Brittney Stricklen’s Reviews > Unloved > Status Update

I think loving you would be the greatest thing in my life.

Loving Rosalie Shariff would be the easiest thing I’ve ever done—I know, because I’m already doing it. I think I’ve loved her since the day she stood up for me in that conference room. As a friend first, something I’ve never had, but now it’s more. It’s overwhelming, suddenly hard to swallow or even look at her. So I turn her around and wash her back reverently.

I think I’m in love with her—not even romantically, but on some soul level. I feel devoted to her.

A list, I realize, skimming over a few of the items: Dance on top of a bar like Coyote Ugly. Third base in a car. Skinny-dip! (But don’t get caught or go to jail!) Go on a crazy spring break trip. (But don’t get arrested!)

What I can now see as me begging him for even a modicum of something romantic. Something he deemed unrealistic. “Real people don’t act like they do in your books, Ro.” But it wasn’t even the romance I’d wanted. It was my desperation for wanting to feel something real. Something overwhelming, but worth it.

“I think you’d be really easy to love,” she says. It’s a lax, whispered compliment, one she doesn’t know sounds like a gunshot in my head, hitting me straight in the chest.