Zero stars. Do not recommend.
His eyes catch mine across the room again. Stupid, beautiful boy. Even as something vital splinters inside my chest, hunger claws through me at the sight of him.
Not just hunger of the body, but something deeper. Something threaded through my bones, my lungs, the very core of me. As if our souls are knotted in ways reason would never accept.
He flings the plushie onto the table like garbage, like it’s nothing, and something inside me finally shatters. Not with noise. Not with violence. But quietly, like glass falling underwater and drifting out of sight.
Birdie’s talking to me, I think. Her voice swims somewhere distant and distorted, syllables melting into meaningless noise.
Floating away.
That’s what this feels like. As if I’m drifting outside my own body.
Floating.
Floating.
Floating.
The next time I blink, I find myself outside. Heat crashes over me, the brightness stabbing at my eyes as I whip my head from side to side, searching.
Shadows.
I need shadows to disappear.
My thoughts spark and fade like faulty wiring, my body steering me home on autopilot.
Damon used to talk like that. Call me crazy. Or say I’m pathetic. Worthless. The apologies would always follow. The love bombing, the promises never to do it again, his insistence that he loved me so much no one else ever could. But then he’d claim it was the only way he knew to show love. Over and over, I questioned if he even understood what love meant, because it never looked like what he gave me. Love, I used to believe, was beautiful, wild, passionate. That it was something that left you breathless, never hollow. It never bore bruises, never struck with fists, never locked you in a cage.
My steps falter when my porch comes into view. Yellow and orange marigolds lie crushed across the wooden slats, tiny explosions of violence against the calm.
I stare, trying to untangle the meaning. Flowers bearing my name, broken on my porch. It should scream a warning, set off alarms. On another day, I’d know to run from the danger they spell.
Everything inside me is muffled, my mind swaddled in thick cotton. I climb the steps, gently nudging petals aside with my boot as if they are just scraps on the wind.
I have enough conscious thought to check my cameras. Not that I really trust them much anymore.
The alarm blares as I step inside, but my fingers silence it on instinct. I drift through the house like a ghost, gliding to the pantry for the broom before floating back to the porch.
Sweep.
Sweep.
Sweep.
Flowers gather into a small, broken pile.
Crushed.
Damaged.
Much like my own heart.
I crouch, knees protesting, and let my fingers sink into the velvety petals. Bruised, yet beautiful. My thumb lingers, tracing proof that broken things can still be lovely. Damaged things endure. After darkness and pain, even after monsters, beauty clings to life with fierce defiance.
Once the porch is swept and the security system rearmed, I collapse onto the couch, staring into nothing, trying to piece together the fragments of today.
My phone buzzes in my fanny pack. When I pull it free, Tomcat’s name blazes across the screen.
