Riley was his cup of tea. But Maya was his coffee. (Not that the drinks were suggestive; on the contrary, Riley drank coffee and Maya loved tea.) Regardless, he should've known any form of caffeine was bad for him.
It was her endless cuddling or her infinitely rough sex.
It was his calming boredom or his restless energy.
He could either wake up indifferently alive or satisfyingly dead. He wasn't sure which one he wanted more.
It should've been an easy choice. Boredom or fun? He always thought that since he was Mr. Perfect, the world was split up into good and bad. Black and white. But part of being Mr. Perfect meant that things were never really as they were made to seem. (Or, that's what she had slowly started whispering into his mind.) She told him that sometimes being impolite was the best way to be polite. She told him that being polite sometimes ends up with more hurt feelings. To him, it was-no, it had been a choice of black and white. To be polite or to be rude? But he was Mr. Perfect. He had no choice. Good would always prevail over-evil? No, he wouldn't call her that. She was wild, that one, but evil? Never. It mattered not. He had to be polite.
But she twisted him, she did. Whenever she was finished with him, bad was good and polite was rude? "If you're really polite," she would croon, "you'd know that it's bad manners to decline an offer," she would say, their faces aligned and her arms snaked around him, "especially inside the company of someone's own house." She'd pause, her lips in his ear, her hair masking her face as he felt her hot breath deep inside his ear canal. "Especially after that person," her lips trailed to his, lightly touching with each syllable, "takes care of you? Don't you have any manners?" He would never say no to her-whether it was polite or rude, he knew not. He simply nodded and went with it. Those were good manners, right? The fire within him agreed but his conscious was never at ease.
If Maya was a wildfire, then Riley was a heater. One was beautiful and bright. The other was dull and slow. One ended up in ashes; the other, warmth.
His personality overrode his passion. (Or at least, when he was himself, it did.) Although he chose to be with her, the good one, he would always think about the other one. He wouldn't call her bad-no, she was definitely good at certain things..
It was the day before the trip when he realized the world had never been nor could ever be split into black and white. And he deserved to have a little bit of color in his life. Even if it left him breathless and never able to catch his breath ever again.
It was the day before the trip when he was at Riley's house and he saw Maya half asleep on the couch wearing only two articles of clothing. It was the night before the trip when he snuck away in the middle of the night into the living room.
It was the night before the trip (or rather, the dawn of the trip) when he felt more alive than he ever would for the rest of his life.
. . .