She'd never know

I remember.

A short story.

I remember now: They'd always call her Keo. I remember her brown skin being wrapped in shiny black silk, and her molasses colored curls, always held back from her round,pouted face with a clip shaped like a butterfly. I watched them from across the room in the once illuminated club that was now dimly lit as the night grew darker.
   To me, It was easy to tell she didn't care, care about the sweet nothings that met her ear as he whispered. He thought his words were like a soothing lullaby, the way her face seemed to light up like a babies' when their mother would press her lips against their belly and blow a raspberry. To her, his words tasted of black coffee and cigarettes yet she smiled so large that the dark gap between her artificial pearly whites revealed every bland secret, hiding behind her pink lips.
    The purples and blues spun around the room, like her dark brown eyes when he said "Let's get married." Still she'd respond. She'd cover her unfed mouth to stop the possibility of forbidden denial spilling out onto the patterned floor, and frolic to the music she could no longer hear, the synth pop contorting into ear plugs she couldn't recall placing into her manically pierced ears, and her response would be: "I do".

***

I recall her asking me for a ride home that evening. I'm still unsure as to why she'd ask such a thing, given she was a newlywed. I mean, aren't you supposed to go home with your fiance?

My knowledge upon such a topic was vague- "You wouldn't get it," Keo whispered. My fingers gripped the steering wheel as I approached the red light, taking the time to examine her face.
    "What wouldn't I get?" I huffed out. I turned my focus back to the road, the green from the stoplight illuminating her sullen face.

  "The feeling of being trapped in the hands of someone. His fingers clasped around you like a rustic cage." I watched her hand rise and settle to the back of her head, fiddling with the butterfly clip. "Oh and my days, the nagging never ends."

"So why'd you say yes?" I side eyed, watching her shift to the left and then to the right. And the hand that held her butterfly clip, suddenly in her lap. I noticed all the signs without noticing a single thing that night. She was right, I wouldn't get it.

"As a woman, I have a role to fulfill, whether I wish to or not. Yet, you, as a man, all you have to do is court someone. Not you particularly, since you don't wish to." Her words cascaded into my ears and I had no remark, because yet again she was right. That's what I loved about her. But I didn't love her enough to understand what she really meant. She never wished to get married.

And I remember now: The morning after I dropped her home that night, I received a knock at my door. I should've known from how the birds stopped chirping. I didn't blink at the words that entered my mind and dissolved there, mended themselves into my memories, just like she had. "Keo left this for you. I'm so sorry."
A letter and butterfly clip. And the last sentence cools the burns she left upon me- "I have finally found my way out of his cage, at last a butterfly."

...
a/n: this is actually a story I wrote for my American Lit class, and my teacher said it was one of his favorites. So, I thought it would be nice to share w y'all as well. Hope you enjoyed.