IMAGINATION, IMAGINATION.

prologue

four years ago

playing truth or dare in the sticky heat on a yawning summer's evening when you're spread like soft butter on blue carpet (because heat rises) and when you only ever pick truth is useless, but sean and her are not complaining. her frizzy hair gels to her forehead like honey, and she chooses truth again.

"tell me something you have never told anyone."

these string of words surf on wobbly heatwaves boasting laziness and melted willpower, bouncing off the ceiling and dissipating into somewhere else.

juniper thinks and thinks, but her synapses always play up in this weather. her tired engine of a brain splutters into weak ignition and says the first thing that blunders out of its electric mess.

"i used to have a crush on you."

she realises that although she technically met the criteria of the truth prompt, the filter fitted behind her teeth definitely also plays up in this weather because she really shouldn't have said that.

"when?"

juniper feels the tiny bones in her hands buzz at the gravity of the question. the weight of what could be is quite intimidating to try to think about, and she is not sure if he would be impressed with the answer.

"like...the first few months when we were friends?" she tells a giddy white lie that sits in the muggy air like a cloud.

"really?" sean swivels his head and his nose points directly to hers. "you said i looked like shit all the time back then."

"yeah. that was funny." she giggles at the memory that stretches like a hand over the warm browns of her eyes. the one of sean's scrunched up nose and snaggle tooth that popped out of his scowls like a jab when juniper would poke fun at him.

he was so scrawny then, the smallest kid in the class with a nose that always ran. juniper would tease him so he would look at her, and so she could look at him and those light freckles that toasted his face like cinnamon. "i was only joking, though."

"man. you had a funny way of showing love."

sean's face rolls back to its resting position, not noticing the wide-reaching smile on juniper's face ever so slightly stumble.