Chapter 21: Claire Mason: 52 Things I Would Love About You
By: Kristen Pizzo
Tags: Novel, Love, Fiction, Teens, Fiction Writing

Photo by Jamie Street

This is what I wrote the other day in class, when I saw a dude handing his girl a deck of cards titled “52 Things I Love About You.” It isn’t for anyone in particular; I mean, how could it be? I have no one.

But I wrote it anyway because I’m trying to imagine a life beyond Him. I’m trying to picture myself falling in love again one day.

And maybe someday, I can give this to someone.

52 Things I Would Love About You (if I had you)

1. Your eyes. Yeah, I know it’s super cliché and all, but it’s true. Eyes are the most beautiful things about a person to me. I mean, anyone can potentially be attractive when they’re wearing sunglasses, but as soon as they take them off it’s the moment of truth. The eyes make them or break them. So, I would love your eyes, would have to. Or else I probably wouldn’t have fallen for you in the first place. Shallow huh? You’re right. I don’t deserve to be so choosy.

2. Your laugh. Again, cliché. I know. Sorry. But it’s important. I mean, if I had you, I’d hope I’d make you laugh. Like really, really hard. So hard you can’t breathe and your gut feels like it’s gonna burst. And everyone around us would stare as if we were too circus freaks who’d been separated from the rest of the carneys. Your laugh would be so loud and happy and cute, I’d hope. I wouldn’t care if you snorted occasionally. I’d just want to hear your wonderful laugh, everyday. And I’d want to laugh with you, till we’d lose our voices. Everything would be okay. It wouldn’t matter what we looked like, it wouldn’t matter who judged us because we’d be together, and that’d cancel out everything else. I miss laughing.

3. Your smile. Sorry. Okay, I promise this is the last overused one. But yeah. I’d hope your smile would put the sun, glaring white hospital lights, and the stars all to shame. And I hope you’d flash it at me around five hundred times a day because I’d make you that happy. I really wonder what it’s like to make someone happy, truly insanely happy, for an infinite amount of time. I hope you can show me what that’s like, whoever you will be. I really do.

4. Your touch. I hope it’s gentle. I hope it’s kind. I hope you won’t use me. I hope you won’t hurt me. I never want to feel a stinging pain from your touch, I only want to feel love. I don’t want to be manipulated by your touch. Though the thought of it terrifies me, I want you to touch me, someday, but for once, I want it to feel okay.

5. Your mind. I hope it thinks kind thoughts. I hope its logic is twisted in a harmless way that’s different and unique and just so you, whoever you’ll be. I hope it’s smart, yet down to earth. I hope it’s full of songs I know and jokes I’ll love. I hope it’ll think about me day in and day out, not just when I’m there beside you. And most of all, I hope it will allow you to miss me when I’m gone.

6. Your humor. To me, the worst feeling in the world is the one you get when you tell a joke or make a funny comment and it’s dead silent after and not even crickets are chirping. Most of the time it’s not because the person doesn’t get your joke, it’s because they don’t get your humor. So I need you to have a sense of humor I’m on par with. One I totally and utterly get without a doubt. I can’t fall in love with you if I’m not in love with your sense of humor.

7. The way you always know just what to say. No “oh’s” no “ok’s,” no one word answers to the things that I almost couldn’t say to you. No judgments, just perfect, just-what-I-wanted, movie line words from you is what I need. I want to feel like we are reading a script, yet at the same time, I don’t want things to feel that way at all. I want things to feel natural and perfectly formulated all at once. I never want your words to hurt me. I want to love the way you always say the right thing at the right time, without fail. Sure, you can slip up a bit. We all fuck up. But I’m sick of hearing the wrong thing all the time, sick of being stabbed in the heart with words uttered without much thought to them, sick of words that should never have been said. I want to love most every word that leaves your perfect lips. Is that too much to ask? It’s a rhetorical question, but, even so, I bet you’d have the perfect answer.

8. The way you move. I don’t even mean this sexually. I want to love the awkward, silly, smooth, or for Heaven’s sake even gawky way you hold and move your body. I want to smile each time you approach me. I want you to know just how to move and when. You don’t have to know how to dance, just how to make me blush and smile with the way you carry yourself, even if you look fucking ridiculous at times.

9. The way you comfort me. You don’t just tell me I’m pretty or even the adjective I hate to love — beautiful. You know those words mean everything and nothing all at once and you know just when to say them. You tell me I’m amazing. You tell me wonderful. You don’t mention my body. You don’t tell me I’m perfect because you know that perfection doesn’t exist and that imperfection is beautiful. You comfort me in all the right ways, and nothing you say ever hurts.

10. The way you say the three magic words. They aren’t overused, misused or abused. You say it just enough but never too much. You say it at appropriate times, always. You never make me feel patronized or bribed. You say it like you fucking mean it.

11. The way you get me. My humor and jokes? You’re right on top of it. My mood swings? You know how to handle them. You know just when I need you and you are there, always. You know me. You know me so well and are so similar we could be one but we only choose to be two because life’s more fun that way.

12. Your smell. It’s not like roses. It’s not like a middle school boy’s cologne or a grandmother’s perfume. It’s you. Maybe it’s a mix of the laundry detergent you use and a tiny but of sweet smelling sweat or the deodorant you wear or even just the shampoo you wash your hair with. But most of all, it’s undeniably you, your signature scent. Like if I slapped your name on a perfume bottle and sprayed myself with the contents, I’d smell exactly like you, no other scents added. It’s so distinct I’d know it anywhere. It comforts me. It envelopes my clothes after I hug you and I secretly smell my sweaters and T-shirts after you leave for the night because I want to keep holding onto you. Your scent is a remnant of you, a souvenir for me when you’re not with me.

I know it’s called “52 things” not twelve, but I swear I can’t think anymore. Because ‘you’ don’t exist. I haven’t yet found ‘you’. It’s too hard to keep painting pictures in my head of all the things you could be. But I promise, whoever you are, when I find you, I’ll have thirty-two more things, and then some. I just want to believe that it’s possible to feel again. To scrape together what I have left of myself and keep giving to someone.