Page 4 of Monsters we Crave

I looked at the line and shook my head. It was already midday. “Let’s grab some my next day off. Mom needs this sauce.”

“What about Ezra?”

I diverted my attention to a little girl flying a dragon kite. “What about him?”

“I don’t know. You two haven’t seen each other in a while, right?”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

I wasn’t going to tell her how he had me bent over four days ago. The memory was as vivid as the hideous décor inside the motel room we’d met in.

I’d been more focused on the vintage comforter than Ezra fucking me. I wasn’t sure he’d noticed.

Ophelia glanced over with a slight frown. “Are you two okay?”

I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I think we were better off as friends.”

“I hate to be right, but I called it. Your relationship hasn’t changed that much, only the label. Oh, and the sex. Now he gets sex.”

I laughed and shook my head. She wasn’t wrong. When it came to Ezra, I found my feelings in a state of flux more often than not. He had been a constant in my life since I was seventeen. I’d just gone from living in seclusion to a more prominent area of Antheia. He’d befriended me during my first week at Haven’s Crest Academy and helped me adjust. He'd been a pillar of support and understanding ever since.

Did I love him as more than that?

Sadly, I didn’t think so.

I valued his friendship more than words could convey.

He was handsome, reminiscent of a modern-day Byronic hero. I laughed every time we were together, and he never made me feel as if he’d grown tired of me. But it was as if we were both actors in a play, continuing our roles even though the script had become old and worn. A few days before we met in that motel room and became a tangle of limbs, I’d tried to break it off.

The memory resurfaced, slicing through the haze of recent events.

We were in the park, Nixon Gardens to be exact, under the very tree where we became something more than friends. Ezra had sat across from me, looking somewhat disheveled, a stark contrast to his usual put-together self.

“Ezra,” I began, my voice soft, “I've been thinking...maybe we'd be better off just as friends.”

He looked up, his eyes blue eyes searching mine, trying to decipher if I was joking.

When he realized I was sincere, a mix of confusion and hurt clouded his expression. “Kore, are you serious?”

I nodded. “I think maybe what we have is more about friendship and less about…all the other stuff.”

He scoffed, trying to keep his emotions in check. “So, you want to downgrade our relationship? Just throw away everything we've been through?”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that. Our relationship was smooth sailing, easy and tame. We hadn’t been through anything particularly life altering. “This isn’t throwing anything away. It's about recognizing where we truly stand,” I tried to reason.

His voice had cracked, and he’d shifted closer. “You want to be with someone else, don't you?”

I remember withholding a sigh, somewhat offended that this was the first conclusion he’d come to. “There is no one else, Ezra. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

His eyes brimmed with tears, taking me off guard. Ezra was strong-willed and seldom displayed vulnerability. “Kore, I can't... I can't just go back to being friends. Not after everything.”

There it was again, his alluding that we’d gone through some dire trials and tribulations together. I didn’t know where that was coming from. We weren’t each other’s firsts, no matter how many times he liked to think or pretend we were. That claim belonged to a former Redpeak Raptor we’d gone to the academy with.

His toned physique evident even beneath the team jersey was the first thing I'd noticed, followed by a mischievous glint in his eyes. He was relentless, his flirtations persistent and undeterred. There’d never been any real emotional connection between us. No shared dreams or whispered secrets. It was his charm and sheer persistence that wore me down. He became my first, and later, for some inexplicable reason, second and third.

Last I'd heard, he had moved to live with his father in Elysium, the esteemed sector 1. I hoped he was doing well. As for me and Ezra, I was beginning to see we viewed our relationship very differently.

“Ezra...” I’d hesitated, searching for the right words, “I'm sorry. I never intended to hurt you.”

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