My Toxic Love

I was only twenty when he arrived.

He was ten years my senior, but in the dim light of that night, age was just a number that hadn't caught up to us yet. He stood 6’2, a living canvas of ink from his scalp to his arches. Dirty blonde hair, and blue eyes—soft, quiet eyes that held a stillness he never actually possessed.

I was fresh out on my own, carrying the dust of a town with fewer than two thousand souls. Everything about him felt like a language I hadn’t learned but desperately wanted to speak. He was West Coast—a grit and a gravity I’d only ever read about.

He appeared with my neighbor, Caveman, just a shadow passing through. But when Caveman returned alone hours later, the world shifted.

"My friend," Caveman said, "he wants to come back. He wants to know you."

*Me?* I wasn't the girl men doubled back for. I wasn't the one who stayed on a stranger’s mind.

I said yes.

He returned that night, and we stretched the darkness until it bled into morning. He told me stories—not with words, but with a frequency I felt in my marrow. Everything sounded bigger through his voice. Everything felt more alive.

I was starving for it. I wanted to map out every tattoo, to understand the weight of his hands, to stay suspended in the way he looked at me—as if I were the only thing in the room that mattered. He didn't just see me; he searched me. Under that gaze, I felt my own potential catching fire.

I wanted more stories. I wanted more time. I wanted to be consumed by the very thing I didn't yet understand.

That night, I didn't just open the door to a man. I opened the door to everything.