GUN IN MY HAND

CHAPTER 3: WORST DAY

Before starting, I just wanna do my first dedication in this book. This chapter is dedicated to @susjoyfully because even if it doesn't look like it, she has lived in the 60s, and she's always there to answer my annoying and weird questions about those years! So thank you for your help and sweetness to help me make this book as realistic as possible 😘💕

'But I don't care what they say

I'm in love with you

They try to pull me away, but they don't know the truth

My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing

You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love.'

Today was the best birthday.

And every minute kept making it better, from half of the night where I'd talked with Spencer and we'd looked at the stars from our windows to the breakfast with my mom's famous birthday waffles—a tradition in the Duncan family, just like our names all starting with a D—and to the weather that was extraordinary sunny and warm again.

I could almost have jumped and danced in joy as I was walking to the park, except that it wouldn't have been ladylike, especially in my other new dress.

This one was larger and white with a pale green bow at my waist, and a round neckline that framed perfectly my new pendant. It was not the outfit to run in the grass and play football, although I was still passing the blue fence that led to the park, the largest area of grass more exactly, where Spencer had told me to meet him.

I knew by heart each corner of this place, each washed-out white bench, each tree planted in an order that was still a mystery for the population of Subrose nowadays, but those ancients must have thought of the perfect hiding places for kids and young lovers. In short, I could have followed the pathway lined with tulips and bushes of lilac starting to blossom with my eyes closed. Yet they were wide open, looking for Spencer or any hint of our 'training' date.

If I knew him well, it should have been near the shady part of the weeping willows after that turn...

"Happy birthday!!"

I knew him well, yet I still jumped at all the voices coming from everywhere.

I'd been expecting something, though certainly not all these balloons, flowers, and ribbons, nor all the tables scattered between the trees and the people. People whom I didn't get to make out the faces when a familiar pair of eyes outshone everything around.

"Happy birthday, DD!" Spencer wrapped his arms around me, adding in a whisper above my ear, "Again."

Indeed, he had repeated it a hundred times since midnight, along with about fifty 'You're 18 now!'. Yet I still giggled at the sweet sound of it, never getting tired of the way his lips almost always found mine after, even if at this instant, they barely brushed mine in a chaste peck because of all the people around. Well, at least until my hands instinctively pulled him back to me.

I needed to thank him properly, after all, and it was my birthday; 'I was 18 now'. So I deserved all the flying butterflies and confetti his lips created on mine.

I was still reasonable though, and I leaned away before getting drunk on his sweet taste because I wasn't 21 yet.

I would have more birthday kisses then, and all the ones after. His promise was still echoing in my chest, as softly as his whisper above my lips.