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And I didn’t realize until the very moment of telling Iris I love you that I only loved the idea of a happy ending, not her.
I was really trying to break out of my gloom today. And you know what? I am. I’m going from wallowing in self-hatred to being actively irate.
There’s a moment. Where I’m staring at the door. And I think to myself, This is my rock bottom. But I might as well find out what the full depth of my rock bottom looks like. Maybe there’s something interesting down here, like my dignity.
Maybe things between us will be okay. And not just okay, but better. Woah there, let’s not get ahead of ourselves with that kind of positivity. I might sprain something.
“Wren.” Coal ignores me. “Can you send him the profiles for—” My phone pings. His jaw drops. “A few hundred years ago, you’d have been burned as a witch.”
“You don’t need to breathe,” Wren says. “It isn’t on the itinerary.”
“Fuck me,” I groan to my plate. Loch doesn’t hesitate. “Only if you say please.”
“You’re denying me caffeine,” I state, to be sure I’m understanding what will be put on the police report as my motive.
“I’m gonna support my only sister.” “That’s why I have two of you. So I do na have to be so loyal.”
I know that his kiss tasted like all the dreams I waxed on about in the writing I don’t do anymore, the words I wove while trying to imagine Iris but all I imagined was a fantasy, an ending. He tasted like those fantasies. He felt like those endings. It’s him.
No one hates someone for breathing like that unless they’re trying really, really hard not to be turned on by them.”
If I don’t kiss you again I feel like every nerve in my body will wither away.
We had one kiss. All this shit building up in my throat sounds a helluva lot like a love profession, which is categorically insane.
Words like diaphanous and graze and ephemeral and ravage and even sloppy, because there is poetry in mess, too.
“You know how to use your fingers, though.” I hear what I say as I say it. Mixed panic and horror knot in my throat and my gaze collides with Coal’s. His face takes on a look of such bliss, oh the gift in the euphemism buffet he’s been given.
“Do na make me repeat the nice thing or I’ll vomit.”
“You aren’t an awakening,” I whisper. “You’re the whole dawn. And I can’t believe I ever thought I’d seen the sun before you.”
“You’re a goddamn poet,” he snarls down at me, livid, “and I dinna stand a chance.” He kisses me, and the world goes ultraviolet.
“I don’t want a fantasy. I don’t want sweetness. For once in my life, I want to be ruined.”
