[Summer Contest Entry 2012] Another Chance

Finally, after putting it off for so long, I'm done with my entry. 1,493 words, if Word is to be believed. Be warned, this is a very... simple entry. Nevertheless, I enjoyed writing it, and to me, that's what matters the most. I hope all of you enjoy reading it as well. If time permits, I'll be more frequent in this section now, so expect to see some of my originals someday. For now, I wish the rest of the contestants good luck. :)

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14 karats.

Fourteen fucking karats on that white gold band and a diamond with a carat weight of 2.00 to boot. That was the only way to describe the wallet-cleaning, yet beautiful ring I held in my hand now. It’s not much by average jewellery standards, but this thing took out a lot of my savings, considering I don’t make much in the first place. It was worth it, though. I saved up early for this and held onto it for a long time, waiting for the right one to come by. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, what’s the use of buying an engagement ring so early, especially if you don’t even get a girl, right? So I’m an optimist, sue me. Anyway, the right girl did come along, and like I said, it was worth it.

Key word being “was”.

You see, for being such an optimistic sap, I was… perverted, to say the least. And our idea of a “relationship” was getting together at either of our place for video games and sex. Lots and lots of sex. Sometimes even during game time. Oh, and we promised not to get committed to each other either.

Yup. It was a freaking “friends with benefits” deal.

I should probably introduce myself. The name’s David Chang. Playboy bassist of “FAKKU!” by day, freelance ethical hacker by night (it’s how I paid for the ring, slowly but surely). Open relationships and fuck buddies were no big deal to me, until I met her. Once I got into her pants, I started to get to know her better, more so than my other “bitches”. Before I knew it, I soon got tired of the others and only went to her for pleasure, and eventually, I fell for her.

There was one problem: she fell for me first. By first, I mean way before I even realized I was seeing other women less and less. Unfortunately, she started to get more frustrated with everything I did and said. Her breaking point was when I ditched her to go to this swingers’ party to score a “tricycle”. It was only weeks later that I found out that she didn’t just want a fuck that night, but an actual date. Yes, weeks later. This was a long, slow, and painful process. We didn’t turn sour overnight.

So yeah, by the time I realized how I really felt about her, she had broken it off, and even claimed she never wanted to see me again. That hurt. Bad. I had already bought the ring too.

Now, here I am, alone in this backstage room in a beach shack, ready to play at another gig, this one for the summer festival at Huntington Beach, CA. I tucked the ring away into my pocket and continued staring at the ceiling blankly, thinking of what could have been-

“Oh… I thought this place was empty. Whatever, I can just pretend you’re not here, and it will be empty.”

I knew that voice all too well, so I didn’t even have to look around. I stayed in place and sighed.

“Nice to see you too, Jo.”

Meet Josephina Taylor; Jo to everyone outside of her family. The guitarist of my band and, as luck would have it, the same girl who broke my heart after I unknowingly broke hers.

Jo set her guitar down in the couch beside her and slammed the door shut, obviously not pleased to see me. She took it out of her case and silently began to restring it. This silence went on for five whole minutes, and it started to get on my nerves.

“Listen, Jo-“

“Shut up.”

Well, that worked out for the better. I decided to take the seat next to hers and try to at least clear things out between us.

“Come on, don’t I get to say something first before you shoot me down?”

“No.”

“You can’t still be mad about-“

“Oh no! I’m not mad! I ain’t mad about anything, especially not about the fact that you obviously didn’t consider how I felt and didn’t even talk to me about it. If I were mad, I’d be sending death threats out to you every day, and wouldn’t even bother coming 5 feet of you. No, I just decided I would flat out ignore you, hoping that you’d take the hint and leave me alone.”

All of this was while she was still working on her guitar. She’s stubborn, but you have to admire her professionalism.

“Well, how’s that working out for you? As you can see, I’m not going anywhere.”
More silence.

“Dammit, Jo! Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

As if on cue, she propped the guitar down and sent me the nastiest looking death glare I’ve seen from her.

“There. I’m looking at you. Now what the fuck do you want?”

Now I was at a loss for words. I was hoping to sit her down one day and talk this over, but now that it’s come to this point…

“I’m sorry.”

That’s all I could manage.

“You’re sorry? You’re fucking SORRY?! Do you honestly think that you can just apologize for everything you’ve done to me?! How you treated me?! Yeah, OK, I guess it was partially my fault for getting into a fuck buddies relationship, especially with someone like you. Excuse me for believing that I wouldn’t get emotionally involved in any way, as long as I just let you rail me every night and keep it at that. The least you could have done is not act like a dick all the time! And I mean both in terms of personality and libido. You always brought women home, and I had to keep myself busy somehow while you fucked them anyway. I always felt like a toy, because you never actually talked to me about anything, and you never listened to anything I told you. The worst part was when you ditched me on my birthday, which I kept repeating to you multiple times over the week, just so you could †˜ride the tricycle’. How the fuck do you think I’m supposed to feel?!”

Everything she said was right. I was a complete asshole to her, and realized it too late. I don’t deserve her, and she doesn’t deserve me…

Yet… while continued to rant away, all I could think about was just…

“I love you!”

Silence…

Well, that was sudden, even for myself.

“… what?”

“… I love you. I… have so for a while now. Yes, I was an idiot for thinking with my dick all the time and not even trying to be a friend to you, let alone a friend with benefit, but… somewhere along the way, I started falling for you as well. Unfortunately, before I could say anything, you left and cut me off. I was floored hard enough to not be able to say anything, and…”

I only then noticed that she hadn’t said anything for a while, and just looked down to the floor with a blank expression.

“Jo?”

Nothing.

“Come on, say something.”

Still nothing.

“Dammit, Josephina-“

“… alone…”

“What?”

“Leave me alone.”

She then stood up to leave, without still looking at me. She was going to walk out on me again, and this time, I knew I was going to lose her for good. I acted without thinking and quickly grabbed her hand without thinking. Of course, because I didn’t plan any of it, I stumbled, and eventually, we both found ourselves on the floor, with myself on top of her. We both got out of our daze soon, and she immediately glared at me again.

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“I said-“

“I heard you! I let you go once, and I’m not doing it again.”

“… fine. You have me where you wanted. Do your worst.”

I could only stare at her when she said that. †˜Do your worst’, she says.

So what do I do?











I kissed her.
Just that. My lips on hers, for just a very brief moment. We opened our eyes soon after. Once again, silence enveloped the room.

“Um, hey guys-“

We quickly looked up to see our keyboard player, Mi-chan, staring awkwardly at us after coming in. Without a word, she just crept back slowly and closed the door.

“Could you get off me now? Please?”

Jo meekly piped up from below me. It’s been so long since I heard her this timid. I quietly obliged. Almost immediately she got up, brushed herself off and headed for the door. This time, I let her have her way.

“Hey.”

I looked at her still there.

“My hotel room. Tonight. We can… talk this over if you still want to. For now, we got a show to play”

With that, she left.

I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe this could work out. Maybe I could get… another chance.

Just maybe…

Well done. You could continue this if you wanted, too.
I enjoyed it :D

I never understood writers, how the hell did you come up with all this?

Creativity.

Lingual creativity.... I have creational creativity which is more fun :3

Pretty nice. I enjoyed it.

Hmmm...I know I'm doing reviews out of order, but here's my review. Starting from this review onward, I'll be shortening it to just Good and Bad, since the Okay section just seems superfluous to me.

Good: Interesting starting point and set up for your story. Most of the time, stories like this occur at the beginning, but you've just skipped right towards the end. The main character also amuses me, considering how he went from a dick to someone caring. There's also the fact that he actually took advantage of the "friends with benefits" status, which most don't usually do. I also enjoy how he is going into the situation with no idea whether it will work or not.

Bad: It could just be me, but the premise itself seems a bit overdone and frankly, a bit predictable. The only part that wasn't predictable was the end, in which case it seemed as if it was leaving a bit unresolved, at least from my point of view. Also, there are just so many spaces that are unnecessary. Asides from that, I would like to know more about Jo, since all we know about is the protagonist who was a dick. By the end of the story, I was surprised it was already over and I realize that there is a word limit, but the resolution still seems a bit weak, though interesting.

Keep in mind, this was a bit difficult for me to review this from an objective standpoint, so this is honestly from my own point of view. You can take what I say with a grain of salt.

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, the resolution is weak mainly because of the word limit. It actually hurt me more than it should have, and I literally had an hour or two to finish before the deadline. Now that I know the premise and the characters were intriguing and interesting enough to catch readers' attentions, I'll be sure to make this into a full story someday. :)

This, and my other stories, of course. Oh boy, I've got something to live up to now. =-=

Review #23

I'm still going to do OK simply because it's not that anything is a bad thing, it's that my personal preferences are compared to the story. It's how I personally felt, not overall structure, grammar, pacing, etc.

The Good: In terms of plot, you kept if flowing with an interesting character. While at the beginning, the self-introduction seemed a little weak, the middle made up for that. The good thing about the beginning is that it does introduce you into the world of the story as well as the mindset of the protagonist. What I also like is that you created a kinetic story where things are happening at a rapid enough pace to garner interest while keeping enough internal dialogue for us to understand who the characters are.

Grammar: OK

The OK: Personally, I do feel like this premise has been done time and time again. Though I do enjoy the dialogue, there isn't much else but the dialogue. While I did like, at the same time I wanted more descriptions. Never once are we explained to about Jo or what she even looks like, but then again, there is a word limit so I don't blame you. The question here is, was every line necessary? Was every word necessary? I feel that you could have sacrificed some plot or action for a little descriptions, but that's what I like doing.

The Bad: The beginning. Who is he talking to? Is there a reason why? If he's at the show, why would he talk to himself, or the audience? The problem here is that you're breaking the fourth wall by doing so. Another issue is the tense usage. You didn't have a clear grasp of either the past tense or present tense- you used both in the "this is what happened" aprt as well as the ending. You really need to define what time period each is. Another issue is the ending in general. If felt- weird. Not only is it rushed, but the protagonist never seemed to grow. He should have remained a douchebag or Jo should have made it a lot harder than: KAY, BONE ME. Seriously.

This one's pretty sweet, I myself prefer simple story like this especially when the words flew smoothly and I can pretty much relate to the characters on what possibly happened~

So like, you've just created a Tsundere chara for the heroine eh? The characters as a whole is pretty realistic but there's some part in which I thought she went back to the playboy so easily after just some sweet words, guess that's fiction for ya but in some cases when quite a time has passed the girl would forget about the man's wrongdoing...especially when that man's truly a love master who could push the right buttons in order to bring her back =)

I like the story and I'm looking forward to see more of your works~

I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to read this sooner. This is excellent, art. Certainly one of your best submissions. In my preference, I loved reading about the struggle and angst between the two. From the very beginning, the casual and personable speak has me feeling for David instantly. Happy endings are a dime a dozen, but this one made me want it even as I was reading through it. That speaks volumes for your ability as a writer and the skill you have with description and the ability to make it personable. This probably deserves my place in the contest, honestly.

So, don't skimp out on us anymore. You have such talent under your belt and I love seeing it.

Oh come on, I appreciate the praise, but being better than yours? I've got miles to go before I'm even near you, Xenon. Thanks anyway. ^^;