Start a Fire in Our Hearts.

It was a cloudy Wednesday when we met. I had been on a coffee run and he had bumped into me, trying to get ahead in the long line. He got his coffee before me and when I angrily confronted him he just smirked and shrugged, causing an angry fire to start in my chest. There was no explaining the need I felt to just strangle the bastard. The nerve of that guy.

Or, at least that’s what I told my friends later when I got home.

The truth was, he was beautiful and the kind of carefree that made you just fall in love and I was already questioning the burning in my chest. There were so many things it could be trying to tell me. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what it was warning me of.

The second meeting came two weeks later, a long time to remember some jerk from a coffee line, I know. I was running late for work and, as my luck would have it, I had a flat. He was in the car in front of me, green eyes watching curiously through his small rearview mirror. I could see his curly, too-long hair flying back in the wind, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him.

Not until he stepped out of his expensive-looking car, that is.

“You,” I’d said, pointing a finger at him in anger. How dare he stop to help me?

I have to admit, I wasn’t exactly thinking logically by that point.

I twisted some of my auburn hair around a finger and then tucked it behind my ear, praying that the wind wouldn’t throw it into my face again. My heart beat loudly against my chest and I couldn’t figure out why I felt like that. How could he do that to me? Why would he?

“Yes, me,” he had smiled, showing off blindingly white teeth. “Who are you?”

“None of your business,” I snapped, almost wishing I could take it back, but then he laughed and the angels weeped. You know the drill, right? His eyes sparkle and make your knees weak. He laughs and it’s so beautiful that the angels weep. “What’s so funny?” I asked, trying desperately to keep a smile off of my face.

“Just...” and for a second I had thought he was going to say something cheesy to melt my heart even more. “You don’t even know who I am, do you?” he was shaking his head now and holding out his hand to me, smile still plastered to his features. “Benjamin Gingham,” his smile grew enough to show his teeth.

I tried not to, but I still giggled, “I still don’t know you.” I ignored the cute ‘you’re kidding, right?’ look he gave me as the fire rekindled in my heart. “Well, I mean, apart from that one time when you were a total asshole.”

Confusion spammed his face, “Are you sure that was me?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” I smiled and nodded, eyebrows furrowed slightly. Was he acting? Was he an actor? Is that why his name sounded so familiar?

“Well, then, I’m very sorry,” he frowned, confused yet. “I must have been late. How about we start over?”

I was going to shake my head and say, ‘fuck off’. I was going to walk away. But I had the guts of a guppy back then. “Sure.”

He held out his hand again, and this time I took it. “Hello, my name’s Ben, can I help you out?”

I laughed and looked to my shoes. The blush was half because I was upset with myself and half because of his cute antics.

If you could even call them that.

“Leanna,” I smiled up at him before letting go. “I have a flat,” I murmured, rubbing the back of my neck awkwardly, gesturing to the popped tire with my elbow.

Turns out that Ben Gingham was horrible with cars and ended up just giving me a ride the rest of the way to work. I remember thanking him and trying to walk away without looking back, no matter how tempting it was. I remember him yelling out my name and asking if he could have my number. I remember blushing and giving it to him shyly. I remember finally walking away. I remember feeling as if I were in one of those horribly cliched romances. Most of all, I remember liking it.

Next came the parties.

There were big ones, small ones, fancy ones, and even a few college ones. You see, Benny came from a family almost like the Hilton’s, and, even though he denied that vehemently, it’s still what I thought. He tried to be normal, he told me, but I knew he never would be. How hard would it to be normal when your family owned a hotel chain that swept the country and many others as well.

One day, almost a year exactly, after our fateful meeting in the coffee shop (yes, I kept track), he proposed. He claimed to love me and my normalcy, and, even though he’d worded it weakly, I accepted. After all, the bonfire living in my heart told me that I loved him.

Two months after that I was throwing the gaudy ring, that I’d always hated, back in his face. He had already had a fiancee. He confessed that that day in the coffee shop, when he’d rudely run into me, he was really hurrying to get back home to his, then, girlfriend of three months. The time on the road, he admitted, was a chance meeting and that he, on a whim, decided to go with it.

I started to doubt he had a heart, as mine was beginning to be swallowed whole by the wildfire as it slowly, agonizingly, spread throughout the rest of my body.

That’s when I finally realized it was all fake. He had given me a counterfeit heart. He ignited my heart and then stomped all over it in a feeble and artificial attempt to put it out.

He was a professional.

A professional heart breaker. He built a fire up inside of me, inside my chest, and then he kindled it until it became my own personal funeral pyre of sorts. Then he left me. He left my heart burnt and broken and holding tightly onto a little thread that it named ‘grudge,’ just waiting for it to get cut.