December 26th
The neighbor girl in her sweater—creamy white, just a shade or two lighter than her skin— sitting on her front porch steps. Sharp cheekbones flushed pink in the cold. Her tongue stuck between her teeth just a bit, and she used the tab from her can of beer to scratch furiously at the lottery ticket gripped in her hand.
Courage. A split second of it flooded me.
“Did you get lucky?”
Her eyes flashed up to mine, and a helicopter bellowed overhead. A smile flirted with the corners of her lips. “I don’t know,” she answered. “You tell me.”
A pounding heart. Too fast, too loud, louder than the helicopter blades, I was sure.
“Wanna come inside?” she asked.
The helicopter flew on, and the door closed behind me, sealing me in a warmer world with a pretty girl with a pretty smile.
December 31st
Our first real date.
A blur of lights, laughter, legs. Lips. Tantalizing and red, warm, almost hot against mine. We stumbled down the street from the bar, waved our arms dramatically, wildly, to hail a cab. Her laughter rang louder than the cheers as the New Year rang in, sent chills that had nothing to do with the cold racing down my spine.
The car moved too fast, the world whipped by in a frenzied mess outside the window. Her hand found a home on my thigh, and my heart—already a storm in my chest, burning with liquor and nerves—beat so hard it almost landed in her hand.
“I’m gonna be sick,” she gasped.
The driver rolled down the window.
Our laughter blended together, a harmony of joy.
Stumbling up the stairs. Tripping over the rug in my foyer. Collapsing onto my bed, her heartbeat thundering beneath my chest, her tongue mapping the pulse in my neck.
Feeling her heartbeat slower, slower, sleeping against my chest. Shifting from beneath her, and taking her tequila soaked dress to the laundry, mind spinning all the time. Returning, seeing her naked and splayed on my bed, beautiful, so beautiful. A girl carved from marble and breathed to life by gods.
Closing the door.
The sun beamed through the windows in the morning, bright, so bright, too bright—
And there she was in the doorway, in one of my shirts, with a smile that could replace the sun if it really wanted to.
“Did you take me to bed last night?” she asked, and I heard the joking, and the fear, and I smiled.
“When I do, you’ll remember it,” I assured her, and she laughed—god, that laugh was stars falling, granting me every wish I ever made—and sat with me for breakfast.
Holding my hand across the table.
January 4th
“Take a picture!” she screamed, mouth split open wide. She tilted her head. Her jawline was irresistible. Marble softer than water.
I would’ve frozen that moment forever.
But it only lasted the length of time it took the shutter to click, and she moved, smile dropping from her lips as she turned to face the water. I turned to the couple behind us, asked them to take a picture of both of us.
When I turned back around, she was already moving on. I hesitated, watching her, but she didn’t look back.
“Never mind,” I told the strangers, and I chased after her.
She kept moving.
January 12th
“Ugh, this coffee is terrible,” I said. Knees bouncing, hands trembling. She looked at me with spinning, caramel eyes, magic eyes. I could smell the tequila on her breath.
She tilted her head back, spreading her arms along the back of the booth, and I could only think of kissing her. I looked down into a steaming mug of too-hot, too-strong coffee.
“Why do you still come here?”
I smiled into my mug. “Because it wakes me up.”
“You know what else wakes you up?”
I glanced up at her.
“Tequila,” she laughed, and the sound seared through my veins, setting me on fire. And all I could do was stare in hopeless adoration. “You’re such an idiot,” she giggled, and kneed the table.
Coffee spilled in my lap. Hot, so hot, too hot, and she just laughed and laughed and laughed, her beautiful mouth split wide by my pain.
February 15th
Twelve dollars. A bottle of brandy. Sickly sweet breath. A warm car protecting us from the cold. Hidden behind a dumpster.
Her mouth on mine.
Her hand on my thigh, fingering her way to my belt.
Her collarbones, sharp against her skin, tantalizing, begging me to drop kisses along the slope of them to her shoulder. Her cheekbones painted red from desire and drink.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
And I thought the world was pretending they couldn’t see us, just so we could all have a little bit of peace. I couldn’t resist her. I couldn’t resist her drunken smile and hot skin and the way her body looked sculpted to meld perfectly against mine.
So I didn’t.
She said someone else’s name.
March 17th
She spit champagne through her front teeth, spraying my suit, and her laughter chased it, but she wasn’t looking at me, she looked at the handsome man to the right of her, smiling a smile that undressed her where she stood.
“We should go,” I said, grabbing her elbow, and she wrenched away, slapping me across the face. Stinging pain. Sharp embarrassment. She laughed like a lunatic, clapping her hands over her mouth and giggling. She looked at me like she didn’t recognize me. Then turned away from me.
I cracked in two.
Her laughter cut through me like a knife. Carved out my heart.
She stepped through the hole like nothing was ever there, and kept flirting with the man beside her.
March 20th
What part of her did I love? Every part of her. Every inch. The wild, magnetic side that left me reeling. The soft, shy woman left in her wake after the booze wore off.
She hypnotized me. The way her body curved, the way her mouth moved, the way her eyes danced. The chisel of her jaw and the slope of her nose, the curve at the bottom of her spine. Her bone structure was so striking…
She drew me in and I never even realized how little she cared for me.
She had no empathy. No heart inside that sculpted body.
She was indifferent to me. And I never noticed.
And now here I was, lost in the ruins of loving someone who never loved me back.
I stared at the porch next door, and envisioned a pretty, flushed girl, scratching at a lottery ticket.
I imagined her smiling at me.