My hands on her neck. Gentle.

She flinched at the memory of how I’d held my dad, but melted when I put my lips to her forehead and backed her to the single bed.

“We’ll need to spoon, you know.” She grinned, catching my lower lip between her fat, juicy ones and sucking. “Bed’s too small.”

“I don’t do spooning. We’ll be forking instead.”

“What’s forking?” Her hoarse giggle poured into my mouth, skating right into my dick, making it salute between her thighs.

“It’s porking, but with an F that stands for fuc—”

“Crude alert!” She shut me up with a kiss that was far dirtier than my words.

We tumbled into the bed, and I let her strip me, slowly, the way she’d always wanted to strip me a minute before I kicked my shoes and tore my clothes so I could drive into her like a sledgehammer. She lay down on my childhood bed, and I hovered over her. A demon, destructive and undeserving. Yet still there, despite everything.

“We need to keep it quiet. Your parents might hear us,” she whispered.

I pinned her arms above her head and buried my face in her luscious hair. “I don’t give a fuck about my parents.”

“Well, I do.”

She did. She gave a fuck about everyone. Every Tom, Harry, and Louisa. And I needed to start respecting that, even if I didn’t respect them .

I grinded myself on her, bare, feeling her damp, clean flesh against mine. Her skin was gold, her hair silver-blue. Her eyes—her fucking eyes—a dark spell enveloped in a sweet girl who brought so much light into my miserable life. I pushed between her thighs, fumbling for the condom and unwrapping it with my teeth. The scent of latex attacked my nostrils, but not even that took away from the moment. The sheer moment of elation. Of having her, submissive and mine—so utterly and entirely at my mercy—despite her promise to me, and to herself, that we would never sleep together.

I felt like a flower that had just endured weeks of hail and rain, finally feeling the soft kiss of the sun, and knowing that somehow, someway, things would be all right. Maybe not tomorrow, and certainly not today, but they would.

I drove into her and closed my eyes, plastering my forehead to hers. She felt so good, so tight, so fucking wet. I moved slowly, allowing her a second or two to adjust. Our eyes were eloquent, our expressions self-explanatory. Hers were the ocean. Mine were the earth. She moaned when I thrust into her, slowly and deeply, biting that lower lip.

“I don’t want to fall in love with you,” she croaked. It wasn’t a statement as much as it was a plea.

I thrust deeper, my forehead wrinkling in concentration as my balls tightened.

“You don’t seem to have much choice,” I answered.

She moaned louder, looking away from me, at the wall, at The Cure, at Robert Smith, hung above us on a wrinkled poster, eyeliner, lipstick, and ridiculous hair galore.

After a few minutes, she began to rock into me while I poured into her.

This wasn’t fucking. This was something else entirely, and if I were a good man—if I were halfway decent, even—I’d stop, flip her over, drive into her from behind, and make sure to bang her head on the headboard for good measure. But I wasn’t a good man, so I let her fall in love with me in that moment, because she was the only person who took my loneliness away.

“I’m coming,” she said, sinking her short, square nails into my back. I liked her nails. They were the epitome of her. Chipped and clean, always coated with a funky color. “I’m coming so…so…hard.”

I felt it, too. In my body. In my balls. In my veins. The release wasn’t immediate. Like our sex, it trickled down gradually, from my neck, down my spine, feeling my muscles spasm and slack as she quivered and tightened around me. Robert Smith and Morrissey watched silently as I did to Stardust what they had taught me.

I put her under my spell, to make sure she was mine.

Scribbling onto her the notes only I could play.

Now that Tania was gone, Stardust was my main instrument.

And it saddened me, because I knew I had to break her, too.

You.

I was already a goner.

By the time you found the rest of me.

You sought me out.

And left me to deal with the girl I never thought I could be.

You.

You carved your name into my heart.

Gutted it out like I was a dead fish.

Held it in your fist.

And left me to drown.

You.

You took my heart and held it in your teeth.

Then we kissed.

Then we fought.

Then we made out.

You.

You said you loved to see how we burn together.

So you took a match.

Lit us up.

And now we burn forever.

I tucked my stupid poem into one of the many compartments of my suitcase, my heart heavy with emotions. Alex was still in bed behind me, sleeping on his stomach, his wild hair blanketing his perfect face.

The twilight was glorious that morning. The sun nearly kissing the stars. I wanted him to watch it, but I didn’t want to wake him up. I settled for taking a picture with his phone. He’d see it when he woke up.

Later that morning, we snuck into the Mercedes. Harry and Hamish met us in the living room. Alex’s family stood in line like soldiers by the door—Jim, Louisa, Carly, and the three boys, from tallest to shortest—staring at us through the lens of regret and tragedy.

Alex patted the boys’ heads and ignored the adults altogether. He bent forward to speak to them, his voice hushed. “Be good. I’ll come back soon and give you stuff. Meaningful stuff, I swear.”

Sadness pierced my soul as Alex’s house became smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror of the SUV. The silence, choking and suffocating, was loaded with so many words I didn’t want to say in front of these strangers. I took his hand in mine and squeezed.

“I’m sorry I made you do this.”

“I’m sorry for thinking with my dick and doing this,” he shot back, his words not malicious or angry, but simply frank. “And also for the black eye.”

Jenna: I heard Alex had a little accident with your eye. A dozen Ray-Bans will be waiting at the hotel. Make sure you wear them until the black fades. Oh, and don’t worry about the paparazzo who photographed you. We paid him well to destroy the photos.