(Spin-off of Imaginary, more so specifically it's second book, Severity)
Cleo Vexer, a problematic teenage girl, is the sensation of your average pessimist and mediocre criminal. Still having to survive the rest of her senior year bitter and lonely...
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I never thought I'd have to ever experience another encounter with Oliver Walkley, but here I am.
There is an uncomfortable tension in the air as I sink into my apartment couch. I never expected Oliver Walkley to show up at my door caught looking guilty.
"She cheated on me." He blurts out, an unrecognizable sadness drenching his face.
I try to block the initial thought in my mind, the anger that Sicily had broke him first.
"Now you know how it feels." I muse blandly. I advert my gaze, rather opting at the sight of pink clouds dusting the light blue sky.
Shame speckles Oliver Walkley's cheeks in a faint blush. "I'm sorry, Cleo. It was wrong of me to do that to you, and I can see your pain after the whole Sicily ordeal blew up in my face. I deserved everything that was coming to me."
"At least you understand me now," A small sigh escaped my lips. "There's no fun in an awful heartbreak."
"You're still hung up over Finley, aren't you?" He asks slowly. I feel every bone in my body stiffen.
"In ways, I guess." Our eyes meet, and when they do, I knew he saw the true answer. "Don't look at me like that." I stared down at my hands.
"He was a good guy, Cleo." His voice softened.
I fluttered my eyes closed and sighed shakily. "You know, sometimes I forget. I forget that you knew him, that everyone in school used to know him. People say that trying to forget makes things harder, but in all honesty, it makes it a lot easier."
"Does he know?"
My eyebrows knit together. "Does who know?"
"Words travel," Oliver Walkley says. "Don't pretend like we're not on the same page."
"Caslon doesn't know, and I expect you and your creepy friend Charlie Marian won't tattle tale." I respond sternly.
He does a cheesy solute. "You've got my word."
"That doesn't mean much." I mutter under my breath.
We sit in a blanket of silence. I start to fade into my own thoughts. Oliver Walkley may have been a cheater, but he also went through some of the pain with me.
"Just out of curiosity. Did you cheat on me because I never really got over," My voice paused. "Finley?"
"It was the main reason." He admitted. "When we were together, sometimes you'd see things that reminded you of him. When we went on walks, or I'd visit you at work, it was like Finley was always there with you."
"I guess I never saw it like that." I mummer softly, finally realizing. "He just gave me a lot to remember him by. He said that he didn't want to be forgotten. No matter how hard I tried to erase his memory, he never really went away."
Flashes of recollection fill my mind. When he was fading to his last day alive, holding my hand as he died in my arms. It was the most traumatizing experience of my life.
When the doctors told him he had little time to live, he asked that I'd get him a green rose everyday as his final death wish. At first, I didn't know why he'd ask for such a random request. But it started to make more sense when he'd make us hold it together before I'd leave the hospital. It made even more sense when he died and I stay until the green rose I bought in the morning wilted. He was preparing us to live the rest of his life knowing that he'd die like the roses.
And green was our color.
I once told Winsley about him after she told of her old love stories. She told me that soulmates may die but then blooms another, the circles love can make.
Tears escaped from the hold in my eyes; I let them drip along my cheeks. I see Oliver Walkley try to move closer to comfort me, but I hold a hand up to stop him.
"It's better if you don't, Oliver Walkley."
"You know, since we broke up you always called me by my full name." He muses. "Why is that?"
"In all honesty?" I ask warily.
Oliver Walkley nods. "Nothing more."
"I like to think of people as imprints. You're a temporary tattoo, soon enough you'll fade away, become a distance thought." A genuine, sad smile curls on my lips. "Finley was a stain."
A couple minutes later, I close the door as Oliver Walkley exits my apartment.
I thought about how I'd usually let the dreadful day plan. I'd sit on my couch, think about Finley, cry a little, then cry a lot. I'd start to feel lonely and hopeless, eat my weight in ice cream, then complain about how it effected me later on the next morning.
So much for losing my weight at the gym, I didn't eat that night.
