Time of Your Life (Time of Your Life #1)

by Jessa Hastings

Our eyes lock, and there’s somethin’ electric between us, like you could bring the dead back to life with the spark. Step closer—wasn’t much distance to begin with, you know? Whatever gap there was—gone now. My hands are on her face now, holdin’ it. Ain’t never held a girl’s face before. Like fuck, sure, probably I have. Twenty-three, fucked ’round a bit, so yeah I’ve probably

had me hands on a girl’s face before, but it weren’t like this, you know what I mean? Holdin’ her face cos I can’t look away. Starin’ at it like one of them glass prisms that shoots rainbows and colours and fuckin’ all sorts about. Hold her face up to the sun if I could. See if the light bounces off her too. Feels like it might just… She’s got a mouth on her, this one. Like it, but. I meant, like an attitude, you get me—? But fuck, like the actual proper mouth on this girl? Art. Michael-fuckin’-angelo himself carved it from stone.

“Pippa,”

“Sparrow,”

She laughs. Proper laughs. Best sound I heard since that first time me mum showed me “Here Comes the Sun,” which is funny now that I think of it. I reckon—somehow—them boys wrote that one about her. Feel like science might one day prove it that she, in fact, is the proper fuckin’ sun.

Heavy is the head, and she’s the fuckin’ crown.

“It’s just Kekoa.

“Why do you smell like lemons?”

I’m so fuckin’ in over my head with this girl, it ain’t even funny. And you know what? Happy fuckin’ days. Never liked shallow water much anyway.

‘Crimson and Clover’ and ‘Unchained Melody.’”

Pixie Fife

Ruth Westheimer

Loxy Blythe

Touch her face.

That they think it’s just infatuation or a momentary fixation, and objectively, I understand how and why they might arrive at that conclusion—but then, they haven’t seen how he is with me, how his eyes go right before we kiss, how he watches me till I fall asleep, how he holds me, how his cheek presses against mine, locked in place like a puzzle piece.

but I know how his heart sounds, I know the beat of it, I know the rhythm of his breathing, I know the patterns he blinks, I know how he likes his eggs in the morning, I know the temperature he likes his showers, and I know what colour lingerie he likes me best in.

“Will you destroy me, Jo?” I ask him quietly, holding his eyes. His head pulls back—the thought hurts him (or in the very least, offends him). “What?” “Well, you could—” I tell him. “Could you not? One could argue I’ve given you that power. I love you, thus you have the capacity to destroy me.” I straighten up on his lap, chin held a little high. “Will you?” He goes solemn as he leans in towards me. “You’re too beautiful.”

And that—I’ll realise in eventual time—will be the first time that he lies to me.

I don’t love it when men drink, actually. Don’t care when I drink—I know that’s a double standard, but I don’t care. I like my men strong and in control and sound of mind.

This is a terrible part of loving someone, isn’t it? That they become your heart that lives outside of your body and they exist in the world, and the world we live in tries to beat everyone and everything down, and today it picked him, and it’s working.

Mark Draper’s in prison.

“Something can be great and scary at the same time, you know…” She elbows me gently. “Most worthwhile things are.”

“Time of my life, mate. Fuckin’ unreal.”

Salford.”

Heath,

Tara Whitmore.”

“Loves you as much as someone can love another person when they’ve never really seen…you know, love like—”

River Casablancas.”