dear violet ➳ andy biersack (currently editing)

32

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chapter
thirty one
violet
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"Andy?"

He glanced at me, arching an eyebrow.

I hesitated. "There was something I heard you say the other night. To Ashley. The first night I'd stayed over."

We stopped in the middle of the sundrenched parking lot, and he looked at me, blue eyes appearing almost turqoise in the bright yellow sunlight. "What did I say?"

I drew a deep breath. "You said 'all the sweetest things wind up killing you.' You said it right after Ashley had told you he thought I seemed like a sweet person. I - uh. I don't know. It sort of bothered me a bit I guess."

But Andy was shaking his head. "It was just something Jacqueline would say a lot. I'd say that chocolate was sweet and she'd say 'all the sweetest things wind up killing you.' 'That was a sweet movie.' 'All the sweetest things wind up killing you.' She just used to use it all the time, and out of context. I didn't mean anything when I said it; I wasn't thinking about you. I just sort of said it without thinking."

I drew a deep breath and expelled it slowly, sending a strand of snow white hair fluttering out of my face.

"So you didn't think that I'd, like, wind up hurting you or killing you or something?"

Andy shot me a deadpan look. "No, I thought you were an undercover assassin or a member of the FBI. Come on, Violet."

He laughed, pulling me on by the hand, and we started off shoulder to shoulder.

I felt the worry of that one overheard phrase vanish, and a silly sort of happiness take it's place.

We walked until we reached the small park just down the street, and the sun filtered down through the summery leaves above, setting everything beneath this gorgeous green glow.

Andy slung an arm loosely around my waist as we continued across the grass, and I let my head fall to rest against his shoulder.

He was making stupid jokes, his jet black hair slipping into eyes. All he had to do was open his mouth and utter a word, and all the world would fall silent. When he was with me, everything but him became insignificant.

When I turned my head slightly, so that my cheek was somewhere against his collarbone, I could catch that smell that was unique to him: soap, leather and sandalwood.

He laughed when I prompted him to, the sound vibrating in his shoulders, and the clear april light turning his eyes to spectrums of a million shades of blue.

I thought, This is what it is to be happy.

The park was so feverishly green, and the sky was so bubblegum blue, and the bliss of it all made the world feel like some beautiful dream that I never ever wanted to end.

We wound up trudging down to the bank of the river, where the ground was sloping down gently and the trees reached out across the crystaline water like skeletons clad in green coats.

We lay down side by side, kissing and talking, sharing the last ciggarette in his pack.

Something struck me right then, and I propped myself up on one elbow to look at him seriously.

He looked carven out of the purest marble, with his features so defined and his blue eyes so bold. The shade of a july mid morning sky, swabbed clear of clouds.

He had thrown off his jacket and given it to me to use as a makeshift pillow, and I could plainly see the artwork of all his tattoos, swirling and jumbling the canvas that was his skin.

Noticing my staring, he grinned cheekily at me, lip ring poking out a bit.

I smiled back gently, and finally spoke my mind. "Uh..." I glanced down at the bright fingers of grass creeping up through the soil. "Ashley made you promise not to fall in love with me."

The words fell heavy and blunt through the silence.

I felt suddenly unsure of myself. That hadn't been the right thing to say, had it? Had I just ruined what had the potential to be the best day of my life with my stupid mouth and stubborn worrying mind?

He reached out a hand to gently lift my chin with his fingertips, so that I was made to look at him.

His eyes were kind and sincere, and such a vivid saphire blue. He turned his head slightly, and just like that the sun fractured the shades within his irises, so that I could identify every individual colour for itself - cobalt, azure, sky, powder, turqoise, sea, summer, ice, ink...

How could there be so many colours in his eyes?

Because there were. All the same shade, and all so different. His eyes were art, just like the rest of him.

And when he blinked they were hooded by strokes of black eyelashes.

"Violet," he murmered. "I am in love with you. I'm so in love with you, I'm forgetting everything else in the world. You are my world. God, listen to me. I sound so corny." He let out a bit of an embarrassed laugh, blushing.

"But," he carried on, "no promise from anyone in the world could ever carry enough weight to prevent me from falling in love with you. I think if there is such a thing as fate, that would be it. It was unstoppable. So by making that promise to him, I guess I was breaking it by default. I was in love with you from the second I met you."

I felt so awake, so clear minded, so weightless and filled with ecstasy, listening to him speak like that.

Like I was the sun, when all my life I'd thought of myself as something black and rotten.

But I understood now: I was worth just as much as he was. Illnesses and pain aside, we were both human and that was all that had ever mattered.

He drew a breath and spoke again. "When Ashley came back home yestarday night, he told me, 'I take it back. That promise I got you to make, where I told you not to fall in love with Violet. Violet's strong, and she loves you like fuck. I can tell when you look at her that you love her too. It's like, the love people write songs about.'
That's exactly what he said. And he was right."

Andy smiled softly, eyes glimmering. "Maybe our love is madness, but it's precious." He lifted our entertwined hands and began playing with my fingers. "And it will defeat all our demons." Here, he smiled again. "Just you wait and see."