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August 6 - August 9, 2024
“You remind me of honeysuckle. Nectar sweet as honey, like the sound of your voice. But the berries are deceiving–poisonous if consumed.” He shrugs playfully. “Beautiful and deadly.”
She’s daylight to their darkness.
“I want to bring you with me because you scare my ghosts away, Darby.”
I squeeze her hand four times. I’ll. Keep. You. Safe.
“And stop looking at me like that.” “Like what?” She pops a hip and places her hand on it, giving me an exasperated look. “Like you’re wondering what a little piece of my soul feels like.”
“Wow,” she says breathlessly. “I’ve clearly been missing out.” I smile down at her. “No, baby. That’s something you only find once. Something you’ll only ever know with me.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Darby,” he rasps. I look at his eyes again. “Do you ever think of me?” I feel my face go red, but not with embarrassment. With need. With desperation. “Yes,” I whisper. “When?” “Every time I close my eyes.”
“When you tell me you love me for the first time, honeysuckle, I want you to look me in the eye. I don’t want to ever hear the word maybe in that sentence either. When you say that to me, I want you to mean it.”
“We don’t know where life will go after this summer– after this night, even. I want—need—to know that when the dust settles, all of this was real. That you are real. I want a piece of your soul. Maybe that makes me selfish, but I don’t care. I need to know a part of you will always belong to me, and I want to give you that, too.”
“You don’t need a piece of my soul, honeysuckle. You already own the whole goddamn thing.”
“Stop looking at me like that,” he whispers. “Like what?” “Like I own all the pieces of your soul. Like you’ve been incomplete all this time without them.”
“I don’t want to be destroyed tonight, Darby,” I whisper against her sweet skin. “Damn the past. I just want to be put back together.”
Because I’ve been destroyed, and in holding her against me now–I’m recreated, brought back to life by the taste of her lips.
“You’re my ‘it for me’ person. You were my first love. Then, the one who got away. Now, you’re my ‘it was always you.’ And it doesn’t matter what happened in between, because you’re gonna be my forever person too.” He cups my face, bringing his mouth to mine. “You’re my once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, Darby.”
