Post by Carley on Dec 12, 2015 6:36:08 GMT -8
12 December, 2015
Dear Matthew --
Dear Matthew --
The last I saw you, it was the summer after graduation, lazy days that stretched into too-short nights. We were eighteen, foolish. I'm still foolish, probably. Can't say whether you are, but if I knew you, and I damned well did, you aren't, not anymore. I think it was June when you scrunched up your face in that dreadful way and told me that if you ever saw me again, it would be too soon. I don't blame you. I didn't then, either.
It would have been easier, maybe, if I had told you the truth, but how do you tell somebody what you are when what you are is the stuff of myth, of fantasy, of poorly-written YA romance? Would it have even made a difference? You still caught me red-handed, my hand up your older sister's skirt while she squirmed in my lap and giggled. I couldn't help myself. I never meant to do it, but I couldn't help myself. To be fair, she couldn't help herself either, which you would have maybe understood if I had opened my idiot mouth and said "I'm a cambion" at some point in the months leading up to our downfall. I maybe could have made you understand.
I did find another. She understands. She understands really fucking well, in fact, and lets me do what I'm made to do. I was honest, so she trusts me, and I swore I would never give her a reason not to. Sometimes she reminds me of you, just a little. She's blonde, like you, and brilliant, like you. But while you were content to sink to your knees and let me have you at the slightest touch to your shoulder, she doesn't cave half as easily. She's fire and gunpowder and sharp, snapping bites. You surrendered the moment I kissed you; she fought me tooth and nail for months. We've talked about marriage. I think you'd like her, if you met her. Beth Lyons, up on the upper right-hand corner of the brains-and-beauty chart.
It was the summer solstice when I knew I loved her. Litha, that's what her faith calls it. It was madness. Fruit and wine and a bonfire surrounded by people wearing not much of anything at all. And there she was, in this barely-there crochet thing, swinging her body and her violin around like a pair of deadly weapons. I had a girlfriend at the time. It wasn't her. I didn't want to repeat the past, I didn't want to be like "some people." Beth's words, not mine.
I think, until I was honest with myself, I couldn't help being "some people." I loved you, Matthew, I did, I really did. I loved you as much as my foolish teenage heart ever could. I know I always said it at the most insincere-seeming times, usually while I gasped against your open mouth and you dragged your nails down my back, and sometimes I think you returned it as a reflex. But I loved you. I promise. I loved you and all your ridiculous quirks. Your food couldn't touch on the plate, you kept a glass of water by your bed at all times, you would recite the twelve times table softly to yourself when you were nervous like some sort of mathematical security blanket. (And when you were too close to orgasm. I remember that too. I never told you I caught you, but I nearly laughed and lost the moment the first time.) But no amount of love could have taken the place of honesty, with you and with myself. I'm half-incubus. It's our way to seduce, and neither you nor Jessica ever stood a chance against me. I found the on-switch of my allure many years before I found the off.
You were my first love and my learning experience, and it's because of how badly I ruined us that I can have a future with somebody else. I hope you've found somebody. I hope he makes you happy and has the loyalty that I couldn't have displayed because I didn't know how. I hope he makes your coffee the way you like it--by the way, I'm a barista now, how's that for some irony? The boy who couldn't work your bloody fancy coffee machine is now making coffee for half the uni.
I hope you found peace. I did, or as much peace as a cambion can ever find. I hope he smiles at you right before he sleeps the way Beth smiles at me, when all her piss and vinegar is gone and she's soft and tired and tiny in my arms. I hope you healed. I hope Jessica healed. I'm sorry I was "some people." I've learned.
(I've also been drinking. This letter will never see the light of day. But I needed to get it out. The demon has to exorcise his demons.)
It would have been easier, maybe, if I had told you the truth, but how do you tell somebody what you are when what you are is the stuff of myth, of fantasy, of poorly-written YA romance? Would it have even made a difference? You still caught me red-handed, my hand up your older sister's skirt while she squirmed in my lap and giggled. I couldn't help myself. I never meant to do it, but I couldn't help myself. To be fair, she couldn't help herself either, which you would have maybe understood if I had opened my idiot mouth and said "I'm a cambion" at some point in the months leading up to our downfall. I maybe could have made you understand.
I did find another. She understands. She understands really fucking well, in fact, and lets me do what I'm made to do. I was honest, so she trusts me, and I swore I would never give her a reason not to. Sometimes she reminds me of you, just a little. She's blonde, like you, and brilliant, like you. But while you were content to sink to your knees and let me have you at the slightest touch to your shoulder, she doesn't cave half as easily. She's fire and gunpowder and sharp, snapping bites. You surrendered the moment I kissed you; she fought me tooth and nail for months. We've talked about marriage. I think you'd like her, if you met her. Beth Lyons, up on the upper right-hand corner of the brains-and-beauty chart.
It was the summer solstice when I knew I loved her. Litha, that's what her faith calls it. It was madness. Fruit and wine and a bonfire surrounded by people wearing not much of anything at all. And there she was, in this barely-there crochet thing, swinging her body and her violin around like a pair of deadly weapons. I had a girlfriend at the time. It wasn't her. I didn't want to repeat the past, I didn't want to be like "some people." Beth's words, not mine.
I think, until I was honest with myself, I couldn't help being "some people." I loved you, Matthew, I did, I really did. I loved you as much as my foolish teenage heart ever could. I know I always said it at the most insincere-seeming times, usually while I gasped against your open mouth and you dragged your nails down my back, and sometimes I think you returned it as a reflex. But I loved you. I promise. I loved you and all your ridiculous quirks. Your food couldn't touch on the plate, you kept a glass of water by your bed at all times, you would recite the twelve times table softly to yourself when you were nervous like some sort of mathematical security blanket. (And when you were too close to orgasm. I remember that too. I never told you I caught you, but I nearly laughed and lost the moment the first time.) But no amount of love could have taken the place of honesty, with you and with myself. I'm half-incubus. It's our way to seduce, and neither you nor Jessica ever stood a chance against me. I found the on-switch of my allure many years before I found the off.
You were my first love and my learning experience, and it's because of how badly I ruined us that I can have a future with somebody else. I hope you've found somebody. I hope he makes you happy and has the loyalty that I couldn't have displayed because I didn't know how. I hope he makes your coffee the way you like it--by the way, I'm a barista now, how's that for some irony? The boy who couldn't work your bloody fancy coffee machine is now making coffee for half the uni.
I hope you found peace. I did, or as much peace as a cambion can ever find. I hope he smiles at you right before he sleeps the way Beth smiles at me, when all her piss and vinegar is gone and she's soft and tired and tiny in my arms. I hope you healed. I hope Jessica healed. I'm sorry I was "some people." I've learned.
(I've also been drinking. This letter will never see the light of day. But I needed to get it out. The demon has to exorcise his demons.)
Yours (once),
Tucker
Tucker