「故事·听力」I Am In Love With My Cousin

I Am In Love With My Cousin

Hey there! My name is Anna and there is one thing you should know about me. I’m going through the toughest period of my adolescence now, which is naturally called unrequited love. How is it any different from any of yours? Well, I’m in love with my cousin.

Here is Jeff, my crush. My mom married my step-father a few years ago, and Jeff is his nephew. So now he is also my cousin, or as I would rather say, my step-cousin. So, you see there are no blood ties here. You might say that there are no problems then, but there are. First of all, Jeff is like 16 years older than me and I doubt that he perceives me as a woman at all. I mean, for him I'm still a child, at 14 years old. But even this is not the biggest deal in this whole situation.

Everything began a year ago. It was my step-dad’s 50th birthday and the whole family gathered together for the celebration. This was also a chance to meet all the relatives from both sides of the family, because my parents never had an actual wedding, so there were plenty of new family members that I’d never actually met before. Jeff was one of them. He grabbed my attention from literally the first second. For me, being a really affectionate person, it really was a love-crush at first sight. I couldn’t believe that he was that much older than me, because he looked really young. Nevertheless, we had some nice small talk, and after that party I could no longer make myself stop thinking about him.

Of course, I friended him on every social network I could. But we haven’t chatted much, because of the age difference probably. But I liked and commented on every single photo from his page, and so did he. And my love was, like, getting more overwhelming from day to day. To be honest, I’d even started a diary to get my thoughts about him out of my head. I felt like I shouldn’t tell anybody about my love, as if I was on the verge of insanity or something. One part of me thought I might have been a freak to feel something like this toward my cousin. But the other part was encouraging me with the fact that we were not directly related, and this “step-” prefix calmed me down.

Then my mom shared excellent news with me. Jeff was going to do some business in our city, and my parents kindly suggested that he stay with us at our big home. Everybody was happy: my step-dad was going to spend some time with his only nephew and Jeff was going to save some extra money on accommodations and food, but I was the happiest in this situation. You just can’t imagine how excited I was about sleeping under the same roof with him, or eating the same food while sitting next to each other and stuff. I had even gotten some money from parents to buy a couple of new outfits. I had to look perfect for him, you know.

Everything was amazing when he came. He seemed to have become even taller and more handsome than he was before, and I felt like I was drowning in deep waters when he was telling us something about his job and life. I felt happy because he was near me, and worried at the same time, because I was too shy to show my affection for him. Once, I remember after dinner my mom asked me to clear the table and wash the dishes, and Jeff suddenly suggested that he would help. I was like, “Is it possible that he wants to be one on one with me?” Then all of a sudden I couldn't breathe and my heart seemed to stop beating. While doing our chore, he was asking me about my school, my friends, and my interests, and suddenly he asked if I had a boyfriend. My stomach twirled instantly and I almost dropped the dishes on the floor. I didn’t know how to react to that question, so I said, “No" of course, since I really had no boyfriend, but my face turned bright red.

When Jeff left to go back home, I was on my own again with my love and my diary. I was filling it with hearts and stuff around his name, when I heard the phone ring. I heard how mom picked it up and understood that it was Jeff calling. I held my breath and began to listen to the conversation. When I heard mom hang up the phone, I felt almost a physical need to know why he called. I rushed to my mom and found her right away telling my step-dad that Jeff had called to say he was going to get married. I felt like the whole world had fallen on me. I yelled, “No!” as if I'd seen how someone was going to murder somebody. This reaction was too much, I knew it, but it wasn’t done on purpose. I ran back to my room and burst into tears. I couldn’t believe that he was going to marry someone else and I felt like I was betrayed or something.