#featuring atticus cortes.

[noralevin]

🍻 + “is there anyone you regret kissing?”

"Why? You heard something?" Nora asked, leaning forward a little on the bar to give her talkative patron a teasing glare. She picked up another glass and started to dry it idly. She definitely shouldn't have been as drunk as she was while she was working, but she needed something to get her through a shift she most certainly didn't want to be there for. "Sure, yeah, there was this one guy with a rattail and the most disgusting little mustache you've ever seen. A girl with adult braces who cut my lip so bad it needed stitches. This...fucking guy I used to sleep with in high school, but that one's pretty recent. That one wasn't actually that painful — this guy is beautiful, let me tell you — but it was right after I tried to kiss my high school ex and got turned down and maybe fucked up the friendship." She shrugged lightly, as if everything she'd just revealed was a totally casual occurrence and wasn't making her insides churn a little whenever she thought about it. "What about you?"

@ulyflynn / @atticuscortes

— drunken confessions | open.

[felixalbright]

💄 LIPSTICK — have you had any romantic or sexual experiences that made you realize something about yourself?

"They've all taught me plenty, in their own ways, but when I think about stuff like this, I think about Atticus. He was the first boy I ever loved, and I could've stayed for him. Part of me wanted to. Leaving Aurora Bay, leaving him, made me realize that nothing and no one can keep me from doing what I want to do. If he couldn't, no one could."

@atticus-cortes

[noralevin]

🍻 + “when did you choose to give up?” (atticus)

"That's a mean fucking question, and I think you know that," Nora said, her smile turning cold over the top of her beer, eyes deadening a little. She wondered if she looked like her mom when she did that. Normally, she'd just get loud when she was drunk — loud and affectionate. But ever since her birthday, it was making her...sad. Angry. "It's also, like — which time? Give up on what? On this town? On us? On New York?" She sat up a little, propping herself up on her elbows as she looked over at him. They were back on her roof while her parents were out of town and not there to open the door and ask her what she needed this time, or if she'd finally given up her whole 'acting poor' shtick and finally decided to see sense. "Let's see... I gave up on this town because I feel like nothing ever changes and I thought I was better than that. I gave up on New York because turns out I'm kind of shit at the one thing I've ever really wanted to do. If you want specific timestamps, you're shit outta luck, because I feel like I'm giving up every fucking day. I gave up a little when I tried to kiss you, I definitely gave up when I fucked Uly. What am I giving up? Fuck if I know. Ambition, maybe. Whatever it was that made me think I was ever going to make it out of here and be anything other than a poor little rich girl townie." She chanced a glance over at him. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

@atticuscortes

— drunken confessions | open.

[noralevin]

👄 + atticus

"Atticus is the only reason I've ever stopped to think that leaving home might not've been a good idea. Obviously I know that it probably wouldn't have ended well if I stayed for him and I might've ended up leaving anyway and things would've blown up with us, but as homesick as I could get in those first few years in New York, nothing and no one else ever made me stop to think that I should've stayed. Because here's the thing. A lot of people want to believe that their first love was the best first love anyone's ever experienced. But I know that mine was, because it was with Atticus. I swear that I haven’t been holding a candle for him or whatever — it’s been a long time since we were together. God, it feels like a lifetime since then. But being back here has fucked with my brain, man. I feel like everything’s changed and nothing’s changed, and I can feel the person I was when I was in love with him. And she was…happier. But fuck, I don't want it to sound like I think I'm...regressing or anything, by doing what whatever we've been doing. God, no, that's not what I mean at all. I just...I'm fucking confused, alright? We're friends and it's good. It's so good, and I just don't want to ruin it because my feelings are all fucked up and I can't tell past from present."

@atticuscortes

[noralevin]

wine: do you have a 'type'

"Dark hair. I can't fuck another blond person, it just feels wrong. Uhhh...nice shoulders, probably. People who can hold my attention. I'm not even saying that as a 'I think everyone else is uninteresting' thing, I just have a shit attention span.

Of the ones that have actually worked out, though... people who are...good, I guess. Not in a self-hating way or anything — I fuckin' love myself, okay — but...Atticus is a firefighter and Maxie is the Disney Channel boyfriend of every tween's dreams. Being good isn't just something they are, it's what they are. It made me wanna be better too."

[noralevin]

📖 + atti 🤭

Send 📖 for my muse to read out an entry in their journal/diary about yours.

"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. What is this, a humiliation ritual?

Okay, fine. I don't keep a diary, never have, but I actually did just find something I wrote something in my fuckin' iPhone 5 notes app after our first date. The first one after we got back together.

God, this sucks. Fuck you.

It's kinda just a timeline of the night at first, but then there's... 'I can't really remember why we broke up in the first place. We could've had an extra year of this but just decided not to? I always thought that I'd feel some kind of lightning bolt hit me the first time I fell in love, but now I think that I might've just felt it so early, the moment I met him, that I somehow just forgot what it felt like in the meantime.'"

[noralevin]

Who was their first crush?

"It was probably both Rachel Bilson and Adam Brody at the same time. I was watching The OC way too young because I had a nanny who loved it. Real life, though — Atticus. I had a crush on him before I even knew what a crush was."

[noralevin]

📸 (atticus)

@atticuscortes