Ready

I sat down, curled up with my knees against my chest, and gave up. It was that simple. I would become a part of the scenery, and let the drunken masses put their cigarettes out on my motionless form as they entered the club, night after night, until I expired. It was, clearly, the best option. Theo disagreed. That son of a bitch, in his trendy jacket, and his scuffed up shoes. He wouldn't let me give up my will to live on a concrete bench in a not-quite-shitty neighborhood, and I hated his beautiful pierced face. I growled at him as he badgered me to get up and go back inside.

Anna would have let me pout, if we hadn't brought Theo.

"I never liked her, you know," Theo confessed. It wasn't the first time I'd heard it.

I rolled my eyes so hard I saw the corner of my brain where, apparently, I'd stashed all
those years of piano lessons so many eons ago. "You don't like anybody."

Anna rolled on another layer of lip balm. "Well," she began, popping the cap back on and struggling to shove it into the pocket of her skinnies, "Some of us did like her."

I took a deep breath. "You like everybody."

"Okay, true, but," Here she gave up trying to squeeze her cherry flavored whatever into her jeans and started using it to gesture. "I was talking about you. You liked her. What Theo and I thought of her is irrelevant. It's your feelings we're dealing with here, and if you need to take some time out here by yourself, I say do it, girl."

Anna. My Anna. She hates confrontation, loves to comfort the sad and lonely, and in the privacy of her own home, wears fluffy slippers and tee shirts with kittens on them. Theo is something altogether different. From anybody or anything. He wears whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and you can be damn sure that he'd rock one of those kitten shirts hard if he ever felt so inclined. He says what he wants and does what he wants too, and loves fiercely. That last part he has in common with Anna.

They're also both boy crazy. Me? Not so much. But there was this girl, Amara. And that was the problem that night. There was this girl, and there was us, and then there wasn't. In the interest of full disclosure, looking back, I'm not sure now that there ever really was us. But that night, at that point in my angry, sad, tantrum filled healing process, in my mind, there had been us. And apparently, not two weeks after a fucked up note informing me she had deleted all my info, and requesting I do the same with hers, there was them. There was her, and there was him. Looking absolutely fucking smitten.

They touched too much, they smiled too much, and they stared too much. It was infuriating, and disgusting, and had they no shame, acting like that in public? It was everything I'd wanted from Amara, but could never get, and it felt like a knife in my insides. All I'd asked was that she hold my hand in public. That she acknowledge something where other people might see it, and not be fucking afraid of what they might think. I'd been patient. I had been so, unbelievably saintly with my patience.

Then one morning, I wasn't anymore. She'd spent the night, and as I'd pulled on my coat and grabbed my liquid meal replacement from the fridge, I'd said it. "Theo says he's taking us out tonight. His treat, double date. He was worried that would freak you out, but I told him after two months, it was about time you and I at least sat on the same side of the table."

She'd given me a tiny, uncomfortable smile and shifted her weight, and I pressed on. I'm not good at reading people, okay?

"Maybe if we get enough wine into you, I can trick you into holding my hand." Not smooth. I leaned in and kissed her. She returned the kiss, rather stiffly, and didn't say a word to me as I breezed out the door and gone to work. I came home to her key to my place on the counter next to the note that said we were done.