[WARNING: PROFANE LANGUAGE INCLUDED]

Love is a devil in disguise. It lures you with the promise of forever, only to leave you stabbed in the back and bleeding to death as you realize that all it’s ever been was an ephemeral dream.

The weather was pleasant enough – neither too hot nor too cold. The clouds were smudges of white on the sky, revealing only pieces of blue and a drop of gold.

She had been a fool to predict that everything would go well based on the beauty of the weather.

With a disgusted hiss, the slender, teenaged girl continued her way, her whole system fuming as she stabbed the sidewalk with every step she took.

She would’ve been able to extinguish her flames of fury much earlier if the boy behind her had decided to leave her alone.

Alas, that boy seemed to lack the brain cells of common sense.

“Cath, wait! I can explain – ”

She whirled around, slicing through the words he always used and the words that she’d wanted to believe each and every time. “Good. All you have to do is take those explanations and the pathetic excuse of your being straight to Hell.”

The boy blanched, clearly shocked by her earnest, fervent use of profanity. He froze in his tracks, a few feet away from her, trembling ever so slightly.

Fueled by his shaken demeanor, the girl smirked triumphantly as she hurled more acid towards his detestable face. “What, you two-faced jerk? Didn’t you think about what was gonna happen to you when you decided that I was too dumb and too innocent to know what you were doing? Did you think I would always be willing to pick up the pieces of the mess you made and forgive you like stuff never happened?” A laugh – bitter and acrid – dragged itself out from her throat. “Well, here’s news flash for you, Mr. Player. I’m not wasting any more chances or tears or heartaches on someone like you. Get out of my life before I decide to make yours a living Hell.”

She didn’t know whether she was being brave or insane and decided, as of right now, that she was a mixture of both. Even though she’d promised herself to restrain her emotions – to show the douche that she didn’t care whether he decided to throw himself off a cliff or go on messing with other girls, she felt sick as she realized that the reins had been tightened a second too late. She’d thrown out everything she’d kept locked away within her heart – all the snakes and the hurt and the poison and the blood – at the face she never wanted to see again.

Now she wished she hadn’t done any of that. Now she wished that she hadn’t wasted her anger on someone like him.

Now she wished that she never cared in the first place.

“Pft,” the boy scoffed, slamming her in the face with the weapon of his own. An insidious grin played on his face, his feigned desperation and guilt that had been there seconds before gone as fast as it had appeared. “You’re wrong. You were stupid. Stupid enough to believe that I actually loved you, and stupid enough to forgive me every single time I screamed to your face that I didn’t care about you.”

His words, like blades that menacingly sparkled in the dark, laughed as they drove themselves into her heart and killed her senses of reason.

She sent her small fist flying towards his face with blind outrage egging her on. Drops of blood from the lips that had lied to her more than she could count peppered the sidewalk as her fist collided with his jaw with a sickening crack.

“You know what?” It was Cath’s turn to tremble now, with more passion than she’d ever wanted. “You’re right. I was stupid. Stupid enough to repeat to myself that you would some day fix that crooked sense of reasoning. But I suggest you shrink that ego of yours, because, eventually, there will come a time when no one will ever love you.”

Cursing fluently, the girl walked away, leaving behind the boy that watched her with an agonized smile.

In your eyes, I’m the playboy that shattered your heart. But what you see isn’t always what’s real.