Julie Johnson

Grayson Dunn is in my head. He's under my skin. He's invaded me like a deadly disease and hijacked my immune system until I don't even bother fighting it anymore. I look at him, and I'm twisted into knots. Tangled into a messy spool of desire and desperation.

I pour another drink and wash the taste of dashed dreams from the back of my tongue. I feel half-dead, but my broken heart somehow still beats. What a stubborn, senseless organ, to keep going when all hope and happiness are lost.

I am not the Juliet to his Romeo. I am not the lodestar around which he orbits. I am not the trade wind by which he sets the course of his sails. I am not essential or exceptional.I was his Monday girl. Shitty, really, since he was my whole damn week.

You think you can change a guy, that he__l be different with you, that you__l finally be the one to tame him_ and before you know it, you__e alone in your underwear at nine o__lock on a Saturday night, crying to Adele songs, eating ice cream straight from the gallon, and wondering what the hell is the matter with you that you fell for such a goddamned man-child, after he explicitly warned you not to.

To those who would love me - I offer you a warning. Do no get to close. You won't survive.

Being heartbroken doesn__ mean you stop feeling. Just the opposite _ it means you feel it all more. With your heart in fragments, every sensation is sharper, every emotion more acute. Your feelings are enhanced, like a blind man with an impeccable sense of smell, or a deaf woman whose eyes can perceive things a normal person would never recognize. The brokenhearted are the best empaths of all.

It might've started as a lie, Faith, but it sure as hell didn't end as one. I might not have been real to you, and that's fine. But you have to know... you were real to me." His voice dropped so low I could barely hear him. "It was real to me. It's still real. The realest fucking thing I've ever felt.