Don't love him

Short story that came from the prompt of these 3 words: Penalty – Connection – Guarantee

When I was born, my parents loved me from the moment their eyes landed on me. A soft looking thing, with blue eyes and a full head of black straight hair. My siblings were little, and my parents loved them just as much, but they didn’t fall for me that soon yet. I just looked like a worm that had grown too large in their eyes.

They told the story a hundred times before we got taken away. When they were going to pay the medical bills to take me home, dad’s credit card declined, that was their first strike of endless bad luck to come.

Their financial information had been stolen, and the bank refused to help, so they had a large chunk of money taken out. Then mom was let go from work, and dad’s salary alone wasn’t enough to cover the bills. The stress piled on and on, but they loved us every bit as much and tried their best to do good by us. Sadly, they were too desperate when dad’s position at work had to take a pay cut due to changes in the company, and mom wasn’t successful after applying to hundreds of jobs.

Debt was accumulating, and they had five mouths to feed in total, their family was too far away and not in a good enough position to help, so of course they fell with the wrong crowd. They were promised quick riches and were desperate enough to believe it.

The law wasn’t kind to them, and they went to prison for trying to make quick money the wrong way, and us little ones went into the system. Sadly for my parents, they never stopped loving any of us.

We barely had any possessions at that point. We were put in the same orphanage at first, but my brother was a mean spirited 10-year-old with a learning disability that hardly anyone would even consider for adoption. My sister was an angel, but she had a full set of illnesses that didn’t come cheap, and who would want a sick child when they could have a healthy one, right? What none of us realized was that the learning disability, behavior issues, and illnesses, only started to develop when they got attached to me.

And how couldn’t they? My smile would light up any room, my laugh was like music from the most prestigious composer, my skin was so soft and flawless that touching it made even the most bitter person smile.

I wasn’t a very vocal toddler, but I loved giving hugs and listening to people, not knowing the repercussions of it when they started to connect with me.

Within my only month at the orphanage, all the caretakers had fallen for my unbearable cuteness, and all of them paid for it. Illness, getting robbed, house burning down, none of it could be traced to me.

Of course, it didn’t take long for someone to adopt me, and boy did I hit the jackpot.

My siblings weren’t the selfish type. They knew their chances of getting into a permanent family was slim, and they weren’t going to drag me with them, so they happily accepted the fact that I got adopted without them, and little did they know that was the best thing they ever did.

I never heard from them again, but decades later a quick search told me they were doing well. My sister’s illnesses cleared up, and my brother had successfully graduated even from college. They were never adopted, but they ended up doing great for themselves as adults, all thanks to letting me go and disconnecting their love from me.

Back to my adoption, I got to live basically in a mansion, with servants and everything. My new parents were busy, but always so loving too.

The first month was normal. They were getting used to me and I to them. Their jobs were going well as usual; my adoptive dad was the most recognized lawyer in the state, and my adoptive mom was the best dentist.

No matter how busy they were, they would always make sure to have time for me. We played together, they taught me anything a toddler should know, we would go to new places every weekend, I’d get to have playdates with other kids. It was a happy time for everyone involved.

Then, the genuine love for me started to deepen, and the problems surfaced.

The first sign was that their friends were pulling away. No explanation, everyone seemed to have just drifted apart. When they only had each other, besides little me, arguments started to come up more and more often. Then illness struck my adoptive dad and made him bedridden. He had to switch to working from home, but was luckily still bringing in just as much money.

Since he was so constricted, there wasn’t much he could do, and his wife started doing outings by herself sometimes, other times with me.

Illness didn’t progress much, but it didn’t get better either, and eventually my adoptive mom found someone else, leading to a nasty divorce by the time I was a teenager.

Their lives apart sucked. I was bouncing from one place to another and it was fine for me; I had a good life no matter where I went… if we ignore how miserable everyone close to me was, but that’s a point for later.

My dad was always happy around me, but as soon as he thought I was out of earshot, he’d cuss at his caretaker and complain about the littlest of things. Mom was upbeat with me around too, but she couldn’t hold a man and felt sickly lonely, turning to alcohol whenever I wasn’t there.

A few days after I turned 18, dad’s illness took him, and mom died of intoxication.

No matter how much their lives sucked after adopting me, their money only kept growing, and guess who inherited all of it? That’s right, I was set for life. Depressed after essentially losing two sets of parents, but rich.

Knowing my real family’s fate for being with the wrong crowd, and my adoptive family’s causes of death, I wasn’t about to repeat their mistakes.

A friend of my dad’s, who thankfully held no genuine love for me, helped me manage my fortune all within the lines of the law. I afforded the best therapists so that my agony didn’t lead me down the path of destruction, and I took better care of my health than anyone alive, probably.

Losing my families and the series of bad events that the orphanage caretakers went through isn’t enough to know that I was the reason of it all, but they weren’t the only ones. Throughout my school years, I made many friends, and within a few months of knowing each other, without fail, they’d be miserable because everything would start going wrong for them. A couple of my friends were doing so badly that they withdrew from everyone and everything, and with that their love for me diminished into nothing. Guess what happened after? Their lives got back on track. They started talking to me again, we get close and bam, their lives sucked. Then the cycle repeated. No one ever blamed me, but come on.

A girl that had a crush on me when we were 13 kissed me on the cheek, on the cheek! She died in a car crash the next day.

I held hands with another girl when I was 14. Her dog got attacked by a bigger one the following day.

A boy was going through a rough patch, and we had a heart-to-heart talk, I helped him out, and his gratefulness developed into a deep friendship. Fell and broke both legs by accident.

I’ve always known that life isn’t always peachy and everyone goes through tough times at one point or another, but come on.

I got so sick of seeing everyone be so miserable that I was the one who started to withdraw. By the time I was a young adult, having gone through intense years of therapy, I learned to live in my own little bubble. There was no reason for me to get close to anyone after all. Except loneliness, but that’s not worth people being miserable over.

So, I got into music, books, cooking, anything that didn’t involve anyone having strong good feelings towards me. It worked out, but the emptiness inside was always there, I just couldn’t afford to pay much attention to it.

It’s funny the things that you can’t afford even with more money than you can spend in your lifetime.

Then, I met her.

I still did outings by myself as to not be cooked up in a house all the time. It’s not like anyone was allergic to me or anything. As long as I didn’t start any friendships or any kind of relationship, it’d be fine.

The library was one of my favorite places to pretend like I was still part of society. One day, turning over a corner into the history section, I bumped into her. She had the most beautifully chaotic messy hair that went down to her chest, thick glasses, brown eyes that looked to me like they were sparkling, and she was wearing the most basic of t-shirts and baggy pants. It may have been due to how long it had taken since any person paid attention to me, but I felt like before me was the most beautiful woman in the world.

We both apologized at the same time, and after a second when she saw the book I was holding, she remarked that I had good taste.

As beautiful as she was to my eyes, it was really something else that caught my full attention. She spoke with the most monotonous voice and with a poker face that matched someone who had been listening to the same song a thousand times. There was no smile, not a hint of emotion on her face. That’s what made me almost break out dancing.

Within less than a second, my mind had made up a ton of scenarios and what ifs, so I took a chance.

I isolated myself, but I still had mad social skills from being popular in my school years and being brough to tons of events. So, I chatted her up. We talked about books, and eventually I learned she had a secretary job nearby. I started going to that library every single day in hopes of seeing her. After weeks of talking and without fail seeing nothing but a poker face, we exchanged numbers and started going out.

Dating was never on the table for me before, given that every girl that got close to me was hated by life before anything substantial could happen, so I was rusty. She didn’t mind that one bit.

I didn’t tell her much about myself, specially not where I lived. There was no social media to speak of from my part either. In the event that anything happened to her and I’d have to pull away, I promised myself I would ghost her so she could move on without looking back.

Months passed, and her life continued as boring as ever �" her own words.

I couldn’t get a single smile out of her, and yet the happiness that being around her brought me was out of this world.

We took things slow, very slow, as rare as that was for two people in their late 20’s. When we started kissing, I felt a heart attack coming every time that she texted. Still, no bad news came. Just the occasional traffic jam, or spilling coffee, getting a nice shirt stained, nothing life-altering.

Had I found her? A person that could love being around me without deeply loving me enough to get struck with my curse? Yes, yes I had.

She had found me too, the person who actually loved the fact that she was so emotionless.

Eventually, we made things official, and decided that the future would be only ours, the two of us, for if we had children and they grew to love their cursed father, who knows what would happen. I never told her about why I isolated myself, and she never asked.