It should have hurt. It was supposed to hurt. Okay, it did hurt. A lot.
It hurt.
It hurt so fucking much.
But the writer in Samantha was telling her that this was perfect. It all made perfect sense. It was the right time, the right place, and it was oh so poetic. Disgustingly so. Oh yes, so. It was the stuff of dreams, the stuff of nightmares, her view from behind the door to the room where Ava slept, left slightly ajar from the careless rush of the room’s two occupants.
That fucking bunny boy, in Ava’s room — her Ava! — doing something so awful as to fuck her. Fucking Ava — her Ava! — when she had only ever wished to be the one that could be that close to her.
It shouldn’t have hurt.
Samantha knew what Ava would get up to when she wasn’t around. She’d fuck around sometimes like she needed it to live. In some perverse way known only to artists, maybe she did. It never bothered her, it was just a fact of life, something she accepted as mere background noise. What could she do about it? It wasn’t like she owned her, as much as she wished it were so. As much as she wished she could take a permanent marker and write her name, yes, Samantha Heather Mackey, across every inch of her perfect skin until it was all hers, all hers forever. Nobody would be able to take Ava away from her ever again, not without being reminded of whose body was her home, and who her body was home to.
It shouldn’t have hurt. It shouldn’t.
But this time, now that it’s Max, it’s too personal.
Hurt. Rage. Blind, seething rage. The sheer audacity of that mother fucking bunny. She wanted to go in there and stop this. Claim Ava as hers, and rightfully so. But Ava would never forgive her if she got in between these two. The love, the longing, the way these two looked deep in each other’s eyes… she could practically hear the doves cooing, the angels singing. Blegh . Atrocious. No man could ever love Ava like that, not for real, not as good as Samantha knew she could. But Ava, poor sweet Ava, she just didn’t know that yet. If only she knew how much Samantha loved her, how much she would sacrifice for her.
But…in a way, perhaps, it wasn’t quite as bad as her boiling anger made it out to be. After all, Max was a creation of Samantha’s mind. Everything she wished she could be for Ava. Strong, tall, dark, bold. Max was part of her. Wasn’t this for the better?
Yes. This was Samantha’s distant, tragic way of showing love to the only person in the world who mattered.
That was the poetic agony that made Samantha think that she could at least use this for something. To cope with the loneliness, to further herself in the eyes of Fosco, the eyes of the Lion, the insignificant specks at Warren who paled in comparison to Ava’s radiance. At that horrible place that Ava wouldn’t even step foot into. That, too, was material.
The girl who was in love. The girl who was in love with another girl, a girl that she couldn’t have. So she thought hard, thought hard, harder and harder and harder until smoke was coming out of her ears, and like magic a boy sprung from the pieces of everything that girl wished she had to give to the one she loved. The girl could not bring herself to admit her feelings to the other, and she knew that she would never in a million years be the things the other would want her to be. The girl would give her would-be lover the perfect boy instead, so she could be happy. She watched them gaze longingly into each other’s eyes, watched them hug, kiss, make love. Watched them live their lives, so happily, blissfully unaware, the other girl ignorant to who her lover truly is. She has no idea that — surprise! It was her closest friend all along, a representation of her soul, a shadow of it. When she learned the truth, she thought it was so sweet that her friend loved her so much that she would create the perfect lover for her instead of stake her own claim. But, my dear, you were perfect all along! You never needed to do that for me! she’d cry out, tossing the shadow aside, bringing the girl into her arms. And they’d live happily forever after, in a cozy little apartment, by a warm fire, with even warmer hearts.
Yes. That is exactly what would happen.
For the first time in an eternity, she wrote. Against the backdrop of her beloved’s moans as she made love to someone else, she wrote the tale of how that someone else would soon be her.