Dusty

by YellowBella

She loves him. He loves her crazy. She's a hopeless romantic. He's just hopeless. She's afraid to let go. He won't let her. A story about a silly girl in love with a foolish boy. Here, forever is a lie. TeamBella23 - the realist and YellowGlue - the poet

25. Two Against One

We do not own Twilight. This is a razor love. It cuts clean through.

All rights and respects to Stephenie Meyer, Neil Young, Jack White, The Kills, The Silversun Pickups, Simon and Garfunkel, Sublime, Kid Cudi, Nirvana, Interpol, and Silverchair.

TeamBella is my dusty princess partner and BabyBlue is the most trusted advisor and pretty-polisher two girls could ask for. I love you guys.

Daniele Luppi and Danger Mouse, featuring Jack White - Two Against One: Make no mistake; I don't do anything for free. I keep my enemies closer than my mirror ever gets to me. And if you think there is no shelter in this attitude, wait 'til you feel the warmth of my gratitude.

I get the feeling that it's two against one. I'm already fighting me. So what's another one? The mirror is a trigger and your mouth's a gun. Lucky for me, I'm not the only one.

This ain't no free-for-all to see. There's only three. It's just you and me against me.

Chapter Twenty Four – Dusty

Rolling the wheel with my right hand, I turn onto Petey's street. My phone vibrates for the fourth time since I left. I continue to ignore it. My temper is what it is, but this was really and truly, all baby.

I drag my left hand down my face and drive with my fingers sort of over my mouth, facing the setting sun. It's blinding yellow-orange and burning bright. My shades don't really help.

I want a line.

I want two lines.

I want Bliss.

She's supposed to be here, my heart beats, making my chest feel tight, full-up. I try to swallow a breath and it hurts. She's supposed to be right here.

That's the fucking point of all this.

I want love a thousand times more than I want anything else, but she's more unattainable than everything.

I swallow harder and squint my eyes against the sunset, replaying our words from just minutes ago in the back of my mind.

"Pete can ride with Ben. I'll come get you. I'll talk to your fucking dad -"

"Edward..."

That was all she had to say.

We'd barely been on the phone two minutes, and that was it. Nothing I could have said would have mattered. In her heart, she'd already decided.

"It can just be us," I tried anyway, phone pressed between my left ear and my shoulder as I tied my shoe. "I won't go to the game. We'll sit on your mom's couch and drink fucking apple juice. I don't care."

Not a word.

Love is like this a lot lately: guarded. Her parents tightened up after everything with Dimitri. They've cut back on the time she's allowed to spend outside of home, and are more watchful when she's there. In turn, it's made baby extra cautious about keeping this secret.

I'm so fucking tired of being a secret.

I haven't actually seen her in over a week. We steal looks in the hallways, but everyone's around and we're worlds apart. She's more theirs than mine, more than ever and I hate it. I need her.

While I tied my other shoe and stood up with my phone still pressed to my ear, Bella stayed silent. It cut and I wanted to say please, as I grabbed my keys off my dresser. I thought about saying just let me see you. I need to fucking see you, but I couldn't.

"It's a school night, Al," she finally said, her tone totally hollow, her unwillingness to even try tearing me deeper.

I blinked and I was downstairs and outside, in the driver's seat with my door open. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, thumb-tracing her in my pocket. My consciousness was spinning and steady love was across town, miles away, and it's not like I asked for the fucking stars -

I just wanted her to come out. Just for a little bit. I wanted her near. Even if I couldn't fucking touch her, I just wanted her within reach.

"You're not even trying," I said, my own voice thin, pitted out and weightless sounding. I hated it. I hate how susceptible and dependent love makes me feel.

Shaking my head as I turn into Pete's driveway, I wait for him to come out. I think about checking my phone, but I don't because I'm right: she isn't even trying. I know our chances are slim and the odds are fucking stacked, but how can we do this for two more years if she doesn't at least try?

Ability courses through me. Attachment stitches without anesthetic.

I square my shoulders and sniff.

Her lack of effort shouldn't still surprise me.

She won't even say yes when it's just me and her.

"Never mind," I said quietly, forcing indifference into my pitch, because love acts and reacts. Love is measure for measure, and I wanted to sound like she did. Like I didn't care. Like it didn't matter any more to me than it did to her, that I was falling the fuck apart.

I emptied my voice out. "Just forget it."

Her wince was unmistakable. I felt it in my own chest before I hung up.

.

.

.

"Don't go." Love breathes, face buried in my chest. She curves her small fists tightly into my unzipped jacket. Her tears soak through my shirt. Every drop cuts like a new razor, melting-sharp right through my skin, marking me with her cries...

.

.

.

"You're slipping," the devil scoffs, shaking her head, tossing messy black hair over her shoulder. Her fingers slink and creep with backroom-temperature intent.

Her breath doesn't even feel warm.

.

.

.

Leave with me, she whispers, hot in my veins and compulsive in my marrow.

They can't love you like I do.

.

.

.

I clench my eyelids closed and grip with everything I have. I grip so tightly my knuckles sting and my muscles burn. Inhaling sets my lungs on fire.

"I can't -" I hear my voice break apart in the dark. I grip my hands tighter still, struggling, straining every raw nerve ending just to hold on.

There's a loud choke sound cut in half by a way too sharp breath. Like a sob, strangled and drowning and lost. My chest feels carved out by red-hot torches.

"It's okay," love murmurs, her voice silk-soft and soothing along my forehead.

I'm burning.

She's shaking.

I feel myself shake too, but her heaven-gentle fingers cool and console and make atonement in the dark. She feels and finds, and touches so easy. She pulls me up and out of the fire, and gathers me to herself while I'm still in flames.

"I'm right here," my soul tells me so quietly, brushing assurance with her lips and solace with her fingertips, fastening us together with sheer and absolute softness. So cool and clean and home, and I can't -

"I'm with you, Edward. Be here with me."

.

.

.

I push my hand through my hair and drop my hat back onto my head, unclipping my keys from my belt loop. "Alice, come the fuck on," I call up from the bottom of the stairs.

"Chill the fuck out," she snaps from her room. "Ribbons are important. Why are you in a fucking rush?"

Because it's baby love's birthday and I'm missing her fucking smile, is the truth, but I don't say anything.

Hood up, Al comes around the corner in my old camouflage cargos, carrying a box wrapped in Lion King colouring book pages and rainbow ribbons. I can't not laugh a little.

"Grab Mom's presents," she says, popping a bubble as she nods toward the dining room.

I step past her and shake my head as I turn the corner. Gift boxes are piled two on top of three, and there are bags in front of those. Mine and Alice's birthdays have never been any different, and as far as my mom is concerned, Bella's shouldn't be either, but she has to know we can't take all of these over to the Swans'.

Grabbing the pink envelope in front and the box directly behind it, I leave the rest for baby to open this weekend.

Bliss is sixteen today, and even though her mom has made spending school nights at home a rule this year, today was a birthday exception.

"I can have over whoever I want, or go anywhere. She said we can do anything I want," B told me last week.

We were in my bed and she was curled on top of me, knees bent around my hips. Her stomach was on mine, and her sleepy warm cheek and left little ear rested on my sternum. I slipped my right hand under her white cotton top, tracing the small dips in the bottom of her back while I listened to her talk.

She sighed and nestled closer, brushing her nose against my ribs through my shirt, settling her downy-hot hips against my hipbones.

She hummed and breathed, and was soft-spot-sweet home. "I just want you."

With my left hand loosely on the wheel, I pull gum from my pocket, thinking about her birthday three years ago. I remember how earnestly open and trusting her green-blues were when she said I can kiss you like she does. I think about her sneaking me into her parents' house less than twenty four hours ago so I could kiss her at twelve o'clock exactly.

"It's my birthday," she whispered last night, smiling a beautiful secret smile, arms around my neck, legs around my waist, her bottom on the very edge of the counter next to the sink. Her parents' downstairs bathroom filled up slowly with steam while she ran the shower to help cover our secret.

Looking down at her through unclouded eyes, I touched my nose to the side of hers and kissed her sugar-sweet sixteen mouth again.

"It's my birthday and I love you!" She squeaked in a whisper, beaming and bright when we broke for air.

"Shhhh," I whispered back, laughing, caught up in her elation. She held my eyes and all my love.

My life.

Baby holds everything.

She smiled high and hidden from the world as I picked her up, and she hummed as I brought our foreheads to touch, and our lips closer together. "Happy birthday, Isabella Bliss."

I sort of smirk in the car, turning left while Al plugs her phone in and searches for music. I think about how B couldn't stop glowing last night, and how she shined just as bright at school today. She spent every minute surrounded by my sister and their friends, and countless other people who wanted to wish her well and see her smile - and she did, she was undeniably everyone else's Bliss today - but every time she chanced a look in my direction, unallowed devotion was there, lit up and full in her eyes.

Maybe she doesn't say yes because she's scared.

Maybe she's being smart.

Whatever her reasons, Bella still isn't willing to try for me.

But she'll lie unflinchingly for us.

She can sneak and distort and conceal like nobody's business. Love's become a motherfucking artist at secret-keeping and today was just as flawless as any other. I kept my distance and watched with almost a week's worth of clarity, and hidden right there in smile-lit sight, was a love that was all my own.

It's laughable how unaware they all are. It would be funny, if I wasn't the secret.

I shake it off. Today isn't about that. Bella could have done anything tonight, had anyone tonight, and she wants me.

"Well, and Alice," she added that same night last week, when we were lying in my bed and she told me her mother gave her the choice. Cheek still over my sternum, she laughed, and the sensation vibrated right through her frame and into to mine.

I love that sound.

That sound thrills, enraptures and enamors. Love's lightheartedness impassions me like nothing else.

My heart pulsed under hers, steady and at ease.

It thumps behind my bones here and now, weak-feeling in her absence. I press slightly harder on the gas while Al touches play on the new Silversun Pickups.

I snort, cracking my window. Pete's been playing the shit out of this album for days. I roll my eyes and rub my forehead with my free hand.

I want a joint.

Or a cigarette.

Something just to cut the edge off impatience, but I don't need the chief or his wife to look at me with any more questions or judgments than they already do. So, I roll my window further down and take a hit of autumn nighttime instead, and try to make it enough.

October smells like cool concrete and dying leaves, fires and damp decay. It's not quite dark just yet, but the street lamps are on, making the orange and yellow and brown littered streets and sidewalks glow dirty gold.

I breathe deeper.

I wish we were walking instead of driving.

I wish I was with Bliss instead of my sister, and I wish we could just walk down the fucking street together with her left hand in my right, right where they both belong.

But we can't, and I wish she'd just leave with me already.

I can take care of her.

I breathe out. My lungs are stale and my sinuses feel brittle unwell. My skin sort of crawls, and inside, my heart is anxious for a rush. I sniff without even thinking.

Alice snorts under her breath. I glance over and she's shaking her head. "Don't fuck around," she says, anger and protectiveness heavy in her voice

She means the drugs.

She means don't destroy her best friendship by being a screw-up in front of Bella's parents.

I turn onto their street and shut the stereo off, stopping "Gun-shy Sunshine" before it even reaches the best part. I unplug Al's phone without missing a beat and toss her shit to her lap. I shake my head, like I'm the only one in this car that's keeping some damaging fucking secrets.

But I say "alright, kettle," instead, because we're all a bunch of hypocrites.

I say "sure," because there's no arguing with a mind so made up and a heart so dead-set on defending someone it feels and knows as family. As love. As all that's good in the entire world.

I don't argue, because I love the same blissful wonder she does.

And neither one of us is doing it right.

.

.

.

Renee answers the door with a welcoming smile "C'mon, come in," she tells us, pushing the sleeves of her sweater up as she stands aside.

I let Alice go in first and hang back a few steps, closing the door behind me while Renee pulls my sister into a hug. She kisses her pink hair and hugs me too. It's as wanted and strange as it is every time. Her sincerity is warm and unconditional, and the second I come into contact with it, I feel simultaneously undeserving and starved.

"Bliss is on the phone with her aunt," she says, turning and gesturing for us to follow her. "She'll be down in just a minute. Do you guys want something to drink?"

Al accepts and hands Renee Bella's gift. They small talk and I walk behind them, filling my chest up with the smell of vanilla-cinnamon candles and warm carrot cake. Simon and Garfunkel float from the record player in the living room, and laughter scratched by decades of lives well-lived drifts from the kitchen. We're about to turn the corner when true love speaks up behind us.

"Hey," she calls from the staircase, smiling birthday-bright as she rounds the last few steps.

I'm sure her mother and best friend turn to face her the same time I do, but I can't pay them any mind. For a second, she's the only thing in the universe that registers.

My heart beats.

"Hey, birthday-baby-baby!" Alice sidesteps straight past me to wrap her arms around B and greet her like they haven't seen each other in days instead of hours. I'm jealous, but I hardly feel it when I look at her. Baby open-mouth grins from ear to diamond-poked ear over my sister's shoulder. I feel almost nothing but love as I look.

Love, and gratitude.

And regard.

And soul-deeply rooted rights.

It's buried deep just now. I've got a handle on it, but I carry ownership and possessiveness of love behind my ribs. I always have. And no matter how far we get from each other, those rights never diminish. From every distance, she's always mine.

"Hi, Dusty," she says, her light-pink glossed lips curved in gorgeous gladness. She's wrapped in skin tight dark blue denim and a thin powder blue sweater so oversized, it hangs off her left shoulder, exposing fading summer-sun-freckled skin I know the taste of. She's radiating easy-going delight so warm I can feel it without even touching her.

"You got me something?" She asks, holding her hand out for the box and envelope I'd forgotten I was holding.

There's playfulness in her eyes. She knows Esme had to be at a dinner meeting with my dad tonight and that these gifts are from her. She opened my gift late last night, and when her fingers touched the pages, she smiled so hard her eyes glassed over.

"No way," Alice laughs before I can say anything. She tugs my girl's other hand and they both giggle as she leads her away and into the kitchen. "Those are from Mom. Wait until you see what's in this box, c'mere."

I follow with a smile on my face and longing tucked in my heart.

I shake hands with Bella's father's father and bend my knees even more than I do with her to hug her grandmother. Charlie nods when he comes in the side door and I return it, leaning back against the counter when my sister takes the last seat at the table to sit down next to her friend. Renee pulls cake from the oven and while it cools, I sip from the mug of coffee she hands me, watching in hidden adoration while her miracle opens birthday gifts.

Bella's grandparents give her a locket that's a generation older than they are. I'd unknowingly carried in a pair of Tom Ford cat-eye sunglasses from my mother, and there are lots of little things from her parents. She finally unties all the ribbons from Alice's gift last. From a bright yellow box that used to hold banana popsicles, she pulls out a gray hoodie with pale pink words on the side that look like Al stenciled and spray painted them there herself.

Lovin, is what I got.

Bliss laughs and her high spirits are so easy to get swept up in. I feel my smile in my cheeks and shared gladness in my chest. I watch her laugh and talk with her grandparents and my sister. Renee ices the cake while it's still in the pan and Charlie gets dishes and silverware. When it's time, I help her mom light sixteen little white candles, and when she sets flame to the last one, I take two steps back to flip the light out.

With the birthday cake in front of her, love glows candle light elegant and radiant red-blonde adorable. She takes all my breath.

It's perfect-quiet for second before Alice starts to sing and everybody joins her.

With the light back on, we eat homemade carrot cake that's still warm while Charlie's mom tells stories about when Bella was a baby. I breathe easy and let myself get caught up in the smell of cream-sweet spices and candles just blown out, and the sound of everyone my girl loves, laughing and carefree. Everything about the house around me feels like a home, spiteless and worryless, cozy with loving prudence and cherished memories.

But when the birthday girl and my sister head upstairs, to her room where I'm not supposed to follow - a room that as far as everyone here knows, I've never even seen, let alone made Bliss sigh and cry and chant my name like a fucking prayer in - I start to feel less at home and more out of place.

Charlie glances over as he sits down at the table. It's quick, but loaded with everything it carries. It's a glimpse of the same way I've seen my dad look at Jasper, but far less lenient. There's judgment in the square of the Chief's shoulders and decision in the set of his jaw, and in the two seconds he looks at me, there's warning.

While love's parents and grandparents talk, my rights and defenses prickle inside. I know I'm supposed to be here and I know I'm stronger than them. I know she's mine, but nothing stops encumbering discomfort from steadily sinking in. The cinnamon-tinted air feels heavier, taking the ease out of breathing.

I haven't touched her in days. I can't feel a single trace of her in my system, but I'm suddenly sure they can see her all over me.

And I can't be still.

I turn around and place my dishes in the sink. I pick up Bella's and place them there too. I think about washing everyone's just to keep from awkwardly standing around, but Renee gently stops me as I reach for my sister's saucer.

"Don't worry about those," she says, smiling warmly. I smile back, but guilt hooks me.

I want effort from Bella. I want her to try, but the weight and threat of choices I've made are tremendous and loud inside me now. Here in her parents' kitchen without her, I feel every shred of how unworthy and undeserving I always am of love.

As much as I want to, and do blame them anyway, I know I can't completely hold their wanting to keep her safe under this roof and secure in their arms against them. The world isdangerous and ruthless and cold, and this is the one place they know with one hundred percent certainty she's sheltered from it.

"You can turn the television on if you want," Renee offers. "You know you can make yourself at home."

No, I think. I can't.

There's one place that's home and she wants to keep it a secret.

"Thank you," I say, pressing my lips together for a second. Charlie looks over as he takes a drink of his coffee.

I can't stay.

Excusing myself, I step out the front door and push the heels of my hands against my eyes. I sit down on the top step, because I can't fucking leave either.

I try not to, because I know her parents hate it, but I give in after a few minutes and light a cigarette. I blow smoke out under soft-white porch light and inhale crisp night air. It's overly painful in my chest and the hurt is un-drug-induced. Every sharpened edge of my breath is all for love and it's unbearable to the point that I want to fucking cry.

I'm no good for her.

I'm all wrong.

But we're right.

I can't be without her. I can't, because being with her is as basic and fundamental as air and food and water. Her parents think she's sheltered here, but she's my shelter and I'm hers, and they can't protect her from me, because I'd die without her. I know I would. Hopeless and homeless, and wasted, and I can't -

The thought that follows is too crippling to even think.

So, I don't.

I blow it out and reach for another cigarette as I finish my first one.

I want to run.

I want to scream until my voice goes out.

I want to drown in coke and not come up until I'm fucking numb, and it would be so easy. Going to her right now would be as simple as that, and no one would have to know. I could take a bump from my glove compartment and everyone inside could go on with the conclusions they're already assuming anyway, and no one would actually be any wiser.

Except the one person it would hurt the very most.

Except everything that's beautiful and good and right in the world.

B would know.

She always knows.

She asks sometimes like she needs to hear me say that I have, but she always knows when I've been with her. Love and I are bound so closely that even when I'm gone miles away, I wonder if her heart accelerates when I get nose deep in a cut.

Staying put, I breathe out and rub my eyes some more. I take in another hit of autumn-tinted, most-sacred-day-of-the-year air and hold it. Cold nighttime burns in my lungs. My chest hurts, but not in a bad way now. As fucked as I feel, the bite of dead summer and coming winter is invigorating. It's proof that I'm still here, that she at least still allows me this near.

Nothing is any less complicated, but nothing is over either.

Just two more years.

Less than that if she leaves the summer after she graduates.

We just have to ride it out a little longer, and we'll be free.

I shift my feet down a step, stretching my legs and scuffing a chip in the old wood with the toe of my new shoe. The chip splits slightly deeper and leaves a scratch on the white bottom of my black-topped Circa. I lean down a bit and am trying to rub it off when I hear the door around the side of the house open and close.

Renee comes around the corner and I sit up straight, lifting my hand in a small wave. The porch light makes her kind of glow, and undoctored wrinkle lines from years of joy and worry, crease around the corners of her eyes as she smiles.

She waves back and I watch as she opens the left garage door. My grin takes over when I see the drop-top Rabbit parked inside. Oldand modest and sort of unconventionally conservative, it's nothing fancy, but it's safe. And kind of, sort of perfect.

I stand up on the top step, laughing through my smile just as the wooden front door open behinds me. Bella beams through the glass as she looks out, watching her mom back the car out of hiding and into the driveway. She's out-loud excited and truly grateful. You can hear it in her laugh when she beelines straight for the car just as Renee parks it.

Strawberry-blonde gets in, and she looks so pretty behind the wheel. My sore heart fucking skips and I feel her in every flutter-beat.

Alice gets in shotgun and they turn knobs and flip switches together, laughing back and forth in their own language. Charlie walks down past me without a word, without a look, to stand next to his wife outside Bella's rolled down window. They talk to her about safety and learning and rules, and B is happily full of thank you's..

When they're not looking, she shoots me a smile from the driver's seat.

I can't wait to kiss her right there.

.

.

.

A little over an hour later, the three of us are standing in the living room saying good night.

I didn't get Bliss to myself for a single minute. Not that I expected to. I knew what tonight was when I came, but parting from her is never really easy.

When she steps away from Alice to hug me, it's fifty-fifty torture and relief.

Even on her tiptoes, we're tall and small enough together that it's easy for B to hide her face in my neck for one unquestionable second. I pull a hit of tea trees and citrus and warm sugar.

"I love you," she whispers so quietly, rocking flat onto her feet again just as I feel it.

I press my lips together and push my hands into my pockets, rolling through the urge to reach out and bring her back to myself. I smile tightly. "See you, princess kid."

"Hey, I'm sixteen," she pipes up, flashing her pretty teeth without an ounce of hesitation. "Maybe you can't call me kid anymore."

Smirking, I take the opportunity to give her sunrise coloured curls a tug. "Kid," I say again, meeting her eyes.

Alice rolls hers, exhaling audibly.

Love shines bright. "See you guys," she says, waving as we head out.

Al and I are in my car about a minute before she has the same song I turned off on our way here, turned up again. I let it play.

We don't speak, but it's not tense. She pulls her hood up over her bubble gum pink and is wrapped up in her phone a few minutes later. The same time I reach for mine, my screen lights up with two new messages from Bliss.

I miss you already.

and

Come over tomorrow night. Teach me?

I glance left and right, and turn toward my parents' house. Teach you what, baby girl? I ask, just to be obnoxious.

Everything, her reply reads. Starting with how to work a gear shift.

I laugh under my breath and pocket my phone, waiting the few blocks until we're parked in my parents' driveway before I take it back out. Once Alice is out of the car, I read love's words again before I reply:

Tomorrow.

.

.

.

My heartbeat wakes me.

Before I'm coherent, I'm hard.

I have no idea what time it is and I can't even care. I turn onto my side and press my eyelids tighter closed, thinking about Bliss's smile last night, candlelit. I think about her whisper-soft lips and the muffled little sounds she makes when she's trying to breathe, when I give her my fingers.

My heart beats faster.

I push waking away and palm my dick through my boxers, while my consciousness spins with want and heat and memories.

I think about the second time I touched her, on the dock, and the first time I picked her up and slipped my hands under her dress. I think about her cold toes, and her warm laugh, and her belly button, how she circles for me and how pink she is, and I'm so hard. I'm so fucking hard -

I hear myself kind of moan.

I ache and close my eyes tighter, thinking about pretty pink and so soft. I think about how she's going to breathe and shake and cling to me the first time I push all the way inside her. I think about how absolutely, completely fucking pure and perfect and right she's going to feel that way. How mine. How only, only mine she is.

I groan and grip, and I want her so bad.

Here.

Right fucking here.

I tighten my grip and move with intent, but it's no use.

My phone vibrates loudly against my night stand, jarring me from my love-needing. I grit a curse between my teeth and my stomach clenches, and twists, and burns through the need to finish, but it's gone. I blink my eyes open and the dim light in my room stings my tired eyes. I close my lids again, pushing down on my dick until enough feeling courses back to my legs for me to stand.

Every morning isn't like this, but it's nothing new either. I've wanted her longer than I want to admit, even to myself. I've always known that she was made just for me, and needing her has kept me up and woke me up more times than I can count.

I take a quick shower and head to my closet to grab anything that's clean. I zip black cotton over a white tee-shirt, and tuck my wallet and phone with my habits into my back pockets before heading downstairs.

The house is empty. Everyone else is already gone.

Outside, it's cloudy. Everything is damp brown and frostbitten gray, but I still put my sunglasses on. October early morning is cold in my lungs and on my face. I pull my hood up.

I turn the key and check my phone while I let the Lincoln run. It's almost eight. If I left right now, I'd make it to first hour probably just as the bell rang.

But I don't.

I shuffle music on and turn About a Girl up low.

I glance in my mirrors and tug her from hiding.

It's been days, but I don't hesitate. I don't even think. I take a hit from my pinkie like it's nothing.

I do it again.

Left.

Then right.

Back to back, before the rush of the first fire has even burned all the way through me, I start another.

My heart makes haste. My whole body heats. I feel my pupils open wider. I'm rapt with unequivocal potential while the best-worst taste tingles on the back of my tongue. Scratchy guitars and screechy-gritty need for an easy friend sound louder around me.

I turn it up.

I'm late to school and I take her two more times in the parking lot before I go in, dauntless, unburdened, and complacently careless.

The secretary leers at me when I stride into the office without a care. Cold wind clings to my person, but all I feel is my pulse.

The look she gives me over her glasses blatantly displays her aversion to the fact that somehow, I'm still allowed in the building. I sign my name on the same clipboard I have a hundred times, like all tardy motherfuckers are supposed to, and give her a respectless smile. I drop the pen, making it roll off the edge and hang from the little chain it's attached to. I resist the urge to knock her cork board cubicle the fuck over and show her both my middle fingers.

Because fuck her and fuck this place.

It's a joke they let me get by with, just like my parents. I come in here and do exactly what I need to graduate, and show up a few extra days in-between to see Bella, and that's it, because that's the point.

She's the reason.

I don't have a clue what I want to do or be when I grow up, but I know I want her. And we can go anywhere. As long as we're together, I can be or do anything, and if that's not the case, we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it. Until then, she's the only thing I want and she's all I'm any sort of worried about.

The bell that ends first hour rings just after I walk out of the office. I take my sunglasses off, but leave my hood up while classrooms empty out. Chemistry is on the second floor, so I head toward the stairs at the very end of the hall.

I'm not expecting it - I don't usually see her until lunch, but my body picks up on love's nearness right before she turns the corner. I hear her before I see her, laughing.

Next to Leah, binder held loosely to her chest, B has on a light gray sweater and tight white hip huggers she looks poured into. Her pretty grin doesn't slip when our eyes connect, but her blue-greens flicker something more serious than what she's letting on.

My blood beats a stolen split-second faster through my veins as we walk straight toward each another. She's not going to turn and neither am I, and it's so double-edged.

I want her closer. I want her to walk to me, but there are too many eyes and ears all around. It won't really be her. This isn't really us, and with every peek in my direction, I can see something she needs to tell me.

Not that she would here and now, but we don't even get the chance.

"Dusty!"

I recognize the voice before I turn around to follow the sound, to see Kim walking in my direction. Her pupils are wide awake, but her pastel painted eyelids look beyond tired.

"Hey," she says when we're closer.

I nod, feeling love close the distance between us behind my back.

Kim holds on to her backpack straps, glancing around the hall before she looks at me. "Have you seen Vic?"

I start to roll my eyes, but drop my lids as I shrug and shake my head. I don't know when I saw her last, and I don't want to deal with this here and now.

"I can't get a hold of her. She won't call or text me back, and I haven't seen her since Monday." Kim continues talking and I feel Bella right before she walks by. She passes my right side without the slightest flinch or falter in the clack of her boot steps. It takes conscious control to keep from reaching out and stopping her.

Kim waits for me to say something.

I shrug again.

"I'm just worried, I guess," she says as she starts to walk. I step with her; it's the same direction I was heading anyway and it's not like I can turn around anyway. I kind of listen as she goes on and on, but I'm thinking about how I need to get to Bliss.

"She's just never stayed gone this long..."

Between wondering about love and wishing Kim would fuck off so I can go find her, I remember Victoria texting me late, late, late Monday night, asking me to come out.

I never replied.

"Have you tried Dim?" I ask, realizing when I hear them, those are the first words I've spoken all morning.

Blonde falls from behind Kim's ears as she shakes her head. "I don't have his number. Petey -"

I nod, knowing what she's going to say before she says it, because I don't want my girl talking to him either.

But that's the thing.

Vic isn't anybody's girl.

She's lone and inaccessible, and while the people that love her worry sick, she's probably the exact same place I go.

Gone.

Away.

Lost.

"That's probably where she is," I tell Kim, referring to Dimitri. "Don't worry," I add over my shoulder as I head upstairs.

She doesn't follow. I type out two messages on my way to class. One to Victoria:

Call your friend. She's scared.

And one to Bliss:

Talk to me.

I'm bored in chemistry and impatient as fuck for almost half an hour before my phone finally vibrates, but it's not who I want.

I'm fine, the devil says. Come over.

I slide my phone back into my pocket without responding, and tap my pen against my blank notebook page.

Another five minutes ticks by.

Ten.

Fifteen.

I slip from impatient to bitter and when baby finally replies, her words do nothing to allay my anxiety.

Don't be mad, is all her text says.

I blink slowly and drag my hand down my face. My temper burns. I sniff. I look up from the last seat in the back row and think about walking out.

Why? I text back.

It takes her more than a few seconds.

It's just a show. It's nothing.

I want to throw my phone.

I'm in the middle of asking what the fuck she's talking about when the bell rings. I pocket my phone instead and take the stairs back down to the first floor, where I know she's leaving English.

The back of her red-blonde crown stands out in the hall and I move quickly through to her. I feel my pulse quicken and my fingers curl with denied want when I make it to her side, and I know she feels it too. I don't see her like everyone else does. My regard goes incontestably deeper. I see her breathing change.

She looks up when we fall into step, but I don't look down. For her sake, I don't meet her eyes yet.

The library is a few doors away, and I walk with her until we're close enough to it that I can reach around her, in front of her, open the door, and push her inside.

I'm uneasy, and I don't give a fuck who sees.

It's stuffy silent in the library compared to the hustle in the hallway. The air feels warmer. Bella doesn't push my hand away from her back as I continue to nudge her, left then right. She moves faster, leading the way to anywhere we can be more alone.

"It's my birthday," she whispers sourly over her shoulder while we walk between stacks of books. "You can't be mad at me, remember?"

I grab her elbow and pull her down a forsaken aisle. We're surrounded by dust and dead poets nobody cares about. Right above pinned-back strawberry-blonde, Hemingway's name catches my eyes just before I look down into hers.

"Your birthday was yesterday," I tell her. "What the fuck is going on?"

She yanks her arm away, and opens the book on top of her binder to hand me two tickets.

To The Kills.

Tomorrow night.

And I know before she says anything, who they're from.

And I know she's right. I can't be mad.

I can't.

But I am.

I'm virulent under the surface. I'm beyond.

She's choosing this. And she's defending it.

To me.

"I thought you heard. Leah was talking about it when -"

I cut her hollow voice off, keeping my own low and calm. "You're not going."

She shakes her head. "Don't do this."

She holds my stare. "It's The Kills and it's a birthday gift."

She stands up to me. "And I want to go."

"You're not going with him," I tell her, knowing even as I say it that she can, and not only that, but she has no reason not to.

Because she won't say yes to me.

Suddenly we're back in my room. It's my sixteenth birthday and she's throwing a fit in my bed, trying not to cry, watching me leave anyway.

Love is the tables turned.

Baby snatches her gifts from my hand and stuffs them back into her book. "You know I love them," she says. "You knew I wanted to go; I've been saying so for weeks -"

I laugh. Out loud. I can't help it.

"Please," I say, extending my empty hands in invitation. "Why don't you explain to me how that matters?"

I shake my head, looking down at our feet as I place my hands on the timeworn bookshelf on either side of her face and lean in. She tilts her neck to maintain eye contact.

Her nerve is stunning. She's provocative when she's like this, brash and unhidden, an eye for an eye with me.

Measure for fucking measure.

But, I didn't want to fight today.

I'm tired from fighting.

"Why don't you just say it, B?" I ask quietly, dropping my stare from hers to look down at the space between us, burning the fuck up to close it. "You don't want this. Just say it."

She swallows hard. I see her throat muscles work. I watch her fingers clench and unclench, and curl into fists at her sides. Between her teeth, she practically grinds her whisper out:

"I'm fucking dying for this."

I snort, lifting my hands from the shelf and my whole self away. I have to, because I want to shake her. I want to knock the whole shelf down.

"Have fun with your boyfriend," I spit, turning on my heels, walking away, because it's not the same.

Dying for this love isn't the same as wanting it.

I leave her with moth-eaten hardbacks and fetid secrets, alone in the stacks. She doesn't reach out or make a sound. She makes no attempt to stop me, and I don't bother looking back.

.

.

.

When I get to my car, I don't know where I'm going. There's no sun out to be found or follow. I just drive.

I head south on US 101, toward the clouds and glance at my tank, good to go for more than a while.

I drive, and drive, but my pulse won't ease up. So, I crack my window and light a cigarette. I breathe menthol and carcinogens, and my head spins. Thoughts that torture twist with others I can't even bear.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I can't think.

I can't do anything but feel love not want me.

I grip the wheel and press harder on the gas. I merge onto Olympic and drive, and drive, and drive toward the Washington-Oregon border, because even though I hate it when she cries, even though her tears fucking scar, where were they?

My stomach knots and pulls tight. I take the first exit into Longview and park at the first gas station I see. It's rusted and run-down, and I lock the dirty bathroom door behind me before puking carrot cake and bitterness up.

I wash my face with cold water that smells like metal, and force Bliss to the furthest corner of my mind. And once she's there -

I cut cokeup and use her uncarefully, selfishly. I take and take, glutting myself until I feel nothing.

No sensation.

No sight.

No sound.

When numbness swallows me whole, I lift myself away from her and breathe out. And as I do, she breaks my ribs open and sets my mad-beating heart free.

Hurt is a memory, futility and insignificance, rumors I've never even heard as I swing open the bathroom door and walk outside. Autumn-sharp wind blows against me, cutting through my clothes, but I don't feel cold.

Leaving my car parked in the corner of the lot without half a thought, I pull my hood up and dig my hands into the front pockets of my jeans. I turn my steps right onto the sidewalk and head toward what looks like a main street.

I walk and walk just like I drove and drove.

I pass failing mom and pop shops, ten-story banks and private offices. I fall into stride beside the consumption-driven and the unsheltered hopeless. I step on trash, through traffic and across neatly kept lawns lined with struggling-against-the-frost flowers.

Their starving stems don't bend. They break under my steps.

Everything I set my eyes on is perfectly clear for seconds at a time, then blurs away. Nothing is actual. Every face is forgettable. And I fit right in.

As light starts to fade from the sky, I head west. White-gray gives way to gray-darkness and my phone vibrates in my pocket, pulling me from forgetfulness, back to myself.

But who I am is unwanted and worthless, nonessential. I don't want to be myself. So, I ignore the call.

I continue to walk and walk, eventually making my way back to the lot my car's parked in.

It's been hours, and I still don't know what I'm doing.

I head into the gas station under the jingle of bells against door-glass and am bombarded by the stink of incense, beer, and bleach. My stomach muscles twist-turn in on emptiness. I want to spit, but my mouth is dry.

The attendant yells at me from behind dingy-dirty and cigarette-sticker covered, bulletproof glass. "Hey! Take off your hood! You can't wear that in here!"

I don't look over. I push my hands into my front jacket pockets, causing my hood to tighten over my head and cover more of my face. I fill half a styrofoam cup with white cherry slush and walk to the counter without a word. Pulling out my wallet, I glance through the windows at the Lincoln as the man punches some numbers into a register.

"Is that your car?" The attendant asks.

Grabbing my cup, pulling frozen sugar through the purple straw, I continue to ignore him. Ice cold sweetness stings my chest as it cuts the chemical taste dripping from my sinuses.

"You can't leave your car here. We're having it towed."

He reaches for a cordless phone and I leave a twenty on the counter before walking out.

I stop at the next gas station to fill up the tank. The bathroom here isn't much cleaner than the first one, but it doesn't matter.

She doesn't mind.

She's unconditional.

I spread her, cut her, and take her hard.

Somewhere between my third and fourth line, baby's laugh swims through the lake of fire. For a second, I wonder what time it is. If she's at home. If she's with him. If her heart is burning too.

I take two more lines back to back, without even a breath. I hope it lights her the fuck up.

And I cut two more because why not?

She doesn't want me anyway.

.

.

.

The light coming in, even behind my tired-dropped lids, hurts. I press my hands over my eyes and curve onto my side, bending my knees up to my stomach. The truth is there before I'm awake:

I don't know where I am.

I force my eyelids tighter closed and bow my head, tucking my chin to my chest. I feel my hood over my ears and my sleeves around my hands. They hurt. I curl up. Nothing is familiar.

I don't want to know.

Memories open up like clouds and blur together like one long, convoluted nightmare. I remember dirty bathrooms and frozen sugar, and driving, and driving, and walking.

And walking.

I remember the hole in the wall club that smelled like cheap bourbon, and a crowded mess of forgettable faces. I remember how easy the X's on my hands were to scrub off, and a private little stall for just the two of us.

My stomach feels wrapped around wires.

I remember finishing her and looking up, into the mirror. My sunglasses were gone and so was all my colour. My cheekbones stood out in the green-tinted fluorescent light and my eyes looked born in black.

I don't know why I'm like this.

I curl tighter. My eyelids throb with my pulse. My head pounds retrospect I do not want.

The same giggle-snort sound that stood out in the crowd and caught my attention last night, echoes in my ear drums. It blurs from my mind, but leaves light yellow cotton, dark brown curls and small curves in its wake. The back of my tongue tastes like dirty cotton and misplaced resentment -

"You think you're a princess, girl?" in front of all her friends.

And "Don't lie," lower, closer to just her.

And "Your dress covers up some ugly fucking truths doesn't it? Liar," right against her cheek, just so she'd tell somebody. Just so she'd go find some douche-fuck to come to her rescue, because that was what I really wanted.

I swallow; the left side of my jaw is sore. There's pressure from leftover violence heavy on both my temples, but it wasn't enough. I remember standing over her knight and walking away.

I breathe out and remember I'm on some girl's couch now. I don't know how we made it to her apartment, but I sort of recall being in it. I remember that she wanted to fuck, and I just wanted to lie right here and think about what it all comes down to.

My heart struggles. The truth is excruciating.

I'm so fucked.

I'm so God damned fucked.

I breathe and it stings. My entire diaphragm feels bruised, from the inside and all throughout.

"Hey."

I blink my eyes open to purple terry-cloth and all wrong knees.

"You gotta get out of here."

Everything's blurry, but I see damp blonde.

"I have class in half an hour."

She walks away and I rub groggy and wayward coke-sleep from my eyes. There's early morning light coming in through translucent blue curtains and magazines spread out on her coffee table. Keys, an agenda for Lower Columbia Collegeand a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses are there too.

I grab her white plastic shades and am gone before she comes back out.

Even with my hood up and my sore eyes hidden from the light, morning is too bright and too cold, unmerciful and disorienting. I don't recognize anything I see and my head sort of swims, but as I start to walk, my body recalls steps my brain cannot. My feet know right where to find my car.

Alone in the front seat, I kick on the heat and exhale. I drop my hood and push my hands through my hair, trying to fully wake up. I lean back in my seat and stretch my legs, reaching for my phone.

Thursday, October 25th, 7:49 a.m.

Fourteen missed calls.

Eleven voicemails.

Twenty-nine new text messages.

Not a single anything from Bliss.

I press my lips together and grit my teeth. I'm every galling bit as mad as yesterday and equally rightless to be, if not even more so, because love is supposed to forgive. She forgives me, but this isn't the same.

It's just not.

The tables aren't turned, they're bad art. Chopped and reshaped, they're nothing like they once were.

This is different, and she knows it.

I clench and unclench my fists. My blood beats. I breathe.

I could head north, toward school, and probably make it in time for the second half of the day. I could go, and see her lit up like a fucking candle for him, and make like it's not killing me.

I could walk straight up to her and tell her I need her, in front of anyone and everyone.

I could just text her, right here and now, and tell her how much I love her.

But love takes two.

So, I start driving and I head north. Instead of contacting her, I tap out a message to someone I'd rather chew glass than let her talk to. And when I ask for his help finding this girl we both know, he calls instead of texting me back.

What are friends for?

"She's on her way," Dim says.

I can hear his grin and two or more sluts giggling in the background.

"Come on over."

.

.

.

I'm back in Forks, at this guy Embry's house because it's his friend's birthday, but I couldn't tell you who to save my life. In fact, there are probably only a very few things I could say with any certainty at this point, and up from down isn't even one of them.

Throughout the drive here, the morning sun gave way to darker clouds and colder cold. It's sleeting outside now, but it's easy to forget in here. Everything is warm and dry, and guitars layered over guitars buzz-thump in the air over the freezing rain and cricket calls.

I see laughs. I hear smiles. We're all high-lidded and heaven-forbidden. We're all lost, and I still fit right in.

Pete passes me the bottle of Black Label that's keeping me sedate while Ben sets fire to a blunt. Across the kitchen, Vic makes eyes I refuse to meet, and there is no shortage of girls slinking in and out of the semicircle we're standing in.

Fuck 'em.

I'm six feet deep in fuck-Bliss mode, which translates pretty unmistakably into fuck life and every meaningless aspect of it. So fuck everything.

Fuck her.

I pull smoke into my chest as deeply as I can, and then pull some more. There's a girl on my left I'm suddenly aware of, but don't recognize. She wasn't there just a second ago.

"Can I hit that?" She asks.

I blow smoke in her face while I pretend to think about it, then laugh as I pass the blunt around her, to Charlotte.

In the room to my back, someone ups the volume on down tempo blips that sound spun under water. Across from me, Janey pulls Ben's face down to hers and blows a raspberry on his cheek. I pass the bottle back to Pete. He's laughing. Everyone is. The young and the wild don't have a care in the world.

I turn, and I'm in the living room. I step inside and a hundred hard-beating, out of sync pulses surround me. When I close my eyes, I can't tell my own from any of theirs.

I rub my eyes, and I'm in some girl's room with Mixie and we're both face down in her. The door's locked and we're setting each other on fire, but there is no I in threesome.

I smoke a cigarette on the couch on the back porch, and then I'm back inside, climbing the stairs to the hallway on the second floor. Fingers slip pills over parted and waiting lips. Hands grip and hips grind. Red-shot eyes look to completely empty eyes for guidance and reassurance, and clean towels for bleeding noses. We are the youth, and we're knocking on death's door.

I sniff, and I'm alone with coke in the bathroom.

I check my phone. It's after one, and still nothing from Bliss.

My chest caves in around a beat. Bending to bear the pangs of discomfort, I close my eyes.

I don't know if I'm upstairs or down. I don't truthfully have any idea where I've been the last two days, but worse, I don't know where she is, where she's been. And all I can think are thoughts that make me seethe.

His arm around birthday-happy, high-shrugged shoulders.

His hand holding strong-small fingers and a so-soft palm.

The look in his eyes the night she gave him her kiss.

I choke when I try to swallow, opening and re-closing my eyes against tears so hot they're sharp. I swallow again, and push, and cram my fallow, good for nothing, constantly and inconsequentially breaking heart back down into my throat.

I lower myself and take, and take until she spins me safely numb again.

.

.

.

Downstairs, the music is still up, but not as loud. Or maybe I'm used to it.

In the living room, Vic, Embry, Pete, and Jess are on the couch, killing the Black Label. Pete finishes a message and rests his phone in his lap. Jess twist-finishes and lick-seals a joint.

"Come smoke this," someone says.

My eyes don't want to focus. I don't try to make them.

I sink down and lean back into the love seat by myself. My foot taps. I pat my knee, keeping the rhythm.

I can feel Victoria's black eyes scanning me, but I don't give her mine. I breathe smoke in and hold it, seeking disconnection. With each hit, I pull back, disentangle and cut myself adrift.

Pete's phone goes off, twice. I make my eyes focus long enough to see lines crease his forehead. He rubs his chin, and I look away because Kim's here, somewhere, and so is everyone else. I know who he's talking to.

I lean my head back and stare at the cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling. My awareness swims with want for total abandon. I can feel Vic's eyes, not letting up and I hear Pete's phone go off again with a message from my sister.

Who may or may not be with my girl.

Who doesn't even really want to be my girl.

Synth beats blur with melodramatic minor chords and I don't want to be here, but I can't go the only place I want to go, because I'm still angry enough to break beautiful bones.

I don't want to be here.

I don't really want to be anywhere.

And I can't even go home.

Unable to sit any longer, I stand from the sunken love seat and walk from the living room to the kitchen, toward the back door, on my way out again.

Anywhere.

It doesn't matter.

Just away.

It's practically pitch dark when I open the door, save for the faintest hint of slivered silver-moon light. Freezing sleet rains down on all sides of the rickety awning above me, making my vision want to focus even less, but I don't miss her.

The stranger to my right is a burning cherry and rising smoke, and I know she is a she without seeing any more of her.

She's silent, spindling toxins and I want that.

I want to be that.

The weight of how much absolutely nothing fucking matters consumes me wholly, and I step in her direction.

"Can I have one of those?" I ask, walking to where I can barely sort of make her out.

Abstracted and almost invisible in the lack of light, she's perched where the side and front porch rail make a corner and she blows smoke up, toward where the sky would be if we weren't covered. I can't see her eyes or much of her face at all really. Between the dark around us and my own haze, my eyes barely bring a pale throat under two tiny-beaded necklaces and pursed, poison-breathing lips into focus.

"Sure," she says, messy chopped black falling over her features as she ducks her head, and pulls a pack from somewhere. She passes me a stick and sparks her flame. The curve of her cupid's bow stands out in the small orange glow.

As I lean in, I catch her scent in the cold and wet. She smells like cough syrup and drywall, like rust and spoiled apples and nothing good.

I give my lungs cool smoke as I lean away, not to be further, but in an effort to better see her. But I can't. I can't see anything but her mouth, full of smoke.

It's so easy.

I laugh as I turn, stepping toward the edge of the porch to watch the freezing rain fall - not to be away, but to ignore her. Because it's the last thing she wants. And I know it.

It's dark all around, and quiet save for the sleet. Her silence says she doesn't care, and cold wind blows through me and between us, but ready, willing, and eagerness lingers.

My cigarette is almost gone when I hear shifting behind me. Illusory like a shadow, it's the sound of bare legs uncrossing and crossing again.

I don't even have to try.

All thoughts of leaving this place are long forgotten. I want to be in exactly this moment. I want to be buried and covered and taken all the way by right now.

Flicking the dead stick, I blow smoke out into the night. I hear her exhale and she sends her little ember flying past me, out into the darkness with mine. So small drops of ice water meet my nose and cheeks. My skin recognizes the cold, the wet, but neither goes through.

There's more shadow shifting behind me. Darker, it's less elusive this time, less of a sound and closer to the feel of simple instinct. It's the whisper of bare legs uncrossing and this time, remaining uncrossed.

"Come here," she says.

Her voice scratches the moment. I don't want her to talk.

I turn, unable to really see her, but I take steps toward where I know she sits. As I close in, I catch the dim silver, more pewter shadow slips of her ankles and bare heels. Her feet sway slowly, and her knees are just parted, not wide enough to fit me.

She smells sterile and filthy at the same time, like rubbing alcohol and sordid, squalid regret. She smells like the ebbing of life, and I want to know what the valley of the shadow tastes like. There's a pull about her that I feel commonality in, sameness, and I want to blind myself in her dust and ashes.

I feel her small sole slide against my right knee through my jeans, but this isn't hers. I nudge her foot away, and recognize it's cold like the sky falling around us, and it's just as insensible.

I speak low and even, the last words I want to say. "Give me another cigarette."

Her feet continue to slowly swing, and she sort of sighs, but she takes the pack out again and reaches to hand me one. I stand still, feeling her fingers brush my stomach and side through my layers as she searches for my hands. When her creeping tips touch my right thumb, I take the stick and bring it up with my lighter.

I breathe the smoke in and continue to stand still, within her grasp. I exhale through my nose, and when I inhale again, I can feel her scent like megadeath in my chest and in the atmosphere all around me. I can feel her heart, working without wanting to.

Every beat is an atrocity, unfit for goodness.

Licking my lips, I take a step closer to a pulse that sounds so like my own feels, like a wish for the end. The insides of her naked knees press and brush up against my hips. She shifts and opens, and breathes, and I don't have to do anything. I just want to drown, and she's all-encompassing.

From behind her, the wind blows icy rain across us both. I purse my lips, and breathe formaldehyde filled smoke across hers as I lean down.

Her mouth is soft, soaking-cold solace. Her kiss is an open grave, worm-eaten and welcoming, and I tilt her head back, wanting to tuck myself in.

My cigarette is gone and we're moving, stumbling and falling. One of her clammy hands leaves my neck, and I feel her, fumbling for the door behind me.

But I want to stay out here, in the freezing wet dark. I don't want to see. I want only this.

I push her hand and step, pressing her against the door and myself against her. Snow-bitten fingertips move back to my neck, under my hood and push it off. She lifts her left leg first, then her right, and part of her is not cold. The heart of darkness burns, and I grip with my fingers in as I push myself closer into her.

We turn, grasping, kissing deeper, falling further. Her mouth is bottomless and dangerous feeling, and I want her to engulf me.

I want to disappear, and she's oblivion, opening.

When she slides her fathomless lips and tongue from mine, I immediately want them back. But she bends and kneels, just like she should, and I welcome her descent.

I feel her pulse over my own as she covers me with her mouth and takes me into herself. Every part of me is hard, and every part of me throbs to the cumbersome beat of a purely self-seeking heart.

I feel every suck, every swallow, every perverted hum. She takes me all the way, and holds me under until I can't breathe.

I am not her first or her last, any more than she is mine, but she envelops me, and I let her. I revel in soft suffocation and bask blindly in the sweet sightlessness she offers. And when she slides her lips to the base of my cock and swallows one, two, three times, I groan; it feels so fucking good.

The breath I take in when she releases me tastes frost burnt and dirty, like autumn acid rain. Her hands are all over me, no longer so cold, stroking as she kneels up. She stands, dragging teeth and sticky tongue along my neck, pushing.

I push in the same direction and we fall further still, together down onto the couch. The scent of mildew and wet ashtrays rises as we sink together, stifling my senses. Her shadow weight rocks on top of me, but I want more. I want inside, and I know she'll have me, because death is like this.

Dripping.

Salacious.

All-taking.

Damp-hot cotton divides us from one another, but she slides and presses and strokes heat along me. I can't see a thing, but I close my eyes just to focus on and give over completely to the brimming, burning rhythm.

My hoodie's gone. She pants against my chest, through my tee-shirt, and I grip her hips, rocking her harder, pulling a raspy whimper from her throat.

She sits up and rolls her weight, girl-soft and shameless, against me. I feel indulgent pleasure vibrate in my stomach as I rock with her, welcoming dark, complacently lost until she shifts.

And I feel her hands.

I feel her pushing bothersome, lust-soiled fabric aside and moving to lower against me.

I grab her left arm and grip her hip, irritated that she's pulling from her depth and out of the moment. I don't say anything as I sit up, pushing her down onto my thighs while I reach for my wallet. She doesn't say a word as she takes the condom from my hands and puts it on me with her mouth.

Her cunt is fever hot, furnace burning and hemming me in circles. I grip her stomach, under her shirt, and ride enfolding, faceless, silk-slick wrongdoing as she rides me.

Every time she lifts, I breathe pitch black.

Every time she comes down, my stomach coils tighter.

Every thrust is an irreversible, unforgivable, completely conscious sin that twists and thrills, and fills me with miserable, insatiable lust.

My awareness falters and fumbles.

The girl with the pale ankles and a mouthful of smoke leans back, spreading her legs further, taking me deeper. She moans and her voice is the only part of her that's not soft. It's like fiberglass in my ears.

She slows down, way down, and I hear my own moaning too. She slides, God-awful and delicious and torturing.

It makes me dizzy in my clouds.

I blink, but can't see any more with my eyes open than I could closed. I hold on, meeting her slowly swallowing movements, but it's not enough.

I thought she could lead me where I wanted to go, but she isn't. My stomach is knotted painfully tight, and I want to come.

I turn her, and she moves more than compliantly, obscene sounds leaving her mouth as I push her top half into the couch and rise to my knees behind her. My stomach turns as I push inside, and she calls my name.

I don't know hers, and no part of me wants to.

I press a face I've never seen into dirty cushions, and clench my eyes closed.

I move without consideration.

I dig to forget, to disappear again.

I fuck with greedy, desperate intent.

And she comes.

And I hate it.

But I rock deeper, harder and harder, because I want to die.

I press down on her skinny back bone, right between her shoulders, and hold her hip so tightly my hand starts to cramp. She moans dark ecstasy and the start of my name over and over, and I want her to shut the fuck up and just take it, because this is wrong, and I know it, but I push.

And push.

And push with all of my muscles, feeling my anger in my throat more than I hear it, because I need to fucking come, and I can't.

I fucking can't.

Hatefulness consumes, and I push nameless and faceless away from me. I curse and stumble as I pull myself back, kicking whatever's nearby off the porch, out into the night.

I follow, blind in the dark, running on nothing but unaccommodating momentum and the sour taste of malignancy. Cocaine whispers and Bliss-ful assurances cloud together inside me, mixing up my steps.

I don't know how I make it to the Lincoln.

.

.

.

Less than twenty four hours later, I'm standing in my own bathroom with still no word from Bliss, and she's right down the hall.

I sniff. I rub my nose.

I still don't know what I'm doing.

Bella and my sister showed up a few hours ago. I was in the kitchen, filling a glass with crushed ice when I heard the front door open. I crunched two pieces between my back teeth just as they turned the corner with jackets still on and Starbucks coffee cups in their gloved hands.

Al rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she pushed her hood off.

B left hers up, watching me. I met her still so mad eyes for a second, then just let her stare, because even though my pulse was suddenly racing for home, fuck her.

She kept me in the dark for days. She can come to me every bit as easily as she thinks I can go to her.

"Do mom and dad know you're home?" Alice asked.

I laughed, tipping the cup of ice back for another piece. "What do you think?"

I walked past love without a look, let alone a word. Not acknowledging her was easy. It was not kicking the island over, grabbing her by the arms and jerking the truth out of her that was difficult.

I sniff again, pushing a hand through my second-shower damp hair.

The only thing that kept my anger checked in the kitchen, was knowing.

My pulse wasn't the only one affected when Bliss-baby walked in. Just like in the hall at school the other day, just like when I pulled her out of her princess bubble and into street light four years ago, just like when I brought that fucking lizard to her and Ally's picnic table when we were kids -

We've never not been this way: deeper than bones, soul-attached.

I realized it first, but I knew she felt it too, because the same cadence flows through both of us. I've always felt her current. We're cleaved at the heart, bound by rib-caged, fist-shaped muscles that beat our blood to the same tempo.

Livid as I still was, and still feel inside, I resisted the want to shake her downstairs. I didn't even look at her again as I left the kitchen, because I know.

She's mine.

And she'll come to me.

Tonight. In secret, because that's how she wants us.

And she can work for her fucking shakes.

She can earn every ounce of forgiveness, just like she makes me.

I'm in the bathroom, cutting coke into two skinny lines when I hear my bedroom door open and close, and I know it's her. My codependent rhythm tells me so.

Licking my lips, I listen for a minute, loving the fact that she's here. Even though she's a liar. Even though I'm still so raw. Even though there are a million reasons why she should be anywhere else.

I push my hand through my hair once more as I lower myself to use.

I rub what's left of her from the edge of my sink, along my top teeth with my thumb. I wash my hands and stand up straight, glancing my born-in-black eyes in the mirror before I open the door to my ends and means.

Her back is to me while she looks through the mess of unfilled-out applications on my desk. She's beautiful-soft looking with her red-blonde pulled up messy-high, and tiny purple flowers printed all over her white sleep tank. The top of her gray sweats are rolled down, revealing just the littlest bit of her back, and for a second I just want to wrap around her. And breathe together. And love.

For just a second, I just want to be held in love.

But then I hear "It's a school night, Al."

And "I don't want to be with you anymore."

And "I deserve more than you are to me."

And every "no" she's ever uttered, and I can't.

So, I step.

And she doesn't turn.

I step.

And she still doesn't turn.

I step right behind her, and over her shoulders, I can see her chest, rising and falling with quick-steady breaths.

My fingers close, containing the urge to grab and grip.

My arms tingle-sting, sore to encircle and fold closer, and hold onto.

And my stupid, stupid heart that never fucking learns -

She's a liar.

She's a fake.

My hopeless, unwanted fucking heart still flutters at her nearness.

Bella turns slowly and looks up. She stares into me, right into me, because chemically numbed as I am, I'm still ripped wide the fuck open.

But she is not. Her defenses are high, and mean, and love-withholding. She's miles from backing down.

I can't help looking from her eyes to her mouth before I snort, breaking three-day silence before turning away. "This is fucking stupid."

Walking around her, I sit in my desk chair and open the first book my hand finds. It doesn't matter which one. I'm behind in every class, and baby didn't come here to say she was sorry, or that she wants this.

She stays put for a second. I feel her. I feel how stubborn and stupid and wasteful this is on both our parts.

Then she turns and leaves without a word, and all I feel is missing.

.

.

.

Sleeping with her is fickle.

It's impossible to ever know how long I've been unconscious because it always feels like just a few seconds. I have no idea how long I've been drifting when I hear my door open again.

But I know right away it's love, and she's come just like I knew she would.

I blink and squint, leaning up onto my right elbow as baby girl slips into my room. I catch her moonlit outline in the glow coming through my window as she climbs onto my bed and crawls to me on her knees.

In the barely illuminated, earliest hours of morning and the haze of my half-sleep, I swim in the scent-feel-sound of love: honey-dipped tea trees, pajama softness, and small, needful inhales.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, crawling on top of me, kissing my chest through my tee-shirt. She pushes it up my stomach, where her tears make contact and cut like razors. I roll through solace under her though, and hold her close, because her cries are the first thing that have felt right in days.

"I'm sorry," she says again, kissing my heart through my skin, sending me further spinning, deeper swimming.

I'm dizzy in the very best way, and I groan as she kisses my stomach. It growls for nourishment, and she cries harder. She kisses softer, surrounding me in her warmth.

Living goes from stakes and pains, to utterly effortless.

I push her shirt up and off too, and let my hands find the full little curves of her belly and breasts in the semi-dark. She's cozy-warm, and home-welcoming, and perfect, perfect, perfectness. She presses and slides, and rocks softly, and need that I've carried for longer than I can remember aches hard against her so precious center.

"You know nothing happened," she whispers. Her tears have stopped, but her voice is still so sad. I know she's telling the truth, but I can hear her guilt just for going... for this, and I can't help it, it makes me unimaginably harder.

I shape my hands around her back cheeks, and press-slide her against myself, groaning again, this time in satisfaction. And love. And need.

Baby whimpers through her bit-to-keep-quiet lips, leaning down to hold onto my shoulders. "You know I love you. You know it," she says, kissing my chin. She doesn't fight the heavy-steady pace I'm building, but her voice strains. "Tell me you know it."

I turn my face away from hers, not ready yet. She moves in turn. She sits up, and I think she's going to let me feel her. I think about the rest of our clothes coming off, and my body throbs at the thought of sliding along her softness, soaking in where I need so badly.

But she doesn't stand, or take anything off. She shifts lower, kissing her way down my stomach. She kisses my fucking belly button and lower, over the waistband of my boxers.

My pulse rushes, and I'm deaf to everything else for a second, but I don't stop her. I'm curious, and I want.

When she pushes my boxers down and wraps her hands around me, my whole body rocks for her touch. She kisses my hip bones, and lower, above the base of my cock. She brushes kisses all around it, and I still don't stop her. Baby's luscious and penitent affection feels better than anything.

Leaning up onto my left arm, I cover her hand with my right, and hold my cock for her amends-seeking.

Love opens, and her lips are the softest, sweetest sensation ever.

Her first few kisses are beyond gentle, and so warm. She kiss-licks with sincerity and truthful, laid-so-fucking-bare want. I'd be insane to close my eyes, but even if I could, there's no way I could see anyone but crazy-beautiful, soulmate-baby on the backs of my lids. No way any part of me could be anywhere in the entire world but right here, right now.

Love makes my fucking fingertips tingle.

I lean back further, letting her say she's sorry with her soft-open kisses. She moves her hands to my hips, learning me with her lips while she shows me with her tongue all the love there are no words for. She kisses me deeper, and nothing compares to Bliss's open mouth, all over me.

When she leans up to take a breath, I stroke from base to tip and back again, watching her watch me.

When she meets my eyes in the night-glowing dark, she smiles, first-time shy and full of true-loving.

When my chest fills so full-up it's hard to breathe, I love the pressure. I love how baby girl fucking gets me.

Nothing even comes close to this. I've never, ever felt like this.

Tucking stray strawberry blonde behind her left ear, Bliss touches her tongue to me and hums. It's the same sound she makes when a song she loves shuffles on in my car, the same sound she smiles when I wake her with collarbone kisses. It's the same sound she exhales after I've tickled her breathless and I finally ease up.

She likes it.

I grin so fucking high I feel it behind my eyes, and for the first time since she opened for me, I let my lids fall under pleasure. I hum too, but I can't quite close my lips; so it's more of a moan. Love takes me deeper, and sucks so soft, so heaven fucking soft I could die.

I'd die for her.

She knows I would.

The thought pull-twists my stomach and all my muscles, and every one of my nerves, and I'm close. My spine burns, and hot chills slide down the back of my neck. I shake inside, and open my eyes, leaning up. I look down to see pouty made-for-kissing lips wrapped so pretty around me, taking almost half, and I want to fucking melt.

Love looks up, trust-open and love-ful, vulnerable and so unselfish. She lets me see just for a second before she bats her lashes.

And swallows.

And takes my doubt, beleaguerment and ability all together with her.

I stroke slowly with my right hand, right up to her lips, and my vertebrae liquefy one by one. Ache dissolves into rapture, and I hear my voice before I can think, without even thinking -

"Baby, baby, Bliss..."

She hums the same as when I pulled her from my ice-cold window I don't even know how long ago. It's a sound that's devoured by yearning, and pleading, revealing ocean deep desperation to be found and loved, and forever-kept.

"Bliss, fuck -"

Everything within me stretches and struggles, and when she slides her lips to the head of my cock, and covers the tip with countless little suckling kisses, everything escalates. No one's ever touched me quite like this, or loved me like this, or can be this except Bliss.

For a second, I go where nothing hurts or has ever hurt, and then in the next, relief rushes from behind my eyes and down my back so fast, so uncontrollably, it's frame-shaking.

Love shifts and covers me with soft hot lips, holding me with both her hands. Her hum-sounds echo in my ears and around the head of my cock as she makes every effort to kiss, and swallow, and lick, and swallow more, and kiss more, and accept all of me.

She's still adoring and I'm riding the last of my shudders when her chest-swelling, heart-entering, soul-filled and high-spirited-in-love laugh vibrates through her and into me, in-between kisses.

For the first time in days, I smile.

I can't even help it.

That sound consoles, encourages and enlivens. Love's easy peace of mind revives me like nothing else.

I love that sound.