I almost reached for his hand again. I didn’t, but I thought about it. A thousand times.
He told me he’d thought about me.
Like it was nothing. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like I hadn’t disappeared without explanation. Like I hadn’t ghosted him for an entire year. Like I hadn’t almost destroyed everything.
I sigh heavily. I had such a wonderful night. It was pretty much magical. Flyn was great company, as always. I should be still glowing. Singing. Walking on clouds.
So why has the strange melancholy settled over me? It feels like I’m suffocating. Or drowning. Weighted by all the things that can never be.
Dinner. It was just dinner.
Yet it was also a taunt and a tease. A glimpse of how my life could be if I were normal. If I wasn’t half-fey, if I wasn’t a former sex slave, or the person who nearly destroyed the world. How, if I were none of those things, I could go on nice dates with wonderful men and maybe fall in love. Perhaps build a life together. A life of simple domesticity.
A home, a garden. Coffee on the porch. Hurried kisses before work. Arguments over the dishwasher.
But that’s never going to happen. Because I am all those things and that’s an awful long way from normal.
I run my hands through my hair, pulling just enough to feel the pinch. I’m pretty sure my stupid longing has already moved past,‘dates with wonderful men.’My wishful thinking has already repainted all those,‘arguing about whose turn it is to load the dishwasher,’daydreams. The images are no longer merely somefaceless man.
It’s not a blurry figure kissing me good morning. It’s not a vague man holding my hand. It’s not a shadowy outline sitting next to me in the cinema.
It’s Flyn, in every single image. It’s Flyn.
My mind has moved on from wantingsomeone,to wanting Flyn.
After one coffee and one dinner.
I really am absurd. Ridiculous. Pathetic. I need to get a grip. If I want to be normal, I have to start by at least acting the part.
I drag myself out of the kitchen, the wine glass abandoned. My legs feel weirdly floaty, my chest tight. I pass the dark living room, climb the stairs and push open my bedroom door, stepping into the quiet.
I flick on the lamp beside the bed, but the warm light doesn’t help. The shadows still feel like they’re watching me.
There’s a mirror across from the foot of the bed. I catch my reflection as I move. And freeze.
I look human enough, I suppose. Myothernessis usually translated in human minds asattractiveness.They choose not to see that my cheekbones are a little too sharp. My eyes a little too large, too bright. They don’t see the inhuman.
But I can still see it. I feel it. Like something just behind the skin, pressing up against the mask I’ve forced it to wear.
I hate mirrors. I hate seeing myself and not knowing who’s looking back.
I sit on the bed, hoodie pulled tight around me. The room’s quiet, except for the faint creak of the floorboards settling and the city murmuring through the window.
I pull my phone out of my jeans pocket and throw it down onto the bed beside me. I stare down at it and it glares back up at me.
New phone. Sleek, expensive. Uncomfortably large and a little too heavy. It scans my face now to unlock, and every time it does, I want to throw it across the room.
Because what it sees, what it records, is a lie.
But I pick it up anyway. Out of habit. Loneliness. Hope.
The message is still there.
Flyn,‘Thanks for tonight. I’m really glad we caught up. :)’
The smiley face ruins me.
Like it’s casual. Like he’s not curling in my thoughts like smoke. Like I didn’t sit across from him tonight and nearly say, “You’ve made me feel like I’m not broken.”
