God, this sounds like we’re about to catch a ride on a plane… or launching a rocket or something. We’re merely sending lanterns up into the sky.
Letting them go is one of the most beautiful and magical sights anyone will ever see. So as soon as the first lanterns float up, my eyes are solely focused on the sky.
I love watching them fly away. I love the brightness of them, and how they get smaller with every meter they leave behind. The way they look like very bright, yellow shining stars when they’re so far away, that they don’t even look like lanterns anymore.
And the atmosphere… oh, boy. It’s so cozy, even with the freezing temperature.
There must be at least half a hundred of lanterns on the night sky right now, and it honestly makes me as happy as Rapunzel looked in Tangled when she first saw them from her window.
I wish I could watch them all night long. Watching lanterns brings some strange peace to me, and I honestly can’t even tell you why. Maybe it’s the fact that mine has a wish written on it—or more like two wishes—or maybe it’s because they’re simply magical. But they make me happy.
Watching these lanterns become the night sky’s accessories for a short while teleports me into a whole other dimension. I feel like I’m part of the books I love to read and write. Like I’m at that very point in the book where everything’s good again. The point in a book when the main characters find together and get their happily ever after.
Or I’m in a movie. Just before the end credits roll, where the hero and heroine just got their long-awaited happy ending. They’re sitting on the grass, cuddled up together while they’re just enjoying each other’s company. That’s what watching those lanterns feels like. Happiness. A happily ever after.
Well, but once the people around me come back into the picture, I feel like this is just the beginning of a never-ending story.
“Let’s go back inside,” Aaron whispers into my ear right before he presses his lips to my cheek. And suddenly, another wave of happiness overcomes me. This time not from fire-y floating lanterns, but from the guy I have always had a crush on.
Damn him for making my head spin, and my heart crave him.
Oh, why did he have to promise me things we both knew he couldn’t keep?
“Yeah,” I agree. “I want to get wasted.”
32
Aaron
“real sweet but I wish you were sober”—Wish You Were Sober by Conan Gray
“Sofia, my love, let’s get you—” Aaaand she falls onto her bed. Great.
When she said she wanted to get wasted, I wasn’t expecting her to getwasted. I thought, maybe she would get a drink or two, not drown herself in liquor to the point where she can no longer walk in a straight line. Or any line, really.
She’s still wearing all her clothes, accessories,andmakeup. I can remove her earrings and hairclips, stuff like that. I’d even remove her makeup because I know how much she’ll hate herself in the morning if she doesn’t take that off before going to sleep. But I refuse to change her clothes. It’s a privacy invalidation I am not going to mess with. Not in the condition she’s in right now.
I’d gladly take her clothes off, but not when she’s not stone cold sober.
“Sofia,” I say over and over again while I remove accessory after accessory. She just doesn’t wake up. Every now and then I earn myself a grumpy groan, and a half-attempted slap… so at least I know she’salive.
Once I’m sure she won’t poke herself with some bobby pins, or earrings, I look around her room and try to figure out where she keeps makeup wipes. That’s what girls use to remove makeup, right? I’m not sure, but I swear Ana used to use those all the time, and they sound like they remove makeup, so why not?
I search through every drawer attached to Sofia’s makeup vanity, and of course I find an almost empty package of makeup wipes in the very last. At least I hope they’re makeup wipes because I can’t understand a single word on these labels. Luckily, the back of the package has an English translation, so now I’m relieved to know I won’t accidentally burn Sofia’s face off when I use them on her skin.
As I kneel down in front of Sofia, I take a deep breath before pulling one of the wipes out of the package and begin to remove her eye makeup. Is there a specific order in which makeup should be removed? If so, I most definitely am notsticking to it.
By the time I have most of her eye makeup removed, about five wipes have been thrown on to her nightstand because they’re no longer useable. And when I add the sixth, Sofia suddenly opens her eyes and stares at me a little disorientated.
“Hi,” she says a little slowly, sleepy.
Suppressing a chuckle, I continue to wipe off her makeup. “Hi.”
She breathes heavily and rolls over on her side, slowly shaking her head at me when I get up and lean over her to remove the last bits of makeup. “I want to sleep.”
“You think you can get changed first?” I doubt it but asking won’t hurt.
Sofia sits up, or tries to, so I pull her up instead. As soon as she sits, she reaches for the hem of her dress to pull it up, and she’s quick to get frustrated when she’s too weak to pull the fabric from underneath her ass. You know, the one she’s currently sitting on.
