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July 14 - July 15, 2024
“I quite disagree,” Gigi said. “Therapy is always necessary.”
Someday soon, she would emerge as a beautiful butterfly who did cool and fabulous things all the time, regardless of whether or not said things had been previously scheduled.
Chloe had many notebooks, because Chloe wrote many lists.
Chloe did not have the time for kerfuffles.
From a distance, in the dark, with that sharp tongue of his tucked away, she saw him as poetry.
Chloe knew she was flesh and blood and bone, just like him. But she wasn’t alive like he was. Not even close.
She’d speak about how strange it was to choose to bleed for something, simply because you wanted to.
“Want me to catch you?” “I’d rather die.”
“Men,” Chloe said firmly, “are not for me.”
Better to be alone than to be abandoned.
Bliss should be held on to with both hands.
She hadn’t always been like this, a tongue with the tip bitten off, her feelings squashed into a box.
He wanted to touch her, just to see if things felt different now. Now that he knew she saw something the same way he did.
“Sorry, I thought I was being obvious. It means you’re rude as fuck.”
If she died, she’d be doing so on the back of an intensely sexy superintendent’s motorbike. Not a bad way to go, all things considered.
Maybe that was his problem in a nutshell: he’d seen cruelty like that as a challenge.
There was just the secret, burning core of him, smoldering for her.
Maybe she was reeling him in right this minute, and he’d wake up in a year’s time with his life in pieces, her perfume all over him, and a distinct feeling that he’d lost his fucking mind.
It’s just a list of things I want to do. Fun, exciting things.” “Like bondage?” “Like camping,”
He’d rather ride naked through Trinity Square than get himself wrapped up in yet another mess. He’d rather eat a damned rock. He’d rather— “So,” she asked softly, “will you help me?” And he, Mister Shit for Brains, said, “Yeah.”
Read my words now, very carefully: You. Need. An. Instagram. Account. I’m so glad we had that talk.
The list is really not up for debate, since it has already been immortalized, and since I am committed, and also because I’m right and you’re wrong. I trust you understand.
Clearly, he’s doing something questionable with that lightbulb. And yet, you keep replacing it.
she’d decided last night while lying awake—in between chatting with Smudge and imagining violence against everyone who’d ever wronged her—that she would treat said list as a professional endeavor.
She even arranged her tail carefully before sitting down on the sofa, just to prove how utterly unconcerned she was by it.
Red held the pen up to the light for a moment, staring at it with the oddest expression on his face—a sort of quiet, bone-deep pleasure, his smile slight and fond.
On the coffee table, Smudge was delicately licking his own arsehole in flagrant convention of the established house rules—a
He was quiet for a moment and she watched him with a new kind of hunger. A hunger that came from an unfamiliar place, that had nothing to do with his vitality or with his beauty, but with the ordinary things about him that were starting to feel like oxygen.
It wasn’t a dream: it was a reality he hadn’t gotten around to yet.
She seemed fine, but then, she seemed fine all the time . . . and yet she was in pain all the time, too.
He’d seen how people treated his mum, after all, because she was diabetic. Like being unwell was a crime or a scam or a self-indulgence.
Hand-holding had never been his thing, exactly, but it felt natural—or necessary—with Chloe. Like an anchor.
“I watched because . . . when you paint,” she said softly, “you seem so vital. It was addictive. It felt like coming to life.”
His voice cracked as if she’d ruined his life by moisturizing after she showered.
“I want to make you cry. I bet you get like that, don’t you? When it’s too much. When it feels too good.”
She could see the phantoms of all the feelings she could develop for him, like premonitions.
“You’re soaked. You’re fucking—Chloe—”
Good things usually hurt in the end.
I can cook, and right now, you can’t. So I’m doing it for you because that’s how people should behave; they should fill in each other’s gaps. Don’t think about it too hard.”
This was what came of liking men: rampant idiocy.
Starting my day with Chloe feels like starting my day in front of a canvas.
Her gaze, dark and serious, felt like a weight—the satisfying kind, the weight of expectation that meant someone might, almost, trust you not to fuck up.
“You don’t know how much I want you,” he whispered, his gaze devouring her bare skin. “I can’t fucking tell you. I don’t know how.”
He pushed her skirt up her thighs and said, his voice rough, “I like the way you look at me.”
He always touched her so carefully, but she didn’t feel like he was afraid of breaking her. More like he worshipped her even as he debauched her.
“You’re so beautiful. So beautiful, and the longer I look, the better it gets.”
Then he brushed his lips over her tears and murmured, “I knew you’d cry.”
He loved Chloe. He loved Chloe like a blank canvas and a finished piece and all the exhilarating, painful, stop-and-start moments in between.
“Red, why did you do all this?” “For you,” he said, as though it was obvious. “It’s always for you.”
She said, her voice sleepy, “I would do anything for you.”
