Yooo your love story straight out seems like an e2l slow burn tumblr fic. Do you have any plans using at as a plot?? I would def read it 👀
I don’t know if I would truly call it enemies-to-lovers because—although I got irritated with him and his behavior and did snap at him from time to time—we were not really enemies. In fact we were barely friends for most of the years we knew each other—
Ok. So that’s not totally true...
We fought online constantly. From the time we graduated college (where his crush first developed and I routinely forgot his name) the two of us were always fighting on social media—usually about politics—and occasionally about other things but both of us were too smart to ever truly get the better of each other so there was a grudging respect, (his mom said he used to yell at his computer screen about me). We had it OUT several times online even though we rarely—if ever—spoke in person.
My poor sweet boy DID get himself in trouble over me in more ways than one though—even if we’re weren’t close yet...
His college girlfriend set him up to fail asked him who he would date if the two of them weren’t together and he answered immediately—vehemently—
“Viola. I would definitely date Viola if I could.”
(That would become a huge THING in their relationship. Every time they got into a fight his ex would shout “why don’t you just go date VIOLA then?!”—When he married me he said he felt like a real winner in that particular collection of conflicts. Playing the long game I guess 🤣😂)
Back then I was all about the music/dramatic arts scene and I was dating a string of empty headed pretty boys who bored me nigh unto death because I was young and completely stupid.
In contrast my someday-boo was painfully quiet and shy (though not really with me because he was too busy trying to prove me wrong), but everyone who met him or spoke to him really liked him and respected him.
After college we were were still in the same extended social circle (and—as previously mentioned—fighting online), but I went to grad school and my not-yet-husband decided to chill for awhile and take a job as a landscaper while he figured his life out and... here’s where it gets complicated because...
—that’s where the girls came in. You see... he’s always been a really nice guy... maybe a little too nice 🤦🏻♀️
The term fuqboi tends to conjure up impressions of a cocky frat bro who slyly shags his way through a mountain of willing women with disconnected efficiency and a subtext of emotional constipation.
But that would not be the case here.
You see my husband is a listener. He’s an INFP. He, unlike many of his brethren, understands emotions and can really make a woman feel seen. Combine that with his good looks, brilliant mind, and broody nerditude and you have a recipe for women who were ‘just friends’ randomly dropping to their knees (and a lot more) for him.
Never one to stand in the way of a lady’s dreams, pre-me-hubby figured that if they were that determined to (*insert miscellaneous sexy stuff here*) with him then—well—he’d let them.
I mean why not, right? No harm done.
And here is where our paths truly began to merge (in the real world) for the first time.
As the FOURTH girl (just in my friend group) he graciously allowed (🤦🏻♀️) to have her wicked way with him sobbed in my arms, I became determined to put this ridiculous man-child IN his PLACE—this time in the tactile world as well as the virtual one.
She realized that he had absolutely no desire whatsoever to be in a relationship with anything other than his WoW account and she was insistent that he had broken her heart.
So I cornered him and we had it out. (Call me meddlesome, but to be fair he was four friends deep at this point.)
The problem was that... the more I talked to him...the more he was not really what I expected... I found myself...oddly...intrigued?
Later it would come out that I was the first girl—ever—that he actually pursued. And I was not even aware of it for like the first three months.
He was pretty slick after all when it came down to it.
That man convinced me to ‘help him’ with women—to make sure he didn’t get himself into another situation where some girl with heart eyes was tearing off his clothes and expecting commitment.
HE ASKED ME TO BE HIS ‘EXCUSE.’
🤦🏻♀️(...I know. I’m an idiot.)
“We can hang out. You’ll teach me how to spot if a girl is about to catch feelings and take off my pants. And I will have an excuse when they call as to why we can’t hang out” (—and ...they really were always calling. It was wild.)
....I mean he WAS shy! It SEEMED plausible!
So yeah my dim self agreed to it. (🤦🏻♀️)
I considered it a valiant attempt to save the rest of my social circle from the most clueless ‘accidental’ fuqboi on planet earth and maybe even an opportunity to teach him how to be a real human being and what not.
And before you think ‘fake dating’—we weren’t. We were just hanging out as friends. You see when I went to yell at him (and chased him down after he laughed at me and tried to escape) we ended up talking in his car for like four hours. And then that happened like three more times randomly so... I... actually... wanted... to be his friend... 🤷🏻♀️
I was still 110% not interested romantically.
Your girl (me) was after some bland banker dude (🤦🏻♀️) and so I blissfully fell into friendship with my actual soulmate without a single second thought. And I never worried about either of us catching feelings because I had a crush on someone else and he had heavily implied that I was not his type. (He told me later that I just assumed this and he simply never corrected me 🙄)
I don’t remember falling for him. I never decided to. I never thought about it...
But one day after the whole crew was hanging out at a restaurant (and the waiter kept giving me free drinks which may have pissed my once-and-future man off) the two of us went out to his car to have our customary three hour post-chill chat...
I was teasing him about something—some girl he was still attempting to untangle himself from—and I said—as had become my habit (seriously I said this so many times as a joke)—“It’s too bad I’m not your type—you could just tell her you have a girlfriend.”
(Now. I know what you’re thinking. But I was still firmly on team platonic ok! I was just a flirt. And maybe part of me was starting to feel weird things about him—but those feelings weren’t like anything I recognized so I thought I just needed to cut back on sugar or something.)
(Have I mentioned I’m an idiot?)
ANYWAYS he looked me right in the eye. So serious. And instead of saying “that’s too bad”—LIKE he ALWAYS did—he said—
“You...are my type, Viola... You’re exactly my type.”
To which I responded—“....What? No I’m not. You said I wasn’t.”
“Never said that. You assumed.”
—followed by a good ten minutes of me having an existential crisis/yelling at him for allowing me to believe he didn’t find me attractive and lulling me into a false sense of security. He was infuriatingly unapologetic.
At the end of it all he asked me to give him—give us—a chance.
And I agreed to go out on a few dates with him (mostly to prove to myself that there was nothing there).
The only thing I ended up proving was that I was wrong about what I wanted and even more wrong about what I needed.
Those weird feelings turned out to be love.
And it was a really special experience to sit in a room full of girls who had cried in my arms over him—girls I had lectured repeatedly on the dangers of his heartless ways— and admit that I was his girlfriend.
Love was—and continues to be—nothing like I expected and frankly I couldn’t be happier.
... to answer your questions
1. I have considered writing a fic based on our story called Broken Road. The title is taken from an old Rascal Flatts song that—as insanely cheesy as it is—really reminds me of us. Don’t know if I will actually write this. Thought about it a lot though.
2. Tags I would use for this story?
#enemies-to-lovers / #idiots-to-lovers / #college au / #outgoing!fem reader(me) x shy nerd!accidental fuqboi / #reader is also a huge nerd actually / #she’s just a loud one / #frenemies-to-lovers / #the love is requited / #they’re just idiots / #pining (his) / denial (mine) / #reader has terrible taste in men / #except for that last one / #she really redeemed herself there at the end
gummygunk
titsay
baratheonpilled
origamiaround
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
romaincrisis
