Rima was sizing him up, and she made no effort whatsoever to hide the fact from him. Twice her eyes scanned him slowly, the downturned corners of her mouth telling him without words that she did not trust him.

He tried to play it nonchalantly, his expression the perfect balance between apathy and mischievousness. It was that precise control of his emotions that made her wary, the way that he could control even the minutest quirking of the brow into exactly what he wanted to convey. She envied him for it just as much as she distrusted him, knowing that any displeasure or joy would be broadcasted across her own face whether she wished it or not. She watched him lean back against the protective rail of the roof, the line of his body speaking of languor, and ruffle through his dirty blonde hair with his free hand. “Like what you see?” he asked.

She didn’t humor him. Rima merely snapped her eyes to him and scowled, feeling the venom of her expression sinking into the lines of her face. She stood at least six or seven feet from him, every part of her held rigid as she glared.

He chuckled and shook his head. “You’re very ugly when you do that.” He said it matter-of-factly, his voice light enough that it didn’t quite sound like an insult, but she took it as one anyway. “It’s your eyes, I think. Too amber. When you frown, it makes you look savage,” he pauses to gauge her reaction before continuing with a baleful grin, “and, of course, we know that’s my job.”

Rima tried very, very hard to keep the fury out of her expression, to make sure that he did not know that his veiled threat had upset her so, but when he laughed she knew that she had lost the battle of tamping down her emotions. She felt her cheeks flare and her ears burn, the blood pounding through her making her feel like the world would start spinning.

He pushed off the wall and took a step forward, prompting her to step backwards. His eyes flicked to her backpedaling feet before focusing again on her face, a smile that was by no means friendly spreading across his lips. “You were quite the chatterbox downstairs with your brother. What’s wrong? Lost your nerve without your safety net?”

“I could kill you.” She blurted the words out without thinking about them, but the moment they were spoken she wished desperately to fish them back, to push them into her mouth with both hands and swallow them so that they burned in her stomach instead. She could kill him, yes, but only if he didn’t kill her first. Quickly, Rima tried for bravado. “I could set you on fire. You’d be a pile of ash before you knew what was going on and even you can’t come back from that. I could kill you, Elias. I could.”

He stared at her a moment with wide eyes, his eyebrows lifted in surprise and she had a second to wonder if he meant for his expression to look that way before she was flinching at the sound of his laughter. It was not a nice laugh, Rima decided. It wasn’t husky and infectious but rather dark, clanging like metal and much too sharp. It sent shivers down her spine but not in a good way, not at all.

She would never admit it out loud, but Rima was afraid. And as Elias continued laughing, bending at the waist and clutching at his own stomach, she felt herself becoming more and more scared, felt the blood draining from her face as she moved two more steps back.

And suddenly, he was a blur, wicked fast as he slammed her back into the metal door that lead downstairs. Her head cracked against the metal and throbbed, but as black danced in her vision Rima was still coherent enough to realize that this was not safe, that he was a vampire and the fact that he had covered the roughly twenty-foot distance in the blink of an eye did not tip anything in her favor.

He had his hand against the column of her throat, not choking, but firmly enough that it was uncomfortable when she swallowed. His fingers were a vice on her jaw, pushing her head back against the door and Rima was scared, so, so scared that he would pull her forward only to slam her back again. His other arm was braced above her head, leaving her hands free but Rima knew, without a doubt in her heart, that Elias knew how terrified she was, knew perfectly well that she was so frozen in her fear that she wouldn’t lash out, not now. He leaned in close to her and her lip trembled, her heart battering in her chest as she wrenched her eyes shut, feeling tears well in them.

“I should rip out that smart tongue of yours,” he whispered, the scent of blood and wine on his breath washing over her. “It’d be a wonderful trophy to present back to my sire, wouldn’t you agree? Her little firebird silenced so that it couldn’t yap about how it could kill a vampire.” His fingers tightened and she let out a little sound of protest, keeping her eyes resolutely shut. “Your fire, you have to mentally will it, don’t you? You have to see in your mind’s eye someone engulfed in flames before it actually happens. Fine and dandy when you’re using it against someone who’s your pathetic equal, maybe even a sluggish werewolf if you’re lucky. But a vampire? But me? You’ll be dead before you can even conjure my face in your mind, Rima. Don’t forget it.”

His laugh in her ear made Rima nauseous, and she felt the traitorous tears roll their path down her cheeks, felt the vibration of Elias’ laugh in his chest and she hated him, hated all that he was and all that he stood for.

“Let’s hear you say it,” he murmured. “‘I won’t forget, Elias.’ Go on. Say it.”

She opened her eyes, the world blurry through tears, and saw the feral planes of his face in front of hers. She tightened her jaw, her lips pressed together, and Elias’ eyes narrowed when he saw the show of defiance.

Just as she had earlier feared, he pulled her forward to knock her back into the door and the sob that flew from her lips made her burn with shame. “Say it!”

“I won’t forget!” she cried, the words ragged and shrill, “I won’t forget, I won’t forget.”

He smirked at her and released his fingers. Though he backed off of her, Rima was too frozen with shock to move, pinned still by an invisible body. Her breath came in and out of her erratically, the sheen of cold sweat on her face catching the dim evening light. She stared at him, the tears still making tracks down her face, and shuddered when he smiled a bright, friendly smile in return, as if he hadn’t just all but concussed her.

“Good.” His hands slid into his back pockets as he cocked his head at her, the smile still fixed. “Make sure you don’t.”

He smells like petrichor and has a thunderclap smile, there and gone in the time it took you to blink. He makes her feel like running sometimes, the same way she ran to get out of the rain (but she usually doesn’t run from fear of seeming silly, childish). She doesn’t run in the rain, and she doesn’t run from him.

He touches her and it makes her think flowers will bloom along the path his fingers trace. She smiles, leans into his touch, (it’s not as romantic as it sounds, though, in fact it’s rather sad because her skin is barren and cracked and flowers will never bloom in that type of ground) and imagines. He leans in close, whispers in her ear, and she can’t make out the words he says but figures that if she thinks of the sound of rain on a tin roof, it’s close enough.

He has a funny habit of lingering too long on things that don’t matter and not long enough on things that do. He’s a bit too volatile for her taste, a little too sharp (sometimes the things he says wounds her, but she’ll smile and carry on regardless because he doesn’t mean it, the words out like a lightning bolt before he can think, and he always apologizes afterwards) and she figures that he’ll ruin her but she’s always liked the feel of rain on her face.  

Somehow, she stands resolute against him (granted he batters her some days more than others, but she has yet to crumble) and when he marvels at her strength, she’ll just wink (because she knows it’s not strength at all but rather fear—she won’t fall simply because she doesn’t know how).

He’s rain (she’s not, but she isn’t sunshine either) and he makes her feel, even if it’s just the feel of the pressure before the hurricane, the eerie calm before a sudden gale. He’s not anything she needs, but she contends the fact that he’s just enough of what she wants (because what she needs, she decides, she will find in herself) and that, to her, is plenty adequate (neither a storm nor a drought but a drizzle).

Wyatt figured it was either a very odd turn of events or the world’s cruelest practical joke that he should be in a grocery market helping his friend buy the food for a birthday party that would also covertly celebrate his friend finally getting the girl—

that he used to, still does, love.

He wandered the aisles with his friend, eyes flicking over but not taking in the multitude of colored plastic plates and it wasn’t until the other man tapped him on the shoulder that he realized he was trying to get his attention. “Sorry, what?”

The other man frowned at him, annoyance flashing momentarily in eyes that were almost too blue. “I said, do you think I should get the red plates or the blue? Or maybe the clear, now that I think about it…”

He raised an eyebrow. “Travis, man, since when in the hell did you care about what color plates to get?”

Travis smiled, a little hunch in his shoulders telling of his sheepishness. “I don’t, but, y’know, I wanna get something that’ll make Cybele happy. I mean, it’s only been like four months so I’m not sure she’d care but don’t women usually get really picky about that? I know Diana was.”

“Cybele’s not Diana.” The words come out startlingly brisk, even harsh, and the tone of them surprised Wyatt. If Travis even noticed, he did a fine job of not showing his surprise.

He saw the slow, private grin that slid across Travis’s lips and had the sudden, almost overwhelming urge to slam his knuckles into Travis’s mouth. “No,” Travis murmured, sliding the clear plastic plates from the shelf, “you’re right. She’s definitely not.”

This was insane, thought Wyatt. How was it that Cybele had never told Travis? How was it that, with all the billions of people and trillions of circumstances, that the stars would align and he’d find himself in the presence of the one girl he’d ever wholeheartedly loved with her current boyfriend, who happened to be his best friend from college, reunited through work and the most uncanny coincidences? And most of all, how was it that he got wrapped into helping buy the damn party supplies?

Travis looked him over after pitching the plates into the cart. “Hey, man, is everything okay? You look kind of pale.”

Wyatt looked away. ‘I look kind of pale because I know that your girlfriend doesn’t like crunchy peanut butter or blueberry muffins but she does like cream cheese with Ritz and refrigerated brownies. Not to mention the fact that I also know exactly where to touch and where to kiss and what to do to make her breathless. Do you?’

“Yeah,” Wyatt said, shaking his head. “Everything’s straight.”

Placing his hands on the shopping cart, he pushed resolutely through the aisles, walking past boxes of Ritz and brownie mix as Travis scrambled after him.

I am not a poet.

I am not a poet because the brevity terrifies me, because the beautiful schooling of words into neat verses and stanzas is something I am incapable of doing. My finesse is not gossamer-fine and springtime delicate. It is not feather-down soft and mist fragile. It is loud, it is rough, and mostly it is ugly.  Sentences often run into words and squeeze between commas and semicolons and in poetry, it is clever, it is an enjambment, but in prose it is sloppy and unrefined, a run-on that is an indicator of untalented work. My protagonists flounder as they drown in words and half-formed plots, twirling amongst words like treacherous, perilous, and risky while reaching, straining for triumph and sanctuary.

The middle is not so much a brief interlude as it is a monolith of—unnecessary—action. No one’s thoughts are cohesive, none of their choices matching with their thought process. Nothing makes sense, everything is a tumble and whirl of past participle and verbs and adverbs, and as I read over it I only realize that I cannot be precise and exact as those blasted, beautiful poets. 

The ends are even worse, because they are neither thoughtful nor clever. They are not provoking, but instead pathetic. They usually cause someone to wrinkle their nose, to wonder ‘That’s it?’ and decide, resolutely, that what I thought to be profound is merely a cop-out.  

For that reason, I am not a poet. I am not, I am not, I am not.  This here, my friend, is a cop-out.

It is a quiet night, the kind where the silence makes you shiver and pull the blanket around your shoulders, up to your chin, and withdraw into yourself, because it is a night meant to be solitary. If it is clear enough, I might throw back the curtains of my window and stare up at the dark sky, counting stars and taking note of the crescent moon as I fashion a lingering cloud into a unicorn, a shoe, a leaf with my mind. 

You will not cross my mind. I will not trace your name in the twinkling stars and I will definitely not press my hand against the cold glass to imagine that, maybe, you stood on the other side of my window, dark and unseen and, most of all, intangible.

When I lay myself down to sleep, burrowing myself into a feather coverlet that does nothing to mimic the warmth of a body, I will not think of the muscles that ripple in your back when you stretch over me to switch out the bedside lamp when I’ve drowsed off, barely awake and mostly asleep. I will not feel a phantom kiss pressed against my temple and my mind will most certainly not conjure the sound of a deep, husky chuckle that is roughened from two parts whiskey and one part cheap cigarettes.

I will lay alone, curled on my side with my eyes squeezed shut in vain hopes that if I bolster every flimsy inch of me with comets and steel-satellites and grind my teeth to the point that the dull, radiating pain will remind me that I will not miss you.

Does it work like that? If you wish it and want it—your heart, I mean—will it cease mid-crack from breaking? Will a fissure form right down the middle of it, between a ventricle and an artery and travel and grow, but eventually stop a centimeter, a millimeter from splitting it right into two because you said, “No, heart, not today. Today, today my friend you will hold.”?

As I lay on a mattress that is entirely too cold and a tad bit too soft, tracing circles with my finger into a pillow a bit too warm and entirely too firm, I will figure that it doesn’t quite work like that, that the world isn’t quite as kind as I hope it to be.

Alone, cold but not frigid, melancholy but not devastated, I will figure that there are worse things than heartbreak and that, should I want to learn to live without you, I had better start now.

Rolling onto my stomach, I’ll lean over and turn out the lamp with the very tips of my fingers, let my hand wander to the window and linger on the cool pane but not touch the glass, and then return nearly every part of me—heart excluded—into my warm bed.

I’ll close my eyes, heave my last sigh of the night, and fall asleep to thoughts that are not sorrowful, but ruminative, and not for the last time wonder where you are, if you’re dancing with girls made of fairy dust and dreams or if you, too, have fallen prey to a loneliness that you’ll nurse with fire and ill-disguised vehemence.

Whether you want to or not, you will sing for me beautiful things. I will wrench your jaw open, hold it there with steel and iron and with my bare hand clawing into you, I will pull the kindness out of your body that you have so firmly ferreted away. I will ignore your gags and your choking just as you have ignored the cries of those around you, their crestfallen smiles and their dying glimmer.

You will be benign; I will make you so.

Once I pull it from you, I will dash your rancor to the ground, watch it shatter like clouded crystal and I will not flinch when you scream around my metal pry, the noise vibrating against the bars that lock your mouth widewidewide open. Bile will rise in your throat—I figure that bitterness acted as a stopper—and flow out of your mouth to stain your tawny dress, dripping like acid down your front as you moan and writhe against me. I will not smile for this is not happy work but instead merely work.

I will dig my hand into that cavern where your heart should lie. My fingers will tear past flesh and cloth, puncture meat and muscle and you will curse at me, your tongue forming noises that your lips cannot finish, the syllables broken and feral as they fly into the air. My hand will fist around malignancy twice as large as a human heart should be. Around the narrowest part I will squeeze my fingers, and with a brutal sudden jerk, I will tear it from your ribs and your body as your arch your back to try to keep it within you. The laugh to escape my lips is cold and without humor. I will set the still-beating tumor beside my foot to burn later.

You will be but a ruin, with your burning eyes and blackened mouth and gaping, twitching, open chest. I will stare at you, contemplating, and for good measure I will tear that profane and godless tongue from your jaws, feel your teeth scrape away my skin as I jerk my hand back. That I will throw far, far away, so that your words will hurt no one forevermore.

My work will be finished, then, and I will stare down at you as I stand. Your breaths will be harsh and rattling, your eyes glassy and delirious with pain and humiliation. I will shake my head, wipe my stained hands on the front of my pants and collect your tumor in one arm.

I will walk away, because even without your mangled heart and your malice and your vitriolic tongue, your soul is still an abomination.

And I, perhaps a liar, am by no means an exorcist.

Your name litters the pages of my worn and yellowed moleskine and the curvature of the letters settle in dark, smeared ink. Your words fill the moments of my breaths as your bones grind into the bend of my body, your cursed presence lingering in every unsaid word and corner-of-the-eye glance. You trail a path of devastation and destruction in your wake and people are powerless but to cower in your presence.

Your voice is the ranging and jangling and banging in my ear and even as I press my palms against my head I cannot drown you out as your screams fill my mind and reverberate through my body and batter the lovely things out of my skull to make room for your horror and infect my lungs to stain them black with your violence and steal my breath from me—

IcannotbreatheIcannotbreathe

But nonetheless I am sprinting next to you, trying to reach out to curl my fingers into your shirt only to find that you are as substantial as smoke and lies. I am opening my mouth to howl at you but all that leaves it are gasps and thick black fluid which I am not at liberty to name (though I have been told it is a mixture of heartache, ink, and poison).

Eventually I will fall and you will not be there beside me, instead pages ahead and unfurling into a story I cannot pen. Your whim will fill another heart, will blacken another soul, and I will be left the ruins of your muse.

And to think that we are to be left a story untold.

You were everything I could never hope to be and everything I was expected to fear. Standing too close to you was a danger in itself; your personality was tempestuous at best and absolutely malefic at worst. You shouldn’t have been interesting in your horror, but I think that horror is what captivated me.

You caught me staring one day, and I am sure that it was that exact moment that I realized you were not a normal boy, that the warnings I’ve heard about you were absolutely true. Your eyes glinted something wicked, the color odd as it shifted between deep brown and hazel, and you met my eyes unflinchingly, flashing me a jaunty smile. Like what you see?

I looked away, startled and frightened by the inhumanity in your eyes, but in the back of my mind you lingered, made hazy by fog as you were illuminated by moonlight, eyes the only thing sharp in the mist. Like what you see?

I didn’t, because you were hard-angled and frigid. Your manner was reckless, your thinking cruel. You lacked a beating, true heart, and I wanted no part in that.

I had no want for a boy who had one hand grasping humanity, the rest of him dangling into savagery.

I was curious, yes, I was interested. But I was not stricken. I was not enthralled nor mesmerized.

I simply wanted to understand the monster that lurked within the shell of a boy that had too bright eyes and too dark smiles.

I remember our second meeting better than the first.

Our fathers were close childhood friends, temporarily separated through time and circumstance, though orbiting in such a way that they were eventually brought into each other’s proximity again. It wasn’t until I was twenty-one and caught up with philosophical, existential trifling that I would have deemed it ‘fate’—which, had you underwent it, you very well would have. But, I was merely a rebellious sixteen at the time, hell-bent on testing the boundaries of my parents and trampling their patience to nothing, so I would have termed it ‘weird’ or, if I were particularly cheeky, ‘just a stupid coincidence, so give it up already.’

It was summer and the heat was blazing hot, the kind of day that getting into your car felt like it could blister the skin off your body. I was grabbing a handful of ice cubes from the freezer to suck on when I heard my dad call my name from the front lawn.
“What!” I yelled, more frustrated than anything else, before I stuck an ice cube into my mouth and rolled it to one side, tucking it into my cheek and shivering when it sent a pang through my teeth.

“Come out here, Damon! There’s someone I want you to meet!”

I grumbled, scowling, and slammed the freezer door shut with a little more force than necessary. My footfalls were heavy as I trudged through the house, passing the broken AC that was dripping water noisily into a bucket with a glare, and when I flung the front door open I had to squint into the bright light, my eyes watering a bit, before I made out my mom and dad’s form on the driveway, standing across from two other people, one of which stood slightly behind the other.

Curious, but intent on not showing it, my face was still surly as I slowly meandered over to where they were, looking at the two strangers from beneath the furrow in my brow.

“You remember Uncle Alex, don’t you?” my mom asked, smiling at me as she motions towards the middle aged man standing right in front of my father.

I looked at him, trying to see if he jogged a memory at all. He was tall, practically my dad’s height, though a bit broader in the shoulders. His hair was cropped short, the blonde fading to gray in some spots, but his hair was still pretty full. He had dark blue eyes that crinkled on the edges as he smiled at me, sticking his hand out to shake mine. I slowly shake his hand, not quite courageous enough to ignore such a greeting, and the beginnings of a memory formed in my mind.

“Uh, yeah, kind of. You got me that train set when I was six, right?”

His smile widened and he nodded. “Got that right. I’m surprised you still remember. You’re growing up to look like your dad, Damon.”

I tried not to let it show, but I was secretly pleased. For as big as a pain in the ass I was to him, I still admired my dad and he was the type of man I strived to—still strive to, actually—be whenever I can.

“God knows I didn’t have his attitude when I was sixteen though,” my dad muttered, and Uncle Alex snorted.

“Are we talking about the same David here?” he ribbed, smirking, and I felt a bit of a grin coming on, glancing over to my dad to see him roll his eyes.

“Damon, since you remember me, do you think you’ll remember Reagan, too?” Uncle Alex said, moving aside to reveal the girl I had only half-noticed standing behind him before.

She was standing with her arms crossed, and when we met eyes she gave me a halfhearted smile, only one corner of her lip just barely quirking up. After that, she promptly looked away, surveying something down the street. Properly stubbed, my pride having been smarted, I shrugged. “Not really,” I answered, though I did, and when I said that she glanced at me, an eyebrow raised.

She nibbled on her lip a bit, as if considering her answer, before she sighed and finally said, “I remember you, though. We used to play in my treehouse all the time.”

It gave me an excuse to look at her more intently, like I was trying to catalogue her features and match it to a memory. She had this curly, brown hair that looked red in some parts where the sun touched it, so long that the very ends nearly brushed the waistband of her cutoffs. There was a little dusting of freckles across her nose, and the eyes that stared back at me were framed by thick lashes, the irises a simple, even plain, deep brown. She still had a coltishness to her, the look of a girl who hasn’t quite grown into her features and body, but she was cute enough. It wasn’t until she scrunched her nose at me, just a tiniest bit, that the memories of hot summer days much like this one came flooding back.

A little girl with dirty blonde hair that was pulled back into the messiest ponytail I ever remember skipping alongside me in a pair of overalls and beat up Converse. The same girl crawling up a rope ladder before me, telling me I had to go after to make sure she didn’t fall. I remembered her grin as she accepted half of an orange popsicle I pulled apart, and her firm weight on my back when I piggybacked her home after she had fallen by the river and scratched up her legs. But most of all, I remembered her that day she moved away, scrunching her nose at me when I offered her one of my favorite comic books, telling me to keep it because she’d be back, one day, and we’d read it together then.

It was that last memory that made me feel a little ashamed, a little cowardly when I shook my head and insisted that, no, sorry, I didn’t remember her. I can’t even remember why I said that.

I do remember catching her face, though, the disappointed-though-expectant way her lips turned downwards in a frown, how her arms crossed a little bit tighter and she started swaying side to side, looking down at her feet.

I wish I could say that from that moment on, I made an effort to be nice to her, to find her at school and help her out and sit with her at lunch. I wish I had invited her over to my house, popped in a movie to watch with her, split an orange popsicle and handed her the bigger half. If I had the courage, I might have admitted that I did remember her. Should I have had the nerve, I could have told her that in the year she lived down the block and around the corner from me, I fell into like with her. Had I the audacity, I might have even kissed her.

But I didn’t.

So I’m left here in the present day as young man who is almost middle-aged but not quite, staring at a young woman in a coffee shop with strikingly familiar freckles, curly brown-red hair, and rather plain brown eyes that stare out the window, watching snowflakes catch on the sill. I want to say hello, want to call out softly, “Reagan?” to see if she’d answer, but I don’t.

And the embarrassment and self-depreciation is so thick that I don’t even remember to conjure an excuse as to why I do not.

We were both curious of each other, standing kind-of-awkwardly yet kind-of-not, two feet away but feeling much, much closer.


He peers at me over the rim of his glasses, taking me in. “I like your hair,” he says, and he reaches a hand out to try to touch the single bolt of blonde I had bleached, stark against the rest of my black hair.


I shimmy back without even thinking about it, fixing him with hard eyes as comprehension dawns in his face. He lowers his hand, makes a soft ‘ahh’ in understanding. “My apologies,” he murmurs, grinning this crooked grin that made his glasses look like they were askew. “I forget social protocol sometimes and the whole ‘looking but not touching’ thing doesn’t come easily to me.” 


I don’t smile back. The easygoingness in his face falters, and everything suddenly becomes very awkward, compared to the bearable uneasiness of before that could be attributed to butterflies.


One hand comes out of his pocket to fumble with his lower lip, pinching it between his index and thumb finger and he looked away from me, clearly uncomfortable, before snapping his eyes back and lowering his hand, smirking again.


“I know what you’re doing,” he states, and in response I arch an eyebrow.


“Do you?” I murmur, the first words I’ve spoken all night.


He nods and begins to move towards one of the tables, expecting me to follow, and I remain in my spot, just long enough to see him squirm a bit, see him struggle to keep ahold of his confidence. In his defense, he did a good job at keeping himself together, placing an elbow on the high table as he fixes me in a stare, turning this all into a contest of will.


I purse my lips to fight the smirk, taking my time as I saunter over to the table. He nudges me a stool with his foot, but I disregard it, standing instead. He cocks his head at me, taking another moment to gauge what might have been going through my head, before shrugging. He flags a waitress, motions with a tipping gesture of his hand for a beer—a flourish of his fingers told her any beer would do—and looks back at me, utterly and completely silent.


A beat passed, and I realize instantly what he was doing. The bastard’s trying to turn my own tactics against me. I straighten, lift my chin, and bear down at him. He doesn’t know or doesn’t figure that I’ve perfected my strategy since I was in a crib. Twenty-two years of Ice Bitch and I’ve got it down to a veritable science.


He cracks first, just like I knew he would. “Jesus Christ, Max wasn’t kidding when he said you were tough.”


I chuckle and pull the stool towards me, tiptoeing to slide myself onto it. “I’ve perfected my technique. Don’t worry. Gotta hand it to you, though, you’re a lot more resilient than the other poor sods he’s tried to set me up with.”


He grimaces, suddenly sheepish, and runs a hand through his hair, his eyes flicking from me to the table. The wariness came off of him in waves. “No beating ‘round the bush with you, huh? I hope I’m not just ‘some poor sod’.”


“Are you?”


He levels me a hard stare, and I’m pleased to see that the nervousness before had been replaced with a little annoyance; there was an edge present in his blue eyes that wasn’t there before. Good. He’s not a pushover. “Do you always answer with a question?”


“Do I?” I reply with a grin, so he knows that I’m joking, but his eyes remain cold and a muscle in his jaw jumps. I meet his eyes, unfazed, and his gaze narrows.


“You play Queen Bitch to put people off, to push them away from you, so no one has the chance of getting close. Max told me you were tough, and I figured he meant that you might have been stubborn, strong, maybe a little temperamental, but I wasn’t expecting a weak little girl who had absolutely no people skills because she’s scared of letting people in.”


I’m speechless, absolutely blown away, and I scramble to quickly school the shock off my face, tuck away the anger and surprise. The furrow in my brow smooths and I pick up my jaw from the table, twisting my lips into as condescending a curve I could make it. Oh, you’re so cute.


“Funny,” I scowl, “Max isn’t much of a liar and he said he was setting me up with a man, not a ‘weak little boy’ who can’t play the game and resorts to insults as a last resort because he’s not capable of anything better. Girls must be leaping after you once you call them a queen bitch.”


He stares at me and I’m not quite able to read what’s in his eyes—actually, I can barely see them through the light reflecting off his glasses. I’m leaning back in my stool and, before I know it, he stands up so violently that his own stool tips over, banging onto the ground of the bar that, if the bar were actually quiet, would have probably sounded like a gunshot. Nonetheless his sudden movement made me jump, so two points to the Little Boy.


“Fuck this,” he spits, and then storms off into the crowd of people, easily melding into the mass of bodies just as the waitress comes around to put his beer on the table.

She eyes the empty stool with a look that wasn’t judging, but simply curious. “Off to the loo before a beer?”


I sigh, bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose. “More like out of my life before the trouble,” I mumble.  


She frowns, turning her head so her ear was towards me. “Come again?”


I shake my head. “Nothing.”


She shrugs, unconcerned, and walks off to take the order of the table behind me. I grab the beer, bring it to my lips, and roughly chug half of it down.


Way to go, Olivia.