Even though by that age, I understood that that was what you did, when someone said I love you.
That was why I had it on the card.
On the card, I’d written I love you, Mom and Dad, along with my full name; I’d been practicing a lot, getting the hang of the letters just right.
I was expecting them to say it back to me, but I guess I messed up the letters and there went my I love you too.
In my defense, I was seven. I was pathetic. I was still trying to win my dad’s approval by trying harder, being good, making stupid cards.
I’m not anymore.
I don’t need love. I don’t need acceptance or approval. I reject them before they can ever reject me.
But Blue’s different. She’s still naïve. She thinks love is this amazing, magical thing. She wants to fall in it.
It’s funny how people forget that it’s called falling in love. There’s a reason for that. You fall and you break your fucking leg and you bleed. That’s what love is. Bleeding, cutting yourself open on purpose.
It’s a weakness to be that crazy, that you’ll hurt yourself for someone else. Or that you’ll love someone despite how much they’ve hurt you.
But whatever.
She’s not my problem.
Though I will admit that I acted foolishly tonight. I knew it was a mistake. The moment I made up an excuse to ruin her date.
Honestly, I have no clue why I did that. Maybe I was just doing her a favor. That Ryan guy isn’t for her. He isn’t man enough to be with her.
But maybe I should’ve let them go. Maybe Blue needs a little heartbreak in her life to get the real picture.
I look at the bed where I found her asleep, her blue hair sprawled out on my pillow.
And then, there are her sandals: also blue and caked with tiny droplets of her blood. There are little indentations where her toes and her heel dug into the cheap plastic.
Fuck.
No wonder she was bleeding. And she’s going to bleed even more because she ran away from here barefoot.
Gritting my teeth, I crush her sandals in my hands and stride over to the closet. Opening the door, I throw them in and shut it back with a bang.
My cock is hard as fuck. Harder than it’s ever been.
I jump into the shower and try to clean off the feel of her. I try to clean off her scent, her softness.
And when the memory of her becomes too much, I pull at my cock.
I hear her words in my head: I don’t want to… Not by someone who makes me hate.
Tears have never been my thing. But still, I jerk off to her.
I beat it, pull it, tug it, until I’m spraying cum all over the tiled wall, thinking about her blue hair and her sugar smell.
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
Fuck.
Bracing my hands on the wall that wears my cum and breathing deep, I clench my eyes closed. Probably in regret. But then, I shut it down.
She hates me anyway.
One more crime against her wouldn’t matter.
“How did it even start?” Tina asks.
I look up from where I’m mixing dry ingredients for baking cupcakes for Art’s bake sale. I suck at baking but Doris is sick and I volunteered to help. So I’m helping, or at least trying to.
“What is it?” I ask.
“This whole thing between you and Zach. Like, what happened? Why does he torture you, of all people?”
I go back to flicking the flour. “Because he’s mean. And rich, and that gives him the right to do anything he wants.”
This isn’t something new. I’ve told this to her a thousand times. She’s heard me cry and bitch about it for years. I don’t know why she’s at it again, though.
“Do you remember the very first time you met?”
I stop mixing; it’s already incorporated more than the recipe called for.
The first time.
I hardly remember any of it, except that it was my first day of school and I was hungry enough to borrow carrot sticks and then, I met him in the detention room.
Although, I do remember that he was looking out the window, staring at a water fountain, and his uniform was as messed up and wrinkled as mine. I remember this utter longing to talk to him, the only boy who looked like me: dirty and untidy.
I remember this tug in my stomach. This flapping and fluttering. At the time I thought, I was so hungry that my tummy was making weird noises. But later, I realized that they were the butterflies, and that tug was the miserable connection between us.
Anyway, when I did talk to him, he turned out to be a complete jerk who called me a thief, smirking, looking me up and down like I was a reject or something. I got angry at that, and I might have said something back.