I’m no longer standing on a bridge, overlooking certain death with the morning sun’s rays beating down on me, but standing on the precipice of something that is far more damning. Far more terrifying.

Far more tempting.

This time, there is no gun. No trigger.

This time, there are only his lips.

His mouth parts a hair’s breadth away from mine. So close, I can already taste him on my tongue. Feel his warm breath wetting my lips, and his thudding heart against my own.

Nothing.

It would literally take nothing at all for me to swoop forward and crush his mouth with mine. Claim him, the first and only boy I’ve ever kissed. The only one I ever wanted to kiss.

And that’s when I feel it.

Because caught under hooded eyes as dark and hungry as the raging sea, feeling the impending weight of his lips on mine—

A gust of air along my lips.

A feathering touch.

Heat, so much heat.

There’s no preventing the tingle spreading its spindly fingers up and around something that should not be feeling any kind of tingle.

Not now.

Not with him.

Never with him.

This isn’t me.

This isn’t me, this isn’t me, this isn’t—

There’s no excuse for what I do next.

No chance of forgiveness now.

His chest is hard and slick and so, so hot as I press my hands and push.

I hardly put any force into it, but it catches him off guard enough that he stumbles back a step. His fingers all but rip away from my arm with my sudden movement, flexing mid-air as if not immediately understanding what happened.

As if reaching for something to hold on to.

Those big, dark eyes flash up at me with visible hurt, and it’s like I’m eleven years old again. Staring down into the wounded face of my best friend, as he laid sprawled out on the ground, telling him to go away. Leave me alone. I don’t wanna to be friends with a—

It’s for the best.

Memories assault me as I’m thrust back to that horrible summer. When I would chant those four simple words like the only prayer I believed in over and over again as I held my knees to my chest and sobbed into my pillow night after night. As days gave into weeks and weeks gave into months until I finally accepted Will was gone and never ever coming back, and my anger was nothing but a wick curling smoke into the night.