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...
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4 Months Later
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Midnight is a funny time; it's the moment when today turns to yesterday, and tomorrow turns to today. It's a quiet time for most, chaotic for others. For me, it's always been a mixed bag; for a long time, I loved it, then hated it, and finally learned to love it again. Since becoming official with Jasmine, midnight has become our favourite time, but still weird. Until now; she's finally moved fully into my house and we can spend every midnight I'm not at work together instead of wishing we were together.
She flops down on the bed – our bed – and sighs before opening the box of chocolate mangoes – a hark back to the first night we met. "Finally, everything is sorted and I'm fully impeding on your home. And right on time, too. One minute to midnight."
I lie beside her on my side so I can look at her while eating my own piece of mango. The bedroom lamps might be on, but Jasmine's still the brightest thing in this room to me. With her wrist finally out of the splint and fully healed, she's been back at work for a while, and she's been putting a watch on the wrist as well.
"Oh, do shush, this is your home too. Feels less empty with someone else in it. Well, someone I love in it. You nervous about tomorrow?" I ask her.
She shuffles until we're level with each other. Her hand moves from mine so it can rest on my side. Somehow, with the contact, everything feels right and whole in this world. "No. Well, sort of. I'm all right at interviews. I just want this so badly, so it'll be my last tie to Josh severed so he can't track me. Well, through places he and his friends know about, anyway. My name is still the same, but whatever. All ties to my old life will be gone, and though I miss the salon I'm in, it'll be good for me, you know?"
I nod. "I get it. If you do get the job, you could always talk to regulars and set up a mobile business thing. We can make it work."
She narrows her eyes. "That's actually not a bad idea. I own a bunch of the stuff I work with; I'd just need to invest in a few more bits and products and whatever." Her hand moves to her forehead; her way of thinking hard. It's fucking adorable. "I could go to their homes or here eventually... if you don't mind, of course. Your legal home and all that."
I laugh; her mind is spinning and then second-guessing herself, and I love everything about it because she really thinks about things – even though she never needs to. "Jazz, my name might be on the deed, but when I asked you to move in, this became your home, too. Hell, the shed in the back garden is currently my shit place where I keep old paint and the lawn mower. I'll move it all and convert the shed into a whole mini salon."
"August!"
I shrug. "I'd have to research it a bit, or maybe just hire someone to help do it with electrics and water and whatever. If that's what you want, I'll do it. How long have you been at that salon now?"
