Hopeless Romantics

Before she met Sam, Anna never understood why anyone would want to commit murder. She never thought of herself as the crazy type either. But here she was on a Friday afternoon, stalking her ex-boyfriend’s Venmo account and fantasizing about stabbing him to death. It had been a whole year since he dumped her and blocked her on everything (except Venmo) but the mere thought of him made Anna’s blood boil. 

She scrolled through his most recent interactions on the app and zoomed in on his new profile picture. This was part of her daily ritual now. Her new mantra was “Eat, Sleep, Hope that Sam’s life is a living hell.”

At the local university, just twenty miles away, Sam was beaming. The weather was chilly but not too cold. He was graduating from college in a week, and the love of his life was walking towards him with two iced lattes in her hands. 

When Sam met Mia, she had been working as a barista at the university’s Starbucks, and he was still with Anna. He couldn’t pinpoint what made Mia so attractive to him but there was a spark there that he had never felt with Anna. It was love at first sight. It only took five coffee runs that day to realize that he did not love Anna. He followed his heart and ended his three-year relationship to ask Mia out on a date. 

Now, he was the happiest man to grace the earth. 

“What are you thinking about?” Mia asked, handing Sam a coffee.

“Just about how beautiful you are,” he replied. 

Mia gave him a small smile and sipped her drink. 

“You say that so often, I’m starting to wonder if you really mean it.”

“Of course I mean it, baby. Are you calling me a liar?” he gave her a pout and batted his eyelashes. 

Mia shivered, but not because of the cold. 

Sam stood up and hitched his backpack up far enough so that Mia could see rings of sweat forming around his armpits. 

“Let me walk you to class,” he said. 

“Okay.”

He laced his fingers through hers and smiled. 

She’s perfect, he thought, giving her hand a squeeze.

He’s clammy, she thought, suppressing the urge to free her hand. 

They stopped in front of her classroom. Sam leaned over and planted a kiss on Mia’s lips. 

“I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

He left, oblivious to the fact that his girlfriend felt like she was being eaten alive by a million maggots. 

When Sam asked Mia on their first date a year ago, she was ecstatic. He was the cute boy who kept stealing flirtatious glances at her during her work shifts. On paper, he was exactly her type: tall, dark, nerdy and handsome. 

But on the third date, he bit his straw while drinking a smoothie. 

That’s when Mia realized that not everything should be judged solely on paper. Still, she brushed her disgust aside because it seemed like a shallow thing to care so much about. “You’re the man of my dreams but I’m breaking up with you because the way you drink from straws makes me uncomfortable” just sounded stupid even to her own ears. Besides, a relationship is all about compromise, right?

But over the past year, Mia had accumulated a list of seemingly petty reasons for wanting to end things with her boyfriend. Out of the hundreds in her collection, her top three were:

1. He licks his fingers when eating chips and wipes his saliva-covered hands on his trousers.
2.  He bellows — there is no other word to describe the sound he produces — when watching sports on TV. He sounds like a dying walrus.
3. He says “libary” instead of “library.”

Mia had been trying to convince herself to escape the relationship for months, but she was too afraid of hurting Sam. He wasn’t a bad guy and he clearly loved her. She thought that maybe after graduation, they would naturally drift apart the way so many couples did, but Sam was getting more and more clingy during the weeks leading up to the end of the semester. 

For the next hour, Mia sat in class but paid no attention to her professor’s lecture. Instead, she planned how she would finally break up with her boyfriend. 

Unbeknownst to Mia, Sam was planning his own surprise at the same time. He had spent a large chunk of his savings on an engagement ring. He sat in his car, daydreaming about his soon-to-be fiancé. He was mulling over the perfect place to pop the question when he received a notification on his phone. An email from the university announced: 

Graduation Party! 

Friday. May 12, 2023

 9:30pm at Olive Garden in Loma City

Dress code: Semi-Formal

Sam smiled. Perfect.

Unfortunately for him, Mia was looking at the same email. 

***

Anna couldn’t believe her eyes. She had thought about what it would be like to see Sam again after their break-up. She thought about it at least twice a day. In Anna’s fantasies, Sam would be cartoonishly miserable, wishing he had never dumped her. 

This was not what Anna was seeing now, through a window of an Olive Garden. Instead, Sam was down on one knee with a ring in his hand, proposing to the most beautiful girl Anna had ever seen. They were surrounded by people who were laughing and cheering. The girl had tears streaming down her cheeks. She was living the life Anna had dreamed of for three years.

Anna felt her heart shatter into a million pieces, and walked away. She didn’t know that the girl in the restaurant was not crying tears of joy. She couldn’t hear Mia sobbing: 

“I can’t marry you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t…”

Nor could she hear Sam’s desperate voice asking, “Why? Why not? Don’t you love me? Did I do something wrong?”

Anna had no idea that her daily spiteful prayers had come true. Sam was on his knees and his life was now a living hell. Just like hers.