Page 55 of Beautiful Lies
“You’ve never been afraid to say how you feel. That’s what made me fall in love with you. You have the soul of a poet.”
That would be some shit poetry. “I’m only like this with you.”
“I know,” she said quietly. After a beat, she asked, “Why did you choose me?”
“Because you’re hot and I’m superficial.”
She laughed. “Besides that.”
I took a drag on my cigarette, thinking about it. Ava had always been my Achilles heel. I didn’t know why she made me so vulnerable. Why she touched a place inside me that nobody ever had. Or why I’d always told her things I never told anyone else. “Maybe it’s because you believed in me when nobody else did. Maybe it’s because of the way you loved me.”
“How did I love you?”
“With the power of a thousand suns.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
I chuckled. Neither did I. “It was blazing hot… and so strong it scorched the earth.”
“Great. I’m responsible for global warming. My love was bad for the environment.”
I laughed. Sometimes she cracked me up. “Maybe you’re safer on the moon.”
“Now you know why I don’t venture down to earth very often.”
“Because I’m living here full-time now?” My tone was light and teasing, but my heart was heavy.
Ava sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Rocket Man?”
“I can think of a few things you can do with me. If my hand falls off, I won’t be much of a tattoo artist.”
“How many times a day do you jerk off?”
“Today? Three. I might knock out another one before I go to sleep.”
“Seriously?”
I smothered a laugh. “Too much? Not enough? What’s the recommended daily allowance?”
“I’m sure there’s no limit—”
“To my imagination.”
“What do you imagine?”
You. “I don’t need to use my imagination. I let the porn stars do all the work.”
I envisioned her rolling her eyes at that one. “You watch porn now?”
No. “You have a dirty mind. You shouldn’t be thinking about my dick or what I do with it.”
She was silent for a few seconds, probably thinking about exactly what I told her not to. I smiled into the darkness. What game were we playing?
Ava changed the game again. She was good at turning the tables. “I blamed you… for everything. For the drugs and for disappearing without a word. And then those men… they were going to kill you after they beat you up and carved your chest...”
Eden must have told her that because I never had. I’d tried to tell Ava as little as possible about what had happened that night. Eden thought I’d been unconscious when that guy had carved my chest. I let her think that, even though it wasn’t true. I’d felt every dig of the blade as it cut into my skin, branding me with a word that would forever scar me no matter how much ink covered the letters. “But they didn’t kill me.”
“I never want to imagine a world without you in it. It would be such a sad and lonely place. But I’m still trying to get over…”
