half of my heart // hs ON HOLD

four

660 Days Before

"This place is shit." His lips made cookies as red icing was spread against ivory skin, I nodded, pushing away the 'tropical' smoothie that I was hoping would be spiked with vodka but really just tasted like expired peach schnapps. We left the run down bar like a deck of cards, he was the king and I was the queen, he was the leader, and I felt so sophisticated following.

We stopped into a little grocery store on the corner in front of the diner that began the two of us, grocery carts parked all around- one on the top of the hill in the back, two jammed behind a mini van as some kind of prank, one mounted on a pole-- which I don't want to know how it got there-- and more just scattered around everywhere I turned- as we passed the maze, we entered the store that reminded me way too much of an American piggily wiggily.

Harry went straight to the back, my legs shifting to the candy isle, grabbing three bags of shit that made old people happy. The king and queen made it back to the conveyor belt together, a smile spread to each pair of lips as I tossed a bag of peanut M&M's, king sized Twizzlers, and four kit kat's, Harry dropping a six pack of Budweiser, completing our party.

We walked in silence, two bags in Harry's palms, the stars gentle in the sky, fading, but glowing. It was casually around two in the morning and the short walk around the unknown town began to buzz me into happiness. Harry's shoulders had brushed against my own seventeen times in the process of my smile coming right after, and I must admit, I have never smiled over seventeen times in less than five minutes in my life- not even when I practiced for my senior pictures in high school for five minutes, I smiled twice, and realized I was going to look like shit either way, so who gives a fuck.

"You live in the music studio?" Harry whispered as if the cops were watching us break into life as I slid the chipping key into its designated home. I huffed the loose strands of hair out of my face as I had to shake the rotting key at least three times to get it out of its burning home.

"Yeah Harry, I sleep under the piano and use the guitars as tables." He rolled his eyes before chuckling silently to himself at my attempt at being a sarcastic asshole. I locked the door behind me as I led the king to my castle.

The creaking spiral stairs croaked like a toad that loves to piss everyone off in the middle of the night as the two of us stepped up, skipping the door to my apartment, continuing climbing until we reached the roof, my favorite part about my life.

It was like you could feel the clouds, and I'm not talking like a dreamer, a believer, I'm talking like a smoker. It was as if just an inhale of that nicotine and those faded dreams that were such complete opposites just mixed so well when you are forty plus feet above most human beings. Sure, it was scary, I was fucking nervous I'd fall off and break my face ninety three percent of the time, but that's what made it so much more fun.

The slice through air when we both opened the shining blue cans of foamy beer that peppered the night sky created a world of conversation as we both chugged in silence for a few moments while someone in the world was most likely having great rough sex, and here I was drinking with the coolest kid in town, and I happened to be six inches to his right, his shoulder barely touching mine, his sleeves rolled up to the point where I could draw the constellations on his milky way of ivory dwelling into happiness of skin.

"Have you ever been to jail?" Harry spoke so delicately, holding his beer with his left hand, his right extended as a pillow that rest upon his mop of strings as he leaned back, his torso just like the moon- long, skinny, and created with an ingredient that was enough to make me smile.

I leaned back too, taking a sip of the foamy darkness "Yeah, I spent the night when I was nineteen for vandalizing the wall behind the liquor store on East Wall."

We shared our shitty stories drinking our shitty beer on the shitty night as the shitty queen sat beside the non-shitty king, laughing until the bubbles gurgled around my toes. Harry went on explaining the first time he got in a fist fight when he was in London after drinking with a small group of assholes, "after spending three hours in a bathtub with bipolar water and ice packs held to every inch of skin, I didn't leave my house for weeks."

I would love to tell you that I was addicted to cigarettes and that I kept them in my shirt pocket and leaned against brick walls with high tops and shredded jeans and palm trees were in the skies and cats flew and whales lived in deserts and I lived in the middle of a Christmas light, but I wasn't as fancy as The Weeknd might put it, because he attended in wicked games and I participated in a shitty life with occasional smoke sessions on the roof of my apartment.

The lights warmed my icicles as I cupped my drug around my soul. The little spark barely giving me enough fireflies to see the king eyeing me in the distance. I liked to smoke, I liked the way it made me feel less worthless because I was killing myself without the pain of actually killing myself, so I smoked on, exhaling flower petals as my lips craved to be the queen to some king.

"I like the way you smoke cigarettes."

My eyes blinked twice before my neck danced to the side, looking forest boy in the eyes as he showed no exact emotion, just twenty three different types of feelings that radiated waves of sunshine and rain clouds onto my body.

"Sad girls smoke a lot." Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. I blew every remain of nicotine out of my lungs before I died in front of the only person that could crack my code, burning the stub to ashes before leaning up and resting on my elbows, emptying the last of my beer.

I watched Harry's fingers twirl into knots as he opened another can, the satisfaction salting into the foamy air as dogs began to dance and cats flew and lizards somersaulted and dragons waddled and penguins sung, his lips twizzling into a picture worthy smirk, "insane boys drink a lot."

And we clanked two icy blue shinning aluminum cans to the clink of the night as I admired the way two orange cats fluttered their wings into the misty air.

I think we stayed like that- on the roof, just the two of us, smiling together, enjoying the cold air of three thirty in the morning, wanting none the less to just lay together on this uncomfortable roof, to have homemade quilts and empty beer cans and scrunched up cigarettes and foam stains and cats sleeping in the corner- just the two of us, all night.

And that's how it went.