Page 49 of Crazy Thing

I’d never done anything like that before. I’d never experienced that kind of magic.

I remember getting home that night. I remember the look on my father’s face when he told me that I’d missed the phone call. The phone call I’d been waiting for all summer. The phone call offering me the internship that would have all but guaranteed me a full-ride scholarship to the college of my dreams.

I remember my mother’s hand on my shoulder as I’d desperately called the organization back that night, getting nothing but an answering machine in my ear. When I finally got through the next day, I’d been told that the internship had been awarded to someone else because I’d missed the 5:00 p.m. deadline to respond.

I’d fucked up.

I’d missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

Because for one single day in my structured, meticulously planned life, I’d lost focus. I’d gotten lost in a magical girl in the woods. And my future hopes and dreams had come crashing down.

Bitterness and rage had swept over me, my eyes blurry from tears that refused to fall. In my melodramatic fifteen-year-old mind, my life was over. Everything I’d ever wanted had gone down the drain.

And I blamed Ziggy. I blamed this girl who made me feelmorethan any other person ever had.

When I missed that phone call, I thought I’d lost out on my dream forever.

I didn’t try explaining it to Ziggy. I just pushed her aside in the cruelest way. I just shut down the feelings I had for her. Or at least, I tried to.

By the time I’d come to my senses and made an attempt to talk to her, she wanted nothing to do with me. She went out of her way to avoid me. She wouldn’t even let me get close to her.

Months later, another internship had come along. I still got into the college I wanted. I still got the scholarship I needed.

But I never found myself another Ziggy.

I spent years of my life chasing the high I got from being around her. I never found it. And eventually, I just gave up. Iresigned to the idea that love wasn’t important anyway. I focused on my money and career.

Now that Ziggy is back in my life years later, I need to figure out if I can fix this.

“The minute I kissed you, you changed my life. Majorly,” I go on. “I didn’t know how to handle it.” Guilt squeezes my throat so hard. I feel my Adam’s apple bob.

“So you handled it by breaking my heart?” she rationalizes. “By dancing with another girl—right in my face—after making me fall so hard for you? I was devastated, Darius.”

My shoulders drop when I realize there’s absolutely nothing I can say to turn back the hands of time and do things differently.

I gather her cheeks in my palms, staring directly into her beautiful eyes. “If I could make it up to you right now, I would. I’d do anything to make it up to you, Ziggy. All I can say is, I was wrong. I’m just…I’m just so fucking sorry.”

I dare to gently press my lips to the bridge of her perfect, upturned nose.

She abruptly pulls out of my grasp, a fierce emotion emanating from her pretty blue irises.

I expect her to tell me to go to hell. To declare that what I did to her is inexcusable. To proclaim that she’ll hate me forevermore.

Instead, Ziggy rises onto her tiptoes, drapes her arms around my neck and plants her lips on mine.

20

ZIGGY

Don’t ask me to explain myself.

What I’m doing makes no sense.

But I’m kissing Darius Brighton. I’m kissing him and I’m pulling him closer and I’m kissing him some more.

This was his plan all along, wasn’t it? He lured me here to this starlit rooftop so he could fuck me. Fuck me and forget me by the morning. And here I am, basking in the trap he set for me.

Because no man I know kisses like this. No-one has ever touched me like this. My body has never responded this way to anyone else’s.

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