AIRICKA PHOENIX

 
 
 
TOUCHING SMOKE
 
 
 
“He’s lying, Fallon.” Isaiah’s chair shrieked against marble as he climbed to his feet. The soft, steady clap of his feet as he moved towards me, made my heart flinch.
 
I hugged myself despite the warmth, warding off an inner chill. “Why would he?”
 
“Because he’s evil,” he said simply. “Because he likes knowing he’s hurt you.”
 
I didn’t pull away from his touch when he rested his hands on my shoulders, although I wanted to. The feel of him through the fabric of my shirt had my blood singing in a way that only then did I realize probably wasn’t natural. Nothing about us was natural. Everything that would apply to a normal relationship, didn’t apply to us. It only just then made sense why I was so obsessed. Why his touch made me melt in my skin. Why being away from him was like being skinned and salted alive. Why I felt like my very breath depended on his existence. None of those things were normal, not to the intensity with which I felt them.
 
“When you touch me, do you feel it?” I asked, staring far into the horizon, at the spot where the world dipped and vanished from sight, kind of the way my sanity seemed to want to do at that moment. “Do you…” I trailed off, biting my lip, trapping the single word that could unleash all my insecurities. The magical L word all girls wanted to hear from the boy they were crazy about.
 
His nose grazed the side of my face as he leaned in to murmur into my ear. My eyes closed and I steeled myself against the shiver that rippled along my spine. “Yes.”
 
Yes.
 
He said yes, yet my chest heaved with the first of many heartbroken sobs because it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real!