The Summer of Broken Rules

by K.L. Walther

“Wink gave it to me for my birthday this year, but it’s at home.” Hidden in my jewelry box, because Ben thought it was weird that I had one. For Meredith, the blade’s engraving read. May you always kick ass and take names.

Stupid ben

“Doesn’t sound like great customer service,” I commented and thought of Claire. If she’d worked at Edgartown Books this summer, she would have made recommendations to anyone and everyone. Nobody would have left the store without a bag in hand. They would’ve loved her.

I thought of Claire and her penchant for personal, affectionate, inside-joke nicknames. She believed they made a relationship more intimate.

“Turkey with pepper jack on sourdough, please,” he said. “Lettuce, tomato, onion.” A pause. “Oh yeah, and honey mustard.”

Omg wawa order

Don’t cry, I told myself. Don’t cry. But it had taken him less than ten seconds. It had taken him less than ten seconds to connect the dots, while Ben had never connected them.

while I waited at the deli counter for turkey, ham, and cheese and listened to the lovable Ukrainian workers argue with one another in their thick accents,

I wasn’t in love with him, but I knew I was falling.

Honey it's been a week

is it okay that I won?” “Without a doubt,” I whispered back. The sun couldn’t be brighter—Claire was overwhelmingly proud. “Without a doubt.”

“Okay, you went on my profile…” I prompted. “Like a stalker…” “I scroll,” he corrected. “I don’t stalk.”

I was not that light pink–tinted girl posing at parties and dangling from her boyfriend’s arm like an accessory. I was the girl who loved laughing with her friends in the sunlight, sleeping in a sandy bunk bed, and grinning while licking butter off the face of a beautiful boy named Stephen. That was the real me.

Instead of answering, Wit kissed me again. He kissed me long and lingering, lips leaving behind the spiral sensations I loved so much.

“And I do know how much you adore me,” he whispered. “I just wish it was as much as I adore you.”