Page 9 of Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance #2)

Loch winds through the castle, back down past the dining room, and into a long, silent kitchen. The whole middle is taken up by a rectangular butcher block island, pots hanging over it that glint polished copper when he flicks on a light. Every inch of space has the same ancient feeling as the rest of the castle, only this room is hung with centuries of food prep, spices in the air, flour worked into the smoothed wooden surfaces and the terracotta floor tiles and the wall-sized fireplace at one end.

Loch crosses to that fireplace and crouches in front of a cupboard near it. Bottles clink as he rummages through its contents.

“If you pull out more whiskey, I’m leaving right now,” I say.

He’s halfway back up, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. The label is definitely not Green Hills Distillery.

“Will na you let me have my vices in peace?” he moans.

“I watched you down like four glasses of that shit and you were barely tipsy. You said you wanted to get drunk.”

“’Tis na shite, ya tasteless prick.” He thinks. “But that’s fair.”

He bends back down, and hesitates.

“I’m gonna get my drink of choice for when I wanna be good and pissed,” Loch says to the liquor cabinet. “But you canna mock me for it.”

“I passionately do not agree to that,” I say and spot a pantry in the recessed shadows next to the fireplace. We’ll need something to eat. Drunk goal or not.

The pantry is mostly empty. Cans of food, some baking supplies, a few shelves of essentials.

Our chef would be appalled —this close to their Holiday, and they’re not fully stocked?

But they don’t have the funds to fill it, do they? Enough to keep up appearances, whatever Malachy deigns to give them. And they don’t have people to provide for, either. Just a visiting Christmas Prince.

Heart in my throat, I sort through the meager food stuffs until I find two clipped bags of crisps on a shelf.

By the time I get back with them, there’s a bottle near one end of the butcher block island.

I chuckle. “Whipped cream vodka?”

Loch sits on a barstool. I grab the one across from him and he cracks open the bottle.

“Laugh it up, boyo, but my logic is proper brilliant. Sláinte.” He takes a swig. “You see, it does na taste quite like rubbing alcohol, but it does na have the syrupy shite that guarantees a bloody awful migraine.”

He offers it to me. I make a great show of cringing as I take the bottle.

“Sláinte to you,” I say and drink.

The rim is warm from his lips.

I swallow forcefully.

“You’re in no position to laugh at my drinking choices.” Loch grabs the bottle back from me. “Hating on Irish whiskey like that. I should throw you outta the country.”

“I’m more of a beer guy.”

Loch sputters on the next drink and shoves to his feet. “Why dinna you say so? Christ.”

“Where are you going?”

“Wait there.”

By the door we came in, Loch yanks open a fridge and hauls out two bottles.

He returns, pops the lid off one on the island’s edge, and hands the bottle to me. Smithwick’s ale.

“Oh, yeah, beer and vodka,” I note. “This is going to end well.”

Loch opens one for himself and retakes his seat. “That’s the point, eh?”

I barely get out the start of a question when he cuts me off.

“I dinna know you spoke Irish.” He unclips a bag of cheese and onion crisps, but his hand’s shaking a little.

“I don’t.”

He gives me a flat stare.

“I mean, it was magic. Unless I’m actively choosing to use magic to translate what you’re saying, I don’t speak a word of it.”

“So you were spying on me intentionally?”

“Yes.” I don’t try to cover. I hold his gaze and let the silence stretch, stretch, god it has to snap eventually, but his eyes go from suspicious to soft to—to—

I grab the vodka and take a long gulp because there’s a realization that’s swiftly fighting up through my chest with clawed fingers and once it gets into my head I am not going to be able to ignore it anymore. But for now, I can keep it down, choking for air in vodka and ale.

“It’s good Christmas’s magic lets me do that,” I add. “Half the time, it’s the only way I know what you’re even saying.”

Loch barks a laugh. “Fuck off. My accent is the pinnacle of sexy.”

“Yeah, that’s why Dublin’s the city of love? Or wait, no, that’s—” And I use magic to help me rattle off a stream of French. I’m getting tipsy and I want to see his reaction.

He has the vodka at his lips again. It holds there, his amusement careening into shock.

His cheeks pinken. “Neat trick,” he says into the bottle.

He sets it down without taking another drink, but his throat fluctuates.

I almost reach for my phone. Almost ask if I can take a picture of him and send it to Iris because that, there, that bob of his neck—something about it is worthy of being immortalized. In googly eyes or any other medium.

“Still.” He drags the back of his hand across his chin. “My accent’s a helluva lot better than yours, French or no. What you got going on, eh? Some American English inbred bullshite even though Christmas is in Greenland, which never made sense to me anyway. You lot could have your North Pole reputation without freezing your arses off. Bit of a pigheaded commitment to your mythos.”

The vodka is starting to take me and the beer is joining in so all I can do is laugh.

Loch smiles.

Mine slides right off, the way condensation’s dripping down my beer bottle.

“What’s going on with your uncle?” I whisper.

It kills the levity. Stabs it dead in the chest.

Loch picks at the label on his beer with his thumb. “You heard. He’s a bastard.”

“I gathered. But I mean—”

“I know what you mean.” He leans back and blows out a heavy exhale, and with it his armor unravels, showing exhaustion, and worry, and regret. Such potent, raging regret that I don’t know how I missed it before, glowing through the smallest cracks in his sarcastic, piss-taking exterior like molten embers burning him to ash.

He swallows more vodka. Winces at the taste, or himself.

“No one takes my Holiday seriously,” he says. “No one’s given a shite about us in generations. We’re the Holiday of drinking and partying and green fucking beer. My father believed that, and his father, and half our court. They do na take themselves seriously—what hope have we ever had, to be something?”

“ You don’t believe that.” Not a question. A fact.

Loch takes another drink of vodka. Jesus, he’s going to finish half the bottle at this rate—I snatch it from him but just hold it.

“No,” he whispers to the table. “I do na believe that.”

Then he looks up at me with a burst of energy, so alive in an intoxicating joy, I feel spotlit by his passion.

“It’s a celebration of our people. A celebration of their survival in the face of political and religious instability. In the face of starvation and oppression and the fucking English’s attempts at genocide. It’s everyone from Queen Medb to Grace O’Malley to Mary Robinson. It has na always been that, I know, and there are problematic parts to be sure. I mentioned earlier the luck of the Irish ? The phrase itself came from racist pricks who thought Irish success could only be because of luck, rather than any skill; but even that’s na fair. We do have luck, in our folklore and pantheons. We were built on luck long before arseholes bastardized it. St. Patrick’s Day has become the one thing we agree on even when we’re divided, even when we’re scattered across the globe. So we embrace the bad with the good, because you would na only see someone as the shite they’ve overcome, but as the fact that they did overcome it at all. My Holiday is a uniting thread of who we are and what we’re capable of and I—”

He stops.

Drops back against the barstool in a limp heap.

“And I have no power to make it what it deserves to be because Malachy’s pouring all our joy into his motherfucking distillery. That’s what he does with it, uses magic to make his business lucky —Siobhán told ya?”

I nod.

He mimics me. “I’ve tried so hard to harness our magic, at least the luck when I can, but I have so little of it. It does na always listen to me, and when it does, it—”

“It breaks your headphones so wandering Christmas princes stumble into your studio?” I offer.

He snorts. “Useful, eh? I do na know what to do with magic scraps. And last year.” He licks his lips, leaves a wet sheen that is a beacon. “Last year, I was right fed up. I have some access to our magic; the transfer to Malachy did na take like it should, so my control of it will na fully separate, despite his best attempts. And last year, I’d had it. I used what I could to try to make our Holiday better. I organized festivals and restarted events that’d fallen by the wayside. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. And Malachy—he became our guardian after our parents died, and they left us some money, but he’s the King and this is technically his castle. Our family bank accounts, all of it is his. So he pays for everything, for Siobhán and Finn’s schooling— I got a scholarship—but if he pulled that money? We would na have enough to keep this up. Already Colm’s here on mostly his own dime, gets room and board. Malachy let go all the staff last year after my stunt. Holds it over our heads now because of my stupid attempt at making things better.”

“Does your court know what Malachy’s doing?” I ask. “Do they come to events?”

“Nah.” He drinks more of his beer. “It’s been years since they were involved in the running of anything because Malachy pushed ’em all away. If they do go to events, he knows, and appeases them so it all looks aboveboard. He puts money into the successful events so he can take credit for doing his damn job, and the Holiday still happens, eh? It carries on. It isn’t grand though. It isn’t what it could be, on a global scale—we have a decent time here in Ireland, but around the world? The Irish diaspora suffers the most, and I canna even make sure people here get what they need.”

I sip the vodka, tongue sweet with that artificial whipped vanilla flavor. “You should show them. Your court.”

Loch’s eyes go hesitant. “What?”

“I saw you in the crowd today. Not just with the fight—the artists you talked to before the race. Siobhán told me how you set it all up. How anything good that comes out of this Holiday is because of you.”

He blushes. Blushes. His cheeks go vibrant red, the tip of his nose rosy.

“Siobhán,” he hisses.

I’m stuck on his blush. Utterly captivated by it.

My lips fumble, but I clear my throat. “You should invite your court to the castle. Or to Dublin for the final big parade. Confront them before Malachy gets a chance so you can show them how hard you’re working to cover where he’s lacking.”

Loch gets a bemused look on his face. “You sound like Finn. But what would I show them? That I can help festival organizers coordinate? Malachy’s done a good enough job of making sure the court thinks I am exactly what he says, someone untrustworthy.”

“But you wanted me here to help that,” I counter. “You wanted to show that the tabloid lies were just that, lies. I could’ve apologized and left, but you wanted me to stay for the full Holiday. Why?”

Loch scowls, but he directs it at his beer bottle. “I told ya, you can leave if you hate it here so much.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant what are you hoping to get out of me being here for this week? You want the Holiday press to write good shit about you, right?”

He shrugs, sheepish almost, worrying the inside of his cheek.

Then he drags a hand over his chin and his lip curls, anger, not at me, directed… somewhere out, but also somewhere within. “I do na want Malachy seeing he can use the Holiday press to further take my legs out, yeah? I figured, if I make a splash with addressing this first incident, Malachy’ll be less inclined to pile on. The press getting fixated on me like this was chance, but I do na want it to be intentional in the future.”

My head bobs slowly. “And Malachy let you arrange this? Isn’t he worried, with the press being so involved, that opinion could turn against him?”

Loch grunts at his beer bottle. “He knows he’s got us pinned, my sisters and me. He knows we’d bow to him.”

“But you are trying to change things with your court. How they see you. You just aren’t going to act on it beyond your reputation?”

Color drains out of Loch’s face and he seems to realize in that moment everything he’s said, like he wasn’t fully in control of himself.

He drops his head into his hands. “Ah, Christ. This has to be some treasonous act, pouring my guts out to you. In my defense, there are few people I can talk to about this shite. My friends at Cambridge obviously do na know about—” He waves a hand, gesturing at what I assume is our whole Holiday hidden world. “They have strong opinions on various types of abstract art, but St. Patrick’s Day? They think I’m loopers talking about it as much as I do. Still though, you do na need this.”

“Yeah, I do. I get it.” Hell, how many times already have I caught myself thinking I don’t talk about this with anyone as I’m in the process of talking about whatever it is with him ? What makes it so easy for us to talk to each other? “Besides, I’m a bit of an expert in treasonous acts, actually.”

Loch’s brows concave.

“Coal—my brother—and I sort of overthrew our father last Christmas.” I tip my beer bottle as I talk. “He was stealing joy from other winter Holidays. We put a stop to it by rallying them to stand against him.”

“Yeah, I know that.” He snorts. “The news made it all seem quite civil. I did na know you were involved.”

“Surprised?”

“Of course.” He forces a grin. “Is that why you agreed to stay for the week? To foster treason in unsuspecting Holidays?”

I don’t pick up his attempt at humor.

I’m here because someone has been stealing Christmas’s joy the same way we stole from other Holidays.

I thought it was you.

But it’s Malachy, isn’t it? It has to be Malachy.

I could say all of that. This is a natural opening. I’d know it’s Malachy for sure and I could pursue investigating him and maybe Loch would help.

But he has a helluva reason to steal from us, his uncle cutting him off like this. Just because Malachy’s an ass doesn’t make him guilty.

And just because things are shifting between me and Loch doesn’t absolve him.

As much as I know all that, I know even more that if I brought up the theft right now, I’d see the truth in Loch’s reaction.

This is the reason I’m in Ireland at all, the whole point of my visit here. Coal needs me to do this. Christmas needs me to do this.

So why can’t I get my mouth to open?

I suck down more beer, but my throat is dry, each swallow an effort.

Loch frowns when I’m quiet too long. “Kris?”

I shake my head, hoping my face doesn’t give away everything reeling inside of me.

Do it. Ask him.

“How did Malachy convince you to give up the crown?” I hear myself ask. “He’s so villainous he’s almost a cartoon.”

It’s the vodka. It’s the beer. It’s—it’s not me. This can’t be me, this person who made a conscious choice to not do the thing my brother needs me to do.

I don’t want to know if Loch’s stealing from us.

Not tonight.

Guilt is tart and vile in my stomach and I take another drink to counter it.

Loch chuckles at my question, and I’m not sure where the tension is coming from, but it’s creeping over me like an inbound tide.

“My da had just died. I was vulnerable. Malachy convinced our court that I was too unstable, too insubordinate.” He swipes the vodka and chugs a mouthful. “Maybe he was right.”

“Like hell he was right.” The back of my neck burns.

He gives me a wry look, but doesn’t argue, and doesn’t agree.

“My dad passed Christmas to my brother,” I tell him without thinking. Is that something I can spread around yet, before Coal’s formal party announcement? Eh, add it to the list of my problems for tomorrow. “The woman who runs our Merry Measure said—”

Loch sputters a laugh. “Your what ?”

“Christmas’s joy meter. The Merry Measure.”

“Is everything in Christmas a pun?”

I grin. “If I have any say in it, yes. But when the woman in charge of our joy meter oversaw the transfer, she said it had to be willing and joyful to work. Maybe, because your transfer of power to Malachy wasn’t entirely willing or joyful, it didn’t take fully, and that’s why you still have access to St. Patrick’s Day’s joy.”

Loch’s eyebrows rise into a sardonic twist. “I did already come to that conclusion on my own.”

“Then—” I scrub at my face, fighting for clarity. “The transfer never entirely took. So what’s to stop you from… taking back control from Malachy? Basically cancel the initial attempt at a transfer, since it was never completed? You wouldn’t need Malachy’s participation likely, since he isn’t in full control and was never supposed to be.”

Loch’s face throws me into quaking silence. Eyes wide, lips parted, brow furrowed.

“You’ve likely already tried that,” I say to my nearly empty beer bottle. “Of course. It was dumb of me to assume you wouldn’t have tried everything. I—”

“No.”

I frown up at him.

He’s watching me in that absorbed way he’s done a number of times now, like he can listen to my inner thoughts if he focuses hard enough, can see straight into my soul if he wills it. And god, I feel that, his lidded-eye gaze an overhanging thunderhead.

“I have na tried that,” he whispers. “What you’re suggesting is a coup.”

“Maybe I am here to instigate treason.”

Loch finishes his beer, plunks the empty bottle onto the table, and scrubs his hand over his mouth. “This day has been too long to entertain a coup on top of everything else. And Christ ”—his eyes go from the bandage on my forehead to the one now hidden under my sweater—“you have to be feeling like shite.”

I shrug. “The vodka is doing wonders, honestly.”

He bends across the table, reaching for the bottle.

I pull it back.

“Kris.” He cocks his head, chastising. “I should na have even let you drink.”

“I’m not broken. You aren’t in charge of taking care of me.”

“Who does take care of you, then? It sure as hell isn’t you. ”

“My brother is excellent at—” Well, no, he isn’t. I take care of him, and that’s part of the reason he’s pushing me to do different things, because I spent so much of my life being the one making sure he ate enough and slept enough and drank enough.

No one does that for me.

Until.

I stare at Loch.

The realization I’m fighting rises up, up, pounds on my swollen throat with angry fists.

I take another drink of vodka.

Another.

A third, to be safe.

Loch snatches the bottle from me. “Jesus, you’re gonna vomit.”

“Vodka isn’t whiskey.” That doesn’t matter; a lightweight is a lightweight. “I’m perfectly fine with—” My body chooses this moment to hiccup.

Loch cuts a smile. “What’s your brother excellent at?”

“Oh. Um. Drinking. You’d like him. He’s got the same burdens as you and channels them into unfunny humor the same way.”

“He’s who that tattoo is for, eh?” He points at my right arm.

I gawk at him. Click my mouth shut. “Yeah. How did you know that?”

My stomach swoops at all this talk of Coal. Once negotiations are over, the other winter Holiday leaders will expect repayment to begin, and we won’t have enough joy for it, and Coal will be the one who’ll have to face them. I have one job to help him, and I can’t even do that right.

Loch’s cheeks are pink again. “He’s the only one you really talk about. Well, him and that girl of yours, Iris.”

“She’s not my girl,” I quickly correct. Then, “What did last night tell you about me?” Still abrupt, pinched throat making everything tight and desperate.

“What?” he asks, airy.

“You said you can tell a lot about someone by the way they paint. What did it tell you about me?”

Loch pushes to his feet.

I flatten my hands on the cold butcher block. Hold my breath. Like any movement will break whatever spell this is or yank me back to soberness and I am in a fuzzy, gilded, vodka-induced haze and I don’t want to leave.

But he crosses to the sink, pours two glasses of water, and places one in front of me as he sits again.

He drinks. Watches me over the rim.

“It’s more telling that you called yourself the Spare Claus today,” he says.

Blood rushes to my face. “It’s a tabloid headline—”

“Na. It isn’t. See, I’ve read the tabloids, and I—”

“I’m sorry.” It topples out of me. Half genuine. Half wanting him to stop this course of conversation. “For the tinsel incident. I really am. I never intended to hurt your reputation or give your uncle further cause to undermine you.”

Loch’s face gentles. “Now that’s a sincere apology, boyo. But we’re talking about you now. And I never once saw the press refer to you as spare anything. Is that how you see yourself? Or is that how your brother treats—”

“No. Fuck no. Coal would never.”

“So why’d you call yourself that?”

I take a gulp of water though I want more vodka because this will sober me up and the only way I can answer his question is to be drunk.

“I am the spare.”

Loch scowls. “Nah, you aren’t.”

“No. I—I’m the backup. The background. The one who’s been so focused on other people getting their happy ending that I have no idea what I want my own to be. And now Coal’s set. He’s got his boyfriend and Christmas and he doesn’t need me anymore, not like he used to, so I could do anything, and I’m floundering because what the hell am I supposed to do. I built my life around making sure other people were happy. I even went to Cambridge and kept going in this shitty track out of some childish dream that it’d earn my father’s—”

That catches me. Not in embarrassment; I’m caught in realization.

I squint at Loch. “You’re in the art history track.”

“Yeah?”

“Why?”

“I like it. I got the scholarship, so I went.”

“But—you also have a business degree.”

“Ah. That.” Loch stretches out a kink in his neck, and again, I’m hit with the need to take a picture of that neck, the way the muscles expand, retract, even under his black turtleneck. “That was my own attempt at winning my father’s approval. I do na regret it—it’s sure as hell helped me manage things that Malachy drops. But I realized, after my da died and Malachy snatched the throne, that the only thing I could control was my own happiness. I dinna want to give up on St. Patrick’s Day, but I wanted to have a… balance.” He shrugs. “I am na always great at it. Siobhán and Finn will testify to that. But I’m at Cambridge now for me, because it reminds me that I do have power outside of Malachy.”

I stare at him long after he stops talking. That’s a mentality that I’ve never been able to grasp, one I’ve been seeking for years. To do something for no other reason than I want it.

“I have no idea what to do,” I whisper. “I have no idea what I want.”

Loch watches me unravel at the island and I press a fist into my forehead as the room spins.

“That vodka. Is hitting me.” I clear my throat. “You’re right. This day has been too long—”

His hand lays over my other one where it’s splayed on the table.

My eyes go wide. I lift my head because I want to see his face this time.

His eyes are bloodshot. He sways a little; or maybe I sway, the sky is dark beyond the windows. What time is it? I have no idea. Time doesn’t exist. There’s only whipped cream vodka and the way Loch’s fingers follow the lines his smears of paint left yesterday, down the delicate skin on the back of my hand.

He launches up from the barstool.

I stand too, tethered to his movements like a reflection.

He comes around the end of the island. My body shifts to follow his, then he’s in front of me, his heat pricking goosebumps down my arms.

“You do na know what you want,” he says. Asks.

“No.” The word wrenches out of me. “What do you want?”

A smile. It’s shattering. Earth-destroying.

He curves down, breaking the height difference in a graceful arc, and rubs his lips across mine.

It’s barely a kiss. It’s a question. It’s the start of something, one of those endless lines of possibilities that ripple out from me, only this one gleams and pulses and shows me the way until I get to that realization I’ve been fighting and I stand face to face with it.

I want him.

God, do I want him.

I let it explode over me, but what comes isn’t destructive, it’s a web of refracting beams the way the kitchen light is going into streaks at the edge of my vision, giving me a centering focal point around which everything else is ombré rays.

I shove onto my toes and kiss him back.

Loch whimpers in the core of his throat and meets me before I’ve even come up all the way, lips punishing and devouring and severe.

He tastes like vanilla and bitter hops and I’m gulping him in the way I drank up the frigid breeze from the car window. Like it could shock the thoughts from my head, the stress from my body, the chaos from my soul. And he does, with each palpitation of his lips on mine, I’m taken to the basest form of a primal existence. He sucks my tongue into his mouth and his beard abrades my face and it’s all a throughline straight to every individual nerve ending. I make a noise that he counters with his own delicious moan and he’s not just peeling me apart now, he’s obliterating.

I never knew kissing could be this . Could be the fervor of every argument, the passion of every lashing that tongue has given me verbally, but in a way that melts my insides and I feel golden.

His hands are on my jaw, clamped around my head, holding me in place like I might evaporate—I might, I am, he bites my lower lip and my blood is turning to champagne bubbles. I grab onto his sweater against his hips to anchor to this plane of existence, but I’m touching his hips, those arched hills, that deep V I saw in his studio, and I whimper pitifully.

We twist and I need the support of the island at my back, his body boxing around mine, his height transforming to consume, swallowing me raw.

“Kris.” He morphs my name into a melody, lilting accent dripping from each letter he speaks into my mouth. “You’re all I’ve been able to think about for weeks. The only thought in my head is what your face will look like when I take you apart—like this, like this right now, you’re perfect.”

He hefts his hands under my thighs and I swear to god all the air in the room vanishes. It’s nothing but electric ozone as I’m lifted, slammed to sit on the edge of the island, legs spreading to belt around his waist.

There are stars shooting all around, supernovas thrown into ruin by the way he works his lips across my jaw, laving, sucking, drawing an abstract curve with his mouth the way he paints them with his fingers. Those fingers. Those fingers —they’re tangled in my belt, tugging, and I rock my head back and I’m so drunk and he feels so right.

“Perfect, Kris. Christ, look at you, spread out for me. So fucking good.”

His praise hits my veins rapid-fire, my breaths heaving faster—holy shit, I’ve never been this close this fast. I rock against him, not caring at all that I’m devolving into greedy little moans that get lewder when his hard cock grinds against mine, but I am greedy. I am greed and gluttony and proof that these sins are deadly.

I can feel his grin on my neck. The flick of his tongue. “You like that, eh? Me telling you how good you are.”

“ Mmmf. ” I try to speak but language is gone.

He puts a kiss in the divot under my ear, his words echoing in its hollow. “You are, Kris. So good for me. Look how well you react.”

He bites my neck and I struggle for something solid but the world is sweaty and honeyed.

I want to be good for him. I want to be the best for him—all my existence whittles to that need.

“I canna concentrate on anything when you’re around,” he whispers. “I just want to taste you, I just want to do this to you—”

Bottles tip over behind me; one shatters on the stone floor. It makes me jump, and Loch, wrapped around me, turns to marble.

I match him. Still tied up in his gravitational pull. The pause gives me space to breathe, gasping, whiny breaths.

Loch presses his forehead to the curve of my shoulder. “ Shite. ”

He shoves back off of me, putting so much space between us that I’m immediately hit with a blast of cold in his absence. I shiver, splayed out on the table, arms propping myself up, legs wide.

“I should na have done that.” He’s looking at the floor. He’s flushed and his hair is sticking up on the side and I don’t even remember touching his head, but my hand feels it, that texture, the way my neck echoes the burn of his beard.

That’s what I feel. Roughness, a scour on my heart from the regret painted so clearly across his face. It’s him pulling away in the car all over again, except this time, everything he said is draped over me in contrasting silk. So good for me, you’re perfect —

“Loch,” I get out. My throat is wrecked. My body is a disastrous collision of mismatched pieces.

“I should not have done that,” he says again, more forcefully, and he marches down the kitchen, rips open the door, and leaves.

It’s all I can do to stagger off the island, legs gone to liquid, heart banging around my rib cage in ardent, aching thuds.

Glass crunches under my shoes. The bottle was empty, at least.

And I focus on that.

The glass everywhere. The crisps spread on the island. The half-full bottle of vodka.

Blearily, I pull my phone out and take a picture of it all.

I come back into myself midway through cleaning up.

We just made out, and he ran off, and I’m cleaning up his kitchen.

I hurl the dustpan I found back onto the shelf. It hits with a clang and I slam the cupboard and I—I—

I don’t know. I don’t know.

I should know.

I do know.

I know that his kiss tasted like all the dreams I waxed on about in the writing I don’t do anymore, the words I wove while trying to imagine Iris but all I imagined was a fantasy, an ending.

He tasted like those fantasies.

He felt like those endings.

It’s him.