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I’m not Jeremy the Coward anymore. I’m Jeremy the Wicked. And if hope shall be my downfall… Then fall I will.
“She’s the love of my life.” Yeah, well, you’re mine, Mason. So fuck us both I guess.
It’s only if you look close enough, that you see it’s not the camera at all I’m staring at. Did Izzy notice? She’s the one behind the camera…the one Mason is grinning at, love and happiness bursting out of his glacier blue eyes.
“So, not to be a total fucking cliché…” I pause, and despite the ache resounding in my chest—an ache I almost welcome at this point, if only because it still means there’s hope—I grin. “How do you feel about starting a band?”
The light catches on something silver looped through his lip, and— Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He pierced his lip.
In my head, I’m humming that melody from so long ago, the one that’s haunted me since I was fourteen. The one I’ve kept to myself since the last time I tried to figure it out, when Izzy and I took it, ran with it, and made something altogether new from it. Spinning, spinning… Spinning the wrong way.
Slowly, but surely, reclaiming my love for piano… Even if it means leaving Izzy behind. No longer ours… But mine.
I nod, and shake Jeremy’s shoulder again. “Come on, drunky. Get on my back. I’ll carry you up.” He lifts his face, squinting at me. “Huh?” My chest squeezes again. Fuck, if he isn’t utterly adorable right now.
Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy. What is this, what is this, what—
“Don’t leave me,” he whispers, voice breaking. My breath catches. Eyes creasing, like he’s in actual, physical pain, he curls his fingers around my jaw, wrist visibly shaking with the effort. “Please don’t fucking leave me, Iz.”
Don’t leave me, Iz. My lips tingle. A phantom pressure. My gut churns, and my mouth waters sickeningly.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Mason’s seated in front of me, with his back to me, head hanging. Then— “She’s gone.”
I can’t…I can’t… I thought… Hope. It’s a vicious fucking thing. Like love—like death—all it does is take and take and take. We’re put on this earth for no other purpose than to be ravaged.
…Cracking. Right down the fucking middle. A fatal hit if there ever was one. There’s no coming back from this.
No coming back from the boy I love kissing me, then calling me by my dead sister’s name. No coming back from finally, stupidly thinking maybe—just fucking maybe—there was a chance. That I was an option for Mason. He was hard…
Find me, and show me the way out This maze has no left side The stars are hidden from me Jeremy, please forgive me I can’t do this without you
I wished he was mine. All mine, and only mine. For years. On shooting stars.
On birthday candles. Then one day, my wish was granted. And I’ve been wishing every second since, on every breath, that I could take it back.
“It’s an impossible feeling to come to terms with. All this love we have for someone who’s no longer here. Where does it go?”
You kissed him. You kissed him, and then you called him by his sister’s name. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?
At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I didn’t cost myself two, if not three, of the most important people in my life. And for what? A ghost?
My sister’s dead. She’s really fucking gone. Mason’s lost to me, once and for all. There’s no coming back from this.
The last four years… I was a casualty. I’ve been a casualty. A scapegoat. An excuse. A crutch. Nothing more.
“That’s how I know this isn’t real,” he goes on thickly, tightly, his voice on the verge of breaking once more. “It’s just a-a symptom of our grief. Because of how much you’ve come to depend on me, and how much I’ve enabled it.”
“Sometimes people grow apart because they have to.” His throat dips. “It can’t always be about you, Mason.” I frown. “Now, if you care about me at all,” he says in an emotionless voice, “you won’t stop me when I walk away.”
And to God. To the universe. To the stars and angels. To my dad. To Izzy… And to me, most of all. I scream, “Fuck you!”
They’d think the same thing he does—everyone would—that he’s just some replacement for you. Second choice.
“It’s from a poem called ‘Desert Places.’ Robert Frost.” He swallows with an audible click. “Been stuck in my head for weeks now, since we analyzed it for class. Can’t shake it.”
I stare at him. And keep staring at him. Jeremy. Jeremy… Jeremyjeremyjeremy— Everything is quiet, except for his name pounding like a drum in my chest. It’s there…it’s right there…just look a little closer… Let it in. “Are you serious?” I whisper.
“Perhaps the answers you seek aren’t in the stars…but in the space between them.” And with that, he turns, and quickly walks, heading back inside. Leaving me to my desert places…
“It hurts. It hurts so fucking much, loving you, and knowing I can never have you.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—I’ve never been as protective of a character as I am of Jeremy. And Mason’s a pretty close second now that I finally “know” him.
I know it was a rough read. I know it was not a typical romance. I know the burn is sloowwwwww. I know it’s
