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She’d told him what an ass he’d been, and he hadn’t even tried to turn it around and explain to her how she had made him behave like an ass. And now he was trying to make it up to her. She wondered if this was some new species of fuckboy, an evolved version that was more effective at luring women into its trap before showing its true nature. If that was the case, it was working.
Once someone knows you can do something for them, they’ll want you to do it all the time.”
People didn’t get rid of things they found useful. In theory, that is.
“Why don’t you say no?” His tone was serious, as if he was presenting her with an option she’d never considered. “Because men make life harder for women who say no,
She’d pushed and instead of revealing himself for the fuckboy he was, he’d surprised her.
Fluttering and fizzing and fluffiness: all kinds of f words. Feelings.
It was the look on Charming’s face when Sleeping Beauty’s eyes fluttered open. The expression of awe that Eric sported when he woke to find Ariel cradling him on the beach. It was the look that she thought only existed in Disney cartoons because it seemed so highly improbable that anyone would ever look at her that way. And yet, there he was, gaze sparking with mischief and want, corners of his mouth turned up in a hopeful smile.
What the hell are you doing, for real this time?!
She had boundaries—everyone needed those—but when Jamal looked at her, she could feel just how tightly closed in on herself she was, and how tiring it was to always be that way. His gaze made her feel like opening.
She should have been able to take on the world. Instead, she just wanted to curl up on the couch and veg out. This was what happened when you slowed down; it was one of the reasons she rarely did.
Her body ached with need and she didn’t want him to say anything else. She wanted to feel.
“I know you’re very busy, Ledi. If you can fit me in, I’d be honored to be one of the many things that take up your time.”
“This city is held together by hope and insomnia,” she said. “Who needs infrastructure?”
She didn’t know how to respond; her defenses should have kicked in, but this type of attack was unknown and crept around them.
Kicking a young girl out for natural exploration was cruel.
“I stopped thinking of my parents because it hurt too badly, and then one day I tried to remember them and I couldn’t.”
He’d gotten himself into a fine mess, indeed.
Since when had she needed outside help with anything?
She’d always kept her deepest feelings more safely hidden than porn on an unlocked laptop—folder after figurative subfolder of false file names to mask her true feelings from those who might click through.
You let your defenses down. When you do that, the bad can get in with the good.
He was a complication she just didn’t need at the moment.
she’d allowed herself to have expectations, like a fool.
Some people enjoy playing games with others’ emotions, it seems.
It’s almost as if people will help you out if you let them in, a not so subtly sarcastic part of her mind chimed in. It’s almost like it’s okay to need that sometimes.
“Funny, the things people omit during love’s first bloom.”
But deception by a guy was unexceptional; from your best friend, it was unbearable.
Apparently, oh-sure-I’ll-do-that Ledi had been incinerated by the flames of her frustration and I-wish-a-motherfucker-would Ledi had risen from the ashes.
Relief coursed through her, but it was quickly replaced by apprehension. Nothing good had happened in the last few days without exacting a hefty toll. Why should that pattern suddenly deviate?
Ledi dropped her gaze to Thabiso’s shoes, then remembered that she’d done nothing wrong and met his gaze.
She hated that she remembered how his hands felt brushing against her most sensitive skin, how lush his mouth felt against hers. She hated how he was looking at her, with that damned Disney-fied, wide-eyed innocence. Like he hadn’t somehow wiggled his way into her life and exploded it from the inside. She’d thought he might be a virus from the moment she’d seen him, and she’d been right—she just hadn’t realized how fast-acting he’d be.
“Explanations are for people who care, and I’m not in that cohort. I don’t need you,” she said. “I don’t need anyone.”
The words were cold, but she needed cold to fight the hot tears rising in her.
This was why her phospholipid bilayer was so important. Once someone got through, it was all over. They could hurt deeply and she’d still care about them. Caring was the worst, despite its evolutionary necessity.
She needed time, and she would take it. If their friendship couldn’t survive that, it wasn’t much of one.
The king and queen sat across the table, occasionally asking questions of Ledi that were either purposefully insulting or only sounded that way because of cultural miscommunication. Ledi was fairly certain it was the former, though; she only spoke English, but was fluent in shade.
“One can never read too many fairy tales,”
Her imagination had this information, and while she didn’t consider herself particularly creative, there was one area in which it had always excelled before she’d forced it to stop: imagining what might have been.
The feeling of unfairness she hadn’t ever allowed to take hold began to get its hooks into her. In that moment, what she wanted more than anything was everything she’d missed out on, good and bad.
These men are intelligent, but they ignore economic history, colonization, and globalization. They can only think in the moment, when we need to be thinking a hundred years ahead, and beyond for that matter.”
Goddess, she was beautiful, all the time, but even more so when she was too preoccupied to push him away.
