dancing.
Because she wanted to hold on to this boy she was in love with. And holding on to him was like holding an explosive in her hands. So she’d tiptoe around him all so she could love him. Until one day everything blows up in her face.
Things explode and she catches fire.
Well, what else do you expect when you fall in love with a grenade?
What else do you expect when you fall in love with the sun?
It’s what the sun does.
It burns everything. Melts everything. Turns everything into dust.
That’s why Icarus, the fool who flew too close to the sun with wings made of wax, was stupid.
That’s why I am stupid.
And miserable and sad.
But what I’m not is angry.
I’m not angry at him. For being who he is. For being the sun he is.
I try though.
Especially the next day when I wake up and see, through the bars on my window, there’s no snow on the ground. It’s not that I love the snow or anything. It’s just that I thought there would be some evidence of what transpired between us, me and him, only a few hours ago.
Some evidence of the chill, the wreckage.
Even his love bite is gone. I don’t see it sitting on my neck, in the mirror.
As if I imagined everything. Imagined his teeth. Imagined the snow.
Again, I try to be angry at something.
At him.
But I can’t be because it’s not his fault.
It’s not his fault that he doesn’t want love. He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t even know what to do with it.
It’s not his fault that he’s The Blond Arrow.
He trained for it his entire life. He worked for it.
I have seen it with my own eyes. His dedication, his determination.
His single-minded focus.
So it’s not his fault that in the pursuit of all that he forgot to be anything else.
To be anyone else.
It’s not his fault that he’s lost.
Because that’s what he is, isn’t he?
After what happened with my sister, what she did and how their relationship turned out to be. Even I’m lost because I, too, thought their relationship was perfect.
Arrow didn’t do this to himself; it happened to him.
So I can’t be angry at him.
But I am sad.
And turns out that it’s also something I shouldn’t be.
Because I already knew that there was very little chance that we’d ever get together. Very little chance that he’d ever love me.
Someone like me. Someone so opposite of him.
And I’ve known this ever since I was ten.
But my heart, my fucking heart, doesn’t understand that. It doesn’t understand logic and rationalizations and all the explanations I’ve been giving myself ever since I turned around and left him standing in the snow.
Because ever since I was ten, I’ve also wanted just one thing.
Him.
To be perfect for him. To be special to him.
Yeah, my heart is stupid and it hurts.
It hurts so bad that I walk around St. Mary’s with perpetual water in my eyes.
My tears sit there as I work in the garden with the rest of the girls. When I secretly clip a gardenia and pocket it, one spills out and flows down to my trembling lips. Another spills when I do my trig homework later in the library and get all the questions wrong because he isn’t here to teach me.
The girls are as supportive as they’ve ever been.
Especially when I tell them everything.
I tell them that I’ve loved him since I was ten and that I shouldn’t have because he was with my sister. Then I tell them that last night when I yelled I love you to him, he told me to get lost.
I don’t tell them about the breakup though, and all the other secrets that he has. Because I will never tell, not in a million years. I know that without filling in those gaps, I might come off as a girl with a witchy heart who goes after her sister’s boyfriend.
But like him, they don’t judge.
Like him, they absolve me, which is something I haven’t really thought about, him absolving me, I mean. Because if I do, I might never get up from my bed. I might never stop crying for what he did for me.
Something wonderful.
Anyway, my friends listen and when I cry for the thousandth time, they wipe my tears. Then Poe says that we’ll be going out tonight.
Because I could use a distraction.
Actually, I’m not the only one. Callie could use a distraction too.
Because her mood is like mine.
Her mood is blacker, actually.
Maybe because for the