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The voice makes me flinch and look up. It’s my friend, Willow. She’s standing by the table and immediately, a rush of warmth flows through my body.
WILLOW MY GIRLLLLL
“Can we please not talk about it?” I almost beg. Willow stares at me a beat before nodding. “Absolutely. We totally don’t have to.” Then, she beams. “Let’s talk about how awesome my husband is.”
SIMONNNNNNN
“Uh-huh. He bought me this set of all the Harry Potters. Brand new covers. With illustrations. He says it’s a wedding present. Can you believe it?”
“There’s so much of that. But for the record, it does not require a bed and a bedroom. A table, a couch, a floor. A wall. All of that works too.” I wrinkle my nose. “Let’s not talk about that. I can’t think of Dr. Blackwood in those terms.”
LMAOOOOOOOOOO
“I know why you came,” he interrupts – again calmly. “You came because of your stupid drunken mistake, isn’t it?”
Is he upset shes calling it a mistake? Thats the vibes im getting👀
“When I look at you, Violet, I think about the night that changed my life. Everyone has that moment. When things change. The moment that you remember for the rest of your life. The moment you think about for the rest of your life. You are that moment for me.”
Uh oh im scared
They were all dead and dull and boring and she was a burst of life in their world. Two days after the pool incident, I found out her name from Brian – Violet. Two years after that she told me herself when I caught her stealing my roses. I’m Violet. Violet Moore. I live next door… I wanted to laugh and tell her: I know. I fucking know. I wish I didn’t. I wish I didn’t know the name of the teenage girl next door, the girl half my age, but I did. I wish I didn’t know that she liked to climb up to the roof at night or that her skin shines when the light of the moon falls on her.
Oh wow- so hes actually been whipped this whole time
“You know how creepy this is? How perverted? Have you been watching her or something? She’s my age, Dad. You have a son her age. And you like her? You like Violet. Fantastic. Guess what, Dad, I like her too. She was special. She was fucking special. I was going to… I was going to ask her out before she moved away for college. I was finally gonna take a chance but you fucked it up. You ruined everything. So fuck you, Dad. Fuck. You.”
Oof yikessssss
“Because it all starts with a kiss, doesn’t it? Because none of it means anything to you. It’s all one stupid drunken mistake that you won’t even remember the next day.”
Lmao he is so pressed about her calling their kiss a mistake and im living for it😂😂
“It means I’m a masochist, Mr. Edwards. I like the pain. The pain doesn’t scare me. You don’t scare me. And let me tell you another secret – masochists like me? We have really tasty skin. You can eat me up all you want. You can eat me up a hundred different ways. I’m gonna like your teeth and your tongue and I’m gonna fall in love with the sting of it all. You’re my Strawberry Man. At least, that’s what I call you in my head.”
In fact, everyone around her calls her Vi. But she’s never been Vi to me. To me, she’s always been Violet. The bright color with a dominant wavelength at the end of the spectrum. The color I never paid attention to until I saw her.
Do you like her, Dad? You want her? I wish I had lied. I wish I had said no to that question ten months ago. I wish I didn’t want my son’s best friend – the girl he secretly liked.
Oh my myyyyyyyy
I chant ow, ow, ow until he’s right next to me. Not only that, he’s holding my hand. Yup. I don’t even know how he got here so fast because he was out back, standing on a ladder, pulling out ivy and things from the roof. But now, he’s here, right next to me, clutching my wrist with his long, dirty and smudged fingers, staring down at the cut on the pad of my thumb. “What the fuck happened?” he asks with a frown.
Hes so whipped HHAHHAAHSHHA
It’s a brown grocery bag. I dash to it and see it has everything from the list I was going to give to Billy. But it has something else too. It’s sitting right at the top and I fish it out, running after him. “You went grocery shopping?” I ask his back; he’s in the hallway. “Looks like it.” “You bought me lollipops?” I say, breathily but whatever.
omggg he is so in love omg
He glances back at me, his eyes alight with something similar to humor. “You wouldn’t let go of my shirt. You got up on my shoes, Jailbait. There was definitely attacking.”
Oh please like you didnt love it
He’s made of the same lonely fabric as me. Lonely and abandoned and alone. God, he could be my soul mate, couldn’t he? The one person who electrifies the very being of me. The one person who could set it all, my soul, my heart, my body on fire. How is it that we aren’t meant to be together?
“And what am I?”
And he’s staring at me with a burning gaze as he rasps, “Something made of moon and magic.”
“Someone will. You go to college, don’t you? Some guy will say that to you. He’ll say it better. He’ll even write you poetry or something. Or whatever the fuck kids are doing these days.” I don’t want someone to say that to me. I want him. I want his words. His poetry. His growls and his hands. I want his hands on me. The ones that are still fisted and digging into his thighs like the words he just uttered about college were some of the most painful ones he ever had.
“No, Violet, I’m not saying that you’re visible. I’m saying that you’re the only thing that a man sees. I’m saying that you’re a thing that drives a man to distraction. You make him forget what’s right and what’s wrong. You’re a thing so terrible and beautiful and fucking breathtaking that he can’t escape you. He can’t think of anything else, not about his job, his responsibilities, his promises, his family, nothing but you. You undo him. You make him helpless. You turn him into an animal who wants to rut. You’re a girl who makes a man go bad.” ***
“Did you just say that you’ve been acting like an asshole to your dad? Why’d you say that?” He goes all silent and I don’t know what to think. All I know is that something bad is coming. Even worse than when he said he wanted to ask me out. Although, for the life of me I can’t imagine what it could be. “Bri? Why did you say that?” “Because he likes you too.”
OMG
“Yes. I did. I watched you like there was no one else in the world.” “Why?” “Because I had this massive, gigantic, epic crush on you.” “You had a crush on me?”
His disbelief is so cute
“Yeah? I’m off the hook for watching a girl half my age? Watching her like I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Watching her like I had this… this compulsion. This need to look at her. To look at her pale skin and her gorgeous as fuck smile.”
“Y-you think my smile is gorgeous?” He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Fuck yeah, it’s gorgeous. Every night, you’d climb up to your roof and you’d just open your arms like you were soaking in the moon and you’d smile and Jesus Christ, I’d lose my mind. And I’d tell myself over and over I wouldn’t do it, that I wouldn’t go out but I did anyway. I’d still go out there and watch you while pretending to work on my roses. I’d still wander around the house, chasing after your strawberry smell like a disgusting creep.”
“Not for that kiss. And definitely not for what you felt. Never for what you felt. Whoever said it, I’m going to take them apart with my bare hands, you understand? And that maid of yours, if you waste a single thought on her, on that pathetic excuse of a human being, I’ll hunt her down and make her wish she was dead.”
“I’m tired of being their slut, Graham. I wanna be yours.”
And when I feel the hair on his chest rub against my cleavage, I go crazy. I grab him back. I dig my fingers in his long, untamed hair and push back against him. That just makes him even more frantic. It makes him roam his hands even more. They leave my waist but they seem to be reluctant. They fist and bunch in my dress as if he doesn’t wanna let go of my hips yet.
“You know why my favorite color is red?” I shake my head. “It’s because it’s the color of your lips. It’s the color of your smile.” The said lips part and I breathe out, “No way.” “I didn’t have a favorite color before you.” My mouth falls open. “Seriously?” His nostrils flare. “I didn’t notice colors before I met you.”
How did I miss that? How? Those marks are burning now, burning so deliciously. My hands move up and I finally, finally touch it. I touch his beard. I feel it with my fingers, all rough and soft, silk and sand, as I whisper, “God, I wanted to touch your beard for so long.”
“I’m going to buy you a hundred dresses. A thousand dresses. And you’re going to wear them all. You’re going to wear them all for me. And I’m going to tear them all off with my bare hands. You know why?”
“Because I’ll buy them all in red. They’ll be as red as your pretty lips. And I’m going to lose my mind over it. That color will call to me, call to my blood like I’m this bull of a man who just has to get to you. Get to your red as fuck mouth.”
She went to sleep as soon as she came. She sighed, said my name and curled up on her side and went to sleep. Like she hadn’t slept in ages. Instead of leaving her alone and giving her privacy, I put her head in my arm and spooned her with my body.
🫠
He left me a note. A note. It said: I want you to leave before I come back from work tonight.
Bitch I know he did not-
But Graham shakes his head once, at me. As if he could read my anxious thoughts. He even jerks me closer to him, making me go flush against his hard and heated body. Like some kind of a claiming, in front of another man. In front of the world. Like he doesn’t care if there could be problems.
My heart is racing so much that I take a step even closer. I go up on his boots and I smell him. I tuck my nose in the triangle of his throat and hide my face, dragging his scent into my lungs. And he completes his claiming of me by wrapping his arms around my trembling body. Oh God. He’s picking me over everything.
😭😭😭😭
“She’s none of your concern, all right? Just leave. I’m asking you to leave. She’s scared, okay? Just leave before I do something to you for making her that way.”
To watch me kiss Graham. To watch me claim my man, like my man claimed me. In fact, I want Richard to watch. I want the whole world to watch when I pick him. When I pick my Graham. I hike up my thigh until Graham gets the message and he heaves me up in his arms. I wind my legs around his waist and put my mouth on him.
Well damnnnn
Love isn’t about asking someone to love you back. It’s about loving. It’s about finding that thing you love and letting it kill you because you’re going to die anyway. And what better way to go than at the hands of someone you love.
“My soul,” he whispers. “It was my soul waking up. The thing that keeps a man alive, came alive in me when I saw you. You woke up my soul, Violet.”
“Yeah. I’d watch you after that. I couldn’t help myself and I was angry about that, you know. I was angry about watching a girl half my age. I was angry that something was happening to me. I planted a fucking rose garden – something I hadn’t done in years – just to watch that girl. Just to have an excuse to look at her at night. God, I thought I was losing my mind.
“I’m going to try. I’m going to learn, Violet.” “Learn what?” “Poetry.” “Poetry?” He nods; it’s a jerk of a movement. “I can learn to write poetry. How hard can it be? It’s a drunk man writing about his feelings, right? I read a poem once, Anesthesia by this guy. Abrams or something?”
Awww😭😭😭😭
“Who cares? If he can do it, I can do it too.” Before I can say anything else, he goes on. “I can paint your nails too. I’ve done it once, I can do it again. I can hold your hand and walk down the beach with you. Even though my hands are rough and scratched up and I fucking hate the beach – too many people. But I can do all of that. I can learn to do all of that and more, Violet.”
“Yeah. A world where colors are bright and gorgeous. Where you dance in the moonlight. Where you have a vegetable garden right next to a rose garden. A world where the air smells like strawberries and candies. A world where an eighteen-year-old girl sneaks into the backyard of a man she wants, a man she’s been watching, a man who’s been watching her as well, and steals his roses. A world where she steps on his shoes because she’s so tiny that she can’t get to his mouth and kisses him. A world where she follows him just because she thinks she’s wronged him. A world where she saves him from
...more
“Yeah. You do. You inspire me to live, Violet. You inspire me to live in a world where a brave girl saves a dangerous, old beast and shows him to be brave like her.”
“So you don’t have to love me, Violet,” he continues with a low tone. “Because I love you enough for the both of us. And I’m gonna learn to show that, all right? I promise you that. I’m going to learn to show my love to you. It might not happen overnight, but I’ll keep at it. All I want is for you to trust me. Just trust me.”
He’s actually gotten more possessive and protective ever since he stopped being my boyfriend and became my husband. You’d think that since I’m legally his now, he’d relax a little. But nope. Marriage has had the opposite effect on my husband.
