Page 2 of Velvet Thorns
She looks so goddamn cute it hurts.
She looks almost the same as she did at fourteen, back when I first realized I’d set the world on fire just to keep her warm. She’s nearly eighteen now, but nothing’s changed. She’s still so achingly familiar. She's still the girl I’d lie beneath the stars with while she traced constellations on my back with fingers that felt likesalvation, whispering stories about a future I could only hope for and never believed Ideserved.
She was hope when I didn’t have any, and I threw it all away. I hate myself for it. I hate that I once had everything I ever wanted right in my hands, and I let my damage and ego smash it to pieces.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw her when we were both fourteen, sitting alone at opposite ends of a lunch table. I remember glancing up and catching her eye, and I was mesmerized because they’re the most vivid shade of gold. Something inside me shifted, something permanent, and I knew even then that she would be important to me.
All I’d ever known was the kind of darkness that breeds in broken homes. A father whose love language was violence and walls that absorbed blood and tears like they were built for it. But Shannen was something else entirely. She had this soft voice, like she was afraid of being too much for the world, and her hair caught the light like it was spun from the sun itself. She was gentle in a way I’d never seen before and the closest thing to an angel I’d ever laid eyes on.
She became my lunch buddy that whole first year, and maybe that’s when I fell for her. No, not maybe. I know it was then because I still remember the moment she marked my soul as hers.
“I’ve claimed you now,” she whispered once, golden eyes burning into mine, promising and threatening me all at once. “In this school full of assholes, you’re mine, and I’m yours, got it? This is where we’re happiest. Not because it’s good, but because at least here, we’re not at home.”
Home for me was fists through drywall, blood on the carpet, and me lying in bed with my hands clenched tight while my mom took punches three feet away and acted like she didn’t. For her, it was junkie parents who forgot she existed until her piece-of-shitfather pissed the bed she was sleeping in and had the audacity to blame her.
Home was survival, but Shannen was the first person who didn’t ask me to survive. She just wanted me to stay.
Bleed if you have to. Break if you must. Just don’t leave.
Those were the rules we both lived by until I went and fucked it all to hell.
I’m closing the distance, and my heart’s thudding so violently it’s a miracle my chest isn’t splitting open with the force of it. Any second now, it’s gonna tear free, drop to the floor, and crawl to her like a pathetic, bleeding thing, begging for something I sure as hell don’t deserve.
Forgiveness.
She was the light I probably never deserved. Instead of holding onto it, I spent the last couple of years convincing myself I didn’t want it, letting her fade into the background of my life, while I played the part of someone I thought I was supposed to be, all to fit in with people I fucking despise.
As I walk toward her for the first time in too long, I feel every inch of that choice like a weight crushing down on my spine. The days I looked straight through her in the hallway, the snide jokes I didn’t shut down when those bastards talked shit about her, and the nights I lay awake staring at my ceiling, wondering if she pressed her face into her pillow and cried herself to sleep because of me.
I stop in front of her. She knows I’m standing here. There’s no way she doesn’t, yet she keeps painting like I’m nothing more than background noise. That angel light she used to shine on me is gone. She burns dark for me now, and I know I’m the one who snuffed her out.
“You’re really gonna act like I don’t exist?” I ask,as if two years haven’t passed since I tossed her aside like she was an option.
She doesn’t even flinch. The brush in her hand just continues to casually move across the canvas. “Haven’t you been doing that for years now?”
And she’s right.
It’s brutally fucking fair.
The moment I made the football team in my junior year, everything changed. I pulled that red and white jersey over my shoulders, and people started chanting my name. I let it get inside my head. I allowed it to change me, and I became a stranger in my own skin. My quiet lunches with her turned into parties with people who cheered louder for touchdowns than they ever would for kindness. I traded our little moments of peace for cheerleaders and the guys on the team—idiots who only liked me when I was winning.
I chose popularity, and I left her behind.
Yeah, I fucking sucked as a friend. That’s why I’m getting the silent treatment. She hasn’t spoken a single word to me in almost two years, and while I haven’t exactly fought for her, pretending she doesn’t exist is starting to split me open from the inside out. I’ve tried every way I know to numb it—I’ve drowned myself in parties, let the quarterback crown sit heavy on my head, and smiled when people worshipped me.
The truth is, none of it means shit without her.
“I need to talk to you,” I say, the words scraping out of me because I can’t keep going on like this. I can't keep pretending I'm not dying without her.
She starts to laugh. It’s vicious and mean, and I fucking hate it.
“It’s not funny,” I snap. “This isn’t easy for me.”
She raises her eyebrows like she’s surprised I’d even say that out loud. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you worried your little friends might see you talking to me?”
I wish the answer were always no, but that’s a lie, and we bothknow it. I slipped into their circle and watched, dead-eyed, as they bullied the hell out of her, and I did nothing. I would never hurt her, not on purpose, but I didn’t stop them, and my cowardice makes me worse than all of them.
“Meet me for lunch. Our spot,” I try, reaching for something that used to matter to her.
