Dirty Headlines

by L.J. Shen

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“Organs, Jude, are like people. They need company, a backup to rely on.

Only the heart works alone. Like Atlas, it carries the weight of our existence on its shoulders quietly, only rebelling when disturbed by love.”

“Semi-drunk and conventionally beautiful: a predator’s wet dream.”

I’m talking Chris Pine perfect, Chris Hemsworth mammoth, and Chris Pratt charming. He was a triple-C threat, and I was S.C.R.E.W.E.D.

“Careful, you might get attached if you get to know me,” I said quietly, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking New York. He began to drive into me from behind, silent. “I’ll take my fucking chances.”

And this is the part they don’t tell you about losing a loved one to cancer: They’re not the only people being eaten alive. When they get it, you get it. The cancer nibbles away at your time with them, feasts on the happy moments, feeds off every second of bliss. It devours your paycheck and savings. It nourishes itself on your misery and multiplies in your chest, even if you don’t have it.

“I’m the man who fucked you senseless and you can’t stop thinking about. I’m the asshole you masturbate to in order to get off. I’m the guy who will destroy my competition, especially when it comes to Mathias Laurent. So, do yourself a favor and keep your pussy—my pussy—as far away from him as possible. Compris?”

What’s the point of being powerful if you’re miserable?”

A forty-six-year-old lesbian who thought white, upper-class men were Satan was my wingman. I think I wanted that on my fucking tombstone.

“My tolerating her is strictly business.” “Then you’re a very bad businessman, because she has leverage over you.”

One claimed she was mine, but it was the other I wanted to own.

If Célian met chivalry in a dark alley, he would beat it to death, then find its sister, generosity, and kill her too.

“I can’t fall in love, Célian. I’m broken.” “Good. Let’s be broken together, then.”

But falling into the wrong hands is just as bad as crashing into nothing.”

“I think you’re his atonement. He wants to save you, but you’re the one who needs to save him.”

Jude said eating a room-serviced lunch was clinical and sad, that vacation meals equaled dodgy street food from questionable trucks and 7-11 candy bars you didn’t know existed.

But Jude was just as hungry for information as I was, which made her even more attractive. Not to mention lethal.

“I didn’t give you your iPod back because I wanted to keep a piece of you with me,” I admitted. And won. And lost.

“Thank you for everything.” “No need to thank me. It was only a fraction of what I was planning to give you, anyway,”

I tried to tell myself I broke up with Lily because I was better than my father. Bullshit. I broke up with her because I couldn’t not be with you (and I’ve spent a respectable amount of time denying that shit to myself).—Célian

Atonement. I was hers, and she was mine. She thought she could never love.

“She can’t hurt me more than the hidden truth did.”