Hamartia

by Scarlett Drake

And that kind of masculinity is the destruction of everything else. Kindness, empathy, femininity, romance.

It’s easy. Too easy sometimes. But mainly it’s convenient. No strings, no feelings—aside from that residual love you carry around for your first love long after it’s over. Long after you realize that it never really begun.

I’m not a natural top, but I would make an exception for him.

“Open,” he says. I do and then he’s feeding me, a big, adorable smile on his pretty face. It makes my stomach do a weird flipping thing. I’m so fucking fucked.

I get to see him perform in a couple of hours, and the thought of it causes something like butterflies to start an air dance in my stomach.

I struggle to think of any concert I’ve ever been to where the energy is as bright as it is in here.

I want to be the only one you ever have from now on. I’m so fucked.

Except, going for it, for him, is about a lot more than amazing sex in New York apartments where no one could see us. It’s hurting people I care about and having the way people see me change forever.

A deep breath in and her hair smells of summer and flowers. Light and familiar. While my heart feels almost like a stranger.

I deflect, scared if she looks too long she’ll see something on my face. Like I fucked a guy is now printed on my forehead.

It’s the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.