The Blueprint (Rules of Possession #1)

by S.E. Harmon

The more I reviewed the past, the more I realized that, yes, I was an awful person, and I did deserve a humiliating public proposal.

if you were dicking me down good enough, I could manage to call you daddy every now and again, if that’s what turned your crank.

And fuck love. And there was the rub. Despite my bitterness about the subject, deep down inside, I think I was waiting on the fantasy, still hoping for the impossible. And I wasn’t willing to compromise. I sighed inwardly. I was as delusional and optimistic as any Disney princess. It was going to look fantastic on my eHarmony profile. I’d use Snow White as my fucking avatar. She found seven men. Surely I could scrounge up one.

My love for Blue as a person had combined and meshed with the fact that he had turned into a bona fide, grade-A, smoking-hot piece of prime beefcake.

In the tapestry of our life, our threads were so interwoven we’d have to unravel the whole damn blanket to pull them apart.

Jesus. I should’ve done us all a favor and spiked the punch bowl with antifreeze.

Hey, I know you’re trying to comfort me and all, but I’m secretly in love with you. And listening to you mack on some football groupie is making the two slices of chocolate cake I wolfed down want to reappear. All right, all right, three slices.

Good grief. These true-love zombies were all over the place. It was like the walking damn dead.

“Would you like to go downstairs and have some hot chocolate? You can come out to me again. I can probably squeeze out a few tears, if it would help.”

But apparently a week’s worth of Kelly ignoring my calls was enough to send me into full-blown stalker mode. Hell, things weren’t right in my world if I didn’t see Kelly for too long. So the fuck what. Everyone had a crutch. My crutch just happened to be of the dark-haired, gray-eyed, mouthy, and annoying variety.

I drained the rest of my beer, looked away from the bar, and briefly pondered where jealousy went when it got to be too much for your body. Did it burble over the top and leak right out your ears? Or did you just explode like a popped balloon?

The best way to get over someone was to get under someone else. Or something less slutty.

Apparently when I got tipsy, I turned into the goddamned Riddler.

“The way he looked at you then. Hell, the way he looks at you now. Like there’s no one else in the room. His eyes track you like he’s scared you’ll leave.”

I didn’t say any of that, even though I practically had to bite my tongue off—mostly because I didn’t relish getting pounded in the face by someone who had fists like honey-baked hams. I liked my teeth, and I’d already bought that whitening voucher on Groupon.

“Oh God,” I prayed fervently, because that’s what you did when someone tried to suck your brains out through your cock.

The woman on the cover of the blender box—way too ecstatic to be making smoothies—stared at me. All judgmental and shit.

Clearly when it came to us, it could be garlic and onion city. Maybe I should just wear a rope of garlic around my neck. The added benefit would be no vampires, and I could use it to hang myself when the loneliness became unbearable.

He gave me a long, unfriendly look as he passed, and I pretended not to notice. When the front door slammed downstairs, I flopped face-first on the bed. So what, he wasn’t happy. Join the fucking club.

It was fortunate we were already in the hospital, because I was about to beat him like a piñata.

I generally wasn’t that big of a fan of closeness. It usually felt too clingy. I could feel every place on my body where that person’s body touched mine. It was almost suffocating. But with Kelly I just wanted him closer, wanted to pull him halfway onto my body as he fell asleep, breathing softly against my neck.

Oscar Wilde seemed to sum up my situation with Kelly—“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” I asked for just friendship, and he gave me exactly what I asked for. No more, no less.

I was tempted to bear down on the intrusion and ride it like a complete slut, but I let him set the pace.

And then I came too, harder than I’d ever come in my life. Someone might’ve screamed out, “Yesss,” like a fucking Herbal Essences commercial. Could’ve been me. Maybe.

“I think it’s a little early in our relationship to accuse me of being a skanky, disease-ridden whore. Don’t you?”

Part of me thinks I could fall in love with you. The clock ticked some more. The other part of me knows I already have.

His quicksilver eyes were steady on mine and filled with something so inescapably tender that I almost wanted to look away so I wouldn’t get emotional. Good God. It was fine to get teary during The Lion King, and I wouldn’t apologize for that, but shit, not during a fucking blow job.

When he finally spoke, his voice was calm. Clearly he had shelved his murdering urges. “I want you to be mine. And I want to be yours.”

Something amazing happens in your world when the person you think is crazy special thinks you’re kind of special too. I didn’t know if there was a biological name for it, and I wasn’t about to distort science to create an explanation for strange phenomena. Love made my world better—that’s all I really needed to know. His sleepy voice interrupted my mental list. “Kels?” “Yeah?” “I was made for you too. He just made me a little early.” He yawned. “Good night, baby.”