Author's Note: It's back! Mazel tov!
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01 • mailbox
If I thought this would be eternal, then I would be lying to you. I knew about boys like Blaise Cohen. They were beautiful, down to the finset detail. Dripping with sex even in the coldest of climates. Boys like him felt as if they ruled the world.
And the swagger, the money, the attitude; it was charming somehow. He was young and reckless, as was I. I had a long list of ex-lovers who wanted to burn me at the stake. I had my baggage, my fair run of playing the game.
But he was no different. I was the one who was different. When I was around him, I felt the butterflies, like a cage match to get out of my stomach. Never had I faltered in the presence of a guy.
Yet Blaise somehow knew how to get inside my head. I was a solution made of the perfect mixture of stolen kisses, pretty lies, and a whole bottle of jealousy. I was driven mad by the way his lips looked when he was lying. The way his bottom lip curved more slightly outward when he would say something like 'she's just a friend' and how the creases under his eyes would bolden after being accused of something that was actually the truth.
Yes, he made me really mad. Enough that I would scream, scream at the top of my lungs. It didn't hurt as much though. I had been drunk in love with Blaise Cohen, each drink numbing my throat so that it felt like the noises I made came out of the air and not from out of my body.
Which was why he couldn't stay. Which was why it all went down in flames. Which was why he left me, gasping and reeling, for London. I had become something that no one could be around without feeling the heat of my anger. I was that fire that burned your house down in your nightmares, the same one he held me by in my daydeams. Nothing was the same except everything that needed to change. How he was always going to be the type of boy who let things go way too far and I had lost my ability to take my own step back.
He was gone and needed to stay gone. Now and forever.
Like all things that do, he came back.
And though the universe had played a hand, it could all be blamed on the fact that I had allowed us to be entrapped in such a senseless game.
Post Off•ice
a game played by children where kisses are exchanged for pretended letters.
Of course, the letters were real. Like everything was with us; the pain, the pleasure, the stakes. They were real and with every kiss, they got realer. And maybe, just maybe, that was the best part. I had went so long without him and only with the fantasies that never left me, that maybe I needed the truth to ground me.
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The best thing about Thanksgiving break was that I had time to myself. To live and breathe at the same time. I had been doing the latter without the former for the entirety of this term so far and when it all slowed down and the weights were lifted off of my shoulders, the sensation of my expanding lungs was enough to have me ride on a wave of sudden ecstasy.
Point being, I never really got time off like this.
My friends, Hayley and Rachel seemed not to have gotten this, for they were busy at the café where they could fret over the terrors that awaited them at the end of break without me. I was perfectly fine with that in all honesty. It was much better than being in a room with three stressed out girls, or being in a room with stressed out people period. I carried enough of it on my own just from not being able to find a good book in the library, so that times three over tests and assignments that could either get us stable futures or otherwise was no fun place to be.
And that was exactly where I found myself now - a fun place to be. Thanks to Rachel's design expertise, she had made the place as homey as if we were in our actual homes. She had tuned it all so finely, even with the nook that I had my doubts of. It had easily become my favorite place to lounge for comfort and indulgence in my imagination, something I avoided like the plague when studying and cramming, but this was the first legitimate break all year and I planned to use every second to its full value.
Hence the reason I was on it when I heard the mail come through the door slot. And like that, all of my complacency had vanished. I had been waiting for the longest time for a membership card to my favorite clothing store, one they said they would bring by this year, and the prospect of shopping seemed quite alluring at the moment, a source of relaxation without letting myself go and getting the right amount of energy.
I got up from my seat, the thought of the mail breezing my mind, the pastel colors of hanging banners advertising my favorite stores, cleaning spoons dipped in sweet gelato. It came back to me in a drove of memories that pulled me forward with magnetic force.
I picked up the envelope however, ripping it open to find a very peculiar letter. I had no recollection of signing up for the New York Times and yet they were asking me to renew my subscription with them in a very wordy letter. A heavy rush of disappointment at the fact that it wasn't my membership card hit me and I was about to discard it in the steel grey wastebasket that sat beside me by the door when my eye caught a detail that was just as peculiar as the envelope itself.
On the front side of it read 'to Blaise Cohen' in small print over the address '751 Oake St. #2156' and I almost dropped the papers to the floor. Not only did that mean he was back from England, but it meant that he was back from England and in the same apartment complex as I was. On the same floor, even, for my room number was 2165. Either he had just moved in or I was really just that blind and inattentive.
I didn't want to find out. I only wanted to know what he was doing here again and whether he would leave again -
Like I had asked so many times before. Only this time, there was a possibility it would be to his face.
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"Wait, Lottie," Rachel asked in confusion, taking a sip of her coffee. "Let me get this straight. Blaise the Bastard moved in on our floor?"
I winced at her use of the name that she had given him a long time ago. Not because it wasn't fitting - because it was - but because it brought me back to a time where I cried at the mention of his name, even at the pronunciation of the letter 'b' and that was a shameful time for me. I wanted that me, those days, to stay gone along with him yet like history, he was bound to repeat himself.
"He does," I said, the uncertainty in my tone not coming from skepticism but from how I would handle it. Definitely without grace, he and I were far beyond that, but surely I could be civil. The effects of the breakup on me had worn off long before and I was okay again. He wouldn't be able to ruin me like he did that time.
"Well you have to give it to him," Hayley said, not once losing the twinkle in her eye. She wasn't a hopeless romantic, but a hopeful one who still believed that a love lost could find its way back. Her optimism of course was misplaced and misguiding because she was the only one out of the three of us who had been with their boyfriend since senior year and we were sophomores in college now. "Opening someone else's mail is a federal crime and you definitely don't want to be arrested. And Blaise wasn't that horrible - " she backtracked " - he wasn't a bastard, at least. You were at fault in that relationship as well and you know it."
I looked at her with wide eyes as she took a bite of her croissant. We were at the campus's west-end cafe, Delish, where I had spilled to them the news of Blaise's inappropriate arrival. Of course, they were there before I was because Rachel needed a study buddy, something I had refused to help her with. Now, Hayley was surely trying to punish me because she had come here on my behalf.
But she did have a point about the mail. I wasn't going to jail because of Blaise Cohen, the thought of it halting me from doing despicable things to him after the breakup. Not only would it ruin my pride but everything else in my life and I wasn't ready for that to happen.
"I'll kick his ass," Rachel offered. At Hayley's look of shock, she added, "if you want me to."
In this moment, they were like my angel and demon on my shoulders and I was met with an insurmountable conflict, the prospects of letting Blaise back in my life gently or by kicking him around teasing and taunting me, begging for one to be chosen. It wasn't until a flash of menace and realization that I figured out how I could expertly do both.
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I wouldn't say I fully took responsibility of my feelings, but I had maintained some level of maturity by slipping a note for Blaise under the door of Room 2156. Doing so made not only a world of difference than running away from my problems, but it made sense of why I had never seen him. The complex we lived in was split up into the fifties and the sixties, with each side having a long hallway between them and their own staircase, vending machine and other amenities. We possibly could've avoided each other forever, but the mail distributor must've not had their head screwed on all the way tight.
He must've been out of the house, because it took him an hour to finally knock on the door, an hour spent reading bad magazines and hoping that it was the wrong Blaise Cohen after all - which in his case would be the right one. When that hour ran up and the glass was turned over so time could start again, I was raised by a hard and strong knock on the door.
When I opened it up, my eyes landed upon curly hair and brown eyes. An angular face that I was familiar with, and seeing it brought back knowledge of all the ways I would cup it as I brought it towards mine.
But looking him in the eye, I heard myself instead, a whisper of a voice that I thought I had put behind me.
I could hardly speak, all of my confidence ebbing out of me as if I were a punctured balloon. If one of my friends saw me like this, they would hardly recognize this insecure pushover of a girl, but she did in fact, exist under the name Lottie Atwell.
I often found myself embarrassed by her existence, but that wasn't enough to make her disappear forever. We all have flipsides. I couldn't do anything to rid myself of my insecurities and past hurt since they were just on the other side. And Blaise Cohen - as much as he and his name were a pain in the ass - had a way of flipping me over completely.
He could do it with a kiss or with a touch. Or even, as I found out in this moment, by standing in my doorway with a box of cupcakes in his arms.
"Well," he gulped, looking at the floor in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I should've asked for a name before coming at your request and I..."
"Save it," I said, effectively cutting him off. I didn't need to hear him go on about something that could be said in a few simple sentences. If I let him continue, he would probably question what I was going about with this madcap boldness of mine, and that was a question I didn't want to bother with answering.
"Do I go?" He asked. He done so before without even considering my feelings. Blaise Cohen up and left from my life to go to London only three years ago. It was amazing how he could ask me this question a billion times and leave a billion wounds on my heart. Hell, it was amazing that he had the audacity to ask me his time around in the first place. Each word was like a stab wound and yet he somehow seemed to not even know he held the knife.
And how I only knew block them by getting to the point, saying, "I have your mail. Your New York Times subscription."
"Really," he asked, his eyebrows scrunched in even more confusion. "No wonder it didn't come today, I really thought it was coming tomorrow. Can I have it, please?"
"Why should I give you it so easily," I frowned. "Because the moment I do, you'll leave me forever."
Even with the distance between us closer than it had been, the look in his eyes proved that I was right and he knew it. That he could leave, whether announced or in a moment's notice, he could be gone and leave me behind as the same girl who would be here, the same one who would wait for him. Too bad for him, I was less patient now.
"Look, Lottie," he said in his coaxingly velvet voice, his accent slightly and mouthwateringly British from his extended visit to London,"I promise you that I won't leave. I need to finish school here, and I'm going to be right across the hall from you. It's a lot closer than London, I promise."
His words were coaxing and I charming, enough to make me recklessly throw everything away like I had done so before. But I wasn't buying it. I had bought it too many times and each purchase was a scam. He was still his money, his swagger, his hard-headed heart. Someone once said that the definition of insanity was doing the same experiment and expecting a different result. And while insanity was a more serious and complex subject than that, there was something to be said about people who thought they could change something without changing their approach. I was beyond deluding myself at this point, and if I wanted something wrong, I needed to get it right.
"Seal it with a kiss, Blaise."
And he did. I was bluffing, only trying to throw him off, but his head dipped down to my face, crashing his lips against mine before I could even laugh. In any given case and any other guy, I would've ran for my life, but the warm feeling of his lips was intoxicating, the recklessness of the kiss influencing my arms to weave around his neck and pull me closer into him. My eyes fluttered shut as a moan slipped from my lips, his tongue using that as an opportunity to slip into my mouth, mapping out its every contour even after years since we had last kissed.
The weight of his actions made my knees slightly buckle and I found myself falling against the side wall with a hard bang, bringing him with me, our embrace breaking apart. His hands instantly came to my sides to catch me, resting on my thighs, his thumbs rubbing circles over the skin instinctively like they used to before they linked under the hem of my shirt. He looked me in the eyes for confirmation that I gave him, before lifting it above my head and kicking the door closed behind him.
His head came back down, but not like I had expected, planting kisses along the side of my neck as his hands found themselves around my back. I used the opportunity of having a free face and free hands to unbutton his, my fingers trailing over his abs slowly heading downwards. They gripped the buckle of his belt, making sloppy work at undoing it, but when I did, he groaned against my neck, letting out a string of curses but I was too affected by the heat to even hear him.
Blaise kissed my lips again, leaving the area of my neck he just left cool and damp, his hands pulling down his pants and shrugging the unbuttoned shirt from off of his back. He wordlessly grunted, cupping the joint in my legs so that they bent at his will so that he could lift me up. He hoisted me up, my legs wrapping around the small of his back and he carried me over to the open door of my bedroom. While in the moment, I was concerned and amazed by how he could get me there without even breaking the kiss, but all thoughts of that left me when he finally laid me down on the soft sheets, not roughly, but not too gently either.
He looked at me finally, tired and true, the realization that we had done a lot more than planned flashing in his eyes, but it didn't deter him for he crawled up beside me on the bed. We were in only our undergarments - save for my skirt and printed stockings - and with the heat radiating over our bodies, it made no sense to redress again. He kicked off his socks and shoes before making quick work of the skirt around my waist and sucking on the unkissed side of my neck.
I felt my hands wrap around his back, mapping over hard muscles and soft skin and the truth, as bleak as it was, revealed itself to me:
Like history, Blaise and I were bound to repeat ourselves.
But by his loss of breath and the flecks of stardust that danced in his eyes as the glazed over me amorously, my hands wrapped gingerly around his neck as if to hold me up from crashing down and shattering, I had a feeling things would be different this time.
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