Catching the Storm

CRYSTAL

We all know the typical boy-meets-girl stories. And we also know how they end. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love.

Of course, there are different variations of the stories. The most typical one being that the boy and girl meet, get along great, and slowly fall for each other. There’s also the one where the boy and girl completely despise each other in the beginning but then what? Oh yes, end up falling in love with each other. Then there are the ones where they’re both best friends but one or both of them has some big secret that prevents them from getting together, or one of them is dating someone else. Either way it ends the same, they fall for each other. Each of those stories ends with a happily ever after.

If you ask me, I’d say that’s way too much love and happiness going around.

This boy-meets-girl story I’m about to tell you, is a bit different than the rest. Mostly because it doesn’t have a happy ending. Why? Because this isn’t the end of the story. It’s only just begun.

Happily ever after’s going to have to wait.

So, unfortunately, this boy-meets-girl story does start off the same as any other. Nothing new. Nothing different. Nothing interesting.

So this girl’s out with some friends, having a great time, and this boy approaches her, offers to buy her a couple drinks.

They get to talking and they’re really getting along. He asks her for her number. She (stupidly) gives it to him. He says he’ll call.

Now this would be the point in the story where someone might be thinking, oh, I bet he didn’t call. Please.

I wish he didn’t call.

He calls her up the next day and they meet up. They go to eat, he takes her to the pier. They walk along the beach, splash in the waves, and have ice cream. It’s the best day she’s had in a long time.

Fast forward a little bit and they’ve been going out together and “dating” for about two weeks now. She invites him to a gala being thrown for her father. She introduces him to her father and he seems to really impress her father.

Now, her first mistake was meeting the guy, her second mistake was leaving him alone with her father.

She leaves them to talk and goes to hang out with her friends. The entire gala she barely sees either one of them. She thinks it’s odd, but doesn’t think too much of it. After the gala he drives her home.

For the next week or so, he comes by and continues to seduce her, buying her extravagant gifts and taking her on extraordinary dates. All the while, he also holds long conversations with her father about his line of work.

Now, here’s where the boy-meets-girl story changes from the rest.

This girl was a very successful model-and no, I don’t mean is. I mean was. Past tense.

This boy is a very nasty conman-and yes, unfortunately is is the proper tense for this statement . . . For now.

This boy saw this girl as nothing more than a means to steals millions if not billions of dollars in money, jewels, and priceless artifacts from her father.

This boy saw this girl as nothing more than a blonde bimbo with too much money to know what to do with.

This boy saw this girl as a bratty, spoiled, rich, Daddy’s girl and used her to con her father.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, this boy used this girl and then humiliated her in the worst possible ways, making her out to look like some prostitute.

This boy destroyed the image this girl had created. Destroyed the way the world saw her and destroyed her career.

This boy made this girl feel used, stupid, humiliated, vulnerable, helpless.

This boy destroyed so much more than this girl’s image that she presented to the public. He destroyed her disguise.

This girl was not the spoiled pretty little Daddy’s girl this boy believed her to be. This girl wasn’t an empty-minded blonde bimbo. This girl is so much more than what she showed him.

For a conman so great at reading people and getting to them, he didn’t read her as well as he’d thought.

He looked at the cover. Only seeing what was shown. He didn’t bother to dust off the book and open it up. Not even for the first few pages. He just did what everyone did when it came to her. He judged the book by its cover.

He knocked her off the pedestal the world had put her on and expected that to be the end of it. He thought he’d finished the story when he left her ruined and on the floor.

Like I said, this isn’t the typical boy-meets-girl story. This one hasn’t ended yet.

Who am I to tell you this story? Well, I’m the girl he thought he’d ruined. The book he judged by its cover.

Who is he? Great question. I haven’t the slightest idea.

But I intend to find out . . .