Scotch on the Rocks

by Elliot Fletcher

“I love my grudges. I tend them like a rose garden.”

“You’re magnificent like this, did you know that?” His eyes flashed a cold blue, but he looked the opposite of angry. “Did my brother ever tell you? Or were the two of you so damn comfortable together, you never screamed at one another just for an excuse to spend the rest of the night fucking the tension away?”

That’s all I’ve wanted since that day on the train when it took me less than a second to fall completely under your spell.”

“I didn’t understand how it feels when the person who promised to love you above all else actively chooses to leave. How it completely resets everything you thought you knew about yourself. Y’know, I thought, He’s just a man, she’ll get over it. But it’s not about the man in the end, is it? It’s about who the heartbreak turns you into. The shattered confidence, the whispers and the knowing glances in the village that make you question if everyone else saw it coming and you were just too damn blind to see it. And if they did know, then why the hell didn’t they warn you? The questions you replay over and over: What’s so wrong with me that I couldn’t make him stay? How long until everybody else sees it and leaves too?”

It’s all pain in the end, wee one, might as well make the journey worth it.

“Because when something matters, you take your time with it.”

“You . . . sweetheart . . . harpy, are the wild moors of this island. You’re like your damn demon cat, claws in my back and blood on my lips. But there isn’t a single day that I won’t welcome that sweet bite of pain.”

“Nothing will ever stop me from fighting for you,”

“Then wreck me. Just don’t leave me.”