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I cleared my throat. “Let me put some music on.” I went to the laptop, connected to my Bluetooth speaker, and selected a Taylor Swift playlist from YouTube,
we love a person with good music taste
“Cas…” I moaned, moving one hand down to his arse and gripping his cheek hard, using that grip to move him over where I needed him. We kissed and moved and breathed together, minutes or hours or days of tasting him, of chasing that edge of pleasure that would take me to the end of the world.
I kind of knew peace here
“But it didn’t mean anything. We got off together, for Christ’s sake. I’ve done it a million times before. It doesn’t mean we’re in love, Jude.”
Nevermind I’m sad
I imagined some alternate reality where he said don’t go, Jude, and I wouldn’t. We’d clean up and lie together on his bed and talk. Maybe about books or films or music or something else. Maybe later, we’d do that all over again. Slower, less fevered.
I hate life
What if I’d promised never to kiss you again? Never to touch you again? Would you have stayed then? I think that would almost be worse. To see you and be close to you and have the memory of what it felt like to...to be with you like that and not be allowed to do it again. But really, I just want you to come back. I’ll do whatever you want me to do as long as you come back. Please, Jude.
I FUCKING HATE LIFE
I thought about how it had started between us in the summer and wondered, not for the first time, how we had ended up here. How had I gone from loathing his every molecule to hanging on his every word? How had I gone from plotting his murder to dreaming about the scent of his skin and the shape of his hands? The wanting of him had grown so immense that it had the power to stop me in my tracks.
Mi nino was so in love with :(
Caspien was an altarpiece, Deveraux his reredos, and I came to him in blind idolatry.
“What if,” he said, “I want you not to come until I get home? Do you think you could do it?”
There was nothing for so long that I thought I might just go outside and drown myself in the lake. The speck of pride I had left wouldn’t possibly allow me to turn up there now.
LOL
Everything about him awed me. I was bewitched in the truest sense of the word. I felt his spell hanging over me like a veil, the world hazy and white whenever I was near him. I loved him. I was as certain of that as I was my own name, both universal truths. I am Jude Alcott, and I am in love with Caspien Deveraux.
I want to die pt. 62
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear. It had dried on his ride and now sat curled and golden on his head. “Like what?” “Like that.” “Don’t all the boys you do that to look at you like this, after?” Maybe it was a pathetic attempt to find out how many boys there were, or maybe it was an attempt to make myself look less...less in love. But his eyes grew very serious as he looked at me. “No,” He said. “No one looks at me the way you do.”
The words sat on my tongue for hours after, the immense and terrible truth of them: I love you. I don’t want to remember a time when I didn’t. I love you. And as long as I am able to draw breath, then I will love you with every single one. I love you.
“He’s going to break your heart, you know. And still, you’ll love him. He’ll break it over and over again and you’ll continue to love him.”
:’) why do i do this to myself
“Do you love him?” I talked over him. Caspien’s gaze sharpened. “You asked me that before, and I answered it before.” “And I’m asking it again.” “If I give a different answer this time, will it make you feel better or worse?” I thought about that. If he said he loved him now, it would be far, far worse.
“That was when it began...” I whispered, understanding everything all at once. “When you pulled me closer, when you wanted me the way I wanted you.” I looked at him, stunned. He’d never looked more cruel, more cold, more beautiful. “You’re fucking poison.” Caspien’s gaze flickered with what looked like torment, but then he lifted his chin and stood. “If I am, then it’s perhaps for the best that I shan’t be around to infect you any further.” He reached for the door.
“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.” Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
I’m writing fewer of these, which I guess is a good thing. They were the only thing keeping me alive after you left. Thousands of words that you’ll never read, each one a kiss I wish I could place somewhere on
your body. I still miss you so much that it hurts, but every day, it hurts a little less. Every day, I heal a little more.
I couldn’t remember who I’d been before him, and didn’t know who I was now that he’d discarded me. I felt more singularly alone than I had in my life.
THIS KILLED ME
Then, because I was some kind of pain enthusiast, I pulled up Cas’s Instagram. There was a video posted last night. He was playing piano in a large, bright apartment – their apartment my mind supplied – with views out over the city. He wore a white shirt too big for his frame (my mind told me, helpfully, that it was Blackwell’s) and a pair of loose check pyjama bottoms. He looked painfully beautiful. Painfully far away. Painfully not mine.
He was a ghost, and what I was living through then was a haunting.
If Caspien is the reason this story exists, then Nathan is the reason I am writing it.
That commanding way he’d always had of holding my attention, of being the only thing I could see, of being the sun to my Icarus.
He looked like he might ask me to tell him anyway. But he said, “You don’t look at me the way you used to.” Because I’m afraid to, I wanted to say. “Well, thank god for that,” I said instead.
“You’re exactly the same as you’ve always been. This is all just another bloody act: this version of you.” I waved in his general direction. “The one cooking me dinner, asking me things like you care about the answers, telling me you miss me. Who are you with him? Which version does he get? I’m curious.”
“I see,” he said at last. “What do you bloody see?” “You’re in love with him.” I stared at him, speechless. Then, I began to laugh. Near hysterical laughter that sounded insane in the echo of the kitchen. “Oh, I fucking wish,” I said when it had died in my throat. “I fucking wish.”
“Oh, for the love of god, sit down, little boy,” Blackwell said, dabbing at his crotch with a napkin. “Little boy?” I laughed, coldly. “Oh, well, then I should be careful you don’t try and fuck me, I suppose.”
I CACKLED
I’d play out an endless variety of futures we’d never gotten to live together. We were happy. Our lives were always happy, and filled with contented days like those we’d spent in London that summer.
“We had nothing left to say to each other. Besides, I told him it was done, we were over. Then, to let me know just how done we were, he married his abuser.”
I want to JUMP
“True. But what I…he…what we did to you was the breaking of us.” He sank deeper into the pillow. “We were never the same after you left us. It was too great a thing for us to move past.” “Well, thank god for that,” I scoffed. “At least you two weren’t able to fuck anyone else up the way you did me. That’s something.” He gave me an agonised look. “I’ve so many regrets, Jude. How I looked at the world then, how cruelly I used you. Both of you.”
