Page 1

Leather she saw the look in my eyes, breaking through the door, she stopped me right as the first drop landed on my cheek.

I gasped at the sting yet enjoyed it all the same.

Thank God for best friends.

They always seem to be there at the right time, even in those you wish they weren’t.

For a long time, I thought my mother’s reflection was my biggest problem.

If only I could find a way to love her, to forgive her, then I could find a way to unbind myself from this self-image.

Her image and the scar would disappear, revealing to me the reflection I so desperately craved—me without the remnants of her.

I failed repeatedly until eventually I found the power in the beauty she gave me and the girl’s reflection I was once avoiding altogether, in my homes, on the streets, and certainly in the photos, now graces billboards all throughout the city.

What I failed to realize until later in life was that the scars more hazardous to me than the thousands chained to me like dead weight are those within my heart, specifically one, and when those scars reopen, the damage can be irreversible.

The man behind my desired scent of vanilla pathetic considering everything I am driving away from, the questions left unanswered, and the complete arsenal of wreckage I cause further with each mile I take, my lips permanently sealed to those who have questions.

I could say I have been a coward multiple times in my life, but this takes the cake.

There is simply no justification.

Simply, I am a coward.

I am not naive to the reality we all hold responsibility.

I am the common denominator here that links us all.

Without me, none of us would be involved, and all I could do was run.

I wish I could have said something.

I wish I could have had the words, but for once, there were none to speak.

I couldn’t even face them.

The idea of it alone playing in my head terrified me.

I know I can’t run forever.

If I know them, they won’t let me, and I do know them.

Fuck, they are probably already on the hunt.

For now, I just need that familiar smell.

I need to remember something happy.

Wiping the tears from my bruised eyes, I adjust my fallen makeup in the rearview to ensure I do not walk into this place looking like the complete wreck that I am.

Pulling myself together, I head in through the glass door, the small cowbell at the top alerting the employees of my arrival.

A quick smile graces my face at the sound, reminding me of small-town shops I’ve frequented on my travels down south, unbeknownst to him.

“Welcome to Crowestead Candle Co.

Is there anything specific we can help you find?”

a young brunette says, heading in my direction.

Her olive skin is young and beautiful, as if life hadn’t even begun to touch her.

She’s probably seventeen and working here while finishing high school with her whole life ahead of her.

I pause for a moment, looking around the shop, pushing down the jealousy of her innocence in my throat before I engage.

“No, just browsing.

This shop is wicked beautiful, smells delightful.”

“Yeah, it does.

Sometimes I forget being here all the time,”

she jokes.

“Well, let me know if you need anything.

I’ll be just over here,”

She points to a beautiful barnwood desk as she makes her way to it.

“Thanks.”

A million scents penetrate my nostrils a mile a minute, but I am only here for two.

The tall white shelves are lined from ceiling to floor, covering every wall within its space.

Beginning my search, I realize they are alphabetized; praise God, this can be quick.

My body is screaming for an Epsom salt bath.

J, K, L, La, Le, gotcha—Leather.

Quickly I grab the candle, making my way further down the line in my search for the second scent I need.

T, U, V—Vanilla.

Holding them, I feel eager with a desire to smell them immediately.

Opening the lids, setting them on a nearby table, I bring them to my face side by side, inhaling my life.

Praying to find some solace.

The memories start flying out of the files locked within my brain.His face, the feel of his arms around me, his naked body pressed against mine after fucking the absolute soul out of me.

His soft lips with a natural cherry tint against his god-given tanned skin on my shoulder, kissing every inch of my body, taking all of me every time while exchanging all of himself with me.

His bone-chilling hands wrapped around my neck as I gasped for air, his dark chocolate eyes penetrating through the windows of my soul as he pushed deep within me, the taste of his sweat on my tongue.

The sound of the engines at the F1 races in Austin, his hands ravishing my hair, his crisp white smile.

I can hear his sultry voice calling for me— Mi Amor rolling off his tongue, and it sounds fucking beautiful.

My eyes are trapped in the dark, and for a moment, I am no longer in a candle shop.

I am happy.

The vision of his hand across my lap in the car, the yellow smiley face staring back up at me, our history, the feel of the water like silk against my leg.

“Excuse me, Miss.

Is everything okay?”

a sweet voice from behind speaks, causing me to startle.

Jolting my eyes open, I realize there are tears streaming down my face.

I’m snapped from heaven back to reality in a fly-over town candle shop.

To this poor girl, I look like a complete trainwreck.

Here I am, terrifying yet another human.

I must still be me then.

Frantically wiping my rain-kissed skin with the sleeve of my hoodie, drying it, I look up to her.

“I’m sorry.

I’m aware I probably look like a psychotic and frantic human right now, but I’m fine.

I’m so sorry.

This is weird; I’ll take all of these.”

My embarrassment consumes me as I grab the lids, placing them back on the containers.

“Okay, I’ll get them rang up for you,”

she nicely responds, swiping them up, heading towards the counter; curiosity takes over her as she pauses, glancing back at me.

“I don’t mean to sound pushy or salesy, but I kind of got the feeling you love vanilla it plays through my head, and a laugh escapes me as my eyes catch something off to the side.

Looking up and to my right, I see a little sign hanging from a wicker basket: Sandalwood it is genetically a part of human biology.

Lastly, parents and family members to teach them compassion, self-worth, respect for elders, and most importantly, unconditional love, the most crucial instillment in every human that walks this earth.

To know that no matter when you fall, if nobody steps in to catch you, they always will.

The feeling of knowing that you are genuinely loved is a core necessity of human nature, no matter your choices, your faults, your failures, or shortcomings.

Your parents are your first lesson and taste of humanity and compassion you will ever experience from the moment you are born.

Somehow for many, the love they receive as an infant is not carried on through their life.

For some, their parents only see their innocence in their physical size, and when that baby begins to grow, they somehow forget that child is still just as fragile as the day they were born.

They forget that the child still yearns and is searching for all the things they needed as an infant; a security blanket, admiration, praise, acknowledgment, and most of all, the unconditional love we give to our babies so freely with nothing in return.

Recklessly for some, they find beauty in their young children that is not wanted; simply, they are only a transaction, here to serve a purpose.

So, what happens when a child is raised without those things in their life? What happens to a child raised within an emotional they stand frozen, overwhelmed and fighting to move accordingly in their adult world, with expectations they can’t maintain one day making their ability to connect with others even harder than it would have been if they were simply just born with an old soul.

Trauma is a fickle beast; it wears many faces, and for some, it causes them to simply spend their life searching for destinations they never arrive to, feeling failure time and time again because, to them, getting out of bed and surviving the day was how they spent their weeks, their months, their years.

So how does one stop surviving and start living? I do not know that we ever do, but what I do know is we will spend every day trying, for quitting is not in our vocabulary, while resilience runs through every inch of our being.

My childhood was hijacked from me, but it also never existed—at least, that’s what I have told myself for years.

For to acknowledge its horror is to admit to myself it was real, and that is like pouring vinegar on English vines.

The toxicity is capable of destroying the entire plant to its roots, making it secede within a week.

Even if I am dead on the inside, the breath I brandish every morning when my eyes open is one of victory, for I am here, while they are not, and I grew to become none of the things they all said I would, the things they tried to force me to be.

I spend every day repenting for the actions that were of their making on my journey here, and I will forever be their prisoner because of them, but I will never be their victim again.

So, for me, when I read my pages, I read them in love, and sign them in lace.

My childhood was full of love, a love like no other, the kind stories are made of.

The ones little girls grow up to walk down the aisle to, that soul-shattering and all-knowing love.

Love that gut punches you, the kind you can finally see outside the speckle of your reality up through the sky, past the burning stars, straight into the bleeding colors of the Milky Way.

Love that transcends elucidation and perception.

He was the light in my darkness, the validation in my tattered soul, and the single thing my heart beats for as I walked this earth, filling the holes in it bludgeoned by others.

Love came to me younger than expected in the societal standards, but for the land in which my soul was forged, it came when it was supposed to.

For I believe they may have been forged in the same fire, whether this is true or not, that ideology and unshakable tie between us through all these years has remained my boundary of hope and the fertilizer that feeds the Ivy covering every wall inside that I have built.

The only problem being—I had never told him until today.

It’s taken me a lifetime to tell him about my feelings for him, partially because telling would give him power, and to give away power leaves room for hurt, rejection, and error.

For me, those are not worth giving up the fantasy.

When I learned he had felt the same all these years later, we made the hard choice that watching the reel play through our mind is better than losing it in the physical world, for taking a chance could alter the ending to the story we wrote together all these years.

Instead of diving off the cliff, we will wade in the rocks while craving the adrenaline the jump would give us, forever convicting ourselves to a lifetime of self-inflicted purgatory.

Forever craving the adrenaline the jump would bring us, dreaming, hoping, and holding onto one another, sentencing our hearts forever to be given with limitation and a lifetime of a desire to be filled.

For heaven is not a place you can physically be, but you can spend your whole life chasing it, even while wading in the waters of Hell.

At Least that was our story, but now the city has brought us a chance to write new pages, filled with new adventures that have never touched the ink in our prequels, a plot twist I never saw coming, and an ending overdue to be written.

Cheers to our Sequel T.

- ME-

P.s.

Buy new fucking pens; these suck.

Oh, and next time, try using I and me instead of them, they, their, we’re, etc.

Your lack of self-absolution is seeping through YOUR words.