Every Girl I've Loved A Lifetime Ago

Izzy

Isabelle smelt like fresh cut grass and tasted like pomegranate.
She played checkers with Mr. Chester after school on Wednesdays and played soccer with her brother on the big field behind Walmart in her spare time.
Isabelle, Izzy to her friends, stole a shopping cart once.
I never did find out how or why.
When she was younger, Izzy almost choked on a lollipop and she refused to try one since.
She had eyes like a waterfall, lips like raspberries, a voice like thunder, skin like chestnuts, and a brain like sunshine.
She had freckles like stars, brows like caterpillars, a smile like honeysuckle, and jokes like a riot.
Izzy had hair like a lion's mane, feet like a dancer's, a laugh like a windchime, and teeth like pearls.
She drove a red Cadillac that used to be her mom's and hung pink fuzzy dice on the rear view mirror because she saw a white guy do it in a movie once.
She memorized facts about the stars, the earth, the planets, the galaxies, the sun, the moon.
Izzy was enraptured with outer space.
She was strewn with stardust, painted with the heavens, coated in the cosmos. Her mind was an asteroid, longing to be back home.
So she studied and poured over books and documents and text.
Took me stargazing on our first date.
Had posters of the Milky Way and Andromeda and Sirius and Neptune and Neil Armstrong hanging in her room.
Wanted to be an astronaut, an astrophysicist, an astronomer, anything to get her closer to the stars.
She had cried one day- our fourth date stargazing- as she told me her life goals, her heart on her tongue
"I'm so insignificant, I'm but a speck of dust in this ever expanding universe. I- I want to leave a mark on the world. Not just the earth, the world. I want my footprint on Mars, on Saturn, on Jupiter. On some new planet we haven't discovered yet. I want to be immortalized, permanent, important. I want people, four generations down, to hear my name and think of space. To hear my name and think of the universe and all its secrets, its riddles, its psalms. To hear my name and think of the girl who unraveled them all."
I kissed her so hard that my lips bruised and my breath shortened.
I kissed her so deep I didn't mind the blades of the grass itching my skin, I barely noticed the knot forming on my back.
I kissed her so much that I was sure that my tongue and hers would be melded together. 
Combined, stuck for an eternity.
We met at a gas station at midnight on a Sunday.
Lucille had left for the last time and I was high and sad and alone.
I was eating Doritos with my red dyed fingers and dried mascara tracks running down my cheeks, leaning against the Mini Mart of a Mobile gas station. It was a pathetic sight.
Isabelle pulled in with her sleek car, J Cole pumping out the speakers, and I thought for sure it was stolen.
The fluorescent, red, glaring lights of the Mobile Gas sign illuminated my face. My eyes were mournful, the downward curve of my lips knew the pain of a thousand heartbreaks, the fray of my leather jacket and denim shorts giving life to my soulful story.
Izzy always told me I looked like a painting right then and there.
She said she fell in love with the art I unintentionally created.
Izzy attended tenth grade at Greenstone High, on the other side of town.
Her favorite teacher was the science teacher, Miss Claremont, but her favorite staff member was the janitor, Mr. Chester, who had a certain god given gift of beating Izzy at checkers every single match.
I knew all of Izzy's friends- June, Maia, Everly, Alicia.
I knew all of Izzy's acquaintances- Drew, Shirley, Lolita, Betsy.
I knew all of Izzy's enemies- Cassandra, Penelope, Daniel, George.
I knew all of Izzy's family- Mamá Ramirez, Beck, Melanie, David
And they all knew me- Isabelle's girlfriend who has sad, sorrowful eyes and a warm, moonbeam grin.
The girlfriend who seems glued to the Caddliac's passenger seat, hip-hop pulsing through her core as she waits for Isabelle to come back from whatever extracurricular activities she's participating in this time.
The girlfriend with the quick, sharp jokes and the loud, startling laugher.
The girlfriend who calls Izzy Stargirl or Moonfire and can't whistle, and kisses each and every freckle speckled across Izzy's face.
My friends, my acquaintances, my enemies, my family knew nearly nothing of Isabelle.
My friend who lived on the other side of town.
Friend.
That's part of the reason Izzy and I couldn't work out.
Izzy with her chestnut skin, raspberry lips, and riot jokes craved validation.
She hunted for it, fished for it, trapped for it.
She'd smile extra sweetly when you called her pretty, laugh more musically when you called her funny, blush even rosier when you called her smart.
And she'd do anything in her power to make you compliment her again.
I could never give her what she needed, I wasn't ready.
I couldn't let her meet my family, I couldn't show her off adoringly to my friends, I couldn't mock my enemies with her beauty, her brain.
This was something she needed, expected. And I wasn't prepared to give it to her.
We left each other at a makeshift soccer field behind the Walmart at two in the afternoon on a sweltering hot Wednesday.
We fought, I yelled and pouted and threw a hissy fit.
"You don't understand, Isabelle!"
"I can't do it!"
"Listen to me, Stargirl."
We fought, she huffed and scoffed and cried.
"Are you ashamed of me?"
"I just want to meet your mamá, is that too much to ask!?"
"I am in love with you, I want to shout it from the rooftops. I want to tell people door to door. I want to scream it running down the streets. Why must you hide my love?"