We sipped our electric blue slushies and sat on the white hot corner curb of North and Williams. It was a particularly sultry Wednesday early in July, and I’d woken up an hour early to do my makeup for you. That hour of preparation became an hour wasted as the heat wiped the makeup from my face, but you didn’t seem to mind. I tried to join your mentality with my own, even as the wind blew my separating bangs around to tangle with my eyelashes.
The glimmering sheen of sweat on both of our skin matched that of the slow melting and condensation of our slushies that were too filled with syrup to really enjoy. We both got the Blue Raspberry flavor, and I liked that. I wanted to take a picture – I didn’t, but I wanted to.
We sat in a comfortable silence, watching time tick by in the reality around us. I would miss sharing that feeling with you on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, but I knew that this was better for the both of us. You knew that too, but you were always quiet about that kind of thing. I think that you just dealt with it within yourself. You got lost in your mind a lot, and I wish I could do that. I spoke things out loud in order to grasp their meanings. I’d yell and shout to get my points across, and you would whisper and look towards the ground.
I poked the straw around at the blue-puddled remnants of my dissatisfying drink, and thought of how my mom told me that everyone gets into serious relationships before they leave for college, and that I should save myself from getting my heart broken.
I looked up at you while you were pushing your own sweaty bangs off from your forehead, and I couldn’t help but think that she was right in most of what she’d said. My mom was right about most things, even though I wasn’t always the first to admit that.
The thing she was wrong about, though?
She made getting your heart broken sound like nothing short of lemon juice in an open wound. But then you were getting up and climbing into your dad’s old pickup truck – your dad waved to me, he didn’t know.
As you climbed into that labored car, the only thing I thought was that it had been a pleasure to have my heart broken by you.
I picked up your plastic cup that you’d left next to me on the white hot corner curb of North and Williams, and your dad drove away with you in the passenger seat. I threw both of our cups away together, and wondered if I’d ever see you again.