Page 47 of Together We Rot

“What?” he whispers, but I refuse to meet his eyes. I step forward and he scuttles back until his spine presses into the bark of a tree. He was a monster in my mother’s office, but I’m determined to make a human out of him. Now he’s only a boy.

There’s a siren pull to seize the shrinking space between us, to abandon it all, and I’m helpless.

This won’t fix me. Nothing on this earth will fix me. But if it means breaking up the grief for a couple minutes, so be it.

Elwood’s lips are close. His breath spills like autumn wind.

“This doesn’t mean anything.” And then I smash my mouth to his.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ELWOOD

Wilhelmina Greene is kissing me.

I breathe her in and my stomach erupts with heat. Nothing in the last ten minutes makes any sense. Everything keeps rushing, rushing, rushing past, and it’s impossible to focus. I don’t see anything save for the motion lines and the blur of the air as things pass me by. I’m aware of it all happening: the kiss, the feeling of a lit coal I had in my gut as the weeds engulfed the floorboards, the sickening crack of a building wasting away to nothing, Wil looking at me like I’m someone to be scared of.

This doesn’t mean anything, she said before her lips crushed mine. But it means everything. At least, to me it does.

She’s close. So close, I could scream. I revel in the turbulent beating of her heart, the flush of her chest against mine.

Her lips are as soft as I remember. The memory of our first kiss is an imprint that will never go away. Wil and I beneath the bleachers freshman year, watching the bitter sway of the pine. Her eyes glossing over mine, dark and purposeful. “Have you ever kissed someone?”

Swallowing a chunk of apple so hard, I nearly choked to death. “O-of course not... Have you?” I don’t remember a blush ever hurting so bad.

“No. I just want to see what the big deal is. Don’t you?”

It had been that easy. She’d kissed me then, just to see. It had been an awkward smash of lips. A closemouthed, eyes-wide-open, five-second ordeal. Afterward, she’d smudged away the imprint of my lips with a smear of her sleeve. “I don’t see what all the hype is about.”

But I did. I thought about it every night and every morning and all the times in between.

My hands must be possessed after all because I reach for a fistful of Wil’s hair and drag her closer. Maybe it’s my sleep-addled mind, maybe it’s the hunger I’d buried deep exploding to the surface. There’s no fighting this. There’s no denying this.

She takes the lead, and we meld together into one dizzying blur of light, color, and sound. The ground rumbles alongside my pulse, flowers sprouting with every kiss. Planted and raised by my own desire. Petals like bruises, vines that mimic her curves. A kiss that lasts forever yet ends all too soon.

I draw back, mesmerized by the sight of her. Lips bursting red, a face that fits perfectly within my hands. My thumb darts out and brushes against her cheek. Her eyes were brown before, but they’ve deepened. They are limitless.

The wind whips her hair, sending it spiraling all around her. I dream of sketching her one last time, another portrait to add to my collection. She’s always been an enigma of sharp lines, never a soft bone in her body. So many papers torn, the lead piercing through. No canvas has ever been strong enough to hold her.

Wil breaks away, horrified.

She takes a step back, but all I can focus on is the red of her lips. Puffy and swollen from the tug of my teeth. “Holy shit. I shouldn’t have done that.”

I blanch.

“We’re tired,” she continues, slow and purposeful.

With the fog lifting from my thoughts, I look to the moon. God’s watchful eye staring down from the heavens. There’s the cracking sound again of a foundation falling apart, but the walls are my ribs and my heart doesn’t stand a chance beneath the rubble. I feel every puncture and bruise of the collapse.

She’s scared of you, the voice inside me whispers.

“That didn’t mean anything,” Wil says again. The flowers wilt at my sides and die at her words. “That was a mistake.”

“A mistake?” I whisper, and I can taste ash on my tongue.

She hates you.

She flashes me a look, but her eyes don’t rest on mine. “Did you want it to mean something?”

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