blackheart ➵ m. clifford

➵ nine

➵ jett

Time seemed to go faster and faster when I was with Michael. Minutes turned to hours and hours turned to days, and each day I was by his side. Whether it was for an hour or five, it felt like I’d found someone that was the start of my entire completion.

I could look at him for days.

His eyes were such a lucid green, flecked with emerald and peridot and ringed with a green so dark it almost looked black. Stubble lined a strong jaw, shading his chin and peppering down his throat to his Adam’s apple, which bobbed up and down each time he took a sip of his Corona. His lips were a dark, sinister red that stood strong against the crystalline paleness of his skin. The fingertips that brushed against my skin were rough and calloused, but they were soft in the way they handled me.

Michael was a heavy breather, each breath curling out from under his lips to fan across my face, smelling of the joint we’d shared and the mint of his chewing gum. A paintbrush was tucked behind his ear, and he held another in his right hand, my chin in his left. Gentle strokes brushed against my cheeks and my temples and every inch of skin he could reach without dipping below the neckline of my t-shirt.

It was Halloween, and Michael had promised me he would turn me into something exquisite. I didn’t have a clue what he was creating, but I trusted him. I trusted him a lot. Michael was somebody I trusted enough to take me to a party, another of Luke’s, at that.

To say I was nervous was an understatement. Memories of his last party were fresh in my mind; people scattered in clumps in his living room, with alcohol pulsing through every vein and weed through every other. Rooms were filled with smoke and clear plastic cups littered the floors, paired with girls that caked foundation into every pore and wore false eyelashes that almost touched their over-plucked eyebrows.  I remembered feeling dizzy, and I remembered pressing myself against the wall as people pointed to my dress and my shoes and laughed and called me a loser. I remembered the bile rising in my throat and my shoes slipping off my feet as they scuffed against the concrete of Luke’s driveway. I remembered my feet sinking into the mud and the twigs catching in the flowers that rested on my head and I remembered the stoner that lent me his joint and pushed me on the swing set in the park a few blocks away from my house.

I guess every dark cloud had a silver lining.

Michael turned away as I slid into the same black dress I’d worn to the last one – it was the only dress I owned – with lace sleeves and a bodice that hugged my waist and flowed around my hips to the middle of my thighs. His eyes scoured each and every curve of my body as they crinkled at the sides in recognition, and a smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he reached forward to run his fingers through the straightened strands of my hair, pushing to up and over so that it fell into my face and down one shoulder.

He stood back away from me and lifted his finger, moving it around in a circle with his lips pursed. My feet scuffed against his carpet as I turned in a slow circle, before he stopped me completely as my back was turned to him. I knew what he was looking at as he traced the back of my dress, laced in the pattern of a skull that followed the curve of my back and rested its jaw above the round of my bum. It was my favourite dress, even though it had started rumours that I was a closet goth.

My skin burned with his fingers as he ran them over the lace, before he was cupping my hips and igniting a flame in my stomach as he rested his chin on the shoulder that was bare of hair. I could feel his breaths in my ear, and all I could think about were his hands as they roamed the expanse of my hips and stroked at the material that covered them. His hair tickled my neck and his stubble scratched against my shoulder as he reached forward, his chest flush against my back as he tugged the black sheet off the frame of the mirror.