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August 13 - August 15, 2025
To everyone who loves a good Hallmark Christmas movie, but wishes they would just rip each other’s clothes off already.
Between work and my personal life, the last several years had been like ripping wax off a labia—which I’d done two days prior, by the way—and
Bacardi is my religion and I WILL be reflecting on it later
I could forgive this one for being blond because he’s holding a husky, swipe right.
“I should let you know, then, that I keep the reading light on the whole flight.” “Perfect.” He nodded. “Because I play Candy Crush with the volume on. Helps keep me focused.”
“So, let me get this straight—you’re a thirty-five-year-old pilot with commitment issues, who’s lived with his roommate so long you two could jointly file your taxes?” “Sweetheart, if I’m your dream guy just say it.”
“The flight attendant thinks I’m a voyeuristic, polyamorous whore.”
“Top Gun. Your favorite movie.” “Fuck Tom Cruise.”
“How was I supposed to know that Casper the Friendly Ghost was your college girlfriend?”
“Make him grovel, it's good for your skin.”
“The outfit you’re wearing alone owns real estate in every cognitive area of his brain.”
“Good morning, Colorado. Were you just having a wet dream on my couch?”
There was a singular part of me that knew I was fucked at that very moment. Comparing a woman’s eyes to the goddamn sky.
“Are you trying to say men are marketing ploys? Because I agree. They’re functional art at best. We have evolved past the need for penis.”
With Frankie, nothing felt disingenuous. He always said exactly what he was thinking and that made him all the more attractive.
“This is a bad idea and we both know it.” “I’ve never seen a bad idea that looked this damn good.”
Oh God. Is he…? “I-I think you’re gonna make me—” “Yeah, Ophelia. I fucking know I am.”
“Let me take a wild guess and say that’s not Cindy making your titties tight.”
No quarrel, Ms. Brody. It was grossly incompetent of me to assume something so outrageously promiscuous. I’ll see to it that I keep my egregious masculine urges to myself henceforth.
An ageist and a cynic playing Twenty Questions sounds like the start to a terrible joke
“The first time I make you come tonight, you’ll look me right in my eyes and say, ‘Thank you, Frankie.’”
“I didn’t baby you, I…” “Serviced me.” He grinned. “No, that wasn’t until a few days later.”
“Now smile like you’re enjoying leisurely butterfly watching with the man who’s going to blow your back out later.”
“Fun fact,” I started. “No, fuck off with your fun facts.” “Butterflies use their feet to taste,” I continued. “It’s probably sampling your skin juice to find a suitable place to lay its eggs.”
My mother and sister stared at one another with the same owlish commiseration. Their eyes held a secret conversation that I was lost to. Eventually, Addy turned her attention back to me and grinned. “What’s her name, Frankie?”
Man got absolutely CLOCKED
“I like you, O,” he murmured. “I want to lock you up and keep you here so you can’t leave. So no one else can ever have you but me.”
Gino abandoned his tomatoes and pointed a finger at the center of his chest. “You know right here when it’s right, because it starts to hurt. Even when you’re happy it hurts. Because it aches to imagine not having that happiness. You worry, you lose sleep, you act out. Anything to keep that feeling from becoming comfortable. When you can bear it, it’s lost.”
“Home is subjective.” He waved my words out of the air. “A smell, a place, a feeling, a memory. A person.”
“He just kissed your mouth.” Natalia pointed a spoon at Frankie. Fig jam slid off the tip and hit the white marble counter. “You’re kissing each other's mouths out in the open now.”
Everything you do is so beautiful it makes me crazy.”
Ophelia. All the time, every second of the day. I wanted her like a tattoo. I wanted her in my veins, ink scabbed over, healed inside of me, part of me, on display, branded.
“We let this happen, we fucking did this to each other, O. And now we have to deal with it like adults. I have to find a way to bleed you from my veins, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to treat you like what you are while you’re still here, and that is fucking mine.”
“Good, stay fucking mad at me. Fight me. Hit me. Give me your worst, Ophelia. Give me every last thing like a punishment, because I’m going to be thorough, and I’m going to remind you why there will never be someone else.”
“Grace doesn’t come back from Miami covered in bite marks, babe.” My hand shot to the side of my neck. “He made me a whore.”
“I’m as shocked as you are,” I admitted. “I feel like I met someone who really sees me. He dug up all these habits I thought were rooted and made me reflect on them instead of water them.”
“I already kept your body wash,” Frankie admitted. “My skin feels like a fucking baby seal.”
Across the lawn a fleck of blue caught my eye, swooping in circles, idling on the edge of the bushes. All doubt got stuck in my throat as a Monarch landed, basking on the flowery branches like a bright little omen. I thought of my mother looking for my dad in the butterflies. The way I adopted that strange, hopeful superstition into my life. There was a necklace hanging from Ophelia’s neck to prove it. And it was too perfect to be a coincidence.
“I love you,” he repeated. “I love you, Ophelia. I said I wouldn’t get attached. I said I wasn’t ready for anything serious. I lied, okay? I lied about every last bit of it. Because I knew the second I met you I was fucked forever.” Frankie’s thumb swiped gently down my jaw over and over again. “Forever.”
“Francesco.” “Don’t threaten me with my government name like that. You know how it turns me on.”
“Yes, Ophelia. I am asking you, the love of my life, the turbulence to my calm, the brightest fucking sun I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing in all my time in the sky—will you drive me crazy forever, baby? Will you marry me?”
