We fuck in my father’s Toyota parked in a church parking lot as big fluffy snowflakes cake over the windshield. She’s the type I never find myself with. Far wilder than me with ideas that I gloss over then find myself enamored with.
Like the time we throw two hundred bucks away playing gypsy games at the weekend flea market. Carny with long stringy hair and surprisingly white (and intact) teeth giving me free tries after free tries. I watch the ball land in the bucket and think so easy. So I’m peeling out birthday money and Shana’s egging me on and I never even wonder.
There’s always a catch.
I find the note in the pocket of her jacket that she left in my car as I’m drifting out in my room. Watching Sportscenter repeats. Sipping a lukewarm forty. Staring at that ticker that always runs at the bottom of the screen. Like how many times do I need to see the Celtics won by 18.
It’s so juvenile I almost want to laugh about it. Her squiggly handwriting: I feel kinda bad but yeah I’ll fuck with you. A note she wrote for a guy in her class. Then either decided not to give it or was waiting for the right time.
I’m all ego, all twisted up, castrated over the words running through my head just like that stupid sports ticker. Yeah I’ll fuck with you. Over and over again. Like there’s no question, no worry. Like it’s the easiest decision to make.
Shana’s gone for three days. Three long nights. No one knows a thing. I’m huddled in her parents’ dining room. They’re feeding me homemade chicken soup and Diet Cokes (the only soda they keep). I’m almost used to the bland acidic taste by now. Kinda even like it.
I’ve paged her five or six times. Her mother twice that.
When she finally calls back.
“Why are you at my house?”
Her voice is unsteady. There’s laughter in the background.
“Just go home,” she says.
It finally happens in my car. Thanksgiving night. A day when we compress the arguments, satisfy Grandparents by eating seconds and thirds, playing cards, complimenting the décor.
“It’s over,” she says and I feel a relief though my heart’s pounding out of my chest.
Her long brown hair blows carelessly in the wind. Windows open (she loves the noise or hates the silence.)
We got her mix on the radio. Bon Jovi. Poison. Journey. Chick music, I’d always chide her. But I’d usually sing along to the chorus.
“Guess it was never real,” I say and her eyes drop. She doesn’t do anything crazy. Slap me or grab the steering wheel. She just lights one of those girly cigarettes she smokes, sticks her head out the window and closes her eyes. Like she’s just too cool for this world.
She’d always get Ashley Judd. Not once, not twice. At least ten times. Pizza places, the beach, even just walking down the street.
Sometimes they’d stop and say, “You look just like that actress. Uh, what’s her name—” And she’d finish their line, we’d laugh at their astonished eyes then rent one of those hourly motels. The ones with the faded neon sign, the bed bugs, the lanyard key, the soggy mattress.
We’d fit together like a glove and laugh at the world outside the barred window.
Three months later, I’m banging on her window.
She comes out and gets me.
It’s late. 2 a.m. Her parents are dead to the world.
She sneaks me into her room.
We go at it like we’re fighting for survival. Her on top of me like she’s punishing me and loving it at the same time.
Back to our established rhythm but this time it hurts a bit and when it’s over, all the euphoria is washed away by something broken.
She cries a little and I almost even believe it.
“I kinda miss this,” she says, “But. It wouldn’t work, y’know?”
Before I can answer, she falls asleep in my arms.
I roll her over, sneak back out the window and home.
Years after everything, the old dreams, the lost memories, she calls me. I recognize the number but let it ring out.
There’s a voicemail. “Call me back asshole.”
Funny.
But I don’t.
I got someone new by then. Things are good. Calm. I look back down at my phone and my heart stutters a bit. Like an old clunker that’s been sitting in the garage too long. Needs oil and a good shave.
I hesitate to finish the search. It’s just her name but it’s unique enough to surely find something. Monty, what’s behind door number three? I’m dreaming of old game shows, Mom filling my tea mug.
Anyway I click it and what I find is no surprise. The photo. A shell of what was once before. They say meth ages you at least a decade for every year. It’s not a lie. I skim through the copy but the headline is where my eyes keep drifting. Grand theft auto. Resisting arrest. Words so sterile, so contextual that they mean very little but tell me everything.
I click on the link a few more times. Stare at the face that looks nothing like the one I knew.
Yeah I’ll fuck with you. Celtics by 18. Over and over again.
Jesse Binger is a fiction writer from New Jersey whose work explores broken people, moral compromise, and quiet acts of redemption. His debut novel The Penitent Hours is currently on submission. His short stories are published or forthcoming at Cowboy Jamboree, Bending Genres, Bristol Noir, Hawkeye, Close to the Bone, Revolution John, Pistol Jim Press and Underbelly Press. You can find him at www.jessebinger.com and X:@jessebinger.
Dodo Eraser 
Leave a comment