I'd give it up for lust, but not for love by Amber Marshall-Nichols (open ebook txt) 📕

I remember, looking out the window of our old farmhouse at her. It was raining, she was sitting inside a tire swing in the backyard, her arms wound around the strings holding the tire to the tree and the heels of her welling tons scraping the gooey mud as she swung slowly back and forth. Other than her welling tons she only wore a dress. It was yellow and splashed with white polka dots. Both he, and she despised the dress, but, her mother- his aunt; loved it.Dirt flecked her bare arms, and some of it created a slimy streak down her skin as droplets of rain swam down her arm. She must of been cold. That's what I remember thinking. I thought 'My god Cleo, why don't you just come inside!' I worried about her. Didn't want her to catch a cold, or worse, catch a cold and pass one on to me. I didn't wonder why she sat in the buckets of rain, just swinging with a gormless expression plastered to her face, I just wished she'd come in. I wished she'd come in and put on a nice warm wooly jumper, and play with me and my train set- the one daddy had bought me for Christmas but I only really got out when she was round for Sunday lunch. On days like that day. I found out later that day that her mother and father weren't going to live together any more, they were getting a divorce. I didn't know what it meant at the time. No seven year old really does. The only part they told me, that I understood; was that Cleo was going to have to chose which of her parents she wanted to live with. That's what she was doing outside in the rain, trying to decide if it were her mother or father that she loved most.

She chose her father. That's what she told me. She wanted to live with her daddy. Things didn't work out that way though. Her father turned to alcohol when the divorce was finalised, and lost custody after a mere year. Cleo's mother, my aunt; was angry her daughter originally favoured her fauther and didn't treat her well. She stopped loving her as she had done before, and Cleo grew up an unhappy child. Nobody really knew how unhappy, no one except me, and I think it was the innocent little girl I saw in Cleo that I fell in love with- the one who cried on Several Sundays swinging on that tire swing when she came to visit; rather than the girl with her red hair dyed black, a stud in her tongue and a fag in her hand that we all saw today kicking that tire swing like it was a cash filled piñata.

Chapter One

I've always had an issue with staring. Especially at Cleo, and it never helps. I think I freak her out, I honestly do. I tend to just let myself off though. I remind myself of the logic that If you're caught staring, then the person you were staring at must of been looking at you for some reason. That's what I tell myself now when Cleo gives me a classic look of daggers after catching me pressed up against the window watching her beat the crap out of the tire swing. I figure that the 'evils' are just part of her image, and that really, she's just embarrassed.

Publication Date: 06-19-2011

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