Oleander: A Great Expectations Reimagining

by Scarlett Drake

“I thought I could live my whole life the way Gideon has: with love being some ancillary but ultimately useless thing I didn’t need. And perhaps I could have.” He turned and smiled, some hollow sad thing I could barely look at. “But then, there was you. And everything that you are: warm and kind, gentle and sweet, and you loved me despite everything I was and everything I did, and everything I couldn’t give you. Christ, I didn’t know what to do with that kind of love, Jude. How to hold it or carry it or even look at it. It was terrifying. I was sure I would kill it – I tried to. But then I began to feel its absence. I missed it. I longed for it. The feel of it on my skin, and deep inside my chest and in my head whenever I felt like I might disappear from loneliness. You and that love was what I clung onto when...when he made me feel as though I was nothing. It was how I survived.”