It was the first time I heard those words.
"You're perfect, Cash. I love you".
She says it as we lay in my bed after yet another party, her fingers running through my hair, dark eyes looking into my light ones. Her dark curls mixed with my light ones on the pillow. She smiles with those teeth that drive me crazy. She says it, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm worth something to someone.
I'm worth something to her.
Eighteen years living in my brother's shadow, second best to my own parents. Glosswas perfect. Glossgot told he was perfect every day. By our parents, his teachers. Girls. Lots and lots of pretty little District One girls that I met, briefly, at our front door before they were led up to his bedroom to reappear the next morning at the table, wearing one of his T-Shirts. None of them ever came back. This was before his Games. This is before he became even more lusted after. I was no one. I was his sister; we had the same good looks, the same blonde hair and strikingly blue eyes. Yet the difference between us was clear. He was perfection, flawless. When he won his games, when he stood at the final moment with blood dripping from the wound in his forehead yet looking like a male model, that's the moment I knew I would never compare to him.
I volunteered the next year. Gloss' victory was effortless. Mine was the product of sheer determination and hard work, hard-fought, and barely won. I came back to District One and the first thing I heard was
"She's trying too hard to be like him. But Gloss is perfect, and she is just… his sister"
I don't think half of them knew my name.
It wasn't until the next year, the year me and Gloss were in the Capitol together for the first time, that I felt like I was worth morefor the first time in my life. The day we met the two most bloodthirsty victors from two. The girl with the teeth, I remembered her as. Enobaria. She introduced herself, those teeth glinting under the lights in the room we were in.
Gloss told me later how he found her creepy.
I didn't tell him I found her perfect.
It took us months to realise how we really felt. Months of being acquaintances, and then friends. Months of parties hosted by Finnick Odair. Months of falling into bed, bitter Capitol alcohol on our lips which crashed together out of our need and desperation and our hands all over eachother. We needed it. She was messed up, but so was I.
She made me feel like someone. I wasn't just Gloss's sister, I was Cashmere, and my girlfriend was Enobaria and she loved me.
I was perfect to her.
