Author's Note: Basically this has no plot.
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The first time she sees him, she loses her breath – just a little bit.
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Sometimes, Ezra and Wesley will stand next to each other and she doesn't know who to look at. Their faces blend together as she darts her eyes back and forth.
(it isn't ezra who stars in her dreams – close, but yet, not quite)
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Ezra leaves and those dreams become more and more Wesley until she wakes up feeling his skin underneath her fingertips.
(i want you more than life itself, she thinks,
i want to put you inside my body and never let you out)
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Wes is everywhere. He's in Ezra's apartment and in her mind and underneath her skin and in her bloodstream and she breathes him in with every inhale.
His gaze touches her very core. She starts to blush more than she ever has and laughs a little too much. She constantly tries to impress him and drinks much more with him than she ever did with Ezra.
For the first time in her life, Aria lets herself be a child under his half-lidded gaze.
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She starts to talk about Ezra in past tense. He doesn't question it, just smiles and leans in closer.
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(ezra doesn't call and he doesn't call but wes is right here in the now and she wants him more than anything else in the world
more than ezra and more than ali's killer and more than life itself
and she wants and she wants and she wants and ezra does not call, not once, and wes is always there)
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Wesley kisses her and she wants to say it's out of the blue, but it's not.
(in the two seconds five lifetimes that the kiss lasts, aria is real – not a girl or a doll or a human being
aria is real and wesley is real and poetry spins around her head
and aria feels it then, in the two seconds five lifetime kiss –
immortality)
When she pulls away, Aria loses ten minutes of her life.
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Wesley runs away, goes back to the prep school, and the inheritance and Aria stays with Ezra until she doesn't.
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("i love you," she says in two seconds five lifetimes
and he laughs and he laughs and smiles his smile
and she wakes up every time
and she aches, knowing that the story didn't have to end like this)
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Without him, Aria dies every two seconds – just a little bit.