His Love Was Harder to Endure Than Four Months in…

Dominic Ashford, nineteen, stands 1.85 meters tall yet carries himself like a five-year-old. His girlfriend Celeste Montgomery, eighteen, is precociously sharp. A ruckus in a shopping mall over a blue plush toy ended with Tessa calling the police and Callum smashing a window, landing him four months in jail. Prison did nothing to wear down his edges — he still clings to that blue toy, Little Blue, living in a world of his own. Now released, he shows up at Tessa’s doorstep once more, like a child who’s done wrong and craves candy, clutching drawings he made in prison. Tessa, through the door, listens to his voice, both familiar and strange, and life feels as if it’s been pressed on loop...