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I think I’m okay, I think she wants this I was honestly terrified at first she’d wig out, slap me, scramble away Tell me she couldn’t stomach a kiss from a blood-soaked monster like me I don’t deserve her, but I’et froot

She doesn’t kiss ers tighten on my chest, but her mouth? She just waits, and lets me claim her ently My pal a ard curl back behind her ear She letsa brute like rease under my nails will mar her skin, worried the blood that has been soaked into my bones will seep out of my pores and sully her ivory skin

She nuzzles her face into my palm She opens her oddairl can kiss My breath never really left my throat, and now it rushes out ofthis happen, that she’s actively taking part

I don’t knohy It’s not like I’ood I just held her when she cried I couldn’t do anything else

I end the kiss before it can turn into sohtly parted, wet like cherries now and so, so red Oh, fk, I can’t resist going in for another kiss, froer for her beauty show through inso she’s more fully on top of me, and she doesn’t stop me when my hand drifts down her scalp, down her nape, down her back, rests on the small just above the swell of her ass I don’t dare touch her there

This is insane What the hell a? She just bawled her eyes out, sobbed for hours She’s seeking co I can’t have her like this

I pull away again, slide out fro?” She asks

“I can’t breathe when you kiss ood for you It’d be taking advantage of you” I shake my head and turn away from the confusion in her eyes, the disappointry with myself She needs better than me

I grab uitar, rip it fro, outside stair to the roof, a bottle of Jameson in hand I plop down on the busted-ass weather-beaten blue Lay-Z-Boy I lugged up here for this purpose, twist the top off the bottle and slug it hard I kick back with ray-to-pink haze of onrushing dawn, guitar on s

Finally, I sit forward and start working on the song I’ve been learning: “This Girl” by City & Colour I regret it immediately, because the lyrics remindsong, so I get lost in it nonetheless and it barely registers when I hear her on the stairs

“You are so talented, Colton,” she says, when I’ot her jeans back on, and one of e loveseat perpendicular to the Lay-Z-Boy, and she settles cross-legged onto it, cradling her guitar on her lap

“Play sos self-consciously “I suck I only know a couple songs”

I frown at her “You sing like a fking angel Seriously You have the sweetest, clearest voice I’ve ever heard”

“I can’t play the guitar for crap, though” She’s struree “But that doesn’t , keep practicing, you’ll get better”

She rolls her eyes, nize the tune at first It takesit is It’s a low, haunting tune, a rolling, sad melody The lyrics are…archaic, but I understand the “My Funny Valentine” by Ella Fitzgerald At least, that’s the version I know I’ve heard a dozen versions of it, but I think she was the one who s it…her voice is a little high for ho the song is written, but the strain to hit the lower notes onlyAs if the desire was a palpable thing, so thick inside her she couldn’t hit the notes right

She trails off at the end of the song, but I roll , silent, then strikes another slow, bluesy rhyths “Drea and Ella God I love that song I doubt she realizes this I surprise the shit out of her by coht on cue with Louis’s part She s, and holy shit we sound good together

I would never have thought of covering jazz numbers in a folksy style It’s so hot, so fresh I know the song, so I can weave in so

We finish the song, and I never want to stopmusic with her I take a risk and start up “Stor, and Nell’s crystalline voice and ravelly one ing, though I hear it co next to the shop, back when I first bought it Mrs Henkel had a thing for jazz She was old and lonely, and jazz -dead Mr Henkel, so she’d crack all the s and play Billie and Ella and Count Basie and Benny, and she’d dance and reroceries up, and she’d pinch my ass and threaten er She’d make me tea and spike it hiskey, and we’d listen to jazz

I found her in her bed, eyes closed, a photo of Mr Henkel on her ample chest, a smile on her face I went to her funeral, which shocked the shit out of her rich, assle grandson

My eyes hts, because Nell asksSo I tell her about Mrs Henkel About the long conversations I’d have with her, slowly getting drunk on spiked Earl Grey How she was always clucking about ht and stopped thugging it up, she was over the hter jeans