Hello, my lovely readers!
So, I want to talk about something I've coined — and yes, I'm claiming it, it's mine — crush euphoria. That very specific, slightly unhinged feeling when you've got a major crush on someone and just being in their presence turns your brain into warm, useless static. You can't speak properly. You laugh too loud. You say the completely wrong thing. You exist, for the duration of that interaction, at approximately thirty percent of your usual functioning capacity. It's euphoric, it's catastrophic, and it is, I have come to accept with great peace, absolutely hilarious to everyone watching.
Now, I write romance (you may have noticed). And I genuinely cannot stop the intrusive humorous thoughts that ambush me mid-scene, many of which, I'll be completely honest, are borrowed directly from my real life. Specifically, from my twenties, which were, statistically speaking, peak-stupid-in-crush years. I have a solid catalogue. But there is one story that lives rent-free in my head above all others, and it is time I shared it with you.
Consider this both a personal essay and an explanation for why my characters occasionally do humorous things at the worst possible moments.
Picture this.
A random New Year's Eve. I'm in my twenties (which I've already established is the era of Peak Stupid and in my case I’d extend it to thirties as well). There's a guy. Mad, mad crush. We move in the same circles, so there's a reasonable chance I'll see him at this massive NYE party at a popular beachside venue — DJs, live music, free drinks, the whole spectacular works.
I show up with my housemates wearing a sparkly top and — and I need you to really sit with this — silver tinsel ribbons plaited all through my hair. Like, intentionally. On purpose. I looked like Christmas had a stomach flu and threw up all over me.
I thought I looked great. (I did not look great. I looked like a very festive disaster waiting to happen, which, as it turns out, was on brand for that evening.)
Midnight arrives. Midnight departs. No sign of him at the party. I am devastated. Shattered in fact. Mind you I'd also had a few too many vodka cruisers — what I have always lovingly called lolly-pop ruin — so the feelings were very much right there on the surface, fully available, ready to engage and launch like a ballistic missile at a moments notice.
Anyhow, the party eventually spilled out onto the street and a couple of friends and I end up across the street from the venue, sitting along this long, wide brick fence, sipping more cruisers and doing that very specific 1am post-party thing where everyone suddenly decides to solve the world's problems. You know what I mean. That emotional buzz where it's too late to go anywhere else but too early to head home and someone inevitably says something deep and off you all go — Feuerbach's letters were discussed. I'm not joking. We were that far into it.
And I'm going on about my no-show-crush. Being very sincere and heartfelt about how exhausting it is to like someone this much and feel absolutely none of the euphoria because he wasn't even there. I was leaning back as I said this. Further and further back, because I was very committed to that brick fence.
And then I was not on the fence anymore.
I was in a garden bed. Flat on my back. Legs completely straight up in the air. My retro platform shoes (it was a retro themed party – no idea why I added tinsel, but I digress) pointing at the night sky. I had fallen disgracefully with zero dignity. It was not demure.
Worst of all? I could not get out. I was stuck with my butt up against the fence and the rest of me wedged in this narrow garden bed — I was genuinely, embarrassingly, tipsy-and stuck — just lying there staring up at the stars while my friends on the other side of the fence lost the absolute plot. The asses were belly laughing. You know the type. Where people are wheezing and gasping and basically useless to you as human beings. According to them, it happened in slow motion. I didn't fall, I just sort of slid of the fence until all that was visible were my legs and those bloody loud retro shoes!
"Guys," I said. "Stop laughing and help me up!"
They could not help me. They were physically incapable. So, I just lay there — dirt through my tinsel hair, retro shoes all up in the air, the full situation — and I started laughing-crying simultaneously, which if you haven't experienced it is truly one of the more unhinged emotional states available to a person. Whilst also being quite cathartic. Full meltdown. In a garden bed. On New Year's Eve. Top shelf.
And then I heard a voice.
Male. Half-amused. Trying — really trying — not to laugh. Calling my name. Several times. Because I had looked up and my brain had simply left the building.
Because it was HIM!
Of ALL the brick fences, in all the coastal cities, on all the New Year's Eves in the entire world. He had to walk into mine!
My CRUSH was leaning over the fence, looking down at the full scene — the tinsel, the shoes, the dirt, the weeping, the useless wheezing friends — doing his absolute level best to hold it together.
And then those beautiful arms reached down, plucked and hoisted me clean out of the garden and sat me back on the fence like nothing had happened. Like this was something he did every day.
He asked if I was okay. He checked I could get home. The whole time trying not to laugh, bless him. And I — with the full range of possible responses available to me in that moment — looked him dead in the eye and instead of thanking him for saving my life because my friends were utterly useless in a crisis… I said:
"I've got tinsel in my hair."
"I know, babe," he replied. "It's pretty obvious."
He left. Turns out there was a girlfriend waiting across the road who was absolutely watching all of this unfold and most likely thinking who on earth is that hot mess. (Hi. It was me. Guilty as charged.)
I think I cried again after that (what can I say, it was a big night emotionally). Got over the crush remarkably fast. And every few years, when I run into those friends, someone inevitably says, "remember when you fell off the fence and had tinsel in your hair?" and we lose it all over again. At the time I was mortified. But at least now I can laugh about it.
Now. Why am I telling you this?
Because sometimes I'll be deep in a chapter, writing some poor character into a mortifying situation, and I'll start laughing so hard (like an unhinged person). And the reason I'm laughing is because I've been there. Maybe not that exact situation (I mean I wasn’t around in the 11th Century to yell 'where is my horse?'), but that feeling, that helpless, ridiculous, crush-addled state where everything goes pear-shaped at the worst possible moment in front of the exact wrong person… that's real. I've lived it. Multiple times. My twenties were basically a masterclass in it.
It’s probably why I try to inject a little bit of humour into everything I write because that's just who I am. I genuinely cannot help it. If I start taking my characters too seriously on the page, I've lost touch with myself, and honestly, I think you'd notice.
So, thanks to crush euphoria, I’ve got a lot of fodder to work with when it comes to ridiculous situations.
Real life is heavy most days and it asks a lot of us, it really does. But it also gives us these moments. The ones where you try to be cool and it all turns to spectacular, glorious, tinsel-covered shit. Those moments are worth keeping. Worth laughing about. Worth sharing.
And if they end up in a book somewhere? Well. You're welcome.
I'd love to say this is the only embarrassing crush story I have. Sadly, it is not. There are others. Perhaps one day I'll share them too.
For now, though, I have books to get back to and some very impatient characters to appease (they never shut up, honestly, it's a lot). And the one coming up very soon is “Your Money of Your Wife: Reluctant Brides Book 5. I hope you enjoy it.
Thank you, as always, for being here and for reading and for being the kind of readers who I think will understand exactly what I mean about crush euphoria, because I'm betting at least a few of you have your own garden bed story.
No judgment.
With love, laughter, and a little too much lolly-pop ruin,
Elina xoxo
P.S - The pic is of the actual platform shoes I wore for the NYE retro themed party. I found them today while clearing out the skeletons in my closet - ha!