“’But soon,’ he cried, with sad and solemn enthusiasm, ‘I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.’

“He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.”

I closed the book, running my hand almost lovingly along the spine. It felt rough and worn under my fingers: a well-loved and well-read story.

Cerulean was lying with his head thrown back across the top of his navy bean bag chair. His dark curls spilled over the chair, framing his beautiful face. He looked asleep, but I knew better: he was listening very intently to the sound of my voice, savoring the words he himself had read over and over again.

I studied the worn leather cover of the book and could barely make out the gold leaf letters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The rest of the cover was rough and brown, full of ruts and dirt from use. The book had its own personality, its own history. It was something loved.

I glanced over at Cerulean, watching as his startling blue eyes stared, unfocused, at the ceiling. He’d always loved his books. Loved Mary Shelley, loved Poe and Homer, Shakespeare and Steinbeck. Cerulean had a tremendous love for art, especially the maddening art of Escher and realism of Artemisia Gentileschi. I could name any number of things he felt a fantastic passion for.

And I wondered, not for the first time, just what he felt about me.

“Something wrong?” His voice purred, pulling my attention back to him. He looked like a cat, curled up on the chair, his chin resting on his crossed arms. Those royal eyes blinked silently at me, no emotion that I could understand in them.

I wanted to tell him everything, beg him to tell me how he felt. A sudden urge to leave him rushed over my body, even as the sight of his half-naked skin shinning in the low light awoke some dark desire to be closer to him.

My indecision froze me in place in his high-backed desk chair. The air conditioner whirred to life, humming and tired. A bird chirped outside of the window, a mere shadow passing across the sunlight from the window. In this surreal moment, I watched as he pulled himself off of the floor, muscles working under the glow of his skin. That long tumble of black curls fell forward, dancing over his shoulders; how did he ever get to be so damned beautiful?

He pressed his fingers under my chin before I could find an answer to my irresolution. I sat still, losing myself in the depths of his eyes as he stood over me. “Hello? You still in there?” There was a tiny smile on his lips, as if he was daring me to say…

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

A warm hand slid under the thin material of my t-shirt, spilling over the skin of my stomach. My breath came out in short gasps as Cerulean lowered his lips to my neck, breathing in hot, shivering lines across my throat. I trembled as he unbuttoned the top button on my jeans, his fingers burrowing under the waistband. “God...” The word spilled from my lips, rough with something raw and powerful. He was pushing this further then we’d ever gone…

Cerulean pulled away from me with obvious reluctance, leaving the taste of tobacco and sugar across my lips. I licked them, nervously, staring up at him as he flexed his fingers, a sultry hunger gnawing at the back of his eyes.

“Cerulean?”

A nervous laugh trickled from his lips. His fingers brushed his hair, nails dragging across his scalp. There was a cold spot where his warm body had left mine, an emptiness where his heat had touched my skin. I missed him, and he was only two feet away.

“You hungry?” The question was so entirely unexpected, I just blinked at him blankly. “It’s about dinner time; we could go pick something up.”

I nodded. Food. It was far simpler then trying to figure out our relationship. If we even had a relationship. The trip to mall for food was made in silence, the food tasteless. The night ended rather abruptly as Cerulean dropped me off at my house. Something we’d said or done had made him uncomfortable. He stared out the window as he pulled up to the curb, threw his Saleen into neutral, and turned the rumbling engine off.

He watched the window with a tired look in his eyes; silence stretched out before us, the night heavy and hot around the car. A bug bounced off of the light of the headlights, dancing in and out of the halo of white. I watched it move, unwilling to get out of the car and leave, but uncomfortable in the stretching silence. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I hadn’t the courage.

He broke the silence first. “I won’t be able to go out with you tomorrow night.” The curl of his voice was unexpected, and I jumped. Cerulean didn’t notice.

“Why?”

“I promised to take a family friend to prom, which is Saturday night; we can still go somewhere during the day though, if you want.”

I studied Cerulean’s perfect profile in the enveloping darkness, my eyes running over the sensual curves of his lips, the way he pressed his fingers against the smooth skin of his upper lip. I was entranced but his beauty, disheartened by his words. My heart crumpled in my chest.

He was taking someone to prom. Someone else to prom. We were too young to go without an invite from one of our elders. I hadn’t even known prom week was so close.

My blood flowed cold in my veins, the chill draining the color from my skin.

“Oh? Have fun, Cerulean.” I dragged myself from the hot leather of the seat, not really feeling much of anything but numb. I heard the velvet of his voice calling from the car. He could have been calling me back to him, or simply saying good night, and I never would have known the difference. I couldn’t hear a thing.

The pain in my chest lessened over the next few days as prom night came and went. Jealousy had overridden everything else, shaking the normally beautiful weekends into something dark and brooding. Just what the hell was wrong with me anyway?

Cerulean was irresistible, beautiful. He spent more time with me then he did anyone else, but I had no hold on him. What if this girl turned out to be more than a family friend? Yet, I couldn’t be angry with him; technically he wasn’t mine.

That made me angrier, somehow.

Monday morning rolled around, and I stared at the ceiling, just as I had for most of the night. The alarm blared, and I ignored it, letting the jarring sound reverberate through my skull. I had no urge to get up. No urge to go to school. No urge to see Cerulean’s face, to hear about his prom night.

The thought thundered through my skull, worse than even the throbbing noise of the alarm. His prom night. Knowing very intimately how unconsciously sexual Cerulean was, how unbelievably beautiful, how could anyone have resisted him? Even I had a hard time, I who had always been inherently unsexual. My skull throbbed with the knowledge, and I tossed and turned fitfully for the rest of the morning.

My mother assumed I was sick and left me alone. She knocked on the door softly around noon, begging me to eat something before disappearing again. I almost called her back. Almost.

I fell in and out of a fitful sleep, waking and dreaming in short intervals. My world of sleep began to blur with my reality and I was having a hard time telling the difference…

He brushed his long fingers through his hair, turning his beautiful head to one side. “Have you slept like this all day?” His voice was soft as velvet, caressing my ears like a hand. Cerulean had drifted in and out of my dreams all day, so I turned over to ignore him, praying my delusions would leave me in peace. A hand brushed my shoulder, his voice called my name. I turned over and stared at him in surprise.

“Cerulean?”

“Who did you think it was?”

This was either the best hallucination I’d had yet, or Cerulean was truly in my room, blinking at me with his unearthly royal blue eyes. He sat a fair distance from me, giving me room to breath, room to wake. I blinked, blinked again.

He was still there, a soft smile painting his lips. “Why are you here?” I rubbed my forehead, trying to wake my lethargic mind, to piece together the mystery seated comfortable and Indian-style across the honey hardwood of my floors.

“I came to check on you. You missed school.” He spoke slowly, his voice rolling and lovely. It was strange, and it took me long moments of pondering to realize why: Cerulean had never been in my room before. We’d been friends for more than a year, and we’d never been here. He’d never been to my house. Now I was hyper-aware of my state of undress, and how wonderful he looked against the dark, dark wine color of my walls. Strange how Cerulean could look at home, no matter where he was.

I blushed, embarrassed. Our house was small, quaint, much smaller, and much less expensive than Cerulean’s. It was like a whole different world here; I was suddenly discomfited by my family’s humble home.

It was stupid, but true. “Thanks for coming by; I just wasn’t feeling really well, so I stayed home.”

“Are you feeling better?” There was a sparkle of something hopeful in his eyes, a glimmer as he crawled forward, his eyes on my lips.

I had the sudden urge to yell at him, to smack that soft smile from his mouth. I wondered how much fun he’d had without me this weekend. Jealousy rose to crowd my throat, making it hard to breath.

Some of my anger must have flashed across my face; Cerulean backed off, pressing his hands to the floor behind him. “I suppose not. Well, if you’re feeling better tomorrow, I’d like you to come with me. Mom’s taking me out to get my birthday present and dinner, and I’d like you to join us.” The sapphire of his eyes was doused with hope and something akin to desperation. “Please.”

It was the please and the look in his eyes that tore at my heart, tore the “yes” from my lips. I couldn’t turn him down, not when he was looking at me like that. That smile returned, shimmering like something alive in his beautiful eyes.

We sat in silence for a moment, Cerulean running his eyes over every inch of every surface of my room, taking in every detail, as though he thought he’d be quizzed on it later. I stared at him, ruffled and uncertain, the quilt on my bed wrapped carefully to cover the most skin possible. I was very aware of how thread bare my white undershirt was, and how horribly short my middle school gym shorts were on my legs. So I huddled under my covers, letting Cerulean study my room like it was truly something interesting. It was a long time he sat in silence.

“Well, what do you think?”

Cerulean blinked at me, as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Of your room?”

“Sure.”

“It’s…” he hesitated, studying my face as he’d studied my room, “very you.”

That told me nothing and the ambiguity of his answer angered me. I forced the anger down, tried not to let it show in my face. “Thank you, for coming to see me, Cerulean.”

“Your mother looked at me very strangely.”

I looked at him. His curls fell in ebony waves over his eyes. Cerulean’s skin was pale, perfect, dabbled with pale fuzz across his upper lip. The half-moons at the back of his nails were colored with black. There were three, no four piercings in each ear, little silver balls lining the cartilage. There was something so amazingly comfortable with the way Cerulean carried himself that sometimes I forgot how strangely he dressed, how strangely he looked to others.

My mother probably saw him as a freak.

“She’s very… conservative.”

“Like you.”

“I suppose.”

“She looks like you.”

“I look like her, not the other way around.”

He merely nodded in response. My hold loosened on the blankets; I felt relaxed with Cerulean sitting on my floor, safe even. This day was getting stranger.

“What happened in class?”

Suddenly a grin painted his features. “Oh what a day you missed in third period. Ms. Graydon was covering the 1960’s again today, about Martin Luther and the Civil Rights movement.” Cerulean began to move his arms, his passion for history in every motion. “You wouldn’t believe how many times I had to correct that woman.” His tirade tore up our teacher’s lessons, finding faults in what seemed like every statement, every fact. It was soothing, watching him smile. I may have been angry, but I was still in love with Cerulean. No matter what he did or what he said, I’d feel the same way.

He spoke for a long time, moving subjects from class onto history in general, then to organized religion, a topic he was quite adamant about. My mother would peak her head in occasionally. Cerulean never noticed. I would look up at her and smile, and she would smile back and disappear behind the door into the hallway.

Cerulean stood to leave after a quick kiss, ordering me to get some sleep. I lay back down on the bed, my head swimming and content. I fell into a deep sleep, the world turned dark and wonderful, with soft dreams of pale skin and shockingly blue eyes.

School the following day was uneventful. I had almost gotten over my anger with Cerulean. It passed quickly, filled with quizzes, notes, and my continued fight to stay above the tough world of high school politics. It was easier with Cerulean, who was like me in that regard. It no longer felt like I was doing a perpetual balancing act, because Cerulean was a foothold, a ledge over the abyss. Cerulean was fast becoming my world.

I settled into the familiar front seat of his Saleen, my thoughts enraptured in him. Had he truly become so important? The thought was frightening; how had I become so utterly dependant on him so quickly? And how could he be so completely unaware.

His perfect profile was smiling, watching the road with a kind of dangerous disinterest. I was brooding, my thoughts wondering just what had happened this weekend between him and that girl. I had to look away, so I studied the blur of trees as they tore by my window.

Just as he had said, his mother was waiting for us when we arrived at his house. She was sitting on the swing on the long porch, a tiny cell phone pressed to her ear. Her hair was permed and styled, tumbling down to her shoulders in perfect ringlets. Mrs. Jane Bryner looked every bit the part a rich businesswoman, from her stylish skirt suit in a faded blue down to the brand name heels. She’d told me more than once no shoes but Christian Dior’s were good enough for her. The purpose of expensive brand names eluded me, so I just smiled and humored her strange tastes.

“Where do you want to go to dinner, Cerulean?” Jane’s voice was blurred with a slight southern accent, as if she’d picked it up somewhere along the way. That was entirely possible; Jane was the sort of person to change her language, her mannerisms, and her style on a whim. There was something strange and wild about her, something I’d only ever encountered in one other person, and he was seated next to me on the expensive leather seats of the Bryner’s SUV.

He looked at me with the same unreal cerulean eyes that his mother watched me with. It was unnerving, being the center of attention of both of them. “Where do you want to go?” Cerulean asked casually, brushing his fingertips over my thigh.

I mumbled something, turning my attention to studying the window. Jane and Cerulean held the conversation all the way through dinner, and I listened, nodding when appropriate and picking at the tasteless food. My thoughts dug deeper, darker, as Cerulean seemed to forget I was there, laughing with his mother about a story of his Uncle Camon as a child.

It was strange, sitting so close to them, and still feeling so horribly far away…

I asked for a doggie bag for my dinner, earning a glare from the tailored waiter. Apparently, he thought “doggie bag” was too déclassé for his restaurant. Perhaps I’d missed something.

“So where are we going next?”

Jane blinked at me, pulling her purse more securely over her shoulder. “He didn’t tell you?”

Cerulean looked equally confused. “I suppose I forgot… Remember that picture you drew for me?”

It had been the only piece of artwork worth seeing. Cerulean had liked it, said it looked wild and tribal somehow, with its dark lines and swirling shapes. The tiny curls and symbols twisted together to form two massive wings, spanning a table-sized piece of paper. It had taken me a whole summer to finish that. It was currently framed and hanging in the game room at Cerulean’s house. “Yeah, why?”

“We’re going to get it tattooed, here.” He pointed to his back.

I remembered, vaguely, Cerulean mentioning it would make a great tattoo, but I never thought… “Are you serious?”

They were serious. The two watched me with twin expressions, twin eyes.

“You want to put my drawing on your back. For God’s sake, why?” That earned a laugh from them both, a rich sound that shivered down my spine like fingers.

“Do you not want me to?”

“That’s not what I meant, Cerulean.”

“Then what did you mean?”

I stared at him, a soft frown on my lips. “You are impossible.”

“You are angry with me.” He made it statement.

Jane was a smart woman, and she ran forward, calling that she’d bring the car to us over her shoulder.

“Why?”

I turned away, unable to meet his eyes. “I’m not angry.”

“Is it about this weekend?”

I winced. He’d hit home.

“You’re upset about this weekend. Why?”

The coming night radiated from the sky, the sun sending its dying lights pulsing across the coming dark. There was a small wind, a coolness that ranged over the parking lot, cutting into the heat. There was no one around, lending to this strange sense of privacy. Cerulean’s dark curls spilled over his shoulders, tumbling in front of his eyes. The look in his eyes was open and impossible; I had to look away. “I’m not upset.”

“Now you’re lying. What are you, jealous?”

He was good. “I said I’m not angry, Cerulean; leave it alone.”

“Good God, of all people, don’t be jealous of Nan. She’s harmless, and totally not my type.” Cerulean turned away from me, his fingers digging into his curls. “She’s a family friend, that’s all. We danced, we hung out, I met her friends. That was it.”

“It’s none of my business, Cerulean. You are not my boyfriend.” The comment was a little more biting then I meant it to be. There was a touch of surprise in those royal blue eyes; perhaps my voice was a little more angry than I had meant it to sound.

“Is that what this is about?” And suddenly he was angry too. His raged seethed off of his skin, his fingers curled into tight fists. “Just because I haven’t given you my class ring or professed undying love to you, you think you mean nothing to me?”

Cerulean’s fury was so startling, my own anger died with a strangled squeak of protest. “Cerulean…”

“Don’t.” He held out a hand, silencing me before I could begin. “I can’t believe you think so little of me.”

“Not of you, Cerulean. Never of you.”

There was a fire in his eyes as he stood there, staring at me. A couple walked by, giving us a wide berth, as if sensing the tension between us. I couldn’t keep eye contact; Cerulean’s eyes were burning, and wide with something indescribable.

I was suddenly caught up in the rush of his arms. There was a moment where I was lifted off of my feet, and my breath caught in my throat. I could smell him, the scent of tobacco and soap clinging to his skin. He covered my mouth with his, and I was drowning in the feel of his body pressed against mine…

“So,” he breathed across my mouth, sending shivers down to the tips of my toes, “you are mine now?” He formed it as a question, confusing me in the circle of his arms. “You’re mine, and I’ll be your boyfriend, officially, just like you wanted?”

The world was spinning, shivering, too hot, too cold. I clung to Cerulean, the only solid thing in the world he’d sent reeling. “Cerulean…”

And suddenly he was kissing me again, his lips demanding. He teased, running his fingertips down the length of my spine, forcing my agreement. I couldn’t say no under the spell of his hands…

We drove away in silence, Cerulean and I curled around each other in the backseat. I think Jane was happy to see we were no longer fighting; she turned the radio up and sang off tune, her voice boisterous and happy. It was strange, in the dark privacy of the SUV, glass shielding us from the world. It felt contained, a microcosm of hope and love, almost as though we were a family.

Family? No, I couldn’t hope for that much yet.

The tattooing process took longer than I’d expected. His ink was only half finished when the artist called it a night, telling Cerulean his skin had to heal before they finished.

He was laying on his stomach, shirtless, smiling in pained triumph; this was something he’d always wanted. I settled into his desk chair across from him, Homer’s Iliad pressed between my hands. He looked like a contented cat, purring on the bed as I read to him.

I closed the book after only a few pages. “You meant it?”

“What?” His eyes were closed, seemingly oblivious.

I stood and walked over to the bed, settling down on the corner. “What you said, earlier.”

“About us dating officially? Yeah.” He opened one, amazing cerulean eye, watching me carefully at a painful angle. “You know what that means, don’t you?” There was any number of things I could have said to that, so I stayed silent, wondering just what he wanted me to say. “It means you’re mine.” There was something dark and feral in his eyes; it was so direct and so open, I had to look away from him.

“Yes…” It was almost a whisper. I liked the sound of that. I was Cerulean’s, completely and happily. Didn’t that also mean that he was mine? I glanced back up at him, and smile. Cerulean belonged to no one.

Cerulean took a firm hold of my arm, dragging me down onto the bed and rolling on top of me. “Cerulean! Your back…” He covered my mouth with his, stealing my words as he pressed our bodies together. Fire seethed along my veins, a blush creeping across my cheeks. Lying in bed with Cerulean made me nervous, excited; it felt dangerous, true, and wonderfully tempting. We’d never gone past kissing, touching. But lying there, with his lips against mine, there was always the possibility, a thought that made my blush deepen, spread across my features like wildfire.

A hand slid under the waistband of my pants, teasing, and finally unbuttoning the top button on my jeans. I gasped against his mouth, an agonizing fight of will and desire crashing over my body. But I knew, even as I moved to stop him, that I couldn’t say no to him.

Cerulean would have his way, because I was his.

He pulled me out of my clothes, my feeble protests dying as his teased his way along the length of my body with his lips and the tips of his fingers. I felt like I was dying, burning from the inside out.

Cerulean kissed a scorching line down my throat, his breath ragged and hot against my skin. “Do you want this?” he whispered, an errant hand slipping down my stomach. Cerulean’s fingers trickled down my skin, compelling soft moans from my lips. He repeated his question, the words tickling my shoulder, shivering down the length of my body.

And I couldn’t say no to him.

Mina.