Page 101 of Honey Pot

Sitting there in the quiet with him felt normal. It was comfortable again, and I hadn’t realized just how much I missed that… How much I missed feeling like Cael and Clementine.

“You’re right. She’d be livid with us, you know,” I said. “All this fighting and for what?”

“You’re the one fighting, Plum.” Cael sighed. “I’m just a punching bag at this point.”

“Well, I’m sorry. Maybe I should try making you feel seen instead of trying to drag some fight from you that you don’t have.”

“I have plenty of fight.” He chuckled. “I’m just navigating seven years of feelings that I thought I’d never get to act on. I used to dream about you, more often than not. It was easier when my sheets smelled like you.” He stopped, cheeks flushed with color. “So I started buying soap that reminded me of you. The guys teased me, but it was worth it because I got you back, even briefly.”

My heart raced so fast it pained me as he talked about it.

All this time, believing that he had just moved on, but he hadn’t, at least not from us.

“You were the majority of my life, Clementine, and I couldn’t live it properly without you,” Cael admitted. “Maybe that’s insane, but I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my life. Loving you, unapologetically, was not one of them.”

“I laid in bed for two weeks after you left,” I confessed. “Everything hurt like I had been hit by a truck. I missed you so bad, but Momma would bring me warm french fries home every day on her way back from work, and she’d never say anything or scold me for lying around crying. She’d just set the fries on my desk and tidy up before leaving me until the next day. She still does that because you did that, bringing me french fries when you made me mad, upset, or cry.”

“I hate when you cry.” Cael’s words were tight.

“I know.” I sighed, thinking about that bird. “But she kept that alive because she knew I needed it. Eventually, I crawled from that cave and managed to find my feet again. Joined the newsletter club at school and found out I was pretty good at making news out of nothing. I slipped a little when Dad left, maybe a lot…”

It had never been our fault.

It had never been Cael’s fault.

“Your Dad left?” Cael seemed surprised.

“Your Mama kept a lot more together than we ever knew.” I clenched my jaw. “I was… I am…” I corrected myself, “angry because all of a sudden, every ounce of love had been stripped from my life. Everything I knew about endless love crumbled. Lorraine died, Daddy fell out of love with Momma. It felt like we had been lied to our entire lives.”

”You know that’s not true,” he quietly argued.

“Do I?” I countered. “I’ve been here for weeks, and it feels like all we’ve done is run in circles, blaming each other for situations outside of our control.”

“You,” he corrected. “You’ve been running circles around me, blaming me, not listening to me.Not kissing me.”

“For a damn good reason,” I fought. “The last time I let you do that, it crippled me so badly I couldn’t leave my room, Cael!”

“So that’s what it’s about. You’re scared.”

“No, I’m not scared.”

I was terrified.

“It doesn’t matter. After this weekend is over, I’m gone. I’m not sticking around to find out how a heart shatters twice.”

Cael stared at me like I had slapped him and suddenly, we were back on that hill behind my house, naive and angry at the world for all the same reasons.

CODY

2016

“You didn’t need to hit him, Cael Cody.” Mama pressed the ice to my face and I hissed in pain as she gripped the back of my head in anger.

“Yeah, I did,” I said with conviction.

He deserved more.

My skin was crawling.

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