❝she was the girl, who bit the horizon, who peeled the stars from the sky and put them on her tongue, the girl who was hungry for the universe, who craved magic and saw the broken boy for who he truly was- a broken boy.❞
Beca...
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Chapter 17
Running From Nameless Pretty Girls and Mum
Ellis
"I can't believe you made me dance."
"I can't believe I made you smoke."
"Once," I protested, remembering the embarrassing coughing of nicotine that I performed at Big Al's Pub and Liquor. The smoke fogging up in front of my view, cloaking me in a thin light blue veil so everything I see was blue and white, soft and distorted, like how I imagined stoners would be seeing the world, through blurry lenses photographers used to communicate a sense of loss within the picture- I could finally see why Jem found beauty in the art of it all; the poetry and how we humans loved self-destruction. Beautiful, yes, but there was this sense of myself crumbling away. Smoking wasn't me. Smoking was Jem. And just because we were friends, doesn't mean we exactly mould into one person- that was not how relationships work. "And never again."
"You're such a diva." Smoking again. Whenever there was Jem, there were cigarettes. And smoke. And lighters. It followed him like a cloud.
"For good reason," I said, holding out my palm to receive the lighter. Thumbing the cerium flint, the flame kindled my Harvard letter, fizzing out like sodium in water, and threw it into the blazing fireplace. Now the pain had dulled- somewhat; I didn't feel like bawling my eyes out anymore every time I thought about it. What was left was the lump of shame and indignity of my reputation reduced into shambles.
"Way to justify it, Porcey."
"I don't have to justify anything to you."
"True."
-
"Where's Jem?" I asked his two friends, Caleb and Heath, whom were considered inseparable, practically attached to the hip, when they unofficially invited themselves to sit by the booth where I was currently reading the book 1984 by George Orwell, assigned for summer reading in my Advanced English class, even though it wasn't exactly summer yet. I just wanted to get started early.
"Jem's on a date. With some chick. Cara or something," responded Heath diligently, "He slept with her, like, multiple times, and she's demanding him to bring her flowers and all that chivalry. Women...so unreasonable."
"Oh, how unreasonable," I drawled dryly, stirring the sugar and creamer into my coffee- strange since I always prefer my coffee black and bitter. A few days ago, Jem had introduced me to coffee with condensed milk and holy shit, it was good. "He just slept with her a couple times and she wants him to bring her out for lunch. Total injustice."
"I know, right?" echoed Heath. "Anyway, why aren't you on a date? A pretty girl like you should have a boyfriend or whatever. Or maybe people just find you intolerable."
"Don't you have a leash on him or something?" I pleaded at Caleb and both of them inexplicably laughed.
