Black Crescent Bay

skinny dipping is my new normal

A/N:

how's this gonna be? what's going to happen? i DoNt KnOw!!! Tune in to find out, I suppose!

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Some part of me knew I should appreciate Shelly breaking into my apartment and startling me with her depressing past and her even more depressing future, but the other part of me, in fact, did NOT appreciate it. Because she ruined the party. There she stood across from me, on the other side of the bonfire, sipping on some beer in a solo cup. Menacingly. Not averting her gaze from my face.

Waverly and Heath didn't even notice. They were too busy walking along the shore of Black Crescent Bay, skinny dipping with half of our graduating class. I was somewhat relieved, however, that they'd taken a break from their dancing.

It was getting exhausting feeling like I was a failure because I didn't know how to woo an entire room of drunken college students. I mean, how was it my fault that I wasn't alive during the golden age of Disco, or that I wasn't raised on Saturday Night Fever?

It was truly humbling though. Watching my old friends shed all of their clothes and people my age cheering them on as they dove deep into the frozen black water.

I turned back to Shelly and pulled the beach towel around my shoulders tighter around me. The salty sea breeze was frozen. It had more ice in it than the ocean. And the bonfire that towered above us, sending black smoke up to the pale white moon, did nothing to warm me.

Shelly's seaweed green eyes were too cold. They froze everything they landed on. Mostly me. She couldn't pull her eyes away from me. Not that I was looking anywhere else either.

I had nothing to say to her. I felt like she'd said it all. Nothing needed to be addressed besides her saying that Feilim did, in fact, not hate me. What did that matter if he still wished me dead? And what did I care?

Or...

Why did I care?

I couldn't understand it. I didn't care about him. He didn't care about me. Deep down, we wanted nothing to do with each other. And if I was going to be with someone forever, I wanted it to be my choice. I want to be with them because I want to be with them. Not because I have no other choice, not because destiny or whoever has made it impossible for me to feel anything for anyone else.

Not that it's ever been something in the stars for me, regardless. I've had one romantic experience in my entire life. One. I was a Freshman in high school, and she sat in front of me in my math class. I still remember her name after all this time: Mariposa. And all it was... Well, it went like this:

She turned back to me when I was having trouble answering the question. She whispered the answer to me. I used her answer hesitantly, not expecting the teacher to clap her hands and write it on the chalkboard as she did. I was relieved she didn't yell at either of us for cheating. Mariposa turned back to me again and adjusted her golden silk veil. She stared me down, with her dark brown eyes, and said, with the most charming smile I'd ever seen on anyone, "Good job."

I couldn't even come up with a way to thank her. And she moved out of Hollowfaye literally the next day. I think because her parents were sick of their neighbors being killed and kids going missing and being slaughtered in The Wildwood or drowning in the bay. It was a sick, twisted fate to stay in Hollowfaye forever. We were all better off dead or far, far away from here.

I never saw her again.

And that's it. My crush on her dissipated as soon as it came. I never liked anyone before her, never liked anyone after her. I did kiss a few people when I was wasted at parties, but that hardly counts as something romantic when all you taste is vomit and you're not sure if it's theirs or yours.

For my first breath of real, true romance to be with Feilim, and it to not even be real, I mean, it was a joke from the gods. They couldn't be serious. Didn't I deserve someone I could actually fall in love with of my own volition? Wasn't that what everyone wanted?

I finally turned away from Shelly. It wasn't worth it anymore. I didn't really understand our standoff anyways. I'd already told her that her secret was safe with me. What more did she want from me? To drop to my knees and beg Feilim for his forgiveness and then kiss every inch of his skin right in front of her?

I walked back to the bar and shook my head at the dude pouring the drinks.

"This is disgusting." It really wasn't, I was just bored.

"Okay, so why'd you drink it?" He snapped and jumped from each side of the makeshift bar, made out of surfboards piled on top of each other, trying to keep up with the drinks being requested of him.

"Because I felt sorry for you." I sighed most bogusly, "Can you make something good this time? I've done my suffering I'm pretty sure."

He shook his head, not even looking my way, "You've had enough. Do me a favor, and back away from the bar."

I did. There wasn't any real fight in me. I just wanted some true, real human interaction. Even just for a second. When I hesitantly turned back to the bonfire, Shelly was gone. It got a little warmer. I couldn't stand it. The burning heat searing my skin. I turned to the ocean, to where Waverly and Heath were jumping up and down and skin was jiggling in all directions.

I walked over, as slow as I could. I wondered if this was the normalcy I was craving. If normal girls did this in college, if I had done this before the dreams started, maybe when I was a Freshman and got wasted every day and smoked pot for the first time. I couldn't remember that time or that girl.

She was a different person now. I didn't know anything about her. How could I have been her if she didn't even feel like me? And I wondered, as Waverly and Heath noticed me and cheered me on, and as I stripped myself ever-so-slowly of my dress and my heels, if maybe Feilim did change me. Not just when he kissed me and changed my biology. But when we saw each other, when our eyes first met. Or when the dreams started, when the cravings for his skin started even though it scared me to death. Maybe that was what truly had changed me.

All this time I was hoping I'd go back to the way I was. Maybe I would never. Maybe this new person that I was, was going to be me forever. Maybe this was my new normal.

I dove into the waves, bare pussy and all.