Royally Screwed

I’d seen it a million times in the movies. To begin with the girl gets off the plane, her - A) Mother’s old guitar hung limply over her shoulder that is no doubt covered in old bumper stickers and crappy sharpie doodles that she thought looked really artsy. B) Well-worn biker boots that gives off the impression that she is dark and mysterious and a little bad-ass. Even though the most bad-ass thing she had ever done was stolen a pack of gum from the supermarket that one time in the 7th grade. C) Dorky glasses – almost definitely ray-bans – falling adorably off of her nose as she waits for some good-looking popular jock to realise that she isn’t like all those other girls. Miraculously after only being in the country for a grand total of five minutes she accidently knocks the bags out of another girls arms (because she’s just so clumsy) who consequently becomes her best friend. Said best friend then goes to invite the girl to live with her because apparently having one conversation with a complete and utter stranger and inviting them to live with you is completely normal and totally not creepy at all. The girl settles in in her new home, and just can’t wait to become – A) A tortured musician who finally gets her big break. Because a few months of guitar lessons that her dad paid for and that life-altering performance with Zac Efron at a ski lodge totally counts as suffering right? B) Angelina Jolie. Give or take a couple of kids. C) A brand new shiny version of themselves that includes drinking until they pass out in a taxi and vomit all over the drivers lap and becoming vegan. That is until she meets him. The guy who changes it all. The guy who she finds repulsive at first, despite the fact that he looks like either – A) Channing Tatum B) Spider-Man C) Prince Harry And she wants to rip his clothes off because duh, the dude looks like Channing Tatum. He’s also dark and mysterious. And has some quirky favourite food that she finds adorable. They then have a big fight because he kisses – A) Brittany B) AmberC) Chelsea And the girl is heartbroken even though they weren’t even dating. He chases after her of course – because that totally isn’t creepy either – and professes his love for her in the middle of the street. Or in a movie theatre. Possibly a train station. Anywhere that isn’t in private really. She cries. Sometimes he cries. And then they live happily ever after. It’s usually at this point in the movie that I turn it off, throw the remote out of the window and eat an entire tub of ice-cream to myself. Because really, who were they trying to fool? Life just isn’t like that. And I would know, because I did the whole aspirational girl routine. Which as you could probably tell didn’t exactly work out the way I had planned. I didn’t play guitar. And I didn’t wear biker boots or glasses. I did write, but the most writing I had done in the past couple of months had been grocery lists that usually only consisted of easy mac and instant coffee. As it turns out it wasn’t as easy to get your book published I had originally thought. Looking back at it now moving to London from Melbourne would rank pretty high in my top-ten list of crappy ideas (right after eating week old pizza). Not only did I have anywhere to live, no friends, no family or a job set-up for me, but I was living on the pathetic delusion that I would get off of the plane and everything would fall into place. Ha. Ha. Ha. Haha. Ha. Boy was I wrong. Like majorly wrong. Disastrously wrong. Catastrophically wrong. I was just wrong, okay? And as a result I had spent the first few weeks in London hostel jumping, scraping by with money I had left over from my eighteenth birthday and sending my novel off to every publisher in the western hemisphere. Around the two month mark of my new exciting fabulous London life (ha.ha.ha) I finally found a place to live. Sure, my roommate was a chauvinistic pig who referred to himself as ‘Terminator Troy’, threw parties every weekend that consisted mainly of peroxide blondes and what felt like the entire pervert population of London and had a neurotic cat that peed in my shoes – but I had my own room and didn’t have to pay much rent due to the fact that he couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to live with him. Terminator Troy hooked me up with a waitressing job at a pub that one of his pervert friends owned, and I guess the rest is history. And more importantly may I add – realistic. There was no light-bulb moments. No happy coincidences. There wasn’t even any Prince Harry look-a-likes. Just a draw full of rejection letters and a wounded pride. “Now that! That is how every movie should end.” Terminator Troy peers over his copy of ‘Beers & Babes’ and c***s his perfectly sculpted eyebrows. He had a monthly subscription. “Aren’t you watching Titanic?” “Yeah, what’s your point?” Little pieces of burnt pop-corn falls out of my mouth as I grumble over the TV. “Zoe, you do know everyone dies right?” Of course I knew. When I was seven I had snuck a bottle of red hair-dye out of my Mums vanity just so I could look like Rose. Unfortunately most of it missed my actual hair and found my eyebrows instead. That was a particularly fun year. “But don’t you see? That’s what makes it so good! Sure Leo dies, but it’s believable. Right? Right?” Terminator Troy studies me for a moment longer. If you could get past the whole Sleazy McSleazepant’s thing he had going on he was actually pretty acceptable looking. When I had first met him he had reminded me of Ronald Weasley. Slightly awkward and with limbs that looked too lanky for his wide frame. That and he was a big old’ ginger. “Riiiiiiiight. Are you sure I can’t set you up with one of my friends?” I roll my eyes and shove some more pop-corn in my mouth. “How many times do I have to tell you? The entire universe could spontaneously drop dead except me and your pervert friends and I still wouldn’t date any of them.” He gives his shoulders one small shrug, licks his fingers and goes back to flicking through his magazine. “Suit yourself. I’m just trying to be a good friend.” “By getting me a boyfriend?” “By getting you laid.” I go to gasp but end up choking on a piece of pop-corn instead. “I-” Cough, sputter, gasp, “don’t need to get laid!” “Uh-huh, that’s what they all say.” “And who exactly are they?” I throw the bowl of popcorn off of my lap and stand up from the couch so I can loom over him. Which for a person of my height isn’t exactly easy. Or intimidating. Just kind of pathetic actually. His eyes lazily lol up to look at me. “People who watch the Titanic and root for everybody to die. Also people who need to get laid.” And just like that he goes back to his stupid magazine full of stupid girls with stupid names that they probably found on the back of a cereal box. Grumbling under my breath – and imagining Terminator Troy’s untimely death – I storm off to my tiny room and slam the door behind me for extra emphasis. “Don’t worry baby, I volunteer!” He calls out from the other side of the door, laughing manically at his own joke. Instead of responding I open the door and slam it shut again.That’ll show him. Sighing I let the back of my head lean against the door taking a minute just to reel in my murderous tendencies. My room wasn’t much. Beige walls and carpeted floors. It had a wrought iron double bed that I had bought from the shady Asian woman who lived on the second floor. A couple of shabby looking bedside tables and a matching dresser that I had miraculously fit around it. And a desk that at the time I thought would be the birthplace of a New York Times best-selling novel. Right now however all that was littered across the top was empty perfume bottles and smudged phone numbers written on the back of coasters. No, it wasn’t much. But it was mine. Photos of my family were strung on twine across the walls, along with Marvel movie posters that I had found lying in the alley behind the cinema. “Can you believe that guy?” I complain to Captain America, throwing my arms up in the air. A weird silence passes through the room as I stare back expectantly at Chris Evan’s face, waiting for him to respond. Which is ridiculous because posters can’t talk. And unless my room had mystically transported into Hogwarts (it hadn’t) he wasn’t going to respond. Still angry – and now a little embarrassed – I throw myself onto the bed and burrow underneath my doona. It was safer under here. Warmer too. And the make-shift shield of downy feathers and quilt that separated me from the rest of the world didn’t hurt either. I wasn’t even sure why I let Terminator Troy get under my skin so easily anyways. It wasn’t like he was right. I mean if I wanted to, which I most definitely do not, I could get myself a banging boyfriend any day of the week. He would have abs and the hair of a sexually confused boy band member, and he would feed me grapes off of a vine if I asked him too. Which is all good and well, but at the end of the day that wasn’t what I wanted. I was a singular noun who had no intention of becoming a plural. I was done fooling myself that my life was a giant movie waiting to happen. Because at the end of the day, there wasn’t a Leo waiting out there for me. And after the great eyebrow disaster of 2002, it was pretty clear that I wasn’t anybody’s Rose.