Because Iknowthat scent. My body is physically unable to not react. My pulse can’t help but hammer beneath my skin, my breath can’t help but come in short small gasps, my skin can’t help but tingle.
I hate that I know that scent more than any scent in this entire universe. I hate that it used to make me laugh, cry, that it made me want more than I’ve ever wanted, with such a desperation shame almost always followed.
Hints of Cedar.
Smoke.
Winter.
All make up, the subtle hints of Jude.
My Jude.
It’s the smell of first kisses followed by bad decisions.
It’s the smell of my fifteen, his seventeen.
The smell of everything I buried—lies I told.
Mistakes we made and everything in between.
His eyes sweep the room briefly while people whisper, and then, they land directly onto me. Immediately, I understand two things.
The first is that Jude Hale isn't dead.
The second is that he knows exactly who I am.
And he’s here.
Standing by my desk.
He knows who I was.
What I did.
The realization crashes into me so hard I nearly stop breathing.
For seven years, I've mourned a living, breathing person.
Seven years.
I've compared every friendship to him.
Every relationship.
Every touch.
Every stupid, disappointing kiss.
Every man who wasn't him.
I've carried his ghost around like an open wound while he was apparently alive enough to walk into my classroom like I didn’t still dream of him, like I didn’t waste tears on him. How dare he, how dare he!
The third thing I realize, is that I’m not relieved. Not at all. I’m not happy, and I’m no longer even really confused. No, I feel nothing but rage from the betrayal of it all.
Pure. Blistering. Rage.
The kind that starts in your chest and burns from the inside out toward your hands until they shake with it.
