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March 31 - April 6, 2024
She’s so fucking hot I want to neck myself.
She says nothing. Her eyes don’t move from me. It’s just me and her alone in the universe, how it used to be, how it’s supposed to be in all the lifetimes. Maybe even this one.
“BJ, you can love someone and not have it rule you, not have it dictate your every waking thought and decision. You can love someone and still retain your power and autonomy. You can love someone and have it just be there, a part of you, and still have a completely functional life—” She pauses and gives me a long look. “Even if it’s a life without them.” Doesn’t sound much like any life I’m interested in, actually.
She lets out a big sigh. “Fine. Can you at least tell her that her dress is last season or something?” “Fuck no—” I snort a laugh. “I don’t have a death wish.”
“And no — he’s not — not my — BJ isn’t — no boyfriend!” I smile brightly. Uncle Aleksey elbows his mother. “Is stroke?”
“I’m going to have to start taking Ashwagandha.” He nods to himself,
He keeps nodding, riffling through the boxes. “So much Ashwagandha.”
“I told you I love you and you’re asking me about the weather?” she whispers to me. Then she looks me dead in the eye. “Fuck you.”
but when that opinion comes from the person you love most in the world, it pierces right through to the centre of you. Poisons you a bit, makes you believe the words they’re saying are true. Words are so powerful.
Rummage through the drawer in my mind as fast as I can to find the words to tell her that I’m coming for her, I’m on my way back, that this is just the long way home.
“I don’t know the worst parts of you.” I ran my thumb over her scar. “I just know you, Parks.”
I’m going to crack her like a macaron. Julian said not to tell her that.
“You are a very dangerous man, Julian. I know that.” I give him a look. “But I hope you know that above that and before that, you actually really are quite a good man.”
“You can’t just make me be your friend til you feel like it and whip out a relationship like a trump card to win me back when I’m sad.”
and it occurs to me for the first time ever that there are two betrayed people in this room.
Remember all of it, I tell myself. Her hand in my hair. How she smelt before. How she smells now. Her lips on my skin. Her little trembling body wrapped around mine under the stairs at Varley. Wrapping myself around her body that trembled differently that December 3rd that I hate and love all at once, and whatever happens I know I’m lucky to have had her. To have gotten to love her how I have.
“Waited to marry you all my motherfucking life!” she yells from inside her wardrobe. “And you — you big prick — decide to ask me when I have a fucking pin in my shoulder.”
“It was always going to be you, Parks. Just a matter of when.”
Bushka’s not talking to me because she’s miffed I didn’t ask her.
