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“Well you could. You really don’t remember me?”
Her eyes were saddened by this, but she shouldn’t have been sad. It was nothing personal. There was plenty that I didn’t remember.
Then there was everything I wished I could forget.
“To be fair, I spent most of my high school career fucked up.”
That wasn’t a lie.
“Or with that Alyssa Walters girl,” she remarked.
My chest tightened right along with my jaw. Just hearing her name made my mind flood with memories.
“Is she still in town?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Alyssa stopped leaving me messages months ago, and whenever Kellan called me, we didn’t speak on the subject.
Sadie nodded. “Working at Hungry Harry’s diner. I saw her working at Sam’s Furniture store, too. She plays piano at some bars. I don’t know. She’s been all over the place. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. You two were pretty much glued to each other, which was weird because you had nothing in common.”
“We had plenty in common.”
A sarcastic chuckle fell from her. “Really? The straight A music kid and the straight D—thanks to me—druggie with a crackhead mother had a lot in common?”
“Stop talking like you know shit,” I hissed, growing annoyed. Back then, Alyssa and I had more in common than any two people on this earth. Plus, Sadie didn’t know a damn thing about my mother. Screw her for thinking that she did.
I should’ve walked out of the motel room. I should’ve told her to piss off and find another person to harass, but I really hated being alone. I’d spent the past five years alone, except for the occasional mouse that came to visit every now and then.
Sadie stayed quiet as long as she could, which wasn’t long at all. She didn’t know what peaceful silence was. “So was it true? That you were in rehab?”
She was talking more than I was comfortable with. I hated talking about rehab because half the time I wished I was back at the clinic. The other half of the time, I wished I was back in the alleyway, with a line or two on a garbage can. It’d been so long since I’d used, and I still thought about it almost every damn day. Dr. Kahn said it would be a tough transition coming back to the real world, but she believed I could handle it. I promised her whenever I felt like using, I’d snap the red rubber band she gave me against my skin, as a reminder that the choices I made were real, just like the sting against my skin.
The band read, ‘strength’, which was weird because I felt like I had none.
I’d been snapping the band against my arm since Sadie began speaking.
“There was a bet going around town that you were dead. I think your mom started that one,” she said.
“Do you know how beautiful your eyes are?” I asked, changing the subject. I began kissing her neck, listening to her moan.
“They’re just green.”
She was wrong. They were a unique shade of celadon, holding a bit of gray and a touch of green to them. “A few years back, I was watching a documentary on Chinese and Korean pottery. Your eyes are the color of the glaze they used to make pottery.”
“You watched a Chinese documentary on pottery?” She muttered with a chuckle, trying to catch her breath as my lips moved to the curves of her collarbone. I felt her shiver against me. “You must have been pretty messed up.”
I laughed because she has no clue.
“They call it celadon in the west but over there, it’s qingci.” I pressed my lips against hers. She kissed me back, because that was the main reason we were there in the dirty motel room. We were there to mistake a few moments of touch with the idea of love. We were there to mistake kisses for some kind of passion. We were there to mistake loneliness for wholeness. It was crazy what people would do—who people would do—to avoid feeling so alone.
“Can you stay the night?” she whispered.
“Of course,” I sighed, rolling my tongue against her ear.
I wanted to stay the night with her because loneliness sucked. I wanted to stay the night with her because darkness spread. I wanted to stay the night with her because she asked me to. I wanted to stay the night with her because I wanted to stay the night.
She slid my shirt over my head, and her fingers rolled against my chest. “Oh my gosh!” she squealed. “You’re buff!” Then she giggled. Fuck. Did I really want to stay the night?
Without replying, I took off her pants, and removed my own. As she lay down, I hovered over her, moving my lips from her neck, down to her chest, across her stomach, and pausing at her panty line. As I rubbed my thumb against her panties, she moaned.
“Yes…please…”
