3rd Draft

Misfortune

What does true love mean? Lately, it’s been the question replaying in my head. I know I am in love or was, I am not sure anymore. Up until few days ago, I believed that David was “the one” and I was his. The way he would encourage me to talk to my distant sister, nobody would argue that he is not a keeper. Heck, I was even expecting him to pop the question in the near future. But by then I felt that my dream of marrying him was at the verge of vanishing. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t even breath without thinking about him. Whenever I tried to focus on eating my cereal, I somehow became lost in my teenage dream. I mean is it fair to automatically accuse him of such a big crime with just one text? Seeing that one text from Padma on David’s phone was more torturing than actually being tortured. My curiosity was slowing eating me up like parasite.

“If you think he is cheating then, he is cheating,” my roommate, Jenna, stated.

“But he is not the cheating type, you know, he is not like that and all of our friends know that. Ugh it’s just so confusing,” I mumbled.

“I know, it’s hard, but just leave him, besides, what does that rat eating asshole think he is. All men are cheating bastards, period.” Jenna would know, as she is the one with lists of exes.

“I just want to talk to him. My heart tells me that there is something I am misunderstanding. But at the same time, I want to rip that girl’s head off, I want to talk to her first though,” I said feeling mixed emotion.

After few hours of asking around, I finally got a number.

“Hello, is this Padma?” I hesitated.

“Yeah, who is this?” Padma replied.

“You’re David’s girlfriend right?” I questioned in a demanding manner.

“What?! No, I have a boyfriend and David and I are just friends, besides David has a girlfriend named Ruby,” Padma exclaimed.

“Well that’s not what your text says,” I exclaimed now in an angry tone.

“Oh… that text...” She replied in a sudden realization. After a brief pause she continued, “Well, before you go on any further pointing fingers, did you see my following texts about how it was sent to him by accident and did you see how many times I apologized?” Padma wasn’t about to take any blame.

I, in fact, didn’t see the following texts; I had only seen the first one. In shame, I quickly hung up the phone. I knew I was right about David; he wouldn’t do such a thing. All of a sudden, I remembered that I left a drunken voicemail on David’s phone last night. I jumped up in a hurry and put on whatever was closest to me and busted out of the door in lightening speed. All I could care to think about was how nasty that voicemail was. I wish I could take back all of it, especially the part where I hoped for him to get hit by a car. As I got close to his apartment, there he was, all dressed up for something very important, it seemed. Upon spotting me, his first instinct was to run to me. It was as if Hilary Duff was narrating the ending of my perfect Cinderella story. With one blink, he was flying in the air and within the next, he was plummeted to the street. As he lost conscience, a beautiful sparkling ruby ring rolled out of his valiant hand....

Reflection           

    This workshop is by far my favorite because I got very meaningful response and suggestions. I really like the idea of getting constructive criticism, in fact I think it's a very useful tool in writing. From this workshop, I realized that my first paragraph is not the problem, it was actually my ending. I got a lot of response suggesting me to make the end a little more clear but at the same time, not making it too obvious. I was also able to fix my grammar mistakes and I realized that my story is written in more than one tense. Overall, this workshop really helped me to see things that I couldn't see in my story before.