Every Girl I've Loved A Lifetime Ago

Daisy

TW: Suicide

During the summer, I worked at Trader Joes to save up for an apartment to share with my old dorm roommate and Haruka.
There was this girl who came by every Sunday to buy matcha flavored chewing gum, mango flavored mochi rolls, and sleeves of JoJos.
She smelled like coconut oil and spearmint mouthwash, had a pretty crooked grin, and had a tattoo of a rose snaked around a sword on her forearm.
She parked in the handicap spot, always asked for her receipts, and avoided Toni Markston when he was on check out duty.
Her darkened hair was always twisted into different styles.
She wore sweaters and sneakers, baseball caps and golden chains, long sleeved shirts and ripped jeans.
Her name was Daisy, she spoke like spring, and her green eyes were starling but warm.
Her dimples popped and she tilted her head back when she was amused.
Daisy often fidgeted and glanced around as I rang her up, never looking me in the eye.
She rarely spoke to me, but when she did it felt like she was sharing with me a chapter out of her autobiography.
I was feeling extra courageous one day, my number scribbled in hasty blue ink on the receipt.
I doubted she even saw it, but two weeks later she was at my checkout with a glass of white wine.
"For our date on Thursday" she had winked. My face flushed and a dopey grin spread like butter.
Thursday was perfect. It was brunch at Eggs N Things. I learned that Daisy hated omelets and English muffins.
I learned that Daisy had an older brother in Orange County and a Border Collie named Buttons.
I learned that Daisy chewed her bottom lip when she was thinking, got a little too nervous talking to strangers, and lightly scratched her arm when she was uncomfortable.
Daisy kept to herself so I did most of the talking, but I didn't mind that.
Daisy could play the guitar, named her car Ruth, and slept with candles burning.
Daisy was perfect, she belonged on a teen romance movie set as the main character.
She was smart, shy, modest, pretty, and her only fault was being too meek for her own good.
But she had a lot of little orange bottles in her medicine cabinet.
Daisy was not as well as she seemed.
I found Daisy with her veins hacked up so deep I swore I saw bone, blood running in rivulets down the cracks in the bathroom tiles, and her face clammy and ashen and undeniably lifeless.
I didn't cry, I knew it was coming.
And I called 911, prepared funeral arrangements, hugged her older brother, like I was daydreaming. I was dazed and distanced and doing but not exactly feeling.
I kept thinking of Virginia, of all the pain I could've spared her.
I thought myself a despicable person. I would rather watch my girlfriend slowly destroy herself than get involved and risk her anger.