It didn't take long for Mike to fuse into my life as if he'd been in it all along, not long at all. I met all his friends, he met all of mine. We weren't in a relationship, so it's not like we could say anything special about each other, but people knew. We would get the half-nod, coy smile from all our friends.

Like when me and Cassie had a cook-out in our backyard and all the Pierce the Veil guys had come over. That was one of the first few times I had been around Mike's friends. We seemed to get on pretty great, and seeing him around his brother and people he loved made me see new sides of him.

"Livvy," Mike whispered, sneaking up from behind me and wrapping me in a hug, as I cooked a few burgers on the grill.

"Hey, you," I said, getting a bit shy because all of his friends were looking.

Picking up on this, Mike turned me around and looked at me menacingly. "Oh, them? Don't worry about them, they don't care."

"Well, I do," I retorted.

"Oh, really? Well, if you're going to get all hot and bothered, I'll give you a reason to," he said, pulling my face towards his and kissing me, gently at first, then passionately, then violently.

I could hear the guys hooting and hollering in the back, but I really didn't care. For the first time in a long time, I felt like myself again. Having fun didn't seem like it was a sin when I was around Mike. He didn't try to get me to bury my past, he allowed me to dabble in my vices. He knew I was jaded, but he just let me be. He had no expectations of me, nor me of him; all we knew was that this was a good thing and we'd like to keep it so.

"This is so weird, Liv," Vic told me, "I haven't seen this side of Mike since like, high school...it's been years!"

I just smiled, I didn't quite know how to respond to that. "Well, your brother certainly is a special one."

"Slightly psychotic, is what he is. I'm offended you didn't go for me. I have better hair!" Vic joked.

"That you do," I winked at him.

"Yeah, it's really weird seeing Mikey all gushy and shit," Jaime chimed in. "Whenever you text him, his face lights up, I haven't really seen that, ever, and I've been living with the guy for eight years now."

"Can you guys try not to scare off the one girl that might like me?" Mike joked, putting his arm around my waist.

"We speak nothing but the truth," Vic joked.

"You make me out to be some sort of womanizing badass with no heart!" Mike said. Jaime, Vic, and Tony looked at him skeptically. I burst out laughing.

"Okay, fine, I have a history, but who doesn't?" Mike said, trying to salvage himself.

"No, history is what you'd find in a textbook, your's is more like a huge set of encyclopedias...with multiple volumes and editions," Jaime laughed.

"Well, people can change right?" Cassie chimed in, handing out drinks to everyone in red plastic cups.

"To change," Jaime toasted, and we all raised our glasses.

"To change," Mike said, looking at me intently.

Having Mike around became so effortless that I began to already dread him leaving. It sounded crazy for me to say so, the girl who'd been with one guy for five and a half years and was grieving his death. It was crazy for that girl to be so taken by someone she had just met mere days ago. What was even weirder was that all the pain seemed to be seeping away. Every morning I would wake up and I would feel lighter, as if, bit by bit, every feeling of remorse and mourning was leaving me. The depressive funk that I'd lived in, that vegetative state of existing but not living seemed to be a thing of the past. I had been reincarnated so vivaciously that it didn't seem like I ever lived a life that wasn't so exciting.

Cassie, for one, was completely Team Mike. Once, I even caught her cornering Mike and telling him that she was so glad I found him and that I would still be completely dysfunctional and lost if it weren't for him. "Thanks for bringing my friend back," she said sincerely, though it might have been the rum talking. There's never any telling with Cassie.

One night, after watching a few movies, Mike crashed at my place. He stripped down to his boxers and got under the covers, while I changed into shorts and a tank top.

"Our first sleepover, how monumental," he joked.

I smirked, "Don't get your hopes up. I still have major intimacy issues."

"I know," he said, as he pulled me close and kissed the top of my head.

I nested my face in the crook of his shoulder. When we were lying down, he didn't seem as dauntingly tall as he did when we were both standing.

"You know what, Liv?"

"Hmm?"

"You never did show me your tattoos. Remember that night at the club? You said 'what makes you think I don't have some' or something like that?"

I propped myself up on an elbow and sat up to face him, smiling slightly. I slowly pulled my top over my head and threw it aside, I reached behind my back and unhooked my bra, throwing that aside too.

"Here it is," I said, pointing to the tattoo above my heart of three stitch marks.

"Did you get it after John died?"

I nodded, as Mike gently stroked my tattoo with his fingers. He looked at me really longingly before pulling me into him and kissing me with such passion that I couldn't believe all of his friends wisecracks if I tried. His hands ran up and down my body, in ways that made me feel absolutely heightened, like every nerve ending on my body was at the peak of its activity, like every stroke of his hands was igniting a fire bigger than the last. It felt absolutely, uncontrollably amazing to lay there and be caressed after being alone for so long.