April

That car would forever be connected to heartbreak for Celeste. She had never studied the cracks in a dashboard so intently, nor fingered the texture of a seatbelt so thoroughly as that night. The car itself was the color of sand and desolation, like a desert as the sun is resisting it's ascent over the dunes. Her hands were shaking and her breath refused to come evenly. Even his scent was different, foreign, as if the city and the wild weekend had soaked into his very pores and made him into someone else.1

"I'm sorry," he said, placing his hand on her knee. Her shaking fingers balled into fists and the dashboard suddenly looked warped.2

"Don't touch me."3

They sat in silence, her searching him with everything but her eyes, looking for the boy she trusted. He was nowhere to be found.4

"I love you."5

"Don't say that."6

All of his clothes were piled in the back seat beside the robot costume he had made. The lampposts turned the boxes to the color of dried blood, with the arms glinting like sinister murder weapons--a real live metaphor of their childhood love affair gone horribly wrong.7

She wondered where they had fucked around. If he first kissed her in her car, after the dance. If he had waited until the late night was becoming early morning and they were half asleep beside one another. Her eyes closed, she tried to imagine the sounds his new lover made, and whether she had looked or kept her eyes closed.8

She searched the future, trying to imagine a day when the questions would leave and she would feel free. When the thought of oral sex didn't make her chest hurt, nor the particular thickness of early summer air make her coke on her closing throat and welling tears.9

"I was trying to have my own life," he whispered.10

She knew, then, that freedom was a luxury she would never afford.