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No guns at the dinner table. That’s my one rule.
our two rules are we don’t fight and we don’t get jealous,
“I’m good here…” His words trail. “Are you good here?” “For now,” I lie and he laughs. For always, I’m afraid.
Boys will be boys and gang lords will be gang lords.
He can’t see straight about her, but neither can I. We both love her and neither of us can do shit about it.
‘A flower among thorns,”
And he’s all surprised that I know his face, but what he doesn’t know is that how he looks in the morning time is burned into my memory and one day, when all this is over and we’re not hooking up anymore and he’s with someone else and I’ve figured out how to move on and past him and we’re not together anymore55 because I don’t think he has room in his heart to see me like that when all he can see is her, even if sometimes now it feels like maybe56 he could—even then, I will see his face when I close my eyes.
Don’t tell her because she’s already pretty up herself, but she’s probably one of my favourite people now.
Usually with her being quiet feels like I’m alone, and I never feel like I’m alone when I’m with someone else.
“No point.” She shrugs dismissively. “I’m nothing but a beneficiary of your sexual appetite.” She flashes me a bratty smile and I fucking hate her. Also feel like kissing her.
“My little wallflower.”
“I didn’t like how he was looking at you,”
“It’s just interesting is all, because I didn’t think we did jealous.”
It wasn’t like this before. It was easy before, but now this feels hard.
are we fighting? We don’t fight.
Missed you a lot, I don’t say.
We could have worked. And instead we’re whatever the fuck we are, and you’re in love with another fucking man—”
“What are we then?” I ask defiantly, putting some
distance between us which he crosses with one step anyway. He kisses my cheek. “Each other’s.”
And it’s weird, I float between being in my head about Daisy, thinking about everything I say to her, everything I want to say, all the things I want to talk to her about, and then when I’m with her I don’t really think of anything.
Daisy’s that feeling you get when you’re floating on your back in a pool and there’s so much fucking noise around you until you put your ears under and it all goes quiet. That’s how she feels to me.
I should have told her I don’t want to share her with anyone.
“I think I’m in love with Christian,” she whispers to me.
“Do you think he’s a phase?” She tilts her head. She looks sad. “Could be.” I shrug as I toss my arm around her. “Or he could be the love of your life.”
This is the worst feeling. The worst fucking feeling—liking her, I don’t want to like her.
“I’ve spent the last three years sleeping with girls who aren’t Magnolia Parks because I’m in love with Magnolia Parks.”
“He’s never once told us what it’s like with you.”
“You never touch her,” he yells in his face, holding him by the collar of his shirt. “Never. Try it again, and I’ll kill you myself.”
That I like literally being
stuck to her, that says something—I’m just an idiot and a slow learner.
“I’m done—” I give her a look. “I’m done with other girls, okay? I just want to be with you—”
“You don’t have to play games with me, Dais—” Shrug a tiny bit. “I’m in.”
“Were you jealous?” “Of you?” I blink. “Sleeping with him?” I nod once. “Yeah.” She smirks a little. “We don’t do jealous…” I give her a half smile. “We do now.”
A great undoing, if you will, and he will. In every way.
“There is a fatal flaw to your normal plan, you know,” he tells me. I turn to face him, lift my brows but make sure he doesn’t let me go. “And what’s that?” He locks the door behind me. “You have that face and that brain and you’ll never be normal—” Shakes his head. “Couldn’t be if you tried.”
I can’t
even look at him because I’m a flower and he’s the whole entire sun and he’ll wilt me away,
he’s kissing me in this way that feels like a ship breaking through fog, it’s fresh water, clear skies, smooth sailing, birds chirping… the planets of us aligning out there like our bodies are in here,
I think I understand for a fleeting moment why everything that’s bad and painful and sad is worth it if you love someone, because I’ll remember how he’s looking at me now forever.
The feel of him is my favourite feeling in the world, for all of history and all of time, write it down, ring the town bell and tell the scribes—I’ll wear it on my heart’s sleeve forever that I love him.
I can feel it now. Me tethered to him.
Daisy and me, we’ve sort of just been in each other’s pockets.
And I don’t really think about what I do next, it sort of just happens. I take off my necklace, slip it over her head and onto her. She stares up at me, blinking. “What are you doing?” I shrug. “Yours now.”
It’s too much to say out loud and I don’t want to tell him because it is the out-loud confession of what I inwardly know already but I’ve never wanted Christian to hear it: loving me only leads to bad things.
I’ve never felt like this and it’s now, right now, this exact second that I realise I am in love with Daisy Haites. And then it is immediately after, in that exact second, that I realise I’ve lost her.
I feel the absence of him in my life the way you can feel the sun slip behind a cloud and wish you were fifteen again, full of stupid hope and
unbroken and able to love properly, but here we are.
“I didn’t know I loved him in the sort of way where when you lose them you lose you too.”
“You made me fall in love without you.”
so when I met you and everything felt good, I didn’t know that I was falling in love with you.”