HAPPY | ✔

JOYCE: 18.0 MORE TO LOSE

Update #2

🎶TAKE CARE - Drake (ft Rihanna)🎶

"Pushing me away so I give her space, ah.
Dealing with a heart that I didn't break.
I'll be there for you, I will care for you.
I keep thinking you just don't know."

I crossed the street to meet him. We stood together, toe to toe. He gazed at me as if it'd been a century since he'd last had the pleasure, and not meager days.

In an uncharacteristic move, he kept to himself, making zero effort to eradicate the distance between us.

I had so much to say, yet I found myself stumped at the vision of him, as always. I noticed things I wished I could ignore. The argent hue of bright red rimmed eyes that confessed tales of torture, torment and sleep-deprivation; the alluring scattering of freckles over a straight nose that reminded me of multicoloured leaves in fall; lips that had always been far too sensual in the face of a man- the bottom one swollen and bruised as if it'd been bitten one too many times. These things that made him beautiful served as naught but a distraction from the turmoil brewing within me.

There was a spasm within my body that urged me to kiss him. To press my body against his until we became one whole. I did not.

"You've been speaking to her?" Is all I managed on my first attempt at speech.

A beat passed before he confessed, "Yes."

"Often?"

"Yes."

"With neither my knowledge nor my permission?" My voice rose steadily with my anger, like a tidal wave a mile off from the coast.

"I-what?" He stumbled at my accusation.

"Have you, or have you not been in communication with my daughter, without my consent?"

His face changed, the serene resolve altering into a wary uncertainty. "What is this?" His voice was barely louder than his breath, "What the hell is this?"

"Answer the fücking question!" I snapped. The reins I held on my anger were slipping from my grasp like my hands were plastered with Vaseline.

"Yes." He said the word like an "Amen", the last utterance of a prayer. As though he was acquiescent to the outcome of this confrontation. Neither eager nor reluctant to it, just resigned.

He appeared weary at the thought of a fight, yet I needed a battle. I yearned for a target to lashout against, a beating post to whip as raw as my hemorrhaging insides.

"Who gave you the right to think you could-"

"The right? The right? His eyes widened, redness flushing against the underside of his throat. "What the fück do you think we talk about, hookers and blow?"

His expression surpassed bewilderment. Outrage took centre stage, and I was given the engagement I desired. "She's seven years old! She prattles on about cupcakes and curries; about her dreams and aspirations; the favourite sweater she wears every time she gets the chance, because it has a print of a pizza slice on the back; and a girl called Tori in her class she can't stand because she keeps stealing her pencils!"

"You promised to send her to Paris!" I exploded.

He drew back, stunned. Affronted. Confused. "I-"

"You promised to send her away to train in France. You made a promise a decade into the future! A future neither one of us can garantee! Don't you see something wrong with that?" My hands were tempted to rip at my hair in seething frustration.

"I- what? So?"

"So?" I echo, "We weren't even on speaking terms, yet you decide it's a fantastic idea to pledge yourself to my kid while our relationship hangs in the balance. What the fück is wrong with you?"

"What is wrong with me?" An indignant hand rose to his chest, "What do you expect of me? We get in one disagreement and what am I supposed to do- ignore our child?"

"But she's not yours!"

Tears blanketed my rage in ferocious waves. I was left shaking on a failing foundation of maybes and what-ifs.

"She is mine!" My fist pounded against my heart, again and again until I felt the vibrations in my very toes, "I will be all that is left to pick up the pieces if and when you decide to fück off, and we are once again on our own. Beyond pretty promises, I am the constant."

My attack bullied him into silence. He stood striken, his face a billboard for the hurt I bestowed.

"Do you not love me enough-?"

The very mention of the word had me reeling, my eyes cringed at what I felt to be a ploy rooted in manipulation.

"What does that have to do with anything? Is that it? You think I don't love you?" I scoff.

"It is something I have to question! Because if you did, if you loved me like I love you, there would be no thought of a future beyond me and you. There would be no alternate ending! All you would see is this." He clamped his hands on either side of my skull and hauled me closer until both our lips and eyelashes touched. "Us."

I found the strength to push him away and he staggered back on the sidewalk. For one who was often too self-aware, I spared little regard to the spectacle we'd created for the public to witness. Another piece of evidence that strove to show his command of my every attention.

"I have more to lose!"

He swore and cursed and tore his hands through his hair, "That's not fair."

"It's the truth."

"I have given myself to you. Wholly. Why question it? Just accept it."

He pleaded with me, yet I could not relent. Shaking my head slowly, sadly, I confessed, "I'm just not built that way."

It was my truth. We were far too fresh, too new, too volatile and unpredictable. Both too good and too bad all at once to follow logic.

But this man was looking at me with eyes like emeralds and a face like an angel. With love and passion and a determination so fierce it would ignite terror in the weak. And that was how I knew he was far greater than anything I could ever aspire to be, because I was afraid.

"I am tired of begging," he was calm, scarily so, "the time for that has passed."

He stepped past me, only to pull open the door of his Lamborghini. His gaze seared into me when he ordered me to get in, and mine avoided him when I refused.

•••

Ba dum tssss.

Show of hands all who hate me right me right now! ✋🏻✋🏼✋🏽✋🏾✋🏿

That's okay, I still adore all of you, lmao.

Sidenote: Isn't this song just fücking amazing?