Penn, what did he do?
It’s more of what did he say more than do.. It was the vulgar words that came from his lips. Lips that used to kiss my skin and now my skin crawls at the thought of it.
Not Pillow talk then Peach?
I ask her, walking from the massive window overlooking the harbor.
I wish you could see what I’m seeing right now, Peach.I type fast, my body humming for her. She is paradise, a place so pure I hate he has made her soul his private war zone and plays her like a toy gun.
That’s right, where are you? It feels like ages since I’ve seen you.
Pulling my lip between my teeth. Sucking the scotch from them. I can’t tell her she will know I’m more than what I’ve told her. She will know I’m a liar and a liar is not what she needs. She needs a man. A man who has loved her since he was four years old and he’s wasted so many days, months, years. She loved, lost, cried and laughed without me there and it’s the pain she endured that makes me so mad for not saving her, fighting for her when I should. But I didn’t, I flew a white flag and allowed the jock to break the princess who he should have made a queen.
I’m nowhere too special, Peach. I just wish I was with you is all.
So, no mystery girl wearing forget-me-nots that I have to worry about?
Her question has a smile pulling at the corner of my lips as I slip my body from my suit.
Oh Peach, if only you knew.
Knew WHAT!!!
“Shouty capitals now?Fuck, Peach. Calm down.” A smirk tugs at my mouth even as my chest tightens around the truth I’ve avoided for years.It’s nothing. No one. Well… she was someone once. Someone I watched grow and fall apart and stitch herself back together in ways that made me ache. Someone who kept trying to change pieces of herself she never needed to. And I stupidly kept begging her in silence not to. Because she was already everything.
Steam spills over the bathroom as the shower heats, fogging the mirror, turning the small room into a confession booth I never planned to step into.
I can picture her in her room reading my message the way her breath would catch, her lip pulled between her teeth, her fingers trembling over the screen as she overthinks every syllable.
That thought alone has my cock thickening, throbbing with the frustration of wanting what I’ve never let myself touch.
I brace one hand on the tiles, the other brushing down my torso, imagining the way her eyes would follow the same path if she were here. God, the way she looks at me like she’s memorising each line and fighting herself at the same time it’s enough to ruin a man.
My phone buzzes.
I wish I knew this woman who had so much of you, Dane.
The hurt in those letters slices straight through me. I dip my head under the spray, letting water pound down my neck, trying to tame the need clawing up my spine.
I type back:
You did know her, Penn.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Reappear.
I wish I was her.
A punch to the gut.
Peach… you are parts of her you don’t even see. The soft parts. The fierce ones. The ones no one gets close enough to touch.
I drag my palm down my stomach and wrap it around the ache between my legs. Slow. Controlled. The way I imagine touching her for the first time, gentle, reverent, with my whole fucking world in my hands.
Another buzz.
Stop. You’re taking the air from my lungs. I don’t want to cry over a ghost.
She isn’t a ghost.
