“If you had any sense, you’d ask someone else.”
“If you had any sense, you’d know that someone is you.”
She stopped and turned. Dirty blonde roots betrayed the jarring pinkness of her hair. It was all tied back in a messy bun to look semi-professional alongside the red polo shirt with Quiktrip embroidered on the left. She had a black elastic on her freckled wrist, backup in case one wasn’t enough.
I shoved my hands into my jeans’ pockets.
“You go to Westport High, right? I’ve seen you in the hallways.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. “Why?”
I shrugged as my eyes gazed down the aisle. “Just curious. How long have you been working here?”
From the corner of my eye, I could see her crouched form turn to continue depositing plastic-wrapped packages of gum into a tiny cardboard box.
“I guess long enough for someone to notice.”
“Am I bothering you?” I asked, grimacing to keep my face from smiling and betraying my voice’s cool tone.
“No, but your questions are.”
“Fine. If you answer one more, I’ll go away. Okay?”
She rose to her full height and spun around to face me. Her eyebrows were too dark for her face, and they were the perfect intensity to send a shiver through my body as she lowered them at me. She was a good four inches shorter than myself, but her clenched fists and locked jaw made her tower over me. She suddenly stepped back when she noticed my unaffected expression, and her foot hit something metal.
“If you’re going to ask me out on a date--”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I grinned. “I was going to ask if you knew you knocked over the lollipops.”
Her foot had slammed into the almost-six-foot-tall display of lollipops, and it was precariously lurching backwards. She jerked her body forward to grab it, hitting it again in the process, and causing the whole display to fall faster. She had it in her clutches, so I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her back. She must’ve had a death grip on the lollipops; with my help, she settled the thing back in place. When she had made sure everything was in its regular position, she glanced over her shoulder at me.
“Saturday night?” she offered. “Pick me up at five.”
***
One night, we went out to see a movie with her newly-single friend.
It was an action flick because who wants to watch a romance unfold after theirs recently failed?
Her friend’s name was Sydney. She was pretty enough, but too soft-hearted for my tastes. She burst out crying when the hero saved a stray dog from being run over by the hitman’s truck. My girlfriend announced she had to go to the bathroom, and suggested Sydney and I should go to get more popcorn. I touched her arm, and she scrunched up her face in a hasty smile as she walked off. I wondered why she had left me with her friend as she disappeared down the small hallway to the restrooms.
“She’s so lucky,” Sydney blabbered through a Kleenex as we walked to the food court. I think that’s the other thing I didn’t like about her: everything about her was so unpredictable and random. At least when my girlfriend and I fought, I could feel it coming for weeks before it eventually hit like a train blowing its whistle as it barrels down the tracks. I decided Sydney was more like an old car that just needed a small push to get it cranked.
“Why?” My brain meant it, but my mouth didn’t.
“She’s in a good relationship. You really care about her.”
That much was obvious, and people don’t say obvious stuff unless there’s more to it.
“Yeah, I do,” I admitted, searching for the right place to put my hands to give her a solid push.
Sydney barked out a bitter laugh. “I’ve been her friend for three years, and you wouldn’t have said that if you had known her three years ago.”
“Why’s that?” I meant it now.
We got in line behind a woman with a shirt that was too big for her and a boyfriend who was too old for her.
“She told me she doesn’t like to stay in one place for too long.” Sydney’s eyes rolled up to meet mine, but her head kept forward. “That’s why she quit her job yesterday.”
She hadn’t told me that.
I pursed my lips and kept quiet for the rest of the night. My girlfriend didn’t seem to notice.
***
When summer hit, she got back with her ex. No warning, no whistle. She didn’t answer my calls or read my texts.
It was a lonely two months, but at the beginning of August, she showed up at my door.
After she cried on my bed for twenty minutes, I was able to coax the reason from her.
“I’m pregnant.”
We stared at each other for a while, her through tear-filled eyes, me through disbelief and disillusionment.
“Do your parents know?”
“They can’t know.”
She sniffed and wiped the snot hanging from her nostril with her bare wrist.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen. I really didn’t. Are you there? Oh, God, what if your parents hear? What will they think?”
She turned over on her side and was silent. I could see her chest springing up and collapsing again and again as she sobbed without making a noise. Her roots had extended, but her hair had been bleached so many times, it was now incredibly dry and damaged. It was shorter since the last time I had seen her, just gracing her bare shoulders, and I could see her spine above the cut of her tank top. There was a dark tattoo peeking out, one I had never seen before. I watched her curl into a tighter ball until she finally released herself and sat up, hugging her knees to her chest as she stared at her toes.
“If you had any sense, you’d leave me,” she groaned, running a hand through her dried locks.
I turned my head and stared at the night sky through the window. I thought about lollipops and falling and a grip so tight I could pull everything back up. I could see her sinking back into the bed as she awaited my answer, but my hands were shaking so bad, I couldn’t grab onto anything.
Finally, with a sigh, I blurted out:
“And if you had any sense, you would have never left.”