Older

by Jennifer Hartmann

know.” “I’ll support you, no matter who she is.” My eyes fell shut as white-hot guilt filtered through my bloodstream, a sickly feeling that had my veins shriveling and my heart rotting a hole in my chest. “You know I love you more than anything, right?” I confessed, my voice hitching with a devastating crack.

Still, the guilt lingered. Guilt in the form of betrayal; something I’d just given my daughter a lecture on. Guilt in the form of weakness. Guilt in the form of her best friend. My Wonderwall.

I feared we were all one loose brick away from that wall crashing down and putting us six feet under.

There were the kinds of messes that took a dishrag to clean up, and some that required a mop and a bucket. Some messes spilled over and compromised other areas, which turned a minor inconvenience into prickling aggravation. And then there were grade-A, next-level catastrophes that left you sifting through the wreckage, contemplating every misstep, every wrong turn, that led you there. We weren’t any of those things. We were just plain fucked.

was a relentless flood, drowning everything in its path. And as I stared at her sun-kissed limbs tangled in my silver bed sheets, her hair a golden river splashed across my pillowtop, I wondered how we could possibly ever reach the surface and breathe clean air again.

I’d never take her out to dinner, hold her hand in public, or put a ring on her finger.

“I don’t want to go.” Careful fingers mussed my uncombed hair. “I like it here.” “I like you here.” Our lips touched again, just a feather-soft graze.

“I guess we can resort to seedy motels and shady corners of parking lots.”

CAUSE THATS THE THING ABOUT ILLUCT AFFAIRS AND CLANDESTINE MEETING AND LONGING STARES

I wanted her here, in my bed, in my home, imprinting her golden light on every lackluster inch of my world. “You look best in my bed.”

I ate her like a starving man, like she was my last meal, knowing she’d forever be the most priceless delicacy I’d ever taste. She was responsive, so eager for me to take control and have my way with her. She’d let me do anything. Even break her heart.

“I like when you touch me like that.” I idled on my knees beside her, the sweat cooling on my skin. “Like what?” “Like I’m yours.” My heart shrank. She was mine. She would always be mine.

“Take a picture,” she said. I frowned. “What?” A smile brightened her mouth as she crawled over the mattress, leaned over, and snatched her camera off the floor. “A picture. To save the moment.”

“You already know how I like my coffee.” Scratching my hair, I offered a dismissive shrug. “I’ve seen you make it at the house.” Dark roast, a splash of milk, and a teaspoon of honey. It didn’t mean anything. Knowing how she liked her coffee, her favorite songs, her deepest fears and dreams, the way her breath hitched on my name whenever my tongue was between her legs, and her assortment of smiles dependent on her mood, only meant that I was observant.

“I remember buying you a box on Christmas Eve.” I ate my cereal standing up, leaning back against the counter across from her in my running shorts, still sans a shirt. “Yeah, you did.” “Then you tried to pay for all my groceries and still snuck money in my pocket, even though you lost the bet. You’re a good man.” A good man. The title gnawed at me with rotting teeth. Pretty sure good men didn’t fuck around with their daughter’s friends and lie about it. I was definitely a piece of shit.

neither of us felt cleansed. There were too many layers. Too much dirt piling up, just beneath the surface.

More importantly, nothing could ever wash away the haunting residue of what we would become.

As excited as I was, I wasn’t ready. For any of this.

“Comet,” he murmured huskily, dragging his lips down my jaw and nipping my throat. “You’re killing me in this dress.”

😭

“Goddamn,” he breathed against my mouth, pressing our foreheads together. “The things you do to me.”

“You smell like coconuts and summertime.” He dragged his nose against mine and inhaled sharply, his eyelids fluttering. Inserting a third finger and thrusting hard, he continued to rub my clit, drawing me closer to the edge. “You have no idea how hard it is to be in the same room as you and not touch you, hold your hand, tell everyone you’re mine.” Yes. This was what I needed, wanted, craved. These words, this passion emanating off of him in volatile waves.

“That’s my girl.” He looked utterly transfixed as he massaged my clit, and I rode out the waves. “I love watching you come apart. So beautiful.”

“Every moment with you fucking hurts.” His voice was pure grit, words cracking and breaking. “Every moment without you…hurts so much more.”

D-Y-I-N-G

I wanted him to keep me as one. As his favorite. As his only. Forever.

But he was in my bones, in my blood, and there was nothing I could say or do to carve him out of all of my essential pieces. I would die with him a part of me.

I shouldn’t have said it. I shouldn’t have handed him my heart right here on this goddamn bathroom sink.

I’d already lost him.

He kissed me. No tongue but all fire. Our mouths lingered as his other hand fumbled for something in his back pocket then swept across my hip.

But something tugged at me. Blinking at my reflection, I slid my hand into the pocket of my dress and sifted around inside. My heart galloped, skipped. Silken petals tickled my fingertips as I removed my hand and outstretched my fingers, peering down at my open-faced palm. A stem of blue morning glories.

STOP THIS MADNESS STOPHDMSKSNSJD

We were all adults. I could pretend my kisses with Halley had never happened, and our limb-tangled rendezvous had never happened, and that her whimpers and moans weren’t an erotic soundtrack to every internal thought that swept through my mind, even though they were seared on my soul with a hot-iron brand. It was only a few hours. I could pretend.

I was weak. Powerless. A victim to this unbreakable draw.

It was late June, almost two years to the date since I’d first laid eyes on Reed Madsen.

It was almost like he was patiently waiting for whatever this was to peter out so I’d look at him in the same way he looked at me. In the same way I looked at Reed.

“What did you want to talk about?” “You. Us.”

I can’t shake you. If I had known your real age, I would’ve walked away the second you told me. You fucking cursed me, Halley.”

“I don’t want to hurt her,” I sobbed. “But I don’t want to hurt. And this hurts. So much.”

“I love you,” I confessed painfully. “You can’t pull me from rock bottom and then send me right back.”

the love inside of it spitting and snarling for one last beat. He could scoop it up in his palms, mold it into something beautiful, something better, and return it to the bleeding cavern inside my chest. Or he could stomp it out.

“How dare you say that to me,” I gritted out, teeth grinding against metal. “It’s the truth.” “That’s your truth. It’s not mine.” “It’s the only truth.” “No.” I glared those dull daggers right back at him. “How dare you rearrange my feelings into something that makes you feel better about walking away. How dare you talk to me like I’m a child—like I’m a lost, pathetic little girl who doesn’t have the mental capacity to know what she wants. How dare you make me feel these things and then twist them into something dirty. You made me finally feel something, Reed, something other than this godforsaken pit of worthlessness and loneliness, and now you’re⁠—” Reed snatched me by the biceps and spun me around, walking me backward until I was pushed up against the cushioned wall and his face was centimeters from mine. Trailing his hands up my arms, he gently cupped my cheeks, tenderizing the hard steel I was molding around us. “I feel those things, too,” he said, chest heaving, voice hitching. “I feel it, Comet. I do. But it’s not what you think.” His forehead fell to mine as he sucked in a fraught breath. “It’s a goddamn death sentence.” Anger battled it out with treacherous pain. I knew he was right, but it was too easy to be hateful and bitter when my heart had become nothing more than rubble clogging my ribcage.

“I never wanted it to go this far. I never wanted to hurt you.” “Well, you failed.” My shield went up, my weapon drawn. I was mad. So irrevocably mad. “You just had to be so perfect. My white knight. My rescuer. You had to be everything I’ve dreamed about, every wish I’ve made on falling stars and birthday candles and pennies in mall fountains, and you had to make me fall in love with you.” Words spilled out of me, assaulting him like an ambush. “How could I not? It was so damn easy. You made it easy.” His brow was wrinkled, features taut and brimming with tension. “Nothing about this is easy.”

“Falling for you has been the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” I confessed through the anguish. “Everything else? Painful. Torturous. Difficult beyond belief. But loving you…” The anger died out, flatlining to a dead pulse. “Effortless.”

We weren’t done. Our story wasn’t over, and yet “The End” was stamped in black ink across the pages. I knew it was for the best, but the best didn’t always feel better. We would forever be a half-written song.

shooting myself

“I don’t want to be right.” “I don’t want us to be wrong.”

Our foreheads touched, our noses grazed, and I said softly, “Are you here to save me?” Another kiss landed on my hairline, and he lingered there, squeezing me tighter, exhaling ragged breaths against my skin. “You never needed saving, Halley. You were never lost.”

Nothing lived forever. Even love. And still, we allowed it to bloom. We breathed life into it, while simultaneously whispering our last goodbye.

alexa play I love you I’m sorry

Maybe there was no calm before the storm. There was only the storm, the aftershocks, and our broken bones scattered in its wake.

Reed tended to my wounds when I was broken-down and damaged. He molded my fear into strength. He gave me tools, wisdom, and hope for better days. He found me when I was lost.

Now, only I held the power to chart my own course and find my way back to myself.

“It’s weird seeing all these boxes,” she said, entering the second bedroom and flipping on the light switch. “Feels so real.” It did feel real. We felt real. And now we were quickly becoming nothing more than memories, slipping through my fingers like grains of sand.

“You know I love you. But that’s not always enough.” “It has to be. We’ll make it so.” “We don’t have that kind of power, Comet. We don’t fit.” I shook my head against him. “We fit in every way that matters.”

“Your life is just beginning. You need to be brave enough to start over.” My face crumpled with agony. “I want to start over with you.”