The Match

Finn was easy to love in daylight.

Warm. Physical. Present. He held me, kissed me, built little pockets of happiness I could step into without thinking too hard.

But when I looked at him too closely there was a distance I couldn't cross. Like knocking on a door that never fully opened. He could meet my body but not my soul, and I think we both knew it.

He didn't know I drew. He never asked.

With Dion it was the opposite.

Nothing about him was safe. Nothing about him was stable. But when he looked at me it felt like he could see straight through to the centre of me. Not the mother. Not the one holding everything together. Me.

That kind of recognition doesn't ask if it's good for you. It just pulls.

When he messaged I told myself it meant nothing. When he asked to meet for lunch I told myself it was just friendship. Neutral ground. The riverfront pub, warm and busy, sun cutting through the trees.

He knew I was with Finn. I made that clear.

We talked like nothing had happened. Easy. Familiar. Too easy.

And then he kissed me.

I pulled back. "Don't," I said.

But I didn't leave.

And a second later I kissed him back.

In that moment my entire centre of gravity shifted. Everything rearranged itself around that kiss. I was completely in love with him, dedicated to him, certain this had changed everything — the way these moments do when you've been waiting for them without knowing you were waiting.

I looked at him.

He looked back at me with that expression I would come to know well — the one that sits just behind his eyes, already somewhere else, already calculating the next move.

The drive home was quiet. Then, casually, he said:

"Maybe it's best if you keep seeing Finn."

The air left my lungs.

I didn't speak. Not one word. I got out, shut the door harder than I meant to, and walked inside carrying something I had no idea what to do with.

He had kissed me like a dare. I had answered like it was a vow.

I poured a glass of wine. Then another. Sat with the gap between what that kiss had meant to me and what it had apparently meant to him — which was something closer to a test, a small private experiment, a box ticked for his ego.

I called him. Tried to explain. He dismissed it. Like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.

No one was hearing me.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I picked up my brushes, drew his eye on the canvas.

The right one. The one with the small dark spot in the iris I'd noticed at the café and hadn't stopped thinking about since.

But the strokes felt wrong. Too polite for what I was feeling.

So I reached for other things. I went outside. Concrete under my feet, night air sharp in my lungs, cool breeze swirling the long dress around me. I needed him to see me the way I saw him — clearly, completely, as someone impossible to look away from.

Turpentine. Ash. Petrol.

I mixed them without measuring, the sharp chemical smell rising instantly. The spray bottle hissed as I squeezed the trigger. The liquid ran and pooled, dragging charcoal dust across the white surface of the concrete.

The eye began to form.

Not clean lines. Smears. Shadows. A shape emerging out of fumes and longing.

I spread the mixture with my hands, fingers blackened, streaks running across like veins. Then I struck the lighter.

For a moment nothing happened.

Then the iris caught.

A thin line of flame bloomed along the curve, flickering gold before racing outward. Heat pushed against my face. The eye burned first — the pupil collapsing inward, the edges glowing like molten wire.

I didn't step back.

I watched.

When it was over, only a charred halo remained, rimmed in gold and soot.

I took a photo and sent it to him.

See this. See me. Choose me.

He came straight over. Climbed the fence like the rules didn't apply to him. Slid into the spa beside me like he'd always belonged there.

"I'll love you forever for this," he said quietly.

And I let myself believe it.

I was on fire for him, and love burned in my chest like a flame.