let me down gently.

⁺ 𝐌    ›    so,  perhaps comforting herself through liquidated means wasn’t a good idea.  (  it was far too late to regret because by a quarter to eleven,  mone had already thrown all sense and cordiality out the window the moment her lips had descended upon a glass whose alcohol contents were much too unknown to her  --  one too many times  )  here lies her current predicament,  inexplicably intoxicated  ;  fluid for limbs with a knack of twinkling toes.  something about the song  --  was this normani’s latest hit?  --  was just calling her back to the dance floor.  “  come on  --  please.  ”  eager hands tug at his own,  once more  --  like all the other songs before this  --  the balls of her feet aching despite the urgent desire to move.  she looks to him,  almost pleadingly.  “  one more dance!  ”  sure,  she couldn’t say she liked nathan but she did like how she felt when she was with him  --  and for mone,  she was in dire need of that feeling right about now.

⁺ 𝐌    ›   she’s been alright up ‘til now.  pleasantly convinced that if she didn’t think about it,  it’d fade like all the other failed romances of her past.  if she didn’t decorate her heart with tiny little windows and doors,  maybe one day all the love in them would stop flowing out of her and into the people who didn’t return them.  one day,  she thinks,  she’ll move on from all this and that she’ll be better because of it.  but obviously,  today is not that day.  nor will the next day be in because no matter how hard she tries  --  no matter how hopeful she pretends to be  --  her heart is always on her sleeve and her emotions are always on her face.  it’s in this instance,  as she spares passing glances among the throng of people around her,  that realization sparks fruitation and the heartache from earlier that month comes back to bite her because he’s here now and despite the promise of being friends  (  from her to him,  because a part of her just couldn’t let go as easily as he could  )  ;  she feels her smile crack just a bit.  swallowed whole as she steps up to his side and whispers a sly, ‘  hello there  ’  from one ear only to twirl on her heel and appear on his other side  ;  smile only a little broken,  but her eyes twinkling with the love she’s yet to move from.

⁺ 𝑶    ›  he was in a good mood.  a superb mood,  if he actually had to put a word to it.  (  whether it had to do with the quick fuck with sunny or the fact that he was fairly inebriated,  ozzy didn’t take the time to theorize  )  because fact of the matter was,  he had pushed his mind of any and all possible pessimisms that could encroach on his night and instead let himself go.  (  in more ways than one  )  he could be seen, ascending from one of the hallways,  gearing to go back into the ballroom once more  ;  hand pushing his hair back, running them through the musings she had made in the moment  ;  fixing his appearance to what it once had been least he wanted serena to murder him on the spot.  now that would have been a real downer.  just as the doors open for him to re-enter,  his focus dies on the appearance on romeo from the corner of his eye and he does a double-take.  waving off the men by the door to instead, turn back around and capture his friend’s shoulders in one swoop of his arm.  “  and just where do you think you’re escaping to, rom?  don’t think you can leave me here with these wolves.  ”

⁺ 𝑶    ›  he had spent a majority of the night hyper-vigilant of her existence.  every turn of her head in his direction  (  whether intentional or not  )  he’d been aware,  too much so that he was sure he was driving serena crazy with his antics  ;  the shifts in his demeanor,  the awkward slouching of his posture that would suddenly shoot straight up,  the hand that hovered much too close, far too often to be considered the act he promised his mother he’d play for tonight.  surely, these coincidences couldn’t be anything more than that  --  but deep down, ozzy knew they were far more intentional than they appeared.  they were far too rigid to be seen as just casual.  the more he acted like he was  ‘  alright  ’  ,  the more fucked up he felt.  and with ten minutes to the countdown, he was exhausted,  a good chunk of him already liquored up, and was still all the more aware of her  :  so finely dressed, a sight that truly kept his breath stilled the moment his eyes had settled upon her at the beginning of the night.  he hadn’t been able to rip his eyes away ever since.

⁺ 𝐌    ›  underneath the glittering lights and all the agonizing work she had to suffer through in order to make the event a hit.  all the sores on her feet were proof of it,  and somehow,  the sight of all the smiles and the chatter of such a ravenous festivity was enough for her.  the sores would fade,  but this party would be talked about for weeks to come.  a fortunate and profitable foreshadowing for the future, she thinks.  and while it had been a long road to get here  --  and mone really didn’t think she’d ever get here,  with woon,  no less  --  here they were.  “  see,  now  --  it doesn’t look so bad,  right?  you don’t feel any aches?  or a headache coming on?  ”  she teases, pinching the sleeve of woon’s fit as she steers him past the open doors and into the room  ;  further drowning in the maximized volume of the music blaring from the stage.  “  still alive, right?  ”

❥     ━━━     oh, but can you save your love for me?

❥     ━━━     all these rumors ‘bout you and me, how about we make this a reality ?

⁺ 𝐌    ›   it was christmas and perhaps mone had gone a little overboard with the drinks. far from home and without the proper cashflow to fly back to vancouver, she had begun to feel lonely.  (  broken hearts do that to a person )   and as one does when the loneliness sets in, the drinks pile up. one had become two   --   three, and more and more until she was stumbling out the doors on the arms of one of her friends, waving her phone in her hand as she exclaimed cries of ‘ merry christmas to all and to all a goodnight ! ’ --  there’s a strong vibration that emits from her phone and she looks up to see the car on the screen roll up beside them.  what timing   --   “  oh, i think my rideshare is here!  ”  giddy laughter falls from her lips as she slips off the arm of her friend, waving them back   --  a flying kiss ( or two ) thrown their way before she barrels into the car with a huff and smile.  as the door closes behind her, she hears the tell-tale ring of the love alarm app and groans, the weight of fatigue pulling her into her seat as she looks to the passenger beside her.   “  was that me or you ?  ”  a part of her itches to look ; another part was too drunk to fish her phone out of her handbag. 

⁺ 𝑶    ›   preparing for the end of the year was going to be the death of him  --  dramatic, yes.  an understatement?  hardly.  serena had always been nitpicky to details and when it came to their attire for the party they were to attend on the last day of the year  --  apparently it was the time to pull out all the stops  (  if he didn’t have his mom in his ear nagging him about it  --  there was serena to pick up the slack  )  ;  in any case, serena must be around here somewhere  --  after the fifth store,  he’s sure he’s lost sight of time, reason and her.  was he dead?  was it even 2019 anymore?  and while ozzy should have a semblance of concern for it,  he feels numb.  his thoughts still shattered from meeting the ghost of christmas’ past in the flesh just days earlier.  enough to render him sober for days  --  lost in his thoughts,  he wanders the store  -- beginning to tinker with some of the boxes stacked upon each other high on the floor to pass him boredom.  tchak! boom! boom!  the sound of the towering toppling over itself to the floor literally breaks him out of his reverie  --  “  oh, shit.  ”  the mutter lies on his lips as he quickly begins to look around to see if anyone had spotted his blunder.

so he takes it  ;  shoulders the blade and covers the wound with a smile  -- the crooked grin he’s donned for years now,  one far too familiar for the occassion.  “  hi,  yourself. you back in town?  ”  it’s so superficial that ozzy hates the words that leave his lips  --  when all his heart wants to scream are the truths his broken heart had cried in the months she’d disappeared.  “  or are you going to skip again?  ”  he shouldn’t have said it -- he knows  --  but a part of him, the bitter monster that he was pulls its ugly head into gear.  but he laughs, masks what mockery the words could mean with amusement as he glances from her to the ground and back.  was it too soon to say it’s nice to see you?  (  how many more before he can say  ‘  when can i see you again?  ’  )

⁺ 𝐌    ›   if mone actually led her life with her head rather than her heart perhaps she’d see reason in the frequent occurrences that have become a little too casual for her liking.  mone had never been casual in her affairs  --  her heart too big to sustain something as superficial as a one-night stand and yet, nathan’s appearance in her life has become a little too familiar and not in the way she’s used too.  (  she stills knows nothing about him and while lips do most of the talking  --  words are the last thing on her mind when he comes around  )  he turns her back and she feels the stutter in her movements as her eyes adjust to the dim-lighting and the sight exposed to her  ; the way his tousled hair falls into his eyes burn her and his bruised lips seem to mock her as she takes a second too long to think.  but, the truth is  --  she cares more than he knows  --  but it’d be the death of her if she let him have something like that hanging over her head.  so she bites on her bottom lip, contemplation stricken across her face as she weighs her options  ;  but he comes in close and the breath she’d sucked in billows out as her fingers once more retain their place on his nape  ;  she laughs,  this time her eyes rolling as the whisper of words flow from hers to his,  “  shut up  --  ”  the crash of her lips to his hurts more than she had wanted it to but it’s second to the numbness in her heart, she thinks. 

⁺ 𝑶    ›   he should probably take it slow  --  a part of him is conscious to the fact that he’s had not one, not two  --  but thrice more than he should  ;  but he can’t stop.  it’s this feeling that he craves these days, the warmth.  the comfort like no one else could give him  ;  the one that scalds his throat and burns all the way down and stamps out the demons that spread the truths that he’s unwilling to hear  --  he’s a  ‘  piece of shit  ’   his mind tells himself  --  the guilt that builds from the eyes he should feel sincerity and compassion for but all else, he feels nothing  --  but he’s too inebriated to pay it any mind  (  anymore, that is  )  ;  but here is serena.  and while he knows she’s no exception to the truths his own self should be saying,  here she broadcasts them into the day with a tone as sweet as a mockingbird,  chirping in his ear  --  taunting him as he plummets himself into a pitiful destruction.  and while he feels bad,  another could care less because they should have known what they were getting into  --  and it was no fault  of his that he couldn’t return what he couldn’t feel in the first place. “  don’t you just wish you could bottle your feelings up and just sail it away into the ocean or something,  ”  he sighs, fuck did he sound dramatic  --  what was he? shakespeare?  “  why do feelings have to be a part of the relationship anyways  --  can’t we just enjoy each other’s company?  her falling for me just messes everything up.  ”

⁺ 𝐌    ›   fingers dangle one hanger after another on their tips,  scanning dress after dress for something remotely appropriate for new year’s  before mone draws the biggest of pauses as --  nose scrunching up as if the greatest epiphany  --  if not the grandest of them all -- had just hit her ;  “   wait  --  cece. you’re going, right?   ”  she realizes, after unceremoniously dragging the other through town that she hadn’t even considered that the other girl wasn’t going.  of course,  after all the reverse therapy and mock-interventions she’s been scrutinized under by the other  --  would she even think of going to something like a party hosted by her company?  “  -- to the party?  ”  she’s sure the other would have told her if she wasn’t by now,  why else would she have let mone drag her all around town on the hunt for the perfect dress?