and it all makes a kind of sense. She’s who you want to be, right?”
I nodded slightly and he grinned like a kid who’d just finished putting together his puzzle.
“Knew it,” he said, “Knew there was something different about you. Don’t have the first clue how you did it because I saw you just yesterday outside the house and you did not look like this but-“
“How do I look now?” I asked him, then blushed a deep crimson as I wondered why I asked that.
“Come on now,” he said, “Girl as pretty as you don’t need to go fishing for compliments.”
“Girl like me might like them though,” I replied.
He smiled broader, then bit his bottom lip and nodded.
“You’re stunning,” he started, “I mean top to bottom gorgeous but that’s not it. You’re the type of girl that takes a man’s breath away, that makes him start wondering what he could do to get you in his life not just in his bed because he knows when he’s looking at you that he’s looking at someone special. So a man starts plotting and planning and scrapping plan after plan because nothing would ever be good enough for you, and he’s likely to spend so long planning out the perfect thing that he’ll miss out on his chance and someone else will swoop in but that’s fine by him, because he knows things would be perfect with you in his life and he knows that you would make him happy and he knows that he’d only screw it all up. So he’s fine with the dream and the maybe what if because if he tries and he fails that’s gonna hurt, but if he holds on to that hope that maybe he can then he can hold on to that forever.”
I pouted, “That’s stupid.”
And he laughed, shrugging at my reply, “Such as it is. If you didn’t want to intimidate quite so much then maybe you shouldn’t have chosen to become such a beautiful woman.”
“No it’s dumb,” I went on, “Because in your little story there someone managed to get me, so why not that guy? Someone took a shot and won, so why not him?”
“He doesn’t know what to do to win you,” he said, “He doesn’t know how to get you to see him in that light. He’s worried that you think of him as a friend or worse. He doesn’t know what step to do to show you how he feels and he’s worried he’ll screw the whole thing up.”
I crossed my arms, “He should just take his shot. You’re the quarterback, you should know that.”
“I have all my plays all written out,” he said, “So tell me, you’ve got the playbook right in front of you right now. You’re on the line, calling the shots. What’s the play?”
“Kiss her,” I said, so sure of myself, “Just kiss her. That’ll tell you everything. A kiss can make it all-“
I noticed his hand first. I was looking away and he reached out and touched my far cheek and his touch was gentle and insistent and he turned my face towards him.
I noticed his lips next, coming closer and closer to me and the whole thing felt a little like it was happening in slow motion but I was grateful for that. It gave me time to savor every last moment. It gave me a while of looking at his handsome face before I had to close my eyes and let him kiss me.