She's clothes-on-the-floor and late night confessions compared to the ice cream and funfairs that you're used to.

She's willing to fight though she doesn't stand a chance and you have to admire her for that, really.

You're not even interested, you never would be in someone who drinks so much that she cries, and cries so much that she drinks, but somehow you just can't help wondering what it would be like in that purple fur that seems to envelop her. Smothering.

You don't know what to think when you realise how much fun she is. Much more fun than your blistering sunshine. And for someone who's never met a girl like her (who so obviously lives in the dark) before, you're curious. And if anyone is darkness, it's her and her neon lights, her loud music (much too loud to talk) and her drama. Her drama, more than anything is the key, her utter thrill at gossip and scandal.

It's tantalising, knowing what you could be caught up in, in fact, what you already are caught up in (it doesn't matter how unwittingly). She's not the kind of girl that gives you a choice. Although, as you're laid next to her one drunken January night you wonder whether it is her at all, or whether it's you?

Of course it's not you.

It can't be you, not when it's so much easier to blame her haphazard approach to life.

You should have stayed to your 9-oh-clock news and beloved numbers. You should have ignored her sword fights and bitten nails, and told her to go back to where she came from.

But that just wouldn't have been any fun.

So when you're laid with your hand down her pants (unaware that your bed is going to smell like her perfume for far too long), you don't really care about the consequences and the sun that has to rise in the morning, because you're caught in the moment with her, and there's nothing else you want. Except for maybe a blowjob, but she's got that covered and you shouldn't be comparing but bloody hell.

We can't keep doing this.

Now you're saying things you don't mean, because you're not sure you could cope without her warmth next to you every night.

Neither of us is free to do this.

Now there's a true fact. And she cries countless tears of guilt, god, she doesn't eat much anymore and professes to never sleep because of it. You, you're not sure what to make of it.

You were fine as long as she was.

And the definition of 'fine' seems to be a bit distorted these days, as her mouth on yours slowly becomes what you live for.

You don't talk in the day time anymore. You can't, because people have already started to speculate about the two of you and anyway, you don't want to have to watch her slowly dying of the guilt she professes to feel so acutely.

But when it's the middle of the night, you're not even drunk anymore, and you've already taken everything she's offering, all you want to do is talk to her. You want to know every single one of those brightly coloured thoughts that happen inside her pretty head. Let's face it, you don't have (m)any thoughts these days.

Thinking's too hard.

She'll just laugh (quietly of course, there's someone in the room next door) and you'll tell her to shut up anyway, someone will hear. Then she'll tickle you, she's the only one that knows it's your weakness (well, one of them anyway) and you know that neither of you are getting any sleep that night.

She comes and finds you at midday, and that's when you know something's wrong. Because you haven't spoken at midday since you've been shagging at midnight.

Let's go daylight.

Let's just tell them, and fuck what people are going to think.

She doesn't want any more secrets. She wants some truth, because it's so bloody thin on the ground these days and she for one is sick of it.

She chews a nail while she talks.

She's yours, you know that now, and you don't know what to do with her.

There's only one way you know to address the problem, so you do it, hating yourself because you know she just wants a hug and some fucking reassurance. You don't offer that. Can't.

Take your top off and get on your knees.

She obeys, hating you as much as you hate yourself. And you know this will be the last time.

You know now that you can go back to your sunshine in peace, and tell that other girl (you're supposed to care about her?) that you love her.

Midnight black isn't going to bother you anymore. Because you've broken her, and she won't come back.

But you can't help but feel that fair is fair, as you struggle to enjoy anything anymore, because now you're unable to stop biting your nails either and it feels like she's broken you a little bit too.

You continue, you're not sure how, butyou get over it. You deal, and you can't help but smirk sometimes as you imagine her telling you to man up.

You've accepted life is different now, a little less glossy, a bit faded. It's just the way things are.

How long has it been? Your room is always a mess these days. You never were an untidy person.

& on one more sleepless night, after a lot of water has passed under the bridge that separates the two of you as effectively as a concrete wall, there's a knock on your door.

Take your top off.

Get on your knees.