Pieces [Wattpad's Editor's Choice]

26: f + l = fOr LiFe

First we stopped at the liquor store. Luna offered to buy me anything I wanted, but I declined. I didn't want to drink. I didn't want to numb my feelings. I needed to feel this hurt, this emptiness. It was motivation for me to keep working for Arrow.

We left the liquor store and found ourselves café-hopping. We drove all the way across town in search for the coffee shop that authentically brewed their coffee and also kept up with the cute study-aesthetic. I knew Luna truly loved me because she absolutely hated coffee where I, on the other hand, was a coffee addict. She was doing this for me.

"Okay, this one sucks." She scrunched her nose up at the yellow porcelain cup, a cute swan design in the foam, and passed it to me.

I tasted it. My taste buds danced. "Oh wow, that's amazing. What are you talking about?"

She shook her head and waved the cup away. "Finish it."

"This is the fourth time you've said it sucked and given it to me. I'm gonna OD on caffeine."

"If it keeps you from moping around like a sloth, then I'm gonna keep pushing them off on you." And then it was off to the next place.

We weren't just buying coffee from each café, though; we were leaving behind unspoken truths about ourselves that no one else knew. At every café we stopped at, we each wrote one confession on a napkin and left them face-down on tables we weren't sitting at. We named the game "Café Confessions." Maybe they'd be thrown away, maybe people would notice them, maybe mouths would be wiped on them before the words had a chance to be read. We didn't sign our names and we'd never know who read them, but it was fun and surprisingly cathartic.

"Never been kissed...and I'm nineteen," I said quietly as I wrote on my napkin.

"I'm at a coffee shop...and I hate coffee," Luna read off her napkin.

We set them on two separate tables, facedown, and left the café.

At the next place, we tried a mocha with Mexican chocolate and spices in it, which Luna finished this time since it was more like hot chocolate (and my heart rate practically quadrupled). Our napkin confessions also got pretty real, like we were drunk off tequila.

"I created life...without a man," I whispered as I scribbled in the smallest print I could manage.

"I fucked a dude and his brother in the same night...neither of them knew."

I glanced up. "Luna."

"What? It's true. I'm not ashamed."

"I'm sure they know by now."

"I gave them both false names: Isabel and Val. For all they know, they fucked twins."

At café seven, we ordered decaf while our heart rates hit dangerous speeds and our fingertips buzzed like jet engines.

You have walked through several doors with me already, even while I raced to the other side. Honestly, it made my heart skip two extra beats each time, I wrote. This one I didn't read out loud. I studied the word "you" and for some reason, the face behind that word surprised me because I thought of Arrow when I wrote it, yet this wasn't about him at all.

"I made you look bad and lied about your truth...I'm sorry." Luna said the words out loud like she was alone. Once again, I looked up at her. She stared at her napkin and chewed her bottom lip.

"Who's that for?"

"Um...it's personal." She met my eyes finally and tried smiling, but it was fake.

"Is it a guy?"

She let several seconds pass. "...Yyyyeah." Another lip bite. "Yeah. It is."

"One of your hookups?"