Page 90 of The Last Kind of Kiss
Alright, Lila. Stay calm. It’s fine. Just some bad weather. The worst thing you could do is freak out.
My eyes roam to the fuel level gauge on my glowing dashboard, which borders on oh-shit territory and rests at 1/4 full. But that’s not where my problem lies. With how icy the road is, my tires are fighting for traction, and I’m afraid of spinning out (and off this goddamn cliff) if I apply too much pressure to the gas pedal.
Maybe I should turn back. There’s no telling what will happen to me the longer I’m out here. I don’t know Big Bear. I’m already about twenty minutes from the town. My head’s not clear enough to finish this drive. But if I turn back, I’ll have to deal with the life I left behind—the life that fuckingruinedme. I don’t want to see Bristol’s face. I don’t want to speak to him. I just want to forget all about him. I just want to leave. I just want to…disappear.
I need to escape. I need to feelanythingother than this hopelessness that slides a poison-tipped arrow through my third andfourth rib, misaligned just enough to scar the tissue around my heart instead of puncture it. Bristol broke everything we’ve built together. He had the ring this entire time, and he kept it a secret from me. Me! I opened up to him about my past, my insecurities. I let him hold the most delicate parts of me.
And then he just tore into me with his incisors like I was nothing but the too-soft pulp on an orange rind—weak, flimsy, created only to slake that greedy thirst of his. Thirst to have two women at once, to live his life with one foot in the present and one in the past, as if the consequences in doing so weren’t even a fleeting afterthought.
My Mazda judders forward a few inches, tires whirring against an impassable snowdrift. It clanks the entire foundation of my car, forcing me back toward a man I want nothing to do with, forcing me to submit to a supporting role in myownlife. I make the idiotic mistake of peering out my window, and I’m slapped right in the face by the image of the mountainside sloping off into absolute nothingness—a demise I’m sure is awaiting me. But the worst part? I don’t even know if that scares me as much as forgiving Bristol does.
I’m bound to forgive him, right? Because that’s who I am. Because I just run back to the people who’ve hurt me in the hopes that theygrowto love me.
The storm’s getting worse. There’s too much snow. My windshield wipers are in constant motion, and yet I can barely see ten feet in front of me. What if I run out of power? What if…fuck, what if I freeze to death out here? What if I starve to death? What if the weather is so bad that nobody can retrieve my body until it’s too late?
I should’ve never left. I should’ve stayed and tried to work things out with Bristol. And now I may never get the chance, all because I was a petty bitch who wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt me. I didn’t even run because I was a coward. I ranbecause I thought that he might’ve cared enough to come after me.
I frantically scramble for my phone, hurrying to unlock it so I can call for…help? Bristol? Then I realize that those little Wi-Fi bars at the top are completely nonexistent.
I have no fucking cell service.
Shit. What do I do? I’ll die of hypothermia if I attempt to walk back to the cabin in this weather, but I can’t juststayhere. I have no provisions to keep me alive for the next few days, or for however long this storm continues to rage on.
Acid—corrosive in every sense of the word—sloshes against the walls of my stomach, and fear rivets up my spine, turning my corporeal form into a boneless pile of mush. I’m going to die out here. I’m going to die out here, and Bristol will have to live with the belief that I still hate him.
The beginnings of a panic attack are coming on fast, and moisture coats my cheeks in a glossy sealant, tunneling my vision to a pinpoint. The sobs that rocket up my throat sear the lining completely. My head’s beginning to pulse because of how much water my body’s losing, and I can feel my heart punching against my chest as it threatens to charge for the nearest exit. My sniffles echo in the interior of my car in a twisted imitation of mocking laughter, the ball of nerves in my belly steadily expanding like that of a kingdom’s iron-fist-run sovereignty.
Breathe, Lila. Calm down.
I ruined everything. It’s all my fault. I was always worried I’d lose Bristol, and now I have.
You can fix this. Don’t lose hope. You two can come back from this.
He saw my true colors. Why would he want a girlfriend so insecure in herself that she punishes him for finding love before she came along?
It feels like my throat’s closing. I can’t breathe. I can’t think straight. The car begins to power down. I’ve run out of time.
My hands claw at the seatbelt restraining me, and sensibility flees from my grasp like an RV rolling down a rocky mountainside when I unclick the buckle. I scramble into the back seat and curl into a ball on the car floor. I’m no longer comforted by the rumble of the engine. Instead, there’s an eerie howl that sounds in the distance for far too long, and at too low of a pitch to be a product of just the wind. A wolf, perhaps. An emaciated creature looking for something to fill its empty stomach, to tide it over until the gunmetal clouds retreat.
Bone-chilling horror unmoors my false sense of security—the piers of a bridge suffering an integral collapse before the rest crumbles down with them—and I quickly unlock my phone to try and mitigate the panic. My fingers move at lightning speed to locate “Beautiful,” but instead, a man’s voice crackles through the small speaker.
I don’t know this song. There’s a melodious acoustic guitar that transcends me to another plane of heaven, and as I debate switching it, I glance down through the tears to catch the title of it on my phone—“Perfect” by Ed Sheeran.
I can feel the puttering pace of my heartbeat begin to slow, and I exert as much control as I can over my turbulent breathing. I lose myself in the lyrics, letting them distract me from my current predicament, too afraid of the inevitable silence that will follow. Bristol must have loaded this song on my phone without my knowledge.
I haven’t added new songs to my library in ages. I’d been so content with the past that I didn’t want to bring about change. Just like how I’ve lived my life—constantly revisiting my deadbeat father and how he abandoned me, constantly revisiting those self-esteem-crushing comments men made about me, all because it’s the only treatment I’ve ever known. Letting someone in, letting someone shift how I viewed myself, was scarier to me than the blows my self-conscious had already sustained.
And that’s what Bristol was—change. Change limned in a spotlight of pure gold.
Maybe it’s the delirium talking, but it sounds like this song’s message was made for me—a reflection of his heart, of how much he adores me.
Perfect.
Never something I thought I was, always something I strove to achieve. And now something I can maybe grow to accept.
Nobody’s perfect, butI’mperfect for someone.
With each harmonious run and tear-jerking lyric, I yearn to be in Bristol’s arms, to have him spin me around and hold me tightly to his chest. I want to go back to how things were. I miss him. I missus.
