Mike had dated my best friend. He had been more of someone else’s boyfriend then even a Friend, in my mind. They were still friends.
The first time I met Amy, we were at a party in the basement of this house off campus. I really needed a drink that night, rum and coke, vodka and sprite anything to fill the cracks that Evan had created. We were both fast becoming the bartender’s best friend. “So what’s wrong with you?” Amy said sloshing her drink against the side of my shirt. I hardly noticed.
“Well I’m fighting with this guy I’ve been seeing on and off. I can’t believe girls put up with shit like this,” I said.
“I know it’s like a relationship isn’t just simple, you know? It’s tattered with loose ends flying all over…like electric wires. Yea, you don’t know when they’re going to spark,” Amy said.
“…and then they show up looking like a sad, dumb, animal and hug you. Of course you take them back. Fuck,” I said spilling my drink over the guy that stood to the right of me.
We had met by chance, but had become friends through our complicated love life. It’s true you can never hide something from your best friend. I knew the way her nose twitch when she was upset because you learn to understand body language, through the people your closet with.
I met Mike the next day and they were dating. It was Valentine’s Day. Evan showed up at my door, shirt half wet from beer, with mud on it. It was 3 a.m.
I’ll never forget what Mike’s eyes looked like as he stared down at me, while he was fucking me. Thinking of nothing other than the skin that rub against his; soft and wet with sweat. Blue eyes change colors during sex. His turned watery deep blue, like an over chlorinated pool.
I wasn’t thinking about Mike, even as he was on top of me saying my name. I thought about the night that Evan and I went to Lollapalooza. The Christmas lights strewn from light poles and tents, the 110 degree heat caused us to burst sweats beads down our backs, chests, and faces. He had turned 21 on July 22nd and this was his birthday present. Music fired from 10 different stages in the middle of Grant Park. People walking around resembled a mock creation of Woodstock: girls with long hair, and guys with no shirts swaying in front of the stages to the rhythm of music and pot. Evan pulled me behind the baseball fence that was half hidden with trees. There in the enclosed area he undid my pants, traced my tattoo and never blinked while he was making love to me. It was the first time we had sex and it meant something. It was the moment that I thought of him as mine, being mapped onto my body. No bullshit about completing each other, just a feeling of safety under the Christmas lights, with The Decemberists playing in the background.
I wondered if Mike saw Amy in my eyes, smelled her on my skin, and tasted her mouth on my now.
Love wasn’t something that Amy and I banter and teased about anymore. We knew now the word had cut to deep to the bone between and across our love lives. The apartment we shared had black and white photographs hanging from the walls. The grays blended into whites and blacks in perfect smoothness; it was amazing what technology could do. Create a perfect print of a photograph in seconds. It was fake.
Amy had gone to Italy with me and while others counted Florence, Rome, and Venice as the cities of love; we saw love and life in Verona. It had lush stones that lined the streets, leading into and away from the center of town. Verona-the city of Romeo and Juliet and we were each in love.
There was a small covering leading into the building that had Juliet’s balcony. On the walls of the enclosed entrance lined the names and unrequited lovers of decades gone by. Stuck there by tape, gum or nails and faded by time. She said, “I want to add mike and I’s name to the wall,” She removed the small piece of purple gum from her mouth. I gave her my pink pen to write their names with. She wrote it on the gum wrapped and stuck the piece of gum to the wall, adding a kiss to it. “You should put Evan and yours, up as well,” I didn’t have any gum, but Amy game me a piece. I signed our names and put it up next to Amy’s.
“I guess the four of us are stuck together,” I laughed. I wondered if in 20 years or even a year the names would still be on the wall, even if the people were no longer in love; if that’s how it work, forever an unrequited love.
Mike wanted to see me, my face. I’ve never been with a guy who didn’t. They wanted to see what it looked like, if I look the way they wanted me to, but I didn’t want to see the sweat dripping down his forehead over his beard and landing on top of my chest. Or the gorilla like smile, showing his teeth that popped onto his face. I could see Amy’s eyes barring holes into the sides of my cheeks. No, her eyes were green. It was a warm February night, the snow had melted, and the air smelled of fresh summer rain in the middle of winter.
No comments:
Post a Comment