She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

Sarah worked an administrative assistant at a local law firm. It was the usual story: working too many hours for too little pay. Regardless, she loved her job, and I loved her for her tenacity. In a time when people give up on things far too easily, she was willing to take it that extra step. She’s like me.

I first saw her at the corner of Lake and Girard, eating at my favorite ramen joint. Her flowing red hair curled around her soft features like dancing flames; her green eyes sparkling like stars. She was well-put-together and full of life.

I was stunned. She was eating gyoza and a bowl of shoyu ramen — two of my favorite dishes on the menu. We have so much in common, I remember thinking. I needed to know more about her.

We went out to the movies a few days later with some of her friends. It was summer of 2023 and two much anticipated movies were released simultaneously: Barbie and Oppenheimer. “Barbenheimer”, they called it, and it was all the rage. We went to both. The movies were fairly good from what I remember, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of Sarah the whole time. Apparently, her friends noticed because they started heckling me, calling me “Loverboy” and other nicknames. One of them was downright rude, though, yelling at me to stop staring at her. I didn’t like Ashley.

Sarah didn’t like the bar scene, and neither did I, but she would go out from time to time with her friends. I would tag along, but I tried not to interfere too much in girls’ night. I’d discreetly buy her drinks to liven up her night and join her on the dance floor from time to time. Only once did the night go poorly, when some asshole with a pompadour starting hitting on her. I followed him into the bathroom to confront him. I’m not happy to say it got physical, but he got the message.

Anyway, we’d go out from time to time after that: shopping at the mall, dinners at fancy restaurants, walks in the park. We would have fun on all of our adventures, and I learned so much about her. My favorites were the quiet nights in. She would often read while sitting in her bedroom window. I couldn’t see what the books were, but I could tell she enjoyed them thoroughly.

The following summer, in 2024, we went on vacation to Cancun. She once again brought her friends along. They were inseparable. It was kind of getting on my nerves how much they interfered in our lives. This is when I was blindsided. Ashley was trying to break us apart. This is when Sarah met Brad.

Brad was Ashley’s cousin and the usual preppy type: tall, well-built, and handsome, with blonde shaggy hair and piercing blue eyes. Sarah was swept up in him, and suddenly I was out of the picture. Over the next weeks and months, I watched her laugh at his jokes, eat at the same places we had eaten at, and watch movies at the same theater we saw “Barbenheimer” at. It killed me.

It honestly broke my heart when he died.

It was a cold December night, and he was walking down a busy street while shopping for Christmas gifts. He slipped on some ice on the sidewalk and fell in front of an oncoming car. He was pronounced dead at the scene. It was so difficult to see the pain in her eyes when her friends told her about his accident. It broke my heart.

I was there to help her through her tough times. I made sure to give her the space she needed and ensured that nobody else bothered her during her grieving period. I’d bring her gifts from time to time to cheer her up. I knew she would feel a connection to the gifts that Brad had purchased for her, and it seemed to show in her expressions. One of the gifts was a poem inside a picture frame with a selfie of her and “Preppy“. She seemed shocked at first but seemingly liked it.

It was around spring of 2025, and Sarah’s spirit seemed to have lightened a bit. She only knew Him for half a year, anyway. She would go out to the park for walks, sometimes with friends. I was keeping my space still, but Ashley was always keen. She spotted me on a walk and actually came at me one day. I ran away to avoid confrontation. I didn’t want to upset Sarah any more than she was already.

It seemed, however, that even more pain was in Sarah’s life. During the summer, Ashley was at the water park with her niece and nephew when she must have hit her head coming down one of the tall slides. She drown. It broke Sarah completely.

It was hard to watch. Sarah wouldn’t come out of her home. I wanted to run to her and sweep her up in my arms. She would grasp the poem I gifted her in her arms and cry in the window of her room. She gave up on reading. She gave up on a lot of things.

Her normally vibrant hair was dulled and greasy, and her green eyes had dulled. She probably wasn’t showering. She wasn’t going to work anymore. Apparently she lost that drive that appealed to me.

Eventually, she stopped appealing to me altogether, and I forgot why I even started following her in the first place. So, I moved on.

I left one final gift on Sarah’s front stoop — I knew this to be a ring wrapped in a box and sealed with a bow — and I worked my way back to my favorite ramen joint to grab a bite to eat. That’s when I saw her: a girl sitting in the window with hair like spun gold and sharp blue eyes like that of the winter sky. She was reading my favorite book by Dostoevsky. We have so much in common, I thought as I walked in the door and took a seat across the restaurant from her.

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In response to the January 18th writing prompt from Writers.com:

The Unreliable Narrator

Write a prose piece or poem from the perspective of someone who believes they are telling the truth. They’re not trying to lie or manipulate the story; they may even see themselves as generous, reasonable, or wronged. Let them retell an important moment—an argument, a betrayal, or a decision they still feel the desire to defend. Allow the narrator to shape the story, and to be confident in their version of events.

As the piece unfolds, let small cracks in their story emerge. Maybe, some detail don’t quite add up, or emotions feel outsized for the moment. Consider why something is skipped too quickly or explained too carefully. Without announcing it, allow another version of the story to emerge between the lines.

Your goal: By the end of the piece, the narrator should remain convinced. The reader should not.

Attribution:
Cover photo by Teslariu Mihai on Unsplash