Everyone had fallen asleep, and I was sitting on the porch alone with my cigarettes finishing off the last of whatever it was we had been drinking. It was a night I was meant to forget. That was the point, at least, but when people are in my house I get so anxious, worrying if someone's going to vomit on our new couch or if the girl in my room is asleep yet. She's the reason I won't forget tonight, no matter how much I want to. Because I slept with her and because it didn't mean anything and because she needed to get drunk for it to happen.
Same girl, different year, different house, different us. We are just waking up and I'm fumbling for my glasses to see how late for work I'll be today. She wants to make love again and I know I don't have it in me. I'm going to be late. I still need to shower. I still need to find my cigarettes. If I lose this job I can't afford to pay rent anymore, it's steep, but there's air conditioning and I can't sleep unless it's freezing. I shrug off her final plea and skip a shower to make it in time.
She hasn't left when I get home. I ask her what she did all day. She shrugs and mentions something about working on some poetry or reading some poetry. I'm half-listening and wholly not interested. I get my pants off and drift out of the room for the kitchen because there's supposed to be beer in the fridge. I open it and stand there for a minute. I need this. To be still with the cold wind rushing over my legs attempting to shock some life back into me, but it doesn't work. I haven't found the beer yet. Bottom drawer and there's two left. I grab both and inch back to our room. I guess it's ours. I had thought it was mine, but she's here more and more. I know she's said something about her parent's house not fostering creativity or having bad lighting or - when I get back in to my or our room she's still talking about the poetry she wrote or read and hasn't even noticed that I left the room. I hand her a beer which she semi-acknowledges and just keeps talking. She has managed to change subjects and God bless her for it.
She's droning on about a party she wants us to go to. It's never just "she" anymore, it's always "us" and it makes me feel alone.
Her again, but no us. We're on the porch of the apartment I used to live in and she's chain-smoking-crying about some guy. I want to console her or be there for her or whatever it is I am supposed to do in this situation, but I'm thinking about how I need to wash my sheets or replace them, there's so many cigarette burns.
That first night and how it started with her bringing me a six pack of the beer we used to drink. I should have known. I should have seen it coming when she dragged me away from the living room filled with people who would know every mistake we were about to make. But I wasn't thinking about that and hadn't since the last boy in a string of boys had broken her heart and I had let spill the thoughts that still wracked my head. I didn't think about her after she told me she didn't love me anymore.
It was years ago that I met her. On the downward swing of some other girl. One who had left me feeling empty and tired. I didn't want another. It had been far enough into my life that I had grown so weary of chasing after girl after girl, hoping that one would make me feel something. They all, every one of them, eventually left me feeling alone. She seemed different, but no one is different. If I have learned anything about women, it's that they bleed you dry in one way or another.
The first time we made love seems so long ago now. It caught me by surprise. The week before, she had told me how she didn't know if she'd ever be ready, but there we were in my old house, candles lit, very romantic. Afterward she asked me for her first cigarette and we laid in bed watching the smoke from our cigarettes drift together and separate over and over and over.
Nothing was ever perfect. It probably would have scared me much more if it had been. It scared me enough as it was. I don't know if she ever understood that. How scared I was. When we said "I love you", it made me distant. She was always wanting more and more closeness, but I was too afraid to give it to her until it was too late. The last time I had meant it the way I did with her, I had been broken so completely. I had been too young and it taken too long to reassemble myself so I kept her far away and built walls to protect myself. Feeling joy always means feeling pain eventually.
The morning after that night, a night we spent like we had spent so many others. Discussing literature before our lips met and records spinning till their end while we made love. Cigarettes and closeness after and sleeping next to each other. Her falling asleep and me trying to be quiet while getting up to have a cigarette on the porch. It was all so familiar, but the morning after I didn't wake up to her face close to mine. I woke up to an empty bed. I saw her a few hours later and asked what the night before had been.
She shrugged and told me she just needed to relieve some stress.
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