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“Can we stay like this?” She asks. Lumine has eyes sweet enough to drink but sharp enough to cut a person to pieces. She has the silhouette of a crescent starlight, untouchable, and he shuts his gaze.
“Yes.” The boy who isn’t her boyfriend, but could be, replies.
He won’t give her everything because that’s how to get a heartbreak. Giving someone all of you is how heroes wilt at the end of an Iliad — teachers with a degree in dramaturgy would have probably told her this.
Someone should have warned her of this.
But Scaramouche gives her a piece of the moon and he might as well be dying.
Begins in earnest, she asks for light and he kisses her blurry. A hand. A river. A hand that kisses stars and water splashes that sheen of her eyes. Please let me have this, he whispers to no one. Please don’t ever take this, his pleading falls to no ear.
He touches the girl and swears to God that he doesn’t love her, ever, because making a promise to an unknown entity helps solidify a case. Because there’s no privacy to fall for a girl in a deadbeat town when her dad is the mayor and yours is a drunk. Because they’re only seventeen and feelings that he has yet to figure out — should never be whispered by mothers at the market and yelled out by fathers at parental meetings. Because he shouldn’t, after all.
He doesn’t love her now, doesn’t know how to hold her with these broken fingers but he might someday. Make a home, ask for a kiss in a cathedral of white and love the girl who you shouldn’t dare to—
The future is dark.
+
His hands are on her waist and the school dance music is too quiet out here.
Everything is too quiet, out here.
Naked for bare judgement, his beating heart stays stitched on old sleeves and Lumine rests her head on his chest. She is deep in his heartbeat, drowning in the rhythmic of it all, the boy knows. The moon is also listening around these parked cars, he knows.
“Hey,” His date exhales, eyes drifting and it can’t be well. It will be beautiful, glittering like the rest of this night and her lips — but it can’t be well. “Let’s run away together.”
Punched-in where the black buttons rest against his chest, “Let’s.”
Thing is, he lied.
+
Nicknames and pet names and any name other than her own,
Muffled by the gold-spun hair, his confession is swallowed in between plush memories.
He’s grounded, writing her letters that get cut into pieces and burned. Illegible scratches of dark ink on the back of crumpled up receipts — He writes poems that love her more than he can.
Bruised eyes that squint hard enough to see light pouring in tangerine,
The teen writes and burns and chokes on smoke.
Hundreds of renditions, but none has her name.
+
“You didn’t call.” She states. There’s a hitch in her tone where he breaks, all over again.
“Sorry.” He mumbles and the world caves in.
+
What would she appreciate? A note, a song?
A goodbye letter shoved in her mailbox, a story undone?
He sits on the back of dad’s shitty truck and his wounds are still healing.
Scaramouche can swallow glass, the first four knuckles of a nasty punch but it’s her eyes in his vision, glossy and tired and demanding for an explanation he barely has — that kills him.
He wants to say something, drops his body onto the curb outside her house and cries out: Lumine, it’s me and I don’t want to leave, but he’s seventeen and can’t handle the next four knuckles to his lips.
He’s seventeen and can hardly handle much, these days.
+
They’re saying goodbye through the window because there’s no privacy when you fall for the mayor’s daughter and your dad is a drunk. Scaramouche should have given her everything because this was always going to end on a heartbreak. Giving someone all of you is how to preserve a piece of love in their heart, someone who cared — should have taught him this.
Anyone who cared — should have taught him this.
I’m sorry. He doesn’t say. I can’t stay. He doesn’t add.
“Let’s meet again someday.” He smiles instead and her eyes are glazed over by the driveway.
“Let’s.” She whimpers, curt because this is a nice touch. It’s a pin in an ongoing story, a promise of sorts between lovers who couldn’t be. A girl in the flickering glow of clouded moonlight and a boy who will find her, again.
Thing is, he lied.