Page 87 of The Puck Player

“You said a ring was just a ring, that it didn’t mean anything,” she whispers, transfixed on the engagement ring in my hand, as she recalls the conversation we had during her first month on campus, and I smile.

“This ring is different,” I reply firmly, plucking it from the box and reaching for her hand. “This ring means I will love and cherish you forever, so what do you say, Trouble? Will you marry me?”

“Yes, yes, of course I’ll marry you,” she cries, and my heart races as I slide the ring onto her finger, and pull her lips to mine, kissing her fiercely.

I’m engaged. I’m fucking engaged, and off the market forever, and nothing else matters, because Aubree Callows is the best play I’ve ever fucking made.

THE END.

They say that when you’re in a deep sleep your body carries out physical repair. Your heart and mind have a period of reduced activity, and so your body works on strengthening itself until it can take away your pain. I guess that’s why there is still a hole in my chest, I never did learn how to sleep through the night. It’s why I’m here, it’s why I watch her, because when she sleeps peacefully, it feels like everything is going to be okay.

I can still remember the day I first met her, which isn’t hard given my eidetic memory, but I knew from the moment I laid eyes on her that we weren’t the same. There was no darkness inside of her, only light, and the closer she got, the bigger the shadow around me grew. She tried her best to infect me with her light of course, that’s just the type of person my step-sister is,she just didn’t realize that every time she smiled at me, the pain inside of me intensified even more.

Now, the only time I allow myself to watch her freely is like this, here in her room, in the middle of the night while she is fast asleep. Her bright, honey colored hair is a tangled mess across her pillow, and for once her face is bare of that smile of hers that she offers so freely to people. My best friend Griffin once said that getting one of her smiles was his favorite thing in the world, and it took everything in me not to make him bleed, and what’s worse? He isn’t even her favorite, my other best friend Harden is. If she is the light to my shadows, then to him she is the sun to his whole fucking universe, but that’s okay. It’s not like she can ever be mine anyway, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever allow her to be theirs either.

Tonight is warmer than usual, which means she’s only wearing sleep shorts and a thin cami, and I let my eyes drag along the long length of her legs as they lay tangled in her sheets. She always has been a messy sleeper, even as a child, and the nights she used to sneak into my room during a thunderstorm she would manage to wreck and wrinkle my entire bed, leaving her mark everywhere. I put a stop to those nights a few years ago, around about the time I realized that the affection I had for her wasn’t the same as what Archer has for her. He’s our brother and unlike me, he actually cares for us like siblings, he sees her as something to protect, not possess, and that’s when I knew I was fucked in the head, because I don’t want to protect her as my sister, I want to possess her as mine.

It’s why I started locking my doors, the one in the hall, and the one that leads to our shared bathroom, because knowing how I felt and having her crawl into my bed when she was scared, was doing something to me that I knew was wrong. Except now here I am, lurking in her room in the middle of the night, like a fucking stalker trying to get his next fix. But I leavefor college tomorrow, and I won’t lay eyes on her for four fucking months. The thought only causes that ache in my chest to throb even more, so I take my usual seat in the chair that she has facing her bed, and I watch her.

My obsession with Aurora Gray has been steadily fed for ten fucking years, but for the first time in my life I’m about to go cold turkey. Maybe then I can erase the imprint of her from my fucking soul and move on.

Shadows disappear when they are cast in light, but I’m ready for my light to disappear, and for the darkness to consume me.

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