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Damien

Play - Cherry by Lana Del Rey

That fire burns

She avoided me.

She didn’t exactly, but she stopped looking at me for three days. And it felt wrong. Mireya’s now sitting across from me, refusing to meet my gaze, but her scent is the same, her presence is unchanged, and I realize that in these few days, I’ve missed our little secret meetings more than I thought I would.

“I strangely missed your presence,” is the first thing I say once we’re both sat next to each other. Because I did. I missed her enough to risk it all just to have her close a little longer.

Her eyes flicker to me before softening. “I strangely missed you too, Mister Caldwell.”

“You can call me by my name, Mireya.”

“I know,” she says, her smile coming back.

“I should have reacted differently last time,” I murmur.

“You think so?”

“Yes,” I admit. “You’re brilliant, dangerous, and I was worried for your future.”

A silence stretches between us after this. Every thought is conscious, and forbidden. She leans slightly closer, not touching me, not saying anything, just existing in my space, and I feel the weight of it crushing me. She smiles as if she’s won, and I don’t care, it makes me smile to see her like that.

“It’s true I’m brilliant,” she says.

“Yes,” I reply. “You are.”

“I’m smarter than you,” she says suddenly.

“I’m older than you,” I counter, letting my voice drop slightly.

“I feel more than you,” she shoots back.

“I can assure you… I’m feeling something stronger than you are, right now,” I reply.

Blue eyes meet mine and for a second I try to look past them. I forget myself there. I wonder if I look long enough to find the girl hiding behind all the things that hurt her.

“Oh really? And what would that be?” she asks, leaning slightly closer.

“A need,” I murmur. “And it makes me… sick.”

“You planning to do something about it, then?”

“I… wish I knew what to do,” I admit.

I want to kiss her. I know better. I know exactly why I shouldn’t. So why does every part of me want to do it anyway?

She looks up, then drops her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m looking at you normally.”

She laughs softly. “No, and you know it.” She leans in, keeping the smile that quickly fades, and then, instinctively, almost before I think, my hand brushes her face.

“The wound,” I ask quietly, glancing at the faint scar at her waist that I touched and saw, but now is covered under layers of clothes. “It’s… okay? Are you okay?”

Her voice is airy, her gaze is lost, confused, caught between what she’s thinking and what she should feel. “Better.”