Warning

by Rayana S Hughes

  The kinks along the way is the real fun. Yet it’s almost impossible not to have expectations. There is a fine line between having standards and creating standards that only the perfect mate in your head can present. Not only is it unfair to you to ask so much from your potential romantic partner, but it’s also extremely unfair to them. Anything they then proceed to do to meet those expectations are small initiates that will eventually make them less of who they grew to be.

  It’s important to acknowledge differences and support that person even when they underfill your mold. Expectations are often detrimental to most relationships. Even those that have not started.

  Being single, you have a lot of time to think, as well as the beginning stages of a crush. If you are imagining that someone you barely know acts a certain way, then you are setting yourself up for disappointment. The truth is, you just don’t know that person enough to formulate opinions. If you have gotten to know them, you still don’t know every single thing about them. The only person who knows about them completely, is them.

  You could lust after someone for months, finally speak to them and realize your conversations are as dry as powdered sugar. This is okay, that just means you are more compatible with someone else. In that instance, you could move on. But call me crazy, I would rather like a guy for a bit, get to know him, discover it won’t work out and then move on, versus wasting so much time expecting them to be a certain way and being overly upset over something I can’t control.

  Relationships are about balance, growth, and honesty. Not relationships with a significant other, but rather the relationship with yourself. If you are honest with yourself, you will understand the importance of balance. Understand what you truly want, pick someone, and go for it. Start by getting to learn more about them. Be more open minded and don’t make someone feel less because they don’t act how you wish. In the end, you’ll be a heck of a lot more satisfied.

  If there is one thing I’ve taken from life as a single woman, it’s that life changes every day, people change, and situations change. There is a life full of wonder for the most apt people but those who want so much from others without understanding why tend to be unhappy.

  The goal for everyone is to be their truest self. That means whoever you pursue romantically may be giving their all. The cards may seem to fall on you two being together because they seem perfect. But some relationships just don’t work, and they never will. And that’s okay. That just means there is someone better out there for the both of you.

  Be right back, preparing for a smooch…

  Age 30

  The Conclusion

  Aquarium day has finally come and I’m sweating buckets. I mean big buckets. I had to take another shower and snap myself out of it. I also had to give myself the mirror talk. You know the one.

  Waverly you are a smart, brave, and beautiful thirty-year-old businesswoman. You can handle asking a dazzling man if he wants to be official. You know, the generic talk.

  I made sure not to overdress and settled for a nice blouse and stilettos.

  Just kidding, they were only two inches.

  Harvey was always on time when he picked me up for our dates and this time was no exception. Ah yes, a man who is prompt. When I opened the front door, he was blasting eighties music and singing. I’ll admit, he sounded like a dog getting a bath. But I let him have his fun and went out to his car after the song was over, to save my ears and save face. When I got in, he gave me one of his five-star hugs, and we were on our way.

  The aquarium was moderately close to my house, so we arrived in no time only to discover that it was closed. That majorly sucked because I was planning on asking about our relationship status after the shark tank. I was even going to start with: “There are plenty of fish in the sea, I’m just wondering if you picked me?”

  Actually, ew. I would never say that. Out loud.

  But I had banked on announcing this whole proposal at the aquarium and now I was dumbstruck. Harvey must have sensed my disappointment. He looked at me with hope. “Okay, Waverly, I know you were weirdly excited for the aquarium, but I think I know a place to act as compensation.”

  Two hours later, we pulled up in front of the Molar Zoo. This place was considerably sketchy, but it was open, and cheap. This time, I paid for our tickets before Harvey could. He had paid for all our excursions over the four months.

  He made me promise that he could buy our lunch as a compromise to which I gleefully accepted.

  The only way to explain this zoo exhibit is that it was weird. They had three species of animals. Horses, tortoises, and goats. It was more of a big farm. But a regular farm has more animals that that, so I was confused. Harvey found this discovery hilarious and squealed like a literal schoolgirl when he saw the tortoises. This visit was quickly becoming an out of body experience. I was the only one who seemed to be spell broken.

  There was an inappropriately large sum of people at this zoo.

  There were kids climbing on fences, and babies crying in strollers while moms took pictures of their husbands petting the goats. Almost every person we saw was wearing a white shirt and I was momentarily concerned that this might be a familial cult. But then I read the back of a young girl’s shirt, in bold maroon letters: “Gerbil family reunion.” No comment.

  After looking at the horses for way too long, my stomach growled. Harvey and I set out to find food. There was only one place for food in the entire fifty-acre zoo. A barbeque joint.

  Seeing as I’m a vegetarian, I was aware that my options would be limited. But at this point, I was willing to eat cardboard. When we walked inside, I got hit with the strong stench of vinegar. Harvey and I were the only two customers, so the second we walked in, we got eyeballed by the cashier. He was definitely a body builder, and he had a bandana on which complimented his mustache that curled at the ends.

  He kind of looked like he ate raw meat for fun. I, if anything, felt inclined to order for fear that he might come find me if I didn’t. My only options were coleslaw with coleslaw and a side of coleslaw. Appalling, really. So, I ordered—you guessed it—coleslaw in large quantity, while Harvey got wings.

  We went and sat in a booth by the window. Not even three minutes later, the muscle crusher came over with our food. My wimpy coleslaw was sure to be a disappointment, but it was all I had so I scarfed it down. Harvey said the wings tasted funny, so he ended up not eating them.

  After we finished, right when I was about to declare we leave this tragic excuse for a zoo, I was hit. Mauled. Transposed. Deformed. I was torn apart by a strong pang that started in my small intestine and seemed to work its way through every part of my body. I keeled over, feeling a burning sensation in my throat. And that’s when I knew, if I didn’t find a bathroom as soon as possible, I was going to be victoriously retching over every square inch of this barbeque place. I clutched my mouth and looked three-sixty for a bathroom, the closest was a calculated thirty feet from where I stood gasping for air.

  I looked for other options, there was a trashcan five feet in the opposite direction, but it was small, and I would have to either pick it up or bend down. I weighed my options for the slightest of seconds. If I went for the bathroom, there was a slight chance I would not make it and the coleslaw would end up all over the floor. But if I went for the trashcan, that meant Harvey would definitely see and be scared off forever. My body made the decision for me and I sprinted to the trashcan. I don’t want to gross out my fellow readers, so I'll skim past the chunky mess. But it was a nightmare, it just kept coming. While I was somewhere in round three out of ten, I felt Harvey pulling my hair out of my face. That’s right, the guy who I was deeply in like with, was holding my hair while I dealt with the card of food poisoning. What a complete and utter nightmare. He even had the nerve to smell good while flies were starting to collect around my head.

  Yes, I’m a sucker for painting pretty pictures.

  After I had finally finished, Harvey helped me back to the car and took me
back home, helped me lie down and made sure I drank a bunch of fluids. He asked if I wanted to go to the hospital, but I was already embarrassed enough, so I told him I would be okay and asked him to leave. That might have been rude, but I didn’t want him to see me when it came out the other end. That’s where I draw the line.

  Through the next couple of days, Harvey kept calling to check on me, he even sent me a care package with flowers, French baguettes, and a slightly worn photograph of Michael B. Jordan. He was a keeper.

  As the days passed, I grew less embarrassed. Harvey made sure to normalize the situation and even told me about the time he had food poisoning and had to use a lady’s purse on the subway next to him. He asked if he could take me out to lunch after work the next week and promised we would go nowhere near a barbeque place. So, when the day came, he picked me up from the office and beforehand my coworkers made me promise to ask him about our relationship before lunch was over. Fine by me, I was about to go insane not knowing. When I went out to the car, Harvey was there on the phone with someone, speaking with intensifying volume.

  I waited until he was done before getting in. He seemed flustered so I thought it was appropriate to ask why. He gave a deep sigh.

  “Sorry you had to hear that, Waverly. Charlie and I are having issues, and my DJ venue got canceled for this weekend because the pipes flooded. I was also just informed by my boss that the house I sold to a single mother last week was actually being foreclosed by the previous owner without our knowledge, and she can no longer buy the house, even though she already paid the first deposit. She is threatening to sue.”

  I’d never really seen Harvey upset before, usually he was the one calming me down.

  I looked at him empathetically. “Oh my gosh, that’s terrible. I don’t know what to say...”

  I’ve never been the best at verbally comforting someone, I usually just hug them until they feel better, but I’m trying to get better at it. “If you need to take time to figure things out, we can go out to lunch another time?”

  “No, no of course I still want to go to lunch, I need someone to get my mind off everything.” And so, I did. I made him listen to horrible music and sang along the whole way to the restaurant. By the end, he was laughing so hard that he had to wipe away tears. The restaurant we choose was a gourmet sandwich place. The walls were covered top to bottom with various sandwich pictures and the tables were shaped like burgers. It was almost weird, but anything was better than the coleslaw health hazard that they called barbeque. We placed our orders and sat down.

  Harvey was laughing at something on his phone and when I gave him a puzzled look, he cleared his throat and put it away. The air was kind of off between us today and suddenly I grew very nervous, so I decided to wait a little longer to ask him about our relationship. We talked more about his DJ venue and brainstormed ideas for a new venue, the one he was usually at would be closed for six weeks to do the water damage reconstructions.

  I tried to pay attention to him and what he was saying, but the only thing I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the restaurant, as well as meat patties sizzling on the grill. I also felt a trickle of sweat run down my forehead and I hoped to goodness that Harvey didn’t see it before I wiped it off.

  I was a complete and utter mess. Harvey was about to ask me a question, albeit along the lines of, “Are you okay?” When I expelled out what I had been wanting to ask him for the past five months.

  “Harvey when are we going to make us official?” I stared at him right in his eyes, almost like a challenge, considering I had been rejected so many times I was ready if it happened again. Of course, he had chosen that moment to take a drink of water, and just about fell over dead choking on it. Harvey measured his words carefully and said in a low tone, “Waverly, what do you mean?”

  The look I gave him resembled that of a piqued lioness. Yes, that is the literal only way to describe it. Look up a picture and that was me. I repeated my question louder this time with traces of irritation. Not only did Harvey start laughing, but he didn’t stop. I timed him with my watch, he laughed like a manic for three minutes and twenty-five seconds.

  I was officially mortified. After he realized that I wasn’t laughing with him, he got quiet. “Waverly, we are just friends, really good friends, I thought you knew?”

  Take a moment, you probably noticed some indicators earlier that I didn’t, maybe it was his love for Michael, or that he wore Chanel number 5. I was so nervous that I wasn’t paying attention. In case you forgot the title of this book, take a quick look and come back…

  Harvey played for the other team.

  Oh.

  Maybe he has a brother?

  Um, yeah, I guess that’s it?

  Acknowledgements

  This book journey started as a jovial retelling of a few times I felt I got rejected growing up, and it turned into so much more for me. As my debut novel, I wanted to share my story with an ode to self-acceptance and relationships with the people around me. But then it evolved into me wanting to remind people that we all struggle at some point to find the people we hope to spend our lives with. There are so many stories I have left to tell that go in completely different directions using other world-building narratives. But as a fictionalized memoir, I knew I could not let this one go without sharing it with as many people as possible. Relatability is a superpower and one that I hoped to emit through the words in this book.

  I’d first like to thank the Lord for the passion and opportunity to write. I’d also like to thank my readers for giving Waverly a chance to tell her story and for me to tell my story through her. I’d next like to thank my family for giving me the space to create and the time to believe in the dream of becoming a published author, one that I’ve held on to since I learned to wear down a pencil nub. I would like to also thank my one-woman design team, Ashley Santoro, for making my vision of what I hoped my book cover would look like, a reality. She exceeded my expectations and was patient with me every step of the way. Through the jungle of title placement, fonts, and color palettes, I could not ask for anyone better. Lastly, I’d like to thank my many editors for helping shape up this rough gem to be something for public eyes to enjoy. Thank you, Jessie Raymond, Katie Evelyn, Laura Rodgers, and a big thanks to my copyeditor, Megan Sanders. I could not have done it without any one of you. This book was a roller coaster of emotions, and a bumpy fun start to the rest of my author career, that’s what makes it all worth it. If you want to do something (within reason) go for it, you never know what could happen.

  About the Author

  Rayana is a bookworm with a love for unique narratives, and she’s been writing manuscripts since she was twelve. When she released this book, her friends and family shouted, “IT’S ABOUT TIME!” You can follow more of her journey at Rayanaselestebooks.com