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I watch my golden girl step inside alone, shutting the door in my face. I’m obliterated.
I feel lighter each time I open up to you.”
I refuse to allow some boy I hardly know to break my heart, but I can’t pretend he didn’t leave a crack in it when he walked away last night.
She’s the easiest person to talk to, those deep hazel eyes burning through me like she’s hanging onto every word, like I fucking matter.
“When the divine is trying to intervene, honeysuckle, I’m going to fucking listen.”
“It was important to me that you understand that isn’t true, that you understand you deserve happiness and love and fulfillment, regardless of the past.”
I know what it’s like to wake up and find out Darby Andrews disappeared from your life.
I know the kind of irreparable, gut-wrenching, soul-crushing heartbreak that comes with losing her, though I think he’s devastated for very different reasons than I was, and that makes me hate him.
“Because it’s crazy to me, honeysuckle, that someone as beautiful and golden and good as you could want someone like me.
I couldn’t kiss you until I let you see all of me, all of my past. Who I really am—an abandoned orphan from the wrong side of the tracks with nothing going for him, who will never be good enough for you. It’s impossible for me to believe that, after seeing that, you still want me.”
I watch water cascade down her perfect face, a droplet falling from her bottom lip and onto her chin. I wonder what kind of god I need to pray to let me lick it off.
“I’ve decided that you are good for me. You’ve changed me more—made me better—in one month than anyone else in my whole life. You make me feel free.
She can take everything from me, move as fast or as slow as she wants. I’m at her mercy.
She doesn’t just taste like honey. She’s sweeter. Her lips taste like the answer to every question I’ve ever asked.
But I also can’t stop thinking back to the look on her face when I told her I’d all but forgotten about our “summer fling,” as if it wasn’t the most all-consuming kind of love I’ve ever experienced.
As if I haven’t been walking through life like a corpse searching for the feeling she gave me ever since. As if I’m not well aware that nothing—no one—has ever come close to her.
I can’t face the truth of that heartbreak in addition to her proximity. It’s simply too much. Yet, I know there is no other place I’d rather have her be than right here, right beside me.
I hate that her beautiful face still makes me want to smile. I hate that I can still track every freckle that dots her nose. I hate that I still want to kiss them, that I still remember exactly what it feels like to have her against me and how hollow it feels to have her sitting right next to me now yet so far away. To know that I’ll never hold her that close again.
“Leo,” she breathes. “Stop looking at me like that.” “Looking at you like what, honeysuckle?”
“Like you know exactly what my soul feels like, and you’ve been incomplete without it all this time.”
“For what it’s worth, I really did love you,” I whisper. “My word is worthless…but I loved you too.”
And the truth is that I want him everywhere. All around me. All the time.
Sometimes, it feels like I’m tumbling head-first into heartbreak, and I can only find it in myself to enjoy the freefall.
“You’re amazing,” I say. “And you’re beautiful,” he responds, bending down to press a wet kiss to my lips.
“You taste like honey,” he rasps. I hum against his mouth. “You taste like corruption.”
“Someday, I’ll be able to tell people that the famous professional surfer, Leo Graham, gave me personal lessons once.”
“Hope I can teach you more than just surfing lessons, and I hope it’s a lot more than once, honeysuckle.”
“Beautiful and deadly, that mouth,”
“Look at you, baby! Riding a wave all by yourself. You’re a natural.”
“You’re the best kind of bad boy because you’ve got a good soul.”
“I just don’t ever want to stop kissing you. Stop hanging out with you. I want you…”
The truth is that I just want everything from him. Anything at all he’s willing to give me. Whether that be his friendship, his heart, or all the pieces of his soul.
I’ll be stuck on you, regardless. So you can go back, and I can stay here, but I’ll still be yours, anyway.”
“You’d wait a whole year just for me to come back?”
“I think I might wait my whole life for you to come back, Darby. Something tells me there would be no point in trying to move on from this because I’d end up searching for you in every place I go. In every person I meet. Aimlessly wandering until I find you again.”
“When you go back to Kansas, you need to promise me that if you’re ever feeling unsafe, if you’re ever feeling like you’re about to break, about to lose yourself completely, you call me. Text me. Email me. Send letter by messenger pigeon. I don’t fucking care.
You’re not just the honey, Darby. You’re the whole damn flower.
“I’m so lucky that I found you, Leo.”
“I don’t think luck had anything to do with it, honeysuckle. This,” he wiggles his finger between us, “is divine intervention.”
Both of us have attempted to give ourselves to others over the years, and we’ve both fallen short each time.
No other person, no other love—no other soul—will ever be enough for either of us.
He’s seen me with and without makeup, seen me washed in tears, with food in my teeth and sand in my hair, and back then, he loved me all the same, thought all of me was beautiful anyway.
“You did hear me say your name. The name I’ve been moaning every time I fuck my fist for the last ten years.”
“Do you ever think of me?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “When?”
“Every time I close my eyes.”
“Sit your pretty ass on that counter and slide your panties to the side.”
“Eyes on me, honeysuckle. I want you looking at me as you come.”
“You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful person I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”
“Thank you,” I say. “They’re beautiful and perfect.” “Just like you.”
