_a/n: i suppose the order doesn't really matter. i also don't know what i'm doing. kiiiiilll me
the aftertaste of playing make-believe
eat that shit up, it's good for you
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iii.
She stands barefoot on his balcony.
He notices her silhouette from his bed, behind the sheer curtains blowing in and out of the glass doors she hadn't bothered to shut. Her name rolls off his tongue and into the autumn breeze that whisks into his room and wakes him. The air tastes like a mélange of pumpkins and black coffee, and her head doesn't turn at the rasp of his voice that she had claimed to love once upon a time ago.
Faded tendrils of her hair sway behind her and he doesn't know it, but she's gritting her teeth with every tear that makes its way down her jaw.
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ii.
"I love you," he murmurs into her mouth before catching the parting of her lips with his and she moans, god does she moan. She uses the time he gives her to answer manipulatively, slyly. Time is not something to waste. She bites at his skin and his toes curl at her touch. She knows how to make his mind spin in all the right ways.
She makes him climax, and the only thing running through her mind is his words. She watches his eyes slowly shut and the slow breaths of his chest come to a steady, constant rhythm. He'd been waiting for her response. She can't give him one.
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v.
Her mom's voice has gotten haggard, breathy. She sounds like a woman on one of those smoking commercials, the ones with catching instrumentals in the back, where someone's talking about how happy their life had been before being diagnosed with lung cancer. And then there's a zoom-out on said person's face and you can see a hole in their throat beside the wrinkles of their neck.
"You run, baby girl," she tells her after a marathon of coughing and rounds and rounds of huffing. "You run."
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vii.
She is bitter and broken and tangled in a wrong path of nostalgia. She wakes with pictures that plague her, taunting questions burdening what's left of the reason behind her smiles. She drowns in sleep during her showers and cries when night looms closer. The sun leaves and she remembers shattered mirrors, beer bottles, and hush child, daddy won't hurt you.
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vi.
She leaves her cell phone behind when she boards the train, counting the bills in the envelope her mother had given her.
Maybe when she'll return to her plain, dingy, take-out infested flat, she'll read through every one of the four hundred and twenty seven text messages and cry at the amount of times they had all tried calling her.
Her heart won't break, though. It'd been broken too many times before she'd reached the age of ten.
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viii.
She emails the Matthews through an open laptop up for customer usage in the closest Best Buy nearly six months later. She makes sure they know she's doing fine – no, I was not kidnapped or thrown into prostitution or dead nor have I sold my soul to the devil; I am fine. She apologizes for being humorous, for disappearing, for making them worry. I found my dad, she adds.
She clicks send with her eyes closed, before scrolling through her list of contacts, only slightly considering to send him something.
She exits the tab when she finds his name.
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iv.
She'll never be his, but he could dream and so could she.
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i.
She is beauty and power and intellect. She is sweet to the touch and spicy on the tongue, with roaring eyes and wit in her remarks. She sings and dances and smiles like there is no tomorrow; dancing in the rain and basking in what's left of the sun in late afternoons.
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fin.