This is the short story I wrote for English. Our assignment was to write about an internal conflict and the resulting call to action. Enjoy!

Decisions

Derek had always been a very indecisive man. Ever since he was old enough to pick things up, he could never decide which option was best. He was a person who always looked at the other side of the issue; he always wondered what if I realize too late that I’ve chosen the wrong thing? This made Derek a very frustrating person to be around for others. He took too much time for every little thing, from deciding where to go for lunch to not knowing which thing to order. For this reason, Derek never had very many friends. The one constant person in his life was Clair, his girlfriend, who he’d known since kindergarten.
Clair was one of the only people who ever understood Derek. Although she did not have as great an issue about deciding things, she had stood by Derek because they had been best friends since the beginning. He knew the little things about her, like how when people spelled her name wrong, she would correct them with “it’s like ‘eclair’ without the ‘e’.” For years, Clair knew Derek liked her, but she also knew that he would take a very long time trying to decide to ask her out. She decided to wait. It took him four years.
Clair and Derek had been very happy from that day forward. They spent six years together (in which Clair had to practically force Derek into their new apartment), happy as they could be. Clair decided early on that if they were ever to get married, she would need to start dropping hints years before they could be engaged. So she did.
“I wish I had more rings,” she said, long before she actually wanted to get married.
“Okay,” Derek replied, thinking he now knew the perfect thing to get Clair for Christmas.
When Christmas came around, Derek walked into Tiffany & Co. knowing that he wanted to get Clair a nice silver ring. However, when he saw the price, he decided that it wasn’t a good idea. He got her a coffee mug and a scarf instead. Things like this mildly irritated Clair, but she put on a happy face all the same, because she knew at some point, Derek would get the message.
This, in turn, frustrated Derek. He sometimes felt that Clair treated him was as if he was stupid, and that he wasn’t able to put two and two together. This was not the issue. In reality, Derek knew right away that Clair wanted to get married, it was just a matter of him deciding if he wanted to as well. He hated that indecisiveness was perceived as slowness in the eyes of Clair.
This is how Derek came to make the biggest decision of his life. He woke up one morning and knew, as he looked over at Clair sleeping next to him, that he could not be with her any more. He got out of bed, got dressed, and wrote a note.
Meet me for coffee -D it said.
When Clair woke, she wondered worriedly what had happened to Derek. When she walked out into the kitchen, she saw his note, grabbed her scarf and walked out the door. She knew exactly which coffee shop he would be at; it was the one Derek had decided he liked the most five years prior, and he never drank his espressos from anywhere else. She was a bit frustrated with Derek’s actions, and made it extremely clear as she stomped through the door and dropped her bag harshly on the table in front of him, making his coffee splash.
“You could have woken me up, you know. I would’ve walked with you,” she said angrily.
“Sorry.” It didn’t seem as though he was. “I had to clear my head.”
“What do you mean?” Clair asked. She suspected what was coming. He’d finally gotten the message, and he was about to pull out a ring. As Derek shifted in his seat, reaching into his pocket for something, Clair’s heart began to beat faster. However, instead of pulling out a ring, he pulled out a piece of paper. He began to read off of it:
“I’ve been given our relationship a lot of thought recently. You know how I am with decisions. I wanted to decide what I wanted out of us before I did anything drastic,” he said solemnly, as Clair’s face fell.
“I’ve decided that I can’t dedicate myself to this relationship any longer.” He looked up. “I’m really sorry Clair,” he said, watching the tears well in her eyes. She stood up hastily, snatched her bag, and ran out of the shop. She would not make contact with Derek again for three years.
It was a cool day in mid-September, the coldest of the month so far. Derek was on his way home from his morning coffee, the usual feel of disappointment settling in. He had switched coffee places since ending things with Clair, and the espressos just didn’t brighten his mornings like they used to. He made his daily stop at the post office to grab his mail, and then headed back to his apartment two blocks away. When he walked through his door, he threw his mail on the table in the hallway, and almost continued walking, but something caught his eye. An envelope addressed to him in fancy cursive lettering. The letters, however, were not what got his attention. The return address was from a Clair Putnam, a name he knew all too well in from life. He opened it hastily, and as he read the contents, his mouth dropped.
Mr. and Mrs. James Putnam and Mr. and Mrs. John Olinsky request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their children Clair Putnam and Michael Olinsky...
Derek was stunned. It was at that moment that he realized that he had made the biggest mistake of his life when he left Clair. He knew that he must go, not as her ex boyfriend, but as her best friend of so many years. More importantly, he knew he could not let her go through with it. He thought and thought about how he could convince her otherwise.
The problem was Derek’s sub par decision making abilities. He could not think of when he would see Clair before the wedding, let alone how he would tell her that she was making a mistake. He waited and waited for the right moment, but soon it was two in the morning on the day of the wedding, and he had done nothing except lose sleep over the issue. He had not bothered to shave or take care of himself at all since he had received the invitation four weeks five weeks earlier.
Soon, he was sitting on the Bride’s side of the church, listening to the exchanging of the vows, and he knew he had lost Clair. But then Derek had a thought. It was a cruel thought, a terrible one even. But he knew it was his last chance. Don’t back out of this he thought, as the priest drawled on. Then the words he had been waiting for came.
“If there is anyone who feels that these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now, or forever hold your peace.”
Derek was on his feet before the last words had escaped the preachers mouth.
“I OBJECT!” He screamed, possibly too loudly.
There was a roar of gasps from the others in attendance. The priest looked confused, the fiance looked angry, but Derek was only paying attention to Clair’s stony-faced expression. Unblinking, and unchanging, except for the drain of color from her cheeks.
Derek realized everyone was staring at him, and that he should probably give an explanation to follow up his objection, but he did not know what to do.
“I love you.” He said.