It took a long time in the making, and hopefully I haven't lost most of you, but here it is: the last chapter of Cookies, Cakes and Cigarettes. No redoes. No takebacks. I hope that when I do the sequel next year, you'll all continue to support me, even if I get writer's block from time-to-time. And since this is the last chapter for this story, I'd like to thank all of you for sticking with me all these years, and through this little hiatus. Thank you, all of you, for reading my fanfic. :3

Originally when I had broken into Misako's apartment, my intention had been to grab a couple sets of clothes and my violin case, stuff them all into my backpack, and get back to Shizuo's. Now ordinarily—or rather, in the case of a normal, boring person—one might have continued a heavy make-out session and borrowed their boyfriend's clothes. While Shizuo had offered the same—ignoring the pure and simple fact that any shirt he borrowed me would be worn as a dress with his belt cinching the extra fabric—I couldn't bear to leave my violin all by its lonesome.

Added to that, Kichiro had been threatening to sell it on online if I crashed at their (Misako's) place any longer.

When I say originally, it is because I had stumbled into—and knocked over—a lamp, waking a very confused and very angry Misako who had come out of her bedroom brandishing a bat. Lucky me the lamp had flickered on when it'd fallen down, or I'd have another sizable concussion to add to my list of "injuries I've sustained throughout my jackass life".

"What are you doing here?! It's midnight!" Misako yell-whispered, lowering her bat but leveling a mean glare on me while I went to stand up the lamp.

"Don't exaggerate; it's barely eleven-thirty," I replied instead of answering, just barely glancing at her as I walked over to the living room closet where I'd been stashing my stuff.

"Answer the question or get out," she said in a normal tone of voice, looking over my shoulder while I grabbed a couple shirts and pants and stuffed them into my old high school backpack. "What are you doing? Where are you going?" she asked as I rooted around spare bedding and storage stuff, looking for the familiar cherry wood stain case amid all the crap stuffed inside.

I tossed a stupid smile up at her, saying over my shoulder, "I'm going home." It slipped into an annoyed frown when she muttered—half to herself, but kind enough to let me hear the other half—"What home? You're here because you got kicked out twice over." I let the remark slide as I went back to digging around the bottom shelf. It wasn't like I could refute something she knew was true anyway.

She went silent for a little while, long enough for me to find my violin—half-crammed under a box Kichiro had lovingly labeled "Amai's shit"—before the meaning of my words finally dawned on her. "No way. He actually believed you?!" Misako asked incredulously.

I glared up at her. "You make it sound like I was lying!"

Misako scoffed, leaning against the bat and putting her hand on her hip as she said, "'Your enemy blackmailed me into acting like my slut-brother so my delinquent-brother doesn't end up in jail?'" She barked once in mock laughter, before annoyance took over her expression. "No person alive would ever believe something so insane," she said, continuing to watch me with tired disdain as I stuffed the violin case into my backpack and zipped it up.

"If you met the rest of my family, you'd know insane shit happens to us all the time!" I replied, slipping the bag over my good shoulder and standing up from my crouch, glaring up at her as she snidely replied,

"As far as I've seen it only happens to you."

I bit back a retort. To her point, the weirdest things to happen to my family had all happened to me—especially in the last year alone. Not including the catalyst thirty-sum years ago with Daideo, Grandad, I was the only one in my family to meet a Dullahan. A freaking headless fairy of death who had incidentally turned into one of my friends.

Not to mention the black market doctor in love with said headless fairy, the psychopath internet troll intent on ruining my and everyone else's lives, and the psycho-bitch sword "in love" with my boyfriend. And of course my boyfriend: the man who could rip steel out of concrete and bench-press cars.

I've never been sure when exactly my life turned into a madhouse given the stupid things I had done before I moved to Ikebukuro, but I think it sort of started escalating the day Shizuo threw a deadbeat through the bakery window. Or maybe it was just leading up to it from the day "Nakura-san" had "persuaded" me into moving.

"Yeah, well…anyway he believed me," I told her, "So if you'll excuse me, I have a long walk ahead of me."

I took a step towards the door, moving around her as I went before she said something that stopped me in my tracks. "You got off pretty easily, didn't you?" The comment took me off guard. Easy? I didn't know the meaning of the word.

"'Easy?'" I repeated, turning back to face her, "Nothing about this night has been "easy"." She narrowed her eyes at me but said nothing. I continued anyway, getting more frustrated by the second. "Trying to convince him of the truth after all of this time hadn't been "easy". It was extremely difficult to even get him to listen to me seriously. How is any of that "easy"?!" I nearly shouted at her, a small part of my brain keeping in mind the baby sleeping on the other side of the wall.

Misako stared at me for a cool minute before she spoke, low and simple like she were speaking to a child. "I put a shock collar on Kichiro and gave the remote to his twin for sleeping with me and leaving before I woke up," she explained carefully, "You do the same to Shizuo, and…what? Nothing? Not even a flick to the forehead? Does that sound right to you?"

For a second I thought about showing her the small bruise on my forehead just to prove her wrong, but thought better of it. "He—he gave me a few stipulations," I replied instead.

"Let me guess: they all revolve around not lying to him."

"I tell the truth eventually, ya know!"

"Only when you get caught, Amai!" she yelled, raising her voice to me for the first time ever since I'd met her. I flinched, taken aback by the anger and ferocity both in her voice and on her face. Beside me I heard a keening whine from the other side of the wall. Gavin's cry went ignored as Misako and I continued to stare each other down. After a few deep breaths Misako calmed herself the slightest fraction. Her frustration still clear as she said, "Amai…I care about you both, but you need to understand something if you really want this to work out. You screwed yourself the minute you thought about taking that deal. You fucked yourself over the second you started leaving him out of the loop. Every word you'll ever say to him from now on will forever be tainted and distorted because of the lies you told. And there is almost nothing that will ever make him trust you again."

It felt like a blow to something I already knew, but I had let the little fact that he'd believed what I said cloud the truth: he might believe me, but that didn't mean he trusted me. It just meant that he trusted Izaya to be involved in such a messed up situation again.

Misako let it hang in the air for what felt like minutes, the only sound between us Gavin's continued wails. But it might have been only a few seconds before I said quietly back, "…Kichiro might not have lied to you, but he still used you like all his other one-night-stand's and whored around while you were pregnant and too scared to tell him the truth."

Shock. I nearly took bitter pleasure in the surprised and hurt look that crossed her face before I let anger cloud my vision and open my mouth again. "So don't talk down to me like you know so much better!"

DRRR!

In my haste and in my anger I do not recall clearly how I got to be in the middle of West Gate Park, my backpack next to me on the bench. I just remembered slamming Misako's door and running down the indoor stairwell. My heart had stopped pounding a little while ago, but my legs still burned from the run. My right shoulder continued to throb from the strain I had put my body through, but the pain meds Shinra had given me had specified once every six-to-eight hours. I glanced up at the owl clock near the fountain, reading half-past-midnight before I dropped my head back into my left hand. My next dose wasn't for another hour.

Bzzz. Bzzz.

I pulled out my phone, glancing over the newest message Shizuo had sent me. Just one of the many he had sent me when my absence had stretched past two hours.

"Where are you?" "Amai, are you coming back?" "Are you hurt?" and others of the like had been sent.

At first I'd let them go on, more than willing to wallow in self-pity and anxiety, until I'd given in and texted back, "Fought with Misako. Taking a breather in West Gate. Don't wait up." A few seconds later he'd asked if I was coming back. Almost instinctually I'd typed that I would, but before I'd hit the send button I'd deleted it. I didn't want to go back yet; my head still felt cloudy and to be honest, what Misako had said had stayed with me—no matter how much I wanted to ignore it all. Instead I'd sent, "Not tonight. Sorry. Going to Taka-chan."

"Are you okay?" was his newest response.

There were a lot of things that weren't "okay". My shoulder wasn't "okay". My relationship with my brother's girlfriend was now nonexistent. And whatever assurance I had that Shizuo and I would be "okay" had gone out the window with the realization that we were so very not. In the end I didn't answer his question; only told him that I'd see him tomorrow. He didn't answer back. I continued to brood on a bench. Alone with a busted shoulder in the middle of the night in an empty park. In the back of my mind I knew this was a sure-fire way to get mugged, but at the same time another, louder part of my brain was yelling, "You've fucked up royally! There's no fixing it!"

I didn't want to talk to anyone; I didn't want to explain anything. All I wanted was to forget what Misako had said. I wanted to forget how right she was.

DRRR!

The fight with Misako had initially put me out of my previous mood: lovesick idiot. Before—when I had stormed out of her apartment—I had been angry and spiteful. Now my stomach wouldn't stop roiling and my brain hurt. And while the cool autumn air helped soothe the burn in my shoulder, it did nothing to clear my head. But maybe that was because I couldn't stop turning what Misako had said over in my mind. Or what I said for that matter.

How could I have said something so underhanded and cruel? Even worse, how could I use what my brother had done against her? I tilted my head to rest against the back of the bench, slouching in my seat as I stared up at the cloudy night sky and one of the many blaringly orange lights of the park's lamps. Neither could I understand why I hadn't gone for my fail-safe method: triggering the pressure point on my ear.

"I need to apologize…" I muttered to myself, lifting my head enough to look at the park's clock again. Barely half an hour had gone by from the last time I'd checked; far too late to call her—and she probably wouldn't appreciate being woken up (again) for my own selfish impulses. 'But it is close enough for a pain killer,' I decided, tilting my body over to dig into my pants' pocket for the little pill bottle Shinra had given me. In the orange-ish glow of the lamp above me I checked to make sure how much the dosage was, inwardly debating if I should chock them down raw, try and find a drinking fountain, or search in vain for a corner store open past midnight. Before I could decide on an option—or even attempt to pry the lid open with my teeth—something hard and small pressed into my spine.

I froze. I hadn't heard anyone sneak up behind me, which meant one of two things: either I'd gotten rusty in the past few weeks—which would explain how I'd gotten shot by an asshole—or the person who'd gotten the drop on me was skilled at sneaking around. Either way it wasn't good.

"Oh my God," I murmured, clutching the bottle tight in my fist as I slowly raised my hands above my head, my right shoulder protesting violently. "If this is a mugging, please don't shoot me. Because seriously, Asshole? I'm already having a pretty rough night," I told them, keeping as still as possible, not wanting to make the guy jump and shoot me by accident. Though given the steadiness of the gun against my back, any sudden move I made would be taken in stride. This theory was proven a second later when the person said, in an annoyingly smooth tone of voice,

"It can't be that bad. After all, you just got back together with Shizu-chan."

"…Fuuuck," I hissed, fighting the urge to turn to glare at him, "And here I was hoping you were just a junkie looking for a fix." Despite that urge, however, I couldn't resist throwing out an insult. "Oh, wait. That's what you are, aren't you? Just another junkie looking to get high off someone else's misery?"

"Not all of us have masochistic tendencies like you, Amai-chan," Izaya replied evenly, the gun neither easing up nor digging deeper into my spinal cord. Giving no real indication of his mood.

"And not all of us are sociopathic bastards leading people to their demise," I shot back, recalling vividly every tiny detail I'd heard from him, about him, and experienced personally. "Is that even a real gun?" The slight click that followed my simple question was answer enough. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I hesitantly asked, "…You're really going to kill me for reneging on our deal?"

"I already knew you'd try to weasel out of our deal, Amai-chan," Izaya said, "I'm surprised you even took it in the first place." Blood filled my mouth as I bit the inside of my cheek hard. He was surprised. Which just proved to him how weak I was towards my family.

"I didn't have much of a choice now, did I?"

"Everyone has a choice, Amai-chan. You could have chosen your beloved boyfriend and let your brother face bogus charges. You could have taken the deal, told Shizu-chan, and spared him the real pain you put him through by trying to trick me." A light scuffling sounded behind me as he slid a step closer to me, his lips at my ear as he finished his preaching by saying, "You could have done a lot of things, but you took the easy way—like you always do—and lied to the poor, naïve brute. Which is just second-nature to you, isn't it?" My heart dropped into my stomach for the second time tonight. Twice I was forced to see the errors of my actions, and see clearly how I could have done so much better than what I did.

Izaya straightened back up behind me, the metal tip that had been digging into my spine dragged up along the back of neck until the muzzle tipped my hat forward, resting against the back of my head. "Killing you would get a rise out of Shizu-chan, and that's always fun," he said, his voice so easy and conversational it sounded more like he was saying it to himself. Unbidden my hands started to shake where they were held up in the air. I could have tricked myself into believing that my arms were getting tired had my heart not started taking staccato beats, and sweat start dripping down my temples despite the autumn air. I heard the hammer click again as Izaya un-cocked the gun, drawing it away. I could have taken a huge breath of relief had I not still been in this sociopath's presence. "But that's not what I want."

"Then what do you want?" I dropped my arms, a slight burn running down my biceps and screaming in my shoulder as I finally turned back to look at him. Not caring to conceal the bitter look of hatred that must have been apparent on my face. Nor the flash of confusion and amusement that had probably flicked across it when I took in the black eye marring his self-satisfied face. I could have—and would have—gone ten minutes throwing jokes at him and asking who had given him the shiner; offering to buy anyone who'd done it a drink had Izaya not come armed and had I even been in the mood.

"The same thing I want from everyone."

I glanced down at the gun at his side. "…Meaning what exactly?"

"Meaning that killing you or getting you killed is meaningless to me unless your actions exceed my expectations."

'With the exception of Shizuo since he constantly defies it,' I added in my mind, seething with impudent rage as he smirked down at me with that wolf-ish face of his. "I'm not a trained monkey you freak!" I yelled at him.

"If that were true then your nickname wouldn't have been Aka Saru (Red Monkey)." Shock stole through me at the mention of my middle school nickname—a name I felt sure I'd never told him.

"…How did you know that?" I asked, slowly getting up from the bench, "I never told Nakura-san that!"

Izaya watched me, a playful smile lighting his face as my body quaked to restrain every major impulse I had to give him a matching set of eyes. "No…but your younger brother did." Ice ran through my veins, freezing my body at the mention of one of my younger brothers. "Your brother is pretty worried, you know. About your father."

'Which one? Which one is it?' I bared my teeth at him, hands curled at my side as I snarled, "Stop. Talking. Or I'll break your teeth before you have the chance to shoot me."

He leveled a cool, amused sneer on me, his expression somehow more menacing in the orange lighting. "If I were you I'd call home," he said, turning half-way away from me. My brows drew together in confusion. Why would he care if I called home? "From the sound of it, old McDonald might be losing the farm." With that he turned his back on me and walked away before I could get another word in.

I watched him as he disappeared into the park, stock-still as I murmured under my breath—much too late—"It's Macneil, Bastard." Only when a few minutes had gone by, and I had not seen or heard anything else, did I sit back down on the bench, biting open the medication and choking the little pill down dry. 'Where did that asshole get a gun?' I asked myself, trading out from my pocket my cell phone for the pill bottle. '...Why was he in the park?' For a second I mulled over what he'd said. Worry clouding my anger before it was replaced with doubt. Lose the farm? My brother? An hour ago I'd acknowledged that the one thing you could trust about Izaya was that he'd find a way to screw with you, and orchestrate these messed up situations. And now he was telling me things that had had me worried for months. And yet despite that I was more worried about which brother of mine had gotten into contact with him.

I glanced back up at the owl clock; much too late to call home and check. But besides that…'I need to apologize now—before that sociopath comes back and kills me,' I told myself, flipping open the cell and scrolling down my contacts list until I got to Misako's name. Even as I thought this I knew it was selfish, yet despite this I called her anyway. "Please pick up. Please pick up. Please pick up," I chanted over and over as the dial tone went on and on. Reaching a hand up to toy with the weathered brim of my fedora until the dial-tone clicked and Misako's rough, annoyed voice spoke in my ear.

"Something else to say, Amai?"

"Don't hang up!" I pleaded with her.

"You have five seconds before I do."

"I'm sorry, Misako…I'm so sorry. You don't deserve that," I started, curling my legs up onto the bench.

"Deserve what?" she asked, her annoyance dropping for a moment to make way for the hurt I'd seen earlier, "You were just saying what happene—"

"No I wasn't!" I shouted, cutting her off as my voice went soft. "I just wanted to hurt you…because what you said is right." I let that hang in the air for a second, neither of us saying anything until my hot blood got the better of me. "I suck. I supremely SUCK! And you were just trying to help me see that…You were just trying to help me see how hard the road ahead is going to be. I should never have used what Kichiro did against you." I paused again to catch my breath. "It's not your fault that I'm a bitch and that my brother's a horny idiot."

There was silence after I'd said my piece, nerves wracking me as I waited for Misako to say something. After some time I heard the thinnest wisp of a sigh—for all I knew it could have been the wind—before she said, an a somewhat exasperated tone, "…It's sorta my own fault for falling for a man-whore. I swear I'm getting more like my mother every day."

"Don't make it sound too bad," I softly murmured, drawing my knees closer to rest my chin on them. "If I were like my mother, I wouldn't be having all these problems." Silence again. And then,

"Just be honest with him, Amai. That's all you need to do from now on. The trust will come eventually if you put the effort into your relationship."

"…Thank you," I replied quietly.

"…You know, you could have just called in the morning," Misako said, barely stifling a yawn as she did.

A corner of my lips twitched up at this; smothering a yawn of my own before I said, "I could have, but…this was the right decision."

DRRR!

I'm not entirely sure when it happened, but between ending the conversation with Misako and waking up to the park's muted orange-ness, I had passed out on the bench. Which just spoke to fact that I had forgotten how strong those shitty painkillers were—evidenced further by the fact that I'd fallen asleep in the middle of the park with a sociopath somewhere nearby.

"—mai."

I blinked up at the lamp above me, wincing at the crick in my neck. 'Last time I sleep upright—'

"AMAI!" Someone shouted close to my ear, a rough shake on my left shoulder jarring me out of my thoughts.

"Wuh—huh?" I sat up, wincing again at the twinge as I tried to focus on the person still touching me. The alarm that had flooded my body waned at the sight of a familiar person, softening until there was nothing but confusion and fuzziness—the latter of which I blamed on the painkillers. "Shizuo?"

He sat on his heels, crouched before me with his hand still heavy on my un-injured shoulder. His mouth was set in that grouch way of his, and his thin brows twitched with the irritation evident in his brown eyes. "What are you doing sleeping here?!" he asked, his voice rough with concern as his eyes darted over me; resting once or twice on the sling.

"I um…I took a pain killer," I replied (slurred), shaking my head to get rid of the fog still clouding me, squeezing my eyes shut in an effort to keep them open. I reached a hand up to run through my hair, knocking my hat askew. "I forgot it makes me sleepy."

The prior concern Shizuo had dripped away until his face was void of the emotion he usually—always—showed: obscene anger. I looked away from him, down to the partially buttoned shirt and the absence of his bowtie and vest. Either he hadn't changed in the few hours since I'd last seen him, or he'd redressed. The latter seemed more likely given the time. What was the time? "How long…have I been here?" I muttered, glancing around for the owl clock until something clicked in my mind. I turned back to look at him. "Why are you here, Shizuo?" I asked him, a mixture of suspicion and dread coiling around my belly.

"'Cause you said you were," he grumbled, "And you're still hurt."

"I also said I was going to Taka-chan's," I said back, my dread easily blossoming into a sad realization that Shizuo was checking to see if I was where I said I was. For a second I wondered if he was going to go to Taka's place too if I wasn't here, before the thought slipped to the back of my mind with a wide yawn. Damn painkillers.

In front of me Shizuo sighed, letting go of my shoulder to reach over and grab my backpack. "C'mon," he said, slipping his other arm around my waist and pulling me closer to him. I slid off the bench onto his lap, propping my chin on his shoulder and wrapping my legs around his body. For a second I felt like I was five again, and my Dad was picking me up to put me to bed. My eyes dropped in accordance as Shizuo stood up in one fluid motion—as if he were carrying nothing at all. My legs tightened around his narrow waist, my left arm coming up to wrap around his neck as he started walking. My right arm tucked tight between our bodies.

The bench grew smaller and smaller until he turned a corner and the park disappeared altogether. I burrowed my face into his neck, my eyes drooping. "You fought with Misako?" I heard him murmur. I nodded my head against him with a muffled "yeah". "What about?"

I stayed quiet for a bit before I said, "…She thinks I'm a pathological liar with a backpedal. And…I said something I shouldn't have." He didn't say anything else. I in turn thought about what Misako had told me however long ago my apology had been. "Be honest," she'd said. So telling him the stuff that'll make him mad, too?

I tried it, the words bubbling up my throat until they came out in a whispered hush. "…I…Orihara-san was in the park." Shizuo's arm immediately tightened around me; a steel bar wrapped around my waist.

"…What?" he growled, so low in my ear I could practically feel the vibration of his timbre. For a nanosecond I debated telling him Izaya had a gun, but…some things are just better left unsaid. It was bad enough that I ran into him at all. I gripped the back of his shirt tight in my hand, drawing my head back a little from his neck—not enough to see his face, but not close enough so my words came out garbled.

"He um…I think he was trying to make a point about my going back on our deal," I continued, the words flowing with some difficulty as I worked to clue him in on what happened. Worked to think of the words through the fogginess of my drug-addled brain. "He was being an asshole. And then he…he said stuff about my Dad…about one of my brothers…" I trailed off, still uncertain of the validity of Izaya's words.

"He's lying," Shizuo said pointblank, his voice a mere octave quieter though his teeth were still gritted and his body tense beneath mine.

"Not about this," I replied back softly, pressing my mouth against his shoulder to smother a yawn. He didn't say anything though I knew he was more than willing to trust that Izaya was bullshitting me, but at the same time taking what I knew about my family into mild consideration. He ended up asking anyway,

"Have you talked to him lately? Your dad I mean." He'd lost some of the forcefulness in his tone; back to his usual gruffness. The smell of nicotine tickled my nose as I burrowed into his neck again.

"No…he doesn't pick up," I said quietly back. The conversation dropped then, with neither of us saying anything else on the topic of "he-who-shall-forever-be-a-troll". Despite the lateness of whatever hour it was, I heard a few cars go by. Shizuo stopped every once in a while for a red streetlight. During those few, brief moments I nodded off, blissful nothingness greeting me for a minute before I was jerked awake when he started moving again. Eventually my clinging limbs turned lax, my legs falling away completely until Shizuo slid his hand under my butt, hoisting me up higher on his body until it felt like I was a sack of flour on his shoulder.

The contact made me jolt, his warm hand still on my thigh as I remembered that cold feeling from earlier. The one that said—in a voice alarmingly like Misako's (though this could have been a hallucination from the painkillers)—that Shizuo didn't trust me about this one small thing.

"…Tá mé i ngrá leat, Shizuo. I told you this. Twice," I mumbled close to his ear. His blond hair smelled vaguely chemical-ly; I wondered if he'd dyed it recently.

He was quiet for a while, and then he said, "What does that mean?"

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I said the words I'd only ever said in my mind and to a—hopefully—empty living room. "It means "I'm in love with you, Shizuo.""

I could have sworn up and down that the night went dead-silent there, where not even the sound of a passing car or skittering rats could be heard. What made it even more nauseating and horrific was that Shizuo hadn't even broken his stride the slightest bit. Which meant that he'd either had an inkling from the other time I'd said it to him—in a language he didn't understand—or he didn't believe me. Panicking like the coward I am I scrambled back from his body, my legs hooking back around his waist as a burst of adrenaline filled me. "Here," I said, tottering a bit as he readjusted his hold on me to dig into my pants' pocket for my phone, "I've got a translation app on my phone; I can prove it."

Before I could look for the app—before I even flipped the thing open—Shizuo's other hand closed around mine, squeezing as gently as he could so as not to hurt the bones in my hand. From his elbow my bag dangled, totally forgotten in the time we'd walked. "Don't," he said, "I believe you, Amai."

For a brief moment elation filled me, before that cold feeling came back and washed it away. My smile disappearing before it even sprang to my face. "…Believe me as in…you know it means what I said it means?" He didn't reply, and it was then I truly saw how far the road ahead was. I squirmed against him, silently pleading to be put on the ground, and stumbling a bit against him when I was. I gripped my shirt to steady myself, not letting go of the slightly stiff fabric—not even looking away from the middle button—as I said, as clear and concise as I could manage, "I wish we could go back to how we were before…but we can't. I really fucked this up."

I looked up at him. "I know I said this before—or at least touched on it—but I was a really lousy girlfriend. And even though I don't deserve it, you gave me a second chance anyway."

"…We can't just start over, Amai," Shizuo said, digging in his pocket and extracting a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Curbing my annoyance for the moment that he was lighting up here, now of all times, and remembering that a nicotine addict was an addict, I dropped my hands and took a step back. He paused for a second, eyeing me wearily through the tiny flame of his lighter before he touched it to the tip of the little white stick.

I smiled up at him, taking another half-step back as he blew a thin line of smoke towards the sky. I let my heart swell the smallest amount that he'd taken care to blow it nowhere near me. "We're not starting over," I began, "we're just…starting up from the middle." He looked at me curiously, the way a cat might eye a toddler that was getting too close. "The first half was great and a little nuts and all around full of horrible, horrible experiences. But the second half?" I said, my stupid smile growing a little more serious, "In the second half I'm going to earn your trust back. In the second half we'll be as normal and boring as the life you wanted. I'm going to pull out all the stops to never lie to you—or at the very least just tell little white lies that don't matter anyway." I stepped closer to him and reached my hands up to cup the sides of his face, ignoring the flare in my shoulder and the tiny wisps of smoke coming off the end of his cigarette.

"I'll share the important stuff. I'll tell you when I'm about to do something stupid—and ignore you if you tell me not to do it. And maybe listen to you when you do." I plucked the cigarette from his lips, dropping it between us and grinding the glowing red tip beneath my heel. "I'm going to keep stealing your cigarettes, and try to get you to quit," I told him, "And I'm going to give you a real first-time to remember; one that won't make you trash your place out of anger. I love you, Shizuo. That will never change."

I could feel my heart beating in my chest, each thud loud in my ears as I waited for Shizuo to say something; to do anything. A slight twitch of his lips into the smallest form of a smile had me grinning ear to ear. And when he ducked down closer to kiss me, I couldn't wrap my arms around his neck fast enough—though the twanging in my shoulder reminded me of why I shouldn't. I ignored it.

'And besides,' I thought as he hooked his hands behind my knees and brought me back into the cradle of his arms, 'it's not like next year's going to get any worse.'

Sometimes I forgot that life liked to throw curveballs.