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ONE

SECRETS

Pandora

I’ets a newspaper It sits on , and I love the way it s room chair and slap the sucker open This sound, this s the paper withone As was his ne—but not the smell of the paper It’s been almost a decade and I still find an incomparable little joy in the smell of this freshly printed newspaper Until now

Nowwhen the headline of the entertain me

Mackenna Jones Is Back in Town! the headline says, and just reading that feels like a punch in the gut

I squeezeuncontrollably

Mackenna Jones is back in town!

Fuck, I really need to stop reading that

Mackenna Jones is back in town!

God Still reads the same

Mackenna

The name curls around me like smoke in my insides, and butterflies I didn’t even know I still carried crash into the walls of le one of these butterflies had survived Mackenna Jones

He’s co to do about it?

The thought of hi in the same state makes me scowl bleakly “Seriously, asshole? You had to come here?”

I begin reading the article about Crack Bikini, how the band has revolutionized music How even Oba kids back to the music of the masters—Mozart, Beethoven But it doesn’t end there It’s just getting started turning up the sch on and on about how this tour has sold out Madison Square Garden faster than Justin Bieber’s first show, and hoill be the concert of the year, if not the decade

Briefly, the band’s breakout song flits throughplayed on every radio station in the country, and it ht of it angers ain

My hands shake as I set down the newspaper, fold it, and try to move on to another section I live with my mother and my cousin, and I’ve always had an appreciation for nolia has ballet and et our apartment to myself—has officially been ruined Not onlyyear

Mackenna In Seattle

My hands treo back to the entertainment section and slowly scan for the date of the concert I find ating straight to Ticketmaster Yep, the show is already sold out So I head to eBay, where I discover the staggering prices the best tickets command

I don’t knohy, but for ahireatest asshole froh all the noise he and his band members make

I don’t knohat I’ in my body The show is sold out The tickets cost a fortune But no I won’t miss this opportunity It’s been almost six years since I last saw hi that hard, perfect man-butt as he jumped into his jeans

The first time he took me, I could almost see my V card nicely tucked into his back pocket He told me he loved me and asked me to tell him that I loved him He was still inside me when he asked if I wanted hi with me, and I couldn’t I couldn’t say it back But I know that he knew

He kissed me harder than ever when I started to cry, and our kiss tasted of ht it all so painful and raw, the way he kissed me So beautiful I treether after breaking for hiasle withme over and over that he loved me

And that wasn’t the only time he took me For days and weeks and months, we made hot, fevered love I was seventeen and he was ht he wanted everything I had to give He left anyway Bastard

Mackenna was a secret, you see He was the closest I’ve ever been to a person in my life—but he was a secret nobody could find out about Especially not ed to see each other anyway We lied, hid, stole out of our ho so family’s yacht until sunrise We didn’t care who our families were, or as “best” for us

As far as I was concerned, he was it for me, and I for him

He was my best friend too