Page 289 of Darling Venom
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emery, 18; nash, 28
Emery
Starless nights rarely descended upon Eastridge. They reminded me of golden tigers—one-in-a-million, striking, intoxicating. Like golden tigers, they seemed bigger, as if the emptiness of the sky meant I could fill more space.
Reed had once informed me that starless nights were a sign secrets needed to be shared. The abyssal darkness provided protection, and he’d said, if I was going to tell a secret, it had to be under an empty sky.
We were nine, and Timothy Grieger had given me a secret Valentine’s day card Reed begged me to show him. I did, sneaking into the tree maze in the backyard and handing it to him with my cheeks flushed red.
Until we’d realized it was too dark to read it under a half-hidden moon without stars.
We ended up leaning against the Hera statue in the center of the maze as I told him what the card said from memory. It was one of those fill-in-the-blank, store-bought cards, where the first five lines had been typed out and all Timothy fucking Grieger had to do was figure out the last word, and he’d written “poop” in brown crayon beside a picture he had drawn of, of all things, a briefcase.
Dear Emery,
I love you more than pretty birds
and all the words.
I love you more than clear blue skies
and fresh apple pies.
I love you more than poop.
Love, Timmy.
Poetic.
He’d even spelled my name right.
It seemed fitting that, all these years later, a starless night numbed my fingers as I decided to spill my biggest secret to Reed.
If you want to date a boy Dad doesn’t own, you’d have to leave the state, I reminded myself as I snuck my way from Dad’s mansion to the servants’ quarters.
The chill of the North Carolina winter taunted me, nipping at my bare arms. Like it was trying to tell me something. Maybe even stop me.
I lifted my phone and reread Reed’s text again, twice to be sure.
I broke up with Basil. For real this time.
Hope spun threads of excitement and anticipation through my body, and I ignored the rest—the part of my brain that told me to turn around, to preserve us because once I professed my love for him, I couldn’t take it back.
We would never just be friends anymore. Either he felt the same way and we became a couple, or he didn’t and something ugly and awkward would cloud whatever remained of our friendship.
