Trent's Second Love (a self-indulgent Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fanfic)
A/N: I love Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I agree with what the prod team did in almost every aspect of showcasing how mental health affects relationships and how it's a good idea to seek help for your own sake rather than relying on your relationship to fix you. But I'm still self-indulgent in the extreme and I wanted to write a self-insert Mary Sue fic about Trent and my OC. I think Rebecca made the right decision for herself and this fic isn't about shaming her. Any thoughts Trent has about Rebecca are from what I imagine his viewpoint would be, not what my opinion is about her. I'm also trying to write my character more from what I imagine his viewpoint would be, rather than mine, although he will have my thought patterns and speech patterns because I'm a pretty basic writer. Enjoy, or if you don't enjoy, go read something else =D
It took Trent longer than he wanted, to heal. Every bone in his body was broken, again, and so was his heart. It was the most harrowing, aching despair he had ever experienced. Rebecca did not, had never, loved him. Every cruel word she had said to him since the moment they'd finally spoken, the way she'd used him, the precise moment every scrap of hope within him turned to despair, it all circled round his head, a feeding frenzy of sharks upon his sanity. He did finally confess to the "crimes" he had committed, for her, for their love, but not before making plans to escape. He didn't want to go back to Iowa, and he couldn't stay in Southern California.
He would go to the Silicon Valley to build his brand and start fresh.
He wasn't looking for love. Once bitten, twice shy, as they say. But as the Fates would have it, he did meet someone, in a manner of speaking. He was slumming it round St. James Park, which, despite the City of San Jose's efforts to "clean it up" (read: gentrify it), remained the kind of place mothers avoided taking their babies for a stroll. It was there, deep in thought while trying not to be, when he caught sight of the second love of his life.
She was like Rebecca, and yet she was not. She was about the same age, with shoulder-length curly brown hair, a curvy figure, and an impish smile that came out while she was chatting with… who was that distasteful person beside her? She was about the same height as Rebecca, a Goth, wearing glasses more fit for a man in his 40's than a woman in her late 20's. Mesh sleeves covered her arms, but other than that, she was dressed casually in black jeans and a band tee for The Pretty Reckless, specifically their song Make Me Wanna Die. Chunky platform boots peeked out from under her jeans, making her look closer in height to her friend (girlfriend?). Something about her radiated – not sunshine – it was difficult to describe. She had a determined set to her face and something about the vibe she gave off told him she was a kindred spirit.
When he saw her, it felt like-
Like glitter was exploding-? No, that was a borrowed phrase. He shook his head slightly and tried to focus on how he really felt.
Gazing at her was like gazing at the full moon. He was wonder-struck. It was as though this girl radiated empathy and joy. He felt better, just by looking at her.
He got a bad feeling about the girl next to her, though. She, too, was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, both of which were at least one size too small for her. The jeans were light blue, commercially faded, and the T-shirt had some kind of anime girl on them. This girl had sandy, stringy hair and clearly thought she was the lead in an anime. She was very loud and very… distasteful, he thought again.
They were talking about the park, or was it a man named James? Had this Goth vixen already given her heart away? No—no, he told himself, that couldn't be right at all. She was probably trying to set her anime-enthusiast friend up with someone, extolling the virtues of a guy she knew to convince her to go out with him. Saint James, indeed.
"Oh my God, Cygnet, no," laughed the anime enthusiast shrilly. Trent almost winced. But Cygnet, that was interesting. A cygnet was a baby swan – tufty and adorable, sure to grow up graceful, picturesque, and vicious. He thought it suited her.
"I'm just saying, Yamazaki"—Yamazaki, really? That shrill blonde did not look like she had a single droplet of Japanese blood in her—"if you want to be taken care of, the older ones are usually the way to go. Besides, experience is key." Cygnet was savvy.
Trent continued to listen to their conversation, collecting tidbits and typing them into his phone until he found… yes…
Cygnet was on Facebook, Instagram (though she seemed to only use it when on a Facebook cleanse), Twitter (though she seemed to rarely use it), and YouTube. She and Yamazaki were on dating sites together, a couple looking for a third. They were inseparable on social media and didn't seem to have a lot of close friends outside their relationship (and if they did, they kept those friends at arm's length in favor of spending time together), but there was something off about their dynamic, Trent thought. They wouldn't last much longer.
Was this what hope felt like?
They broke up a few months later. Not only were they no longer inseparable, but they were calling each other out viciously on social media for all kinds of slights. Trent smiled to himself as he scrolled through Cygnet's Facebook profile. Many of their friends had been mutual friends and now some were taking sides, some were remaining friends with both, and some were dropping both. Cygnet was the more authentic by far, he thought, so it was right and good that she should keep the majority of their friends.
Heartbreak again took hold of Trent, and despair, much later in the year when she announced her pregnancy. But reading between the lines, it seemed there was trouble in paradise. She would be staying with her elderly father and his cats, while the father of her baby resided—where? It didn't matter, thought Trent. He would continue to observe, and when the time was right he would make his move.
Quarantine hit and no-one was moving anywhere. Except, apparently, Cygnet. She had her baby and moved in with its father in a much nicer part of San Jose than her own father lived. She went back to work early, he noticed, too early. The baby's father, then, stayed at home. In a stroke of sheer luck, the apartment complex they had moved into was where he was living, a couple miles north of St. James Park. They were neighbors now. He thought of all the ways he could introduce himself—bring them food, welcome them to the neighborhood, ingratiate himself into their lives—but once bitten, twice shy, and he continued to wait for an ideal time to approach. He couldn't have Cygnet calling him a "weirdo face" and demanding he stay away from her and her baby. Besides, what about the husband? It wouldn't be smart to get rid of him, or even get on his bad side.
A year later, she'd quit her job and decided to go back to school. Her post-partum depression was long gone and she saw clearly that her job had not provided for their family in the way she had hoped it would; she'd mentioned on Facebook and YouTube that they had demanded more effort than when she was a single woman, without raising her pay. Now she was going to be a student, because she had to do something, and she wasn't confident enough to be a stay-at-home mom while her husband went back to work. She'd become more active, going on family walks with her husband and baby, going swimming at the apartment and spinning at the gym alone. His own work was so successful he barely needed to think about it, and he could devote most of his time to observing Cygnet.
Here's what he observed:
Cygnet was a career woman who had never been around children before she had her own. She archived her own, handwritten diary in a blog and often quoted it on Tumblr. He learned a lot of things about her and, as with Rebecca, began absorbing bits and pieces of her into his own personality. She was empathetic; she was tender towards characters like Monsieur Valmont and Joe Goldberg, while also critical of their missteps. Her mother had been born in East Asia but adopted and raised by Europeans; she had been born in Europe but raised by her American father after he and her mother divorced. She'd been in love, a lot, and those relationships had almost never worked out. She and her husband had met seven years ago in trade school, been together off and on, and each had had other partners during their off phases who were obviously less-than-ideal. Both had dated Yamazaki; both had regretted it. She loved most women, not in a feminist way (she was critical of third-wave feminism), but in a way that honored their individuality and shared humanity (though she was also critical of humanism).
She was a walking paradox. A cynical romantic. She liked older men, but didn't like to be treated as a younger woman. She was intelligent, but highly forgetful and spacey. She was forgiving, but archived just about every conversation she ever had, "just in case". The more he learned about her, the more impressed with her he became. She was like Rebecca, and yet nothing like Rebecca. He wondered, before the thought became too painful, if they would have been friends had they met.
She'd lost weight during her pregnancy and immediately following birth, but regained it shortly thereafter due to a combination of stress, a fairly sedentary lifestyle, and her discovery of Uber Eats. She was, if he had to guess, somewhere between a size 14 and 18. She liked romantic, flowing smocked-bodice peasant dresses; cute and playful skater dresses; faux fur vests and bell-bottom jeans. She'd branched out from the Goth style, which apparently she had been leaning into to fit in with her husband's family, but retained an appreciation for dark eyeliner and mesh sleeves. He watched her come and go from his window; he scrolled through her Facebook, subscribed to both her YouTubes (personal and collaborative), followed her on Instagram, bookmarked her Etsy; he watched every show and read every book she mentioned, just so he could feel close to her; he even got in the habit of tipping her on and Ko-fi. She also had an in-character OnlyFans, in the persona of one of her characters on the collaborative YouTube, and an in-character FetLife, but she seemed either too busy or too disinterested to maintain those particular sites.
She and her friends ran an underground record label on the collaborative YouTube; she and Yamazaki had sung together on a few tracks before she'd fired Yamazaki following their explosive breakup. Both girls were good singers, but for Trent, Cygnet's voice was the song of Heaven. Her lyrics were poignant and went straight to his heart. She sang about love, lost and unrequited. Her "brand" was "emo high school ramblings", but that was a cynical undersell, thought Trent. He could apply any one of her songs to his own situation, his own broken heart. He found out her band released songs on SoundCloud before albums were completed. He followed her on Spotify, listened to her albums, listened to the artists she followed, and he knew her, he knew her better than ever now.