Page 5

A bottle of Jack Daniels flies through the doorway, making contact with the window right next to the face of Bradley the Ex, making him sneeze. Three times in succession. Anyway, the empty white bottle then crashes and shatters into a million tiny specs of shimmering glass, just like how Lily’s mother’s heart breaks into a billion tiny bits all over again. And there goes Mother Dearest’s newest conquest.

“Fuck you, Kevin. I’ve had enough. Get the fuck out of my house,” the older woman who resembles Lily-girl except for the extra-bleached blonde hair, brow lines, and thick eyeshadow says.

Dear readers, I believe that you all have just met her mom.

Taking the breakup as a sign to go and hide up in her room like the sad, isolated island of a girl she is, Lily Lilenna Luscious slips out of the room and makes her way up the stairs. She breasts boobily, her bosom bouncing with every step she takes till she finally reaches her shabby bedroom in the chilly attic.

And this is just a typical day in the household.



The sky is pitch-black, darker than a villain’s heart. The owls outside the window are reciting their ABCs, and Lily the Dreamer is chasing white rabbits down endless tunnels. The wind howls, sounding not unlike a fart—or is that a wolf in the distance? The slumbering dreamer keeps running after the white rabbits, which at this point have morphed into a herd of hooting horses. She shifts in her sleep, flailing her arms, before falling from the creaking bed onto her ass with a loud thwack.

“Aw shit, that hurt me,” Lily the Dreamer, now no longer dreaming, mutters to no one.

“Girly, are you alright?” comes a sound from the window.

“Sure, bro,” Lily answers, not really thinking.

“I am not your bro,” comes a near-panicked reply to her. Then a crash follows, and with it come all two hundred and fifteen pounds of Every the Weird Customer, tumbling down from the opened windowsill with more violence than Humpty Dumpty. Who tumbled from a wall. The tall man, clothed wholly in black, from his suit to his loafers to his sunglasses, rolls onto the threadbare rug at Lily’s feet.

How unfashionable.

As a rule that Lily strictly follows, an outfit should have more color variation than that.

“Huh,” the half-asleep Lily mumbles, now more confused than ever, “what kind of fever dream is this? It’s even more damn worse than when I fell asleep in Chemistry class and had a lucid dream of being a fucking formula of elements. Jumping around Mendeleev. Damn.”

“But you ain’t not dreaming, babe,” Every corrects her, his voice deeper than a blue whale’s, more husky than, well, a Husky dog's.

He gazes straight into her eyes, and even though the room doesn’t have electricity, Lily still feels something electric course through her veins at the sight of the hot guy.

She still can't believe he somehow materialized here.

“Then fuck off from my rug. Wait, what are you doing here anyway, you unforgettable, annoying customer?” Lily scowls, now looking not unlike a spoiled seven-year-old. She sits down on her old, creaking wooden bed, with yellowish drool-stained pillows and no blanket, smoothing her midnight-blue nightgown on her lap.

Hello, Cinderella.

Staring up at her from the threadbare rug donated to her by Mrs. Smith from next door, Every sits cross-legged, fiddling with a wand he found in her bedside cabinet. It lights up and buzzes as he fiddles with the buttons.

Hello, fairy godmother.

He sure looks adorable sitting there, pouting and looking around himself like a curious cat. His hands are clasped in front of him, making his pecs press together tightly underneath the black tie. Washboard abs are somehow visible from beneath the dress shirt, a trait only the main love interest could have. Blue-or-sometimes-brown eyes shine brightly even in the dimly lit room, illuminated only by dying candles.

Why?

Because our Lily darling is so broke, and we would not allow the readers to forget this.

“I just came back from my double agent job, spying for my Mafia gang and wolf pack,” he speaks up, digging a stray nail that must have come from the old windowsill out of the sole of his handmade Italian loafers.

Lily crinkles her nose. What a cute character quirk. “Cool. Care to share about the assignment?”

“Sorry, sweetheart. But it is confidential.”

“And how does this have anything to do with you showing up at my window at a quarter past midnight?” Lily asks, showing the readers her common sense. But since she is the damsel in distress of this story, there isn’t that much of that, though, so don’t get too hopeful.

“Well, nothing, really,” he answers, “I just thought it’ll be cool to show up at your house and watch you sleep. Like that glittery vampire and all those masked stalker bros. So dope.”

“Actually, it’s just creepy. I ought to report you to the police, you know,” Lily deadpans, shooing him away with a waving gesture of her hand. “Before this morning, I had no knowledge of your existence. I don’t even know you, man. You are just a random nobody to me.”