ONC 2024 SHORTLISTER || After two opposites find comfort in each other and have an instant connection but can't be together, they collide again months later and get a second chance at love || August Walker and Jasmine Kelly are complete opposites...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
☆.｡.:*
Every time I think of Levi, my already shattered soul just breaks. I never talk about him, and I try not to think about him. Most of the shit Josh put me through – including the knife incident the night I met August – I'm over. The one thing I will never move forward from is what he did to Levi, and how he did it in private with no evidence. Though, when I pressed charges against him six months ago, I put in evidence about Levi, so it may go to trial.
Telling August about it, though, has brought it back. Not because it was a bad thing, but because I needed to think about him again. I wanted him to have the full picture of everything that had happened.
The problem with bringing it back, though, is that it brings back the swirling guilt and blanket of blame that settles in my mind.
It's funny because playing the blame game is an everyday thing for every single human. We don't want to be the one to be at fault for something bad, but our human nature is to place blame fully at our own feet. The thing I always come back to is, would you blame Icarus for being the one to fly too close to the sun despite someone telling him not to, or do you blame fickle human nature for making him wonder what would happen if he did the forbidden? We always walk on the grasses we shouldn't, so who are we but humans if we blame our souls and not ourselves?
Who is really at fault for Josh's behaviour? It's an impossible answer because while it's totally Josh's fault for what he did to Levi, and I will always maintain that, it's also partly my fault for putting Levi in that position. If I had stayed away, he wouldn't have gone through that.
I remember Levi like it was yesterday – the way his smile lit up the moments that didn't even need lighting up. He had the most gorgeous hair that wasn't fully ginger, but not quite blonde either, with a small five o'clock shadow to go with it. He had the most gorgeous blue eyes and a completely infectious laugh that brought everyone with him. When I was seeing him, he and I were completely infatuated with each other, and I wanted to be with him so badly.
The night it happened, I'd planned to meet up with Josh to tell him we had to stop the arrangement we had. Josh and I were only casual friends with benefits, anyway, we weren't even dating. He was just a casual thing whenever we were both horny. I'd been spending the day with Levi that day, on an actual date – Levi and I were actually dating, anyway – we were down in Bournemouth spending the day at the beach. He'd bought tickets to the oceanarium so I could see the penguins and otters, and we walked across the sand hand in hand.
I'd told Josh I was out all day when he'd messaged that afternoon; he didn't reply, not even when I told him I wanted to talk to him that night without sleeping together. I didn't hear from him, so I just left it. Levi knew all about the thing with Josh; we started seeing each other a week before with no expectations and with the premise of being friends. We'd kissed and slept together a few times between when we met and that day, and that day was when we agreed to be with each other exclusively.
