Missed me? Or missed hating me? Didn’t matter. The hunger was the same color.
Shane went to grab a funnel cake for Sabrina.
Now it was just me, Amelia, and the dark space between us. She wouldn’t look at me. Her fingers worked a napkin to shreds.
I broke, finally. “You bored?”
A shrug. “It’s fine.”
“I could take you home,” I said. “If you wanted.”
She shook her head, hair sweeping over her cheek. “I’m good.”
Fine. She wanted to play it cold? I could do cold.
But I wanted her to want me. I wanted her to hurt the way I did.
“You thinking about Colorado?” I asked, voice barely more than a growl.
She froze. For a second.
“Kind of,” she said. “Not the parts you think.”
I leaned in, low. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
She looked up, finally. Her expression was bleak, exhausted, but there was fire in it, too. “No, I don’t,” she said. “And I don’t want to.”
She walked away, found Sabrina, and didn’t look back.
But I was right behind her, like a shadow she couldn’t shake.
The rest of the group night was a blur. I didn’t talk. Just watched her, cursing every part of me that still wanted her, wanted to taste her tears and her laughter and every little piece she tried to hide.
Every time she glanced my way, I felt it. The pull. Dark, alive.
I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be loved. But I didn’t deserve it. I’d burned that bridge years ago.
Still, the ache didn’t stop. Never did.
Am I a monster? I don’t want to be. But maybe that’s all I ever was.
Or maybe I was just hers. The only thing that ever fit.
I let the thought hollow me out, let it echo in my skull as the night wound down and the group drifted to their cars, too tired to fake it anymore.
Inside, I was already gone. The only thing left was the need.
And when the need got loud enough, nothing could quiet it except ruining myself all over again.
I hit the bar at midnight, when all the nice people had already gone home to their soft beds and prettier lies. I was the wolf atthe door, looking for the scrape and bruise of something that tasted like oblivion.
Inside, some indie band wailed in the corner, the guitarist’s face screwed up like he was being electrocuted. I moved through the crowd like a ghost, just another fuckup with scars he didn’t want to explain.
The girl behind the bar looked up at me. I ordered whiskey, neat, and killed it in two swallows. The burn was good. I liked it. I liked the way it made my fingers tingle, the way it sharpened the ache inside me instead of softening it.
I drank another. And another. By the time I left my stool, my head was swimming, vision doubled at the edges. Perfect. I wanted the world blunted, so I could pretend it was safe.
That’s when I saw her. Not Amelia, but someone shaped like the idea of her. Skin-tight dress, long hair, lips painted with that slash of red. She leaned on the bar, staring at me like she could already taste what kind of bastard I was.
