Bad Enough for You (Currently Editing)

They Literally Had Rainbows and Unicorns Falling From Their Asses

20.] They Literally Had Rainbows and Unicorns Falling From Their Asses

The kiss with Eli made me realize two very important things, A) I had kissed a boy who wasn’t my boyfriend and B) I had to return to my real life at some point. With regards to the latter, I wasn’t willingly going. In fact, my left hand was clinging to the door, begging me to stop this nonsense and stay with the people that made me feel as if I could do whatever I wanted with my life. Unfortunately, I had a family that, even if they weren’t always around, would probably wonder as to where I was going when I usually spent my summers either curled up on the couch or the hammock at our summer home. Not to mention, I had a recently engaged sister who was already beginning to piece together her wedding for the upcoming winter.

While I knew that I could handle whatever was thrown at me in real life, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about the fact that I had kissed Eli. At the time, I had forgotten that there were even things that existed outside of us. Now that it was over, however, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that it hadn’t been Blaine’s lips against mine or his tongue in my mouth.

The sick part, though, was that I really wasn’t distraught over the situation. Sure, it was just a kiss, but there were some cases where a kiss could change everything. Actually, there really wasn’t even such a thing as “just a kiss.” Every kiss, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem was not something that one could just brush off. Even that time Georgia kissed a girl had a justified reasoning behind it. This didn’t mean that there was always a good reason behind kissing someone. Kisses always meant something and they meant even more when you really didn’t want to think about it.

The world was cruel in this way. You could even want it to be that the kiss meant nothing, but when you push away all of the lies and the words to explain why it happened, you’re left with the truth. Sometimes you can handle it and sometimes, it’s just better to pretend like it never happened.

For me, the latter was the better option. I knew that if I brushed away the cobwebs and the layer of dust that I was hoping to bury that kiss with, I would find something that was far more unsettling than just the fact that Eli had kissed me. It was better for my own good to retreat back from the darkness and stumble once more into the light, leaving behind the kiss and the alcohol and every embarrassing moment that happened. Not to mention, Eli had called me a problem. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but I knew that I wasn’t just a problem, I was a ticking time-bomb.

My path of destruction was growing narrower as time went on and pretty soon, I would have to realize that this path was leading me to a cliff. I could stand on the edge and look back over my shoulder, seeing the people who mattered calling out my name, wanting me to come back. The light shone so brightly from behind them that I would have to raise my hands to see their faces clearly. I didn’t know this at the moment, but when I was actually standing on that cliff, looking back at them, I would find that they were pulling away. Right now, however, they weren’t the only ones calling out to me. There were voices rising up from the canyon beneath me. I couldn’t see them due to the darkness, but I could hear them, voices raising like smoke from a fire and wrapping around my body until the voices reached my ears.

My toes were curled around the cliff’s edge, arms spread wide and ready to throw myself over. Something held me back this time, though, and I turned around, tucking my hair behind my ears and shoving my hands into my pockets. The voices kept calling, but I kept walking, determined to save myself before it was too late.

“Mom?” I asked as I stepped into the kitchen the following morning, still sporting my pajamas and bedhead. I narrowed my eyebrows at her, surprised to find her sitting at the island, her MacBook open on the marble countertop with pages upon pages spread out around her. An open jar of Nutella sat on top of one of the papers beside her coffee, cream-colored droplets sliding down the Starbucks mug and onto the papers. She didn’t notice the coffee stains, though, and barely paused long enough to look up at me from over the rims of her glasses.