Deflower

Chapitre Dix-Huit

Life was beginning to seem a lot like those dulcetly beautiful poems and novels her father was so fond of. For the first time in years on end of drowning in natural disasters of her own, famine, it appeared as though Lourdes Guerrero felt a peculiar surge of happiness flow through her veins. But this only lead to the brunette babe thinking when it would end, and how—would it end in bright flames? In her, falling once more within an inescapable ocean of diamonds and tears? Lourdes knew that she was content, if she managed to look past the occasional evenings upon which her mama would not be capable of tempering herself, but she also knew that all good things came to an end.

She was adamant within the idea that happiness solely reached her when she closed her eyes and permitted a black veil to overshadow her vision. So she often relied on delusions to fill the void that severed her heart like a gaping wound. She would close her eyes, during the day, when her mama's hands were deft and rough against her skin, and before her, she would see what she truly longed for— what if's about the world and the peace it ached for flashing through her mind like a cinema reel. The drowsy scenarios, however, weren't sufficient to make the violence vanish. They'd only make it all worse; make seconds feel like hours. Her mama had always told her that she was destructive—said it'd ruin her, one day. Because every person that came a mere word, or inch, too close to her, every person that managed to make her forget about her misery, she seemed to push them away. Better, she didn't permit herself to be content.

According to Lourdes, she didn't deserve happiness.

Kyle was the precise same. He, too, lived in a fabricated world that did not manage to persist past his daydreams. He'd only wait for time—along with the cruel reality—to destroy his vague illusions. The shades of red and blue he left along the necks of girl after girl had been borne from juvenile desires of his; he wanted to be affluent, but at the same time, he wanted no more than to be independent of everyone else, to do whichever he wished to and shamelessly, so. But he wasn't allowed to, thus he barely satisfied the aching gap with the girls that fell to their knees when they took sight of him.

To Kyle, sex, and all that it brought along with itself, was simple. It could be done with anyone, in his case, anyway—but intimacy was something he had never experienced. Intimacy, according to him, was something much more intense, much darker, too; like a liquid that runs down, the stomach receiving satisfaction for a craving it had always possessed of, but never knew it needed. This, to most people. All people, but Kyle. He'd never want to pour himself into one, because the idea of closeness to one-another, with the soul rather than the body, was a terrifying concept to him. His favorite sounds would not ever be ones laugh, but ones moan.

It was in the earliest of the morning, when school had not yet commenced, and Kyle stared at her from where he stood against his car, which his sister had a moment ago jumped out of. He'd dismissed her with a chaste kiss upon her cheek—one he could only hope no one had seen—and instead of driving away, instantly, he remained against the cold material the vehicle was made of, awaiting for Lourdes to turn to him, so he could ensue a conversation with her. She stood with her girlfriends, and Kyle wondered if she'd been forced to be there— or she'd chosen to. Likely the first; he knew that the last thing Lo wanted was to be with those girls. Sure, they were all nice to the eye, but they were entirely bland. Kyle knew a thing or two about Lourdes, and if he was sure of anything about her, it was that she was the contrary of this.

So, Kyle supposed—figured by the way she stood there so uninterested as they bickered amongst themselves—, that he would be the perfect opportunity to get away from them.

"Hey, Lo!"

Upon this, not one but five pretty heads turned to him and not two but ten empyrean orbs stared straight at the boy. Captivated by the lucid depths of Kyle's dark eyes, Lourdes found herself uttering a few words to the girls that had a few moments prior surrounded her, and then, she approached him cautiously. "Tell me, am I not your knight in shining armor, now?" Kyle cockily grinned, as his gaze darted from the ground to her neck, her lips, her nose, and eventually, her eyes. With cheeks that resembled a freshly plucked tomato, Lourdes rolled her eyes playfully.

"Who are you, Kyle? You're still a mystery to me. Well, relatively," she mumbled, curious as to what hid beneath the facade. He like an instrument, at that moment, she the musician, Lourdes wanted to make him hit the perfect note, wanted to unravel him. Raising his brows at her question, he only permitted a few low, masculine—but at the same time, surprisingly soft—chuckles to push past his lips. He gave her a look of affection, but there were already plots and schemes polluting his mind.

"I've been many things, Lo. The painter, the poet, the painter, the pianist, the playboy. But I've never been myself. Ever," Kyle spoke, and for once, he was talking. Talking sincerely, seriously, with no joking undertone, telling her tales he'd forbidden himself to ever open up about to one; but there he was. Per unusual occasion, Kyle loved to talk, and Lourdes loved to listen. Lourdes had always deemed Kyle so opposite to her—if he said black, she'd probably chose white—but now, it appeared to her as though they weren't at all so different. Now, listening to him speak, and being able to relate to each word, made her much more comfortable around his inevitably intimidating persona. You see, she was enthralled by his intention to move up in the world and get money, whilst he was enthralled by her kindness and her inability to do anything but love and tell stories.

"When did it start? You weren't like this as a kid, were you?" Lourdes furrowed her brows—she felt bad for him, although his indifference was, or so it seemed to her, a choice of his own. She felt bad, because there he sat, next to her, with his heart in his hands and closer to laughing then to crying—and Lo knew it was only bad when one rather would chuckle upon their misery than cry. She had no clue of the fact that she'd stopped being aloof, at that point, and she practically oozed empathy towards him: even if he had hurt her before, Lourdes couldn't help but proffer him the second chance everyone deserved.

"I was thirteen, I still lived in Italy. I'd failed for my maths test—and the teacher asked me to stay behind, expressed how very disappointed she was in me. I did what she said was needed to fix it," Lourdes sighed deeply amidst the dense silence that had swept over them. The faint scent of expensive cologne that penetrated her nostrils reminded herself of it that he'd truly lost his youth, then; and that before her stood no boy, but a man. Furrowed brows accompanied the disgust she felt towards the teacher Kyle spoke of. "We sneaked around for a month or two, after that. I didn't really care about it. I still don't, honestly. Then, the principal, himself, caught us. I was expelled, she was fired. That's when we moved here."

"You haven't told your parents? The teacher could be arrested for that—" It was the sense of naïveté and uncertainty that the brunette girl was lathered in that made Kyle laugh. The laughter was cut short by words of his own. It wasn't as if he'd told her this in order to gain a reluctantly organized pity party—and if he had tried to manipulate her into thinking that he was much more gentle, delicate, than in reality (maybe he was doing this, only God would know), the girl had taken the bait. She'd stepped in his trap with her eyes wide open.

"Arrested? Not in Italy, darling. Would I have told anyone, I'd be prized and awarded for becoming a true man at such early age. It doesn't matter, anymore." Kyle said, and upon the reluctance, the indifference, the careless aura, that laced his words, Lourdes could only arise her brows with disbelief.

And when she looked in his eyes, she recognized a glimpse of uncertainty—she recalled that he was broken. And maybe, just maybe, she decided that she wanted to piece him together again. Oh, how beautifully foolish she was—she should have known that one who plays with glass, inevitably bleeds.

DEFLOWER. authors note

thank you so much for reading!! be sure to leave a comment or a vote if you want to <3

almost at chapter twenty??? i'm?? so?? shocked?? it's from chapter twenty that things get really juicy, soooo (in regards with tommy's secret, more about vincent and vivian, and more things i won't spill the tea about yet!)... this novel will have thirty-five chapters by the way, in case you're wondering.

i feel so bad for kyle, he's an asshole but his issues clearly has roots and no one deserves to be prey to pedophiles and it's just really sad that kyle is so numb about it and doesn't have anyone to talk to about his past :(