It’s dark blue with very subtle shades of green.
When I found it at a store a year ago, I knew I had to have it.
I knew it was for me.
For the brokenhearted girl that I am now.
Something flashes in his eyes, something heavy and grave, and before he can say anything, I continue, “It’s my favorite lipstick. It suits me. Don’t you think?”
I’m not sure what I expected him to say to that.
But he does say something and he says it with that same heavy look in his pretty eyes that gets my heart racing. “It does.”
Chapter Four
The Hero
The first time I saw Calliope Juliet Thorne was when she was six and I was nine.
Until then I’d only heard rumors.
I knew that people called her the Thorne Princess.
The little sister of the four Thorne brothers.
People said that she could melt the snow with her sweet smiles. She could melt people with her shining blue eyes. Especially her brothers.
Whose hearts she held in the palms of her hands.
When she danced, people watched. When she spun, people stopped moving. They said no one danced like her.
The first time I saw her, that’s what she was doing.
Dancing on the playground, by the rusted swing set.
I don’t remember a lot about that day but I do remember watching her. No one had to tell me who she was. I already knew.
Because I couldn’t stop. Watching her, I mean.
I couldn’t look anywhere else when she leapt and jumped and spun on her toes.
And then I remember walking toward her.
I don’t know what made me do that but one second I was standing still and the next, I’d started moving.
It was as if she was gravity.
A blue-eyed, blonde-haired force of nature.
And good thing too because somewhere in her spinning and leaping, she lost her balance. But I got there just in time to catch her.
I grabbed her arm, and this part I distinctly remember.
Idistinctlyremember leaving muddy fingerprints on her skin, on her dress.
I remember dirtying her up because I guess before I saw her, I was playing ball or something and my hands were all messed up. I remember wanting to snatch them away, to keep her all clean, and yet all I did was hold her harder.
And when she stared up at me with her big blue eyes and said ‘thank you’ in a voice that reminded me of the cotton candy that my sister liked, there was no chance that I was letting her go.
