❝not the way you'd imagined it,
on a balcony with champagne lips.
but in a pantry against the pancake mix.
you had your new year's kiss.❞
— casiotone for the painfully alone,
new year's kiss

♥

"I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY..."

It took seconds, minutes, hours, to realize that I was stuck on fucking repeat, forever apologizing, over and over and over, until those two words hung between us in an infinitely breathless whisper, until those two words withered into a numbing plea, until those two words were the only thing that felt real. I couldn't find her or myself; I could only find shapes and colors, metamorphic, bleeding and melting into the tiled walls of the subway station, closing in on me, closing in on me, closing in on me.

My cheeks were wet.

Soft.

My eyes fluttered closed.

Dizzy.

My heartbeat slowed.

Sorry.

"I'm really sorry."

Fingertips. Fingernails.

"I'm really high."

Fingers.

"I'm really fucked up."

I was sorry, high, and fucked up. 2020.

I'd started 2020 on a rooftop, kissing a beautiful fucking stranger, and I was ready to end 2020 on a subway platform, apologizing to a beautiful fucking stranger. It wasn't going to be my year; it was never meant to be my year.

Everything felt frozen.

I opened my eyes to an arctic wasteland, lost somewhere in Midtown, scrambling to inhale the icy air, when it felt... like I... was suffocating. Scarlett didn't move, didn't say anything, didn't seem to breathe. Scarlett sat silently, soft and sweet, twisting into shards and fragments, blurry, on the edge of reality and fantasy, almost untouchable, in a veil of light that cast her into gritty landscape of metal and tile and concrete. Scarlett didn't seem real.

I didn't know her.

Slowly, I sank into stone, cold, hard stone, collapsing in exhaustion, lying on the concrete platform, if only to feel the chill bleed through my clothes. A fringe of darkness inched from the edges of my vision, drawing my eyes closed again, and I let it, I let it, I let it lull me into a fucked up state of stillness.

Had I always been this fucked up?

Probably.

Mom would be so proud.

"Mom was worried about you," Levi had said that morning, in the car, as I pressed something warm and wet to my forehead to stop the bleeding. "I was worried about you, bro."

I coughed, and my entire chest cracked in half with the impact, shattering what was left of my heart and lungs in one blow. I couldn't get up. I'd just stay here. I'd stay here.

Levi would find me eventually.

"Levi isn't going to find you, Nick."

Shit. Did I say that out loud?

"Right." Levi was probably balls deep in Carly right now. Carly. "Levi... left."

I didn't remember when or where Levi left me. I didn't remember why Levi left me. I didn't remember, remember, remember. Levi was there, beside me, outside a shitty club in Midtown, catching me before I face planted, easing me from the public humiliation of potentially puking in front of the cast of Girls Gone Wild, with all his endearing big-brother-knows-best bullshit, and then... Levi was gone. Suddenly, I was in these dark, dark, dark veins of the city, a skeleton of Times Square, feeling empty, hollow, erased, like a ghost, staring at Scarlett.

Alone.

Somehow, Carly had convinced Levi to... leave me.

Bitches, Levi always said. Bitches break brothers.

An icy panic clenched around my heart as I sat up frantically. I didn't trust that crazy bitch with Levi. "Where is Carly?"

"Probably with Levi," Scarlet said quietly, but the words were too measured, too calm, too patient, like inevitable Shakespearean levels of tragedy were about to unfold... and everyone knew it. Carly was going to kill him. "Nick, don't worry. I saw them grab an Uber."

Why didn't I see them grab an Uber? Why couldn't I fucking remember? Why was there this shift in my memory, like pages ripped from the spine of a book, torn away from the story? Why?

"Levi told me..." Scarlett inched closer, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Hesitantly, her gaze met mine, and I blinked, struck by how fucking dark her eyes were, deep and vast, a midnight ocean that could drown me. "Levi told me to bring you home."

They reminded me of Kayla—always obscure, always secretive, always burning with something silent.

"Do you miss him?"

Scarlett blinked in surprise. "Who?"

"Ah, fuck." I scrubbed a hand up my cheek, cursing myself to hell and back. Great job, Nick. You're so fucked up that you can't even think, and you decide to ask a potentially violent widow if she misses her dead husband. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

"Don't apologize," she warned, a razor-sharp edge in her voice, "if you don't mean it."

My head fucking hurt, and I just wanted to know if she missed him. "No, I do, but I—"

"Then what are you really sorry for, Nick?"

Vaguely, I knew, but I couldn't... find it. There were a million warnings pulsing, throbbing, screaming at me to back the fuck up. Why hadn't a train come through the station yet? Why was Scarlett still here? Why was this station empty on New Year's morning? Why were we the only two people in the entire fucking world right now?

"I... I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry that I kissed you, and I'm sorry that I ruined your night, and I'm sorry that your... your fiancé, or your husband, or your fucking soulmate, or whatever, is... dead." I let out an inappropriate laugh, too drunk to care that I couldn't laugh at a fucking funeral. "I'm sorry that I let Levi creep your Instagram."

A knowing smile softened at her lips, and I almost choked on another apology for imagining what her lips would look like wrapped around my dick. But then I'd be apologizing for something I wasn't sorry for.

Scarlett cocked her head to the side. "Instagram."

"I saw the photo, and then I... I saw the obituary. Edward Miguel Lopez." Heat flooded through my cheeks as I held her gaze. "I... I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your loss."

And I was sorry for her loss, but then she leaned in, leaned in, leaned in, and Scarlett kissed me, and she tasted like cherry chapstick, like a teenage dream, like fireworks, like a fucking Katy Perry song, and suddenly, I wasn't sorry that Edward Miguel Lopez was dead. I didn't care.

I didn't even care that Kayla was dead.

—One time, my Levi told me that when he kissed a girl, it TASTED (no, you're not reading that wrong) like a Katy Perry song. I JUST CANT—

Anyways, I love you all! Besos! 😘