My 25 milligram edible gummy is just starting to hit when Jamie tells me he doesn’t want a relationship. He says he’s going to Chicago soon, on account of his acceptance to law school and impending lease expiration. I’m zoning in and out, touching my front teeth with my tongue too much and melting into the sidewalk. Between the two of us it’s all forehead sweat and stale deodorant and bad timing. At 26 everyone is always moving or marrying or something in between.
Two girls on the park bench next to us are talking about phone sex. It’s August in the worst of ways. My tongue is dry and my skirt sticks to the dampness on my back. I used to do it in college for extra cash, one of the girls says. My fake name was Monica and I’d charge $100 for an hour. It was easy money until it wasn’t.
Jamie is convinced I’m in love with him. I can tell because he places both hands on mine as he talks, like a doctor in a hospital waiting room. Sun seeps through the outline of his hair and tears at my pupils. I squint, involuntarily, removing my hand from his to lift it to my eyes. My face, scrunched up and slightly sunburned, will be his final image of me, the last girl he fucked in Richmond.
I could’ve really liked you, he says. If things were different.
I let Jamie think he broke my heart because it’s hot and I’m dehydrated and near passing out. He kisses me melodramatically, his hands firmly caging my face. I steal the saliva in his mouth with my tongue. My eyes are wide open, counting the steps between where we’re standing and the convenience store up the next block. I’m at fifteen when Jamie pulls away. He leans his head against mine, his fingers trailing slowly down the apple of my cheek.
He makes me promise I’ll take care of myself. I nod. I know I’ll never see him again.
Scalding pavement burns through the foam of my cheap flip flops as I walk. My toes are moist against the rubber, fresh blisters forming in each crevice. The discomfort requires most of my focus. My brain is scattered and preoccupied. My brain is pink chewing gum.
The convenience store is cramped and airconditioned and feels like fucking heaven. There’s about fifty corner stores in this neighborhood alone but they all follow the same formula. I grab water and a nerd’s rope and skittles in thirty seconds flat.
The cashier is hitting his vape with one hand and half heartedly swatting the flies surrounding the grab and go food items with the other. He sighs when I approach, as if I just entered his living room unsolicited and asked him to cook me dinner.
How are you today? he asks, fiddling the button of the hand scanner. I just got broken up with, I think of responding, but I smile instead; the words sitting like marbles in my mouth. I give him six bills, crumpled and lightly saturated from the swamp of my back pocket.
You’re two short, he tells me.
I paid this exact amount last week, I say. He shrugs.
Inflation, he replies. Cus’ of the war.
I drop the skittles back on the counter and move to the exit, trying to remember which war he’s talking about. I almost text Jamie to ask, since he’s a total news junkie, but realize I can’t anymore. I rip open the water bottle and chug so fanatically the liquid grips at my throat.
That cashier is full of shit anyway. And so is Jamie. And so am I. Everyone’s so full of shit.
On my walk home I think of the time I was eleven and rode my bike down the tallest hill in the neighborhood. I collided in such a cartoonishly terrible fashion against a tree I was sure I’d irreparably ruined my body. I laid in the grass for a long time, paralyzed by the physics. It’s easy to forget yourself in the quickness, to forget yourself in your own desperation, your own gravity.
I bent every joint to check everything was still intact. First the elbows and then the legs and then the wrists and ankles, moving in circular motions. I do the same with Jamie now, assessing the damage.
I picture him entering his apartment, removing his guilt with his brown loafers at the front door. I remember then how I felt at the bottom of the hill when I was eleven, all dried tears and scraped knees.
Afterwards I felt so lucky I hadn’t died that I left my bike there and ran all the way home.