The End Is Now

You said I didn’t scare you. That no part of me would make you run away. That we would never be alone again, that instead, we would be alone together. Remember when we turned the apartment into a fort, said we would barricade ourselves away from the world forever? We would bury ourselves under blankets with an endless supply of caramels and Fresca, enough to last us through all six seasons of The Sopranos and every time one of Tony’s henchmen killed someone, we would kiss. We were stupid then, and didn’t understand forts or barricades or forever. And we never got around to finishing The Sopranos, which is a shame, because now there’s no more Netflix and it turns out there’s not as much overlap as you’d expect between premium cable viewers and doomsday cultists, so there’s no one here to tell me how it ends. Even if there was, they wouldn’t have acted it out in the stupid voices, the way you did when I missed an episode.

Here is what I think about sometimes: The day I figured it out, that the entitled ass who showed up every day to exchange his rental car because the seat didn’t recline all the way or the gas cap jiggled or the clutch was sticky or the radio cut out at the high end of the FM band wasn’t such an entitled ass after all, that you didn’t give a shit about the shitty cars, you just wanted an excuse to smile at the girl behind the counter. The day I smiled back. The four days it took after that, waiting for you to make your move; the way you dimpled when I made it for you. What you said, when you dropped me off that night—the first time, before you made the U-turn in your tin can rental car because you realized taking things slow was crap—that it wasn’t because you thought I was pretty, that that’s not why you came back the next day. Not that you didn’t think I was pretty. Of course you thought I was pretty. It’s just it wasn’t because I was pretty.

I liked it when you stammered. I liked that I could make you nervous.

It was because you didn’t bother to say thank you when I handed you the keys, and I told you that wasn’t very polite.

Not just a pretty girl; a pretty girl having a crap day at a job that required her to smile and be nice. A pretty girl with butterflies on her dress and a glittering stud in her nose, with army camo nail polish and a chip on her shoulder, with one assy customer too many, and something about it woke you up, you said, and you came back that first time, the next day, just to see if I had quit. You had a feeling about me, you said. Like I was some tropical bug lighting on a flower, that all it would take was a breeze to spook me away.

I liked that you remembered what I was wearing; I liked that you didn’t call me a fucking butterfly.

You’re right that it was different with you, I’ll give you that. You’re right that it was better—but in the end, it was the same, because it still ended. It doesn’t matter how good something is if it doesn’t last; the being better only makes it hurt more when it’s over, so what’s the fucking point?

It’s over. That’s the only forever for us now. We both know you’re dead, and we both know how, and I don’t want to talk about it.

Love,

Heather

* * *

Dear Cheating Bastard,

You die in the woods, where your smug face gets eaten off by escaped zoo bears, you chipmunk-headed fuckwit.

Love,

Heather

* * *

Dear Teach,

That was my first ever A+, and I guess I proved myself a C student through and through by being dense enough to believe in it. That when you said I had promise, you meant in life, and not in a back office, bent over your desk, skirt hiked up, both of us listening for someone coming, only one of us actually knowing what that would sound like. You write like a writer. That’s what you scribbled on the last page. See me after class, and you underlined that one twice. A for effort.

I thought I was an old soul; I thought I was a portrait of the artist as a young woman. I thought you loved me for those things, and for the way I laughed like I had a secret and the way I perched on the fringe of life, expectant and ever watchful, seeing into things that most people can’t see at all—because that’s what you told me. Not that you loved me because I sucked you off like I’d done it a million times before or because you had some weird fetish for skinny wrists and slap bracelets, or because I was just stupid enough to believe you when you said I was smart.

I know, I know: When I whine, I sound like a child.

I’m thinking now you liked that best.

Age, you said, was just a number, which in retrospect explains why you liked fucking teenagers, because you assumed we would mistake cliché for wisdom.