❝i think i came to find the feeling,
baby, between what was mine
and what was yours.❞

❘❘

THERE ARE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF, Emmy tells me, pero no le creo. Grief doesn't work in stages; it works in waves, returning to the shore each day, a constant ebb and flow of rough tides and gentle waters, but... always there.

Grief is eternal.

There are five stages in addiction, Emmy tells me next, como si significara algo. I don't know how many fucking stages there are because I don't know... what that means. Is there a moment—a stage—when I lose all control of my actions? Is there a singular second in that fucking spiral when it becomes an all-encompassing need? Was it one of those nights, skidding into dependence, when it consumed me? How does it start? How does it end?

No sé.

What I know is that grief and addiction lean on each other. They can be tethered together into a blissful distraction, a temporary anecdote, a beautiful deception that helps destroy everything that is... wrong.

For a moment, an intricately intimate infinity, a fleeting forever, nothing hurts, and nothing will ever hurt again.

It's nothing but a smoke screen, a foggy filter, a trap—ensnaring lost souls into the chaste kiss of euphoria. Because when I wake up in the afternoon, when I fall asleep in the early morning, when I battle shitty decisions and fucked up impulses, violence and nausea and depression and anxiety, I'm still grieving.

Escapism only means trading heartache for hollow hope. It still hurts when the high fades, when holes puncture the haze, when oxygen strangles and suffocates, when lights dim, when bones break, when fingers numb, when everything is fucking real.

Somehow, we always meet at the shore, like the tide, and as the waves of anguish wash over me, salt stings the open wounds from another fucking fall.

We always crash.

This is forever, and maybe one day, I'll learn to live with it—with him being gone, with me being... me.

Sólo han pasado veinte minutos, and I'm clawing out of my skin, a twisting, churning pain gnawing at my heart, gnashing teeth, ripping, tearing through muscles and—

Only twenty fucking minutes, and I'm already crashing. Every little promise I whispered in Emmy's dimly lit bathroom is gone, fading, unraveling into the fierce wind lapping at my cheeks. Debería haber sabido. Two hits wouldn't last; two hits would only leave me cold and miserable in the heart of an arctic kingdom, swaying and stumbling, coughing, clinging to Emmy for warmth.

As we sway down the sidewalk, arms linked and fingers laced, my head swims. Soft, flickering lights cut through the blue haze of winter; a faint glow embraces the iron fence lovingly. Something gentle carries the luminescence into the darkness, threatening the shades of gray that paint the city into a monochromatic mass of a million silhouettes. Candles.

There's blood still staining gravel—a dull sea saturating the surface of the entrance to the basketball court, a tattoo, inked, ingrained into the concrete jungle that stole Julian Rivera.

Emmy tugs at my arm gently, and I bite back a cry, twisting in her grasp to run, run, run. We were going to leave; we were going to run.

Maybe we would have gone north, like we talked about on those late nights, and we would have settled in Canada. Maybe we would have been cold; maybe we would have found snow.

I blink away the hot tears.

Julian never got to see the first snow of the season. It still hasn't snowed.

"Neva," Emmy pleads quietly, tucking my hair behind my ear. I spin to meet her dark eyes, and she gives me a soft smile, a beautiful fucking smile, before pressing a lighter into my open palm. "Puedes hacerlo, mami."

Nodding frantically, I muster up a smile. "Yeah, I c—"

"Neva."

Fuck. Anxiety flutters through my chest violently, writhing, thrashing, flailing, in a sudden burst of heat. Shakily, I glance up, and my breathing hitches. "Mickey."

"What the fuck are you doing here?" A jagged edge of hostility traces the words into daggers, hard and unforgiving. "You didn't care about Julian."

"I... I did care about him," I whisper, flinching when his eyes flash. That soft light dances across his cheek quietly, and as Mickey steers his gaze to the candles at our feet, it shifts to expose a veil of tears. My heart stutters. "Mickey, I did care. I just—"

"It was your fault."

Fuck. I reel back with a cry. Emmy catches me, her grip tightening around my waist. "No, I... I didn't want this—"

"It's your fault that Rio got caught, and it's your fault that Jules got iced." 

Tears rush forward, and I blink furiously, turning up to take in the starless, cloudless sky—a hazy curtain of darkness. A silent sob shakes through me. There were people that loved him, people that were mourning him, and I... fue mi culpa.

"Okay," Emmy drawls, raising a hand between us cautiously. "I don't think it's her—"

"No, it was her fault," Mickey cuts her off with a hiss. "She's the reason everything fell apart."

"I..." A wave of guilt crashes over my head, and as I fumble for words, I feel myself sink further and further under the pressure of nuestros errores. It wasn't just mine. It was Julian and me. It was us. "I... I didn't—"

"Ay, cabrón." Emmy yanks me back to jab a finger at him. "Nobody told your friends to start a fucking drug war. It's not her fault. It's theirs. It's about time you fuckers start taking some responsibility."

Mickey scowls, hands curling into fists. "Jules did it for her, and he roped Rio into it."

"I didn't... I didn't ask for it. I didn't want this." I sniffle, swiping at my cold cheeks and shaking my head numbly. "I didn't know he was d—"

"You knew." Exasperated, Mickey rolls his eyes. "You knew what you were getting into with him. You knew how he felt about you, and you... you took advantage of it. Of them."

Did I?

Julian loved me, and I... I always knew I couldn't—wouldn't—love him back, but I stayed with him, I stole from him, I slept with him, I survived with him.

"I..."

"All for a little bit of blow," he sighs, his shoulders slumping, his gaze falling to the candles in defeat. "It's fucked up what people will do for a little bit of fucking blow."

Maybe. Maybe we were all just lost in some self-destructive spiral, wishing for love, for sex, for rapture and release, for reckless abandon and endlessly wild nights, wishing for something, something, something else.

Wishing for snowstorms.

My bottom lip trembles. "Julian called it snow."

We call it snow.

A gust of cold air lashes at my cheeks, and it stings, but it doesn't numb me like Mickey's sudden mocking laughter. "No, baby, he called it snow because of you. Fell in love with some fantasy of fucking winter."

And fuck, that hurts.

Icy tears roll over my cheeks. "I love winter."

"Yeah," Mickey rasps, "and he loved you."

I look down, a mixture of shame and pity clenching my heart as I take in the burning candles.

"I think... the world ends in fire, Neva."

"Not ice?"

Julian was warm, in every fierce stroke and sultry smile and searing kiss, a beautiful way to burn, and... and Julian always believed the world would end in fire.

But I was destined to an icy infinity, nothing but raw memories and numb fingertips in la hielera, cold and alone, a tragic way to freeze, and I always believed the world would end in ice.

We were fucked.

"No, he... he didn't love me," I whisper. "Jules didn't even know me."

Emmy squeezes my hand, but I can only watch each faint flame flicker and wane in the darkness, rippling through crisp air, struggling to stay alive in the midst of winter weather. A constant battle.

A fire can only last so long in the freezing cold.

I destroyed Julian.

"Hey, Neva," she says softly. "It's okay."

"Está bien," he says softly, so fucking softly. "It's okay, Neva. It's okay."

"I wish everyone would stop saying that." My voice cracks as I pull away from her. "Nothing is okay."

I duck to the candles carefully.

I cup my hands around his to block the wind and rain, and his lips twitch in amusement, but he doesn't waste any time before the next spark.

As soon as it catches, he takes a long, lazy drag and hands me back my lighter. Wisps of smoke tangle with his hot breath as he exhales, "Thanks."

And just like I did for him that first night, when I met him on a warm, rainy night in the middle of August, when I ducked into a dark doorway and smiled, when I cupped my hands around his to help him light a cigarette in the summer breeze... I cup a hand around a candle and light it in the wintry wind.

It blows out.

Nada es para siempre.

My teeth grind together. I flick the lighter, lean closer, closer, closer, let the warmth caress my cheeks in a featherlight kiss.

"You are Neva," he lulls me into a calm with a simple, sensual whisper. "Nieve. Snow."

"You and me, mamita. We got this."

"I want you to stay, Neva."

"You look fucking beautiful."

"It's already winter, Neva."

"You're beautiful."

"No one is going to kill us, Neva."

"Cuidado, mami."

"Are you cold?"

"You are fucking cold, Neva."

"Me and you," he teases my words into the dim room, our lips still slowly moving together. "We'll take over the world, and it will always be winter, remember?"

"I... love you, Neva."

"I wish I didn't."

"Neva," he says, his dark eyes raking down my body, burning with something sensual and threatening in the darkness. "Like snow."

"I knew it when I fucking met you," Julian drawls softly. "Like fucking snow. Beautiful and cold."

Each memory is faint, a sensual snowflake, fractured and frozen, dusting fluttering lashes and kissing numb lips. Cold.

Beyond a blurry veil of dying lights, the world is cold.

Desperately, I swipe at my nose as I shiver and sniffle, blinking, blinking, blinking, bl—

Warm. It's warm.

My hand sways in front of me, swimming through black spots and hazy light, and I'm dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, a breathless gasp tangling the seemingly innocent nosebleed into a wild panic.

Blood.

Fuck.

❘❘

**I am so drunk. I can't think straightand it's starting to scare me, so I came to post a chapter on Wattpad. I love you guys. ❄️