2Author's Note: Got home after this whole fiasco, thought seriously about swallowing the whole damn bottle of Tylenol and just getting rid of the whole problem, but decided to sit down and write this instead. Yes, it's a true story. Unfortunately.
And yes, we're both fucking girls. Get the fuck over it.
If you can't tell already, I'm so fucking depressed and angry right now I could kill someone (or her). I am reluctant to say constructive criticism is welcome as well as other reviews, but I'm warning you, I'm so bitchy right now I might bite your head off. I apologize in advance.
Note: I was thinking of good break-up titles and Final Countdown just came into my head. It makes sense, but it was also her favorite song. Ironic, huh?
She smiles at me like she doesn't know exactly what I'm thinking. Exactly what I'm feeling. Like she hasn't been able to read me like an open book since we first met.
She looks good today, the right amount of make-up on. She used to overdo it a lot, when she was still hanging around with them, those old friends of hers that she doesn't like to talk about anymore. But all she has on today is a touch of mascara, because her eyelashes are white blonde and she hates them. And candy-flavored lip gloss, because her lips aren't edible enough without it.
She tells me she doesn't regret it, but I do. I can't tell her that because she has morals and she is brave and she is intelligent. I stand opposite from her, with my sins and broken promises and I am ashamed, down to the root of my toes.
She is absolutely perfect in every single way, but I suppose I am a bit biased. After all, two days ago, she told me I was perfect, and we all know how very wrong she was. Well, she doesn't, I suppose. Which shows how much she knows about me.
She really doesn't know much, you know. You'd think after dating (can I even begin to dream of calling it that?) for as long as we did, she would understand me. But there are things I think of in the earliest hours of the day, knotted up in my blankets, that I would rather die than reveal.
She really is beautiful. I can see why I fell for her in the first place. Her hair is white blonde and the first thing you do is look at her roots and think, "wow, she must've just gotten that done". But the truth is, it's real. I didn't believe her. She had to show me baby pictures and hair in other places to convince me.
She's wearing it down today, which she never does. Me neither, I guess. We did have that in common – both liked dressing up but hated the hassle. I wonder why today it's flowing over her shoulders like that. Is she making herself purposely beautiful to torture me?
She has on, like, four colored tank tops all layered over another. Red, yellow, purple, blue. It sounds strange but it looks amazing on her, the blank canvas that she is, with her white skin and hair. And those pale, pale green eyes that you can just see through like water. One arm is bare, except for the yellow Livestrong rubber bracelet she always, always wears because of Danny. Apparently, he owned one, like half the teenage boys in America. The other arm is littered with braided friendship bracelets and Sharpie tattoos.
She always changes the subject when I get the nerve to ask her about Danny, but from what I know, he was her boyfriend. Or best friend. Or just friend with benefits. Whatever he was, he was special to her. Of course I heard when the fifteen-year-old boy drowned on the Jersey shore last summer, but I never gave it a second thought until she told me he was her soul mate. Which crushes you, you know. Hearing your girlfriend say that some dead guy is her soul mate while you're sitting there in her bed after having sex.
She was a good kisser, though. I managed to forget about Danny when she kissed me. Or touched me with those long, spindly fingers with the nails that were always different colors, except for her left thumb which was always fire-engine red. It's her favorite color, but she says her hands look washed out if they're all red. I guess her solution is every shade of aqua, green, purple, even black some days. There are never two nails the same color. I used to check, every day, just to call her out on it.
She kept her left thumbnail bright yellow ever since our first kiss, because it's my favorite color. Today it's blue. I wonder if between last night and right now she's kissed some girl whose favorite color is blue. Or some boy, for that matter. She always blurred important lines like that. I don't get the nerve to ask her, though. In reality, I'm not brave enough to say anything to her.
She's still smiling at me. But now she's talking, saying she's sure I'll meet some great girl someday (bullshit) and that the summer's only just begun (more time to dwell on you) and she hopes I don't take this too bad (too late) and that she wants me to talk to Brandon, her washed-up surfer brother (no chance in hell).
She was always saying that I would be good for Brandon. Not in a dating way, because Brandon is a shitty boyfriend – from what she tells me – but she thinks I'm smart and influential and I should be a psychiatrist and Brandon needs one. In my honest opinion, he needs way more than that (a good fuck?) but she insists. And even though we're not dating (there's that word again) anymore she, apparently, still thinks that he needs my help. I bite my tongue from kissing her.
She leans forward and rests a skinny arm on my shoulder, as if she's comforting me. And suddenly I'm angry at her. She's acting like I'm some pathetic chick she's leaving behind and needs to put back on her feet. So I pull away from her and she looks at me with big eyes. It reminds me of that time we were on the couch in the living room just outside my mom's bedroom and she was trying to unbutton my pants. We didn't get far because my cousin Mikey came upstairs for a "midnight snack" but he told me later he wanted to catch some girls fucking. I slugged him and told him he was a fucking pervert and he grinned at me. But she gave me those same eyes when we heard his voice behind the couch. Then it was teasing and sexy and fun because we went down to my bed right after and got very comfortable. Now it is sad and pitying and sympathetic and I can't stand it.
She watches me as I turn around and leave, my cheap, mainstream flip-flops flip-flopping as I walk down the wooden pier and she doesn't say a word. She doesn't call after me like she does in my dreams (if I was a boy, they would be very wet). Instead, I hear her sigh and kick off her sneakers (she wears sneakers not flip-flops and I am a preppy bitch because of it, well that's what she says anyway) and turn around and walk down to the ocean. When I'm sure she can't see me anymore I turn around and watch her skinny little ass (in those tiny little jean shorts) move down to the ocean.
She always stirs up those memories in me. Like the time that she was wearing that skin tight rash guard (I wanted to rip it off with my teeth) and her sexy board shorts so she looked like a surfer chick (and after all the times she teased me about posing?) and I was hanging all over her in my string bikini that I made my mother buy for me so I would be sexy like her but it didn't really work because she didn't check me out, she was too busy checking out those goddamn waves in that ocean. Brandon taught her how to surf and some potheads taught Brandon how to surf and his fuck-buddy Kylie asked me to have a threesome with her and Brandon. That caught her attention and she slung a bony arm around me and said I was all hers and gave me a sloppy kiss on the cheek. She whispered in my ear that she figured that that bikini would be easy enough to take off, right? I blushed. Kylie laughed like she understood. Brandon and Kylie ended up fucking on the sand behind a tree (like that would've done a whole lot of good) and me and her ended up soaping each other up in the shower out back.
She's walking to the ocean right now, though, not towards a hot shower with me right under my mom's nose. Of course, my mom doesn't know a thing about us. We're best fucking friends in her mind. I guess I have to tell her we had a fight but she'll stick her nose in it and make me tell her why and no fucking way woman I will tell you that. My sister won't even ask, what with her constant migraines and whining from her bed. She doesn't give a shit about my life, which you think she would, since I spend half my time getting her goddamn Tylenol and birth control pills. I consider telling her to nix the second one because no man will touch her the way she's been looking recently, but my mom says she's feeling delicate so I have to help her. Of course, my mom doesn't ask when I collapse from my pinched nerve in my hip but if my sister so much as whimpers in pain, Mom is all over her, gagging her with aspirin.
She would tell me that maybe this will come in handy (she was always so logical like that). My mom might not even notice that she's not in my life anymore. But, of course, she's still in my life. For fuck's sake, I live on 58th and she lives on 104th. I walked those goddamn forty-six blocks about a million times because New Jersey is anal and won't let me get my license until I'm fucking seventeen. Like any normal teenager can wait that long, dammit. She only walked to my house once because she was horny as hell. Apparently, her brother was watching porn and she could see it and it was lesbian or something but she was a maniac that night. She has a car because she lives in Pennsylvania (can't wait until the summer's over and the fucking Delaware River can separate us for good) and they get their licenses at a respectable age so she usually drives. That night, my cousin Mikey borrowed it to go fuck his girlfriend Lindsay who lives on the mainland. I was about to tell him to walk the fucking bridge all the way there, but I was feeling romantic (she always made me feel romantic) so I let him, even though his relationship with Lindsay is far from romantic.
She is all I can think about and dream about and talk about (if I could, which I can't). I know tomorrow morning I will wake up like I woke up this morning – reaching for my cell phone to text her "good morning" which was one of our corny couple-y things that we always did. This morning I almost did but caught myself and forced myself to delete the little line of hearts that she put next to her name in my contact list. I wonder if she deleted the smiley faces I put in my name on her list (:D:D:D:D:D:D:D). She said it was perfect because she loved my smile which disappeared right after when she kissed it off.
And there is no end to this story I'm telling you. Sorry to disappoint. Because tomorrow it's going to hurt, and the next day, and all fucking summer until I can go back to school and start fucking Andy again and forget about her. Honestly, I don't know if I'll go down to the beach tomorrow and drown myself or nick my sister's Tylenol and down it but I'm trying not to. I'll call my friend Jess tomorrow and we can chat about girly things that straight girls talk about and fuss over Andy and her on-again off-again dude Colton. I won't mention her and she won't mention that I haven't talked to her for a month because of her and we won't talk about the time we made out in the eighth grade because Jess told me the next day she was sorry and it was a mistake and I felt like smashing her head in you bitch decide before you kiss someone whether you want to or not. But I'm not that brave so I let it go.
I can only hope that she sticks to her beach and I stick to mine and I will never turn down 104th street again in my life, not to talk to her druggie brother or beg her to take me back. Because I'm smart enough to understand that this is a clean break which everyone says is easier but it's not (notnotnotnotnot). All I know is I'll keep wearing the leather cuff bracelet that she made for me but one day or another I'll cut it up and fucking burn it because I get angry like that. But she'll keep being perfect and amazing and sweep up every boy and girl that looks her way while I watch from the corner, remembering when for that short (but oh so long) time that I shared her spotlight.
Author's Note: I could've kept writing. I really didn't want to stop but I felt like I needed to because I feel like I'm gonna pass out from everything that happened today.
If you noticed that the profanities increased as the story went on, it's because the more I wrote the angrier I got about everything that's happened.
Note: I didn't purposely begin starting the paragraphs with "she". Didn't even notice until I skimmed it (my version of that foreign thing called "editing") and realized the last two don't. Guess that shows just how fucking in love with her I am. Still.