yeah I got heartbreak that I reminisce about
Flora lets a silence settle between them long enough that it begins to take a shape. She studies Kaisel through it; the hard line of his jaw, the way the warmth in his copper eyes has cooled to something forged and inflexible, frustration bright as a struck match behind it. For all the looping and fraying of their words, one thread is finally clear: they have both made a mess of this. I didn’t know has always sounded like an excuse to her, a shrug disguised as an apology, but the thought tilts unexpectedly as she stands there, invisible and aching. Too many hours with Jack have taught her the ease of being read without asking, of thoughts answered before they’re spoken such that perhaps she's developed a habit of thinking a look is a letter, and silence can be a sentence. Maybe the signs she thought she left Kaisel were only shadows he could never catch.
When his anger flares and he vows he isn’t giving up, she can already see the version of events where she tries to force him to his feet by threatening to leave him, the SugarTide beginning to hum as her hand hovers over the wheel. He would stay rooted in the flowers, and she— even with the hull lifting—would never actually leave him there, and he knows it as surely as she does. It irks her how perfectly he matches her penchant for drama, even if she understands it completely.
"Fine," she says at last, and the word comes out small, worn at the edges, thin as fabric that’s been washed too many times. His memories of their night spill into the air and heat floods her unseen face, a quick, betraying flare across the bridge of her nose. Her lips part for a breath that somehow doesn’t reach the bottom of her lungs, with it’s too late pressed against her tongue. Explanations don’t return the nights she sat alone or soften the mornings that went quiet; they arrive after the feeling has already settled and made a place for itself deep in her bones where affection for him had run rampant. But, hating how final that would sound, she swallows it and lets the quiet carry what words would only bruise.
With a soft sigh, Flora lowers herself invisibly into the flowers to lay on her back, eyes tracking a pale scrap of cloud drifting an indifferent path across the blue. When she speaks again, the words are rubbed thin with salt. "It hurt, what you did," she says, and the honesty of it empties her voice of every blade. "You came after Pierce’s stupid pool party, and then after Dahlia attacked me.." She swallows, the sound hardly more than a ripple. "Maybe it was stupid of me to think you’d come back on your own, but after everything that happened between us—"
The sentence unthreads as tears find the curve of her temples and slip into her hair unseen. There's no accusation in her voice now, only grief given room to breathe. She draws a breath that snags anyway and tries again, softer, as if something more might break within her if she speaks too loudly. "Whatever you thought you were doing...it was the wrong thing."
When his anger flares and he vows he isn’t giving up, she can already see the version of events where she tries to force him to his feet by threatening to leave him, the SugarTide beginning to hum as her hand hovers over the wheel. He would stay rooted in the flowers, and she— even with the hull lifting—would never actually leave him there, and he knows it as surely as she does. It irks her how perfectly he matches her penchant for drama, even if she understands it completely.
"Fine," she says at last, and the word comes out small, worn at the edges, thin as fabric that’s been washed too many times. His memories of their night spill into the air and heat floods her unseen face, a quick, betraying flare across the bridge of her nose. Her lips part for a breath that somehow doesn’t reach the bottom of her lungs, with it’s too late pressed against her tongue. Explanations don’t return the nights she sat alone or soften the mornings that went quiet; they arrive after the feeling has already settled and made a place for itself deep in her bones where affection for him had run rampant. But, hating how final that would sound, she swallows it and lets the quiet carry what words would only bruise.
With a soft sigh, Flora lowers herself invisibly into the flowers to lay on her back, eyes tracking a pale scrap of cloud drifting an indifferent path across the blue. When she speaks again, the words are rubbed thin with salt. "It hurt, what you did," she says, and the honesty of it empties her voice of every blade. "You came after Pierce’s stupid pool party, and then after Dahlia attacked me.." She swallows, the sound hardly more than a ripple. "Maybe it was stupid of me to think you’d come back on your own, but after everything that happened between us—"
The sentence unthreads as tears find the curve of her temples and slip into her hair unseen. There's no accusation in her voice now, only grief given room to breathe. She draws a breath that snags anyway and tries again, softer, as if something more might break within her if she speaks too loudly. "Whatever you thought you were doing...it was the wrong thing."
real big things I still gotta figure out
