What I Thought He Said

I was very much in love with him. I had been for years. Except, it hadn't been the kind of love that keeps you warm on cold nights. It was the kind of love that makes you colder... and that night was one made of solid ice.

He was going to take me on a date that night. When getting ready, I alternated between sitting in my room with a measuring cup to throw up in and hanging my head directly over the toilet. I felt putrid inside. I was going to be hurt that night. I could feel it. And I had already been hurt so many times by this particular boy, I didn't know if I could take it. This on-again, off-again, here-a-little, there-a-little thing between us had to stop and I didn't know how to stop it. I wanted to stop being charming. I wanted to stop being beautiful.

I was holding a measuring cup under my face with one hand and rolling up a hair curler with the other. My pride wouldn't let me be ugly. If my heart was going to get a third piercing that evening, I was going to get it looking flawless.

That was the only night I did that. Normally, if I expected a date to go badly, I would wear all boys' clothes. Once, a girl came to my house to see one of my older brothers. I was a little girl, and I opened the door and let her in. I could see at a glance that she had high expectations for the night, and I, who knew more about which way the wind was blowing than she did, wanted to whisper to her to pull the pretty clips out of her hair. It was going to be a disappointing night and her prettiness was going to make it feel worse. So, anytime I thought the date would not be what I wanted, I dressed like a boy, like one of my brothers. I was one of them, and they didn't get their hearts broken by teenage boys.

But this one night, I was getting ready for the blood in my heart to come in cold squirts like a sprinkler running in winter and freezing everything. I was going to look beautiful, be charming, and at my best I was going to watch all of my hopes come crashing down, breaking everything I had once dreamed of.

He knocked on the door.

I was ready.

I had left the measuring cup in the bathroom and I stepped forward like nothing was wrong.

It was a date. Teenagers have dates. There was another couple with us. There were even more people we met and saw as the cold night carried on. He drove me home. He kissed me and it was supposed to be magic but tasted like ashes.

I had to do something. I had to make it better. I had to be impressive, daring, and somehow better.

I wasn't.

When he dropped me off at home and his eyes had stopped being blue. Instead, they had become gray like the night around him had become part of him. The color was gone, but something of the shape of him was still there and for the moment, still mine. I did not remember that he was not what he seemed to be and he was anything but mine.

“Thanks for a good time,” I said, or something like that.

And he nodded and looked into my eyes with a slight smile. “What time is your church tomorrow?” Those were the words he said, but it sounded like he said, “I'm never going to give you what you want.”

I glanced up, an expression of horror on my face. I told him the time and we finished our goodbyes. I didn't hear from him the next day, because the time of my church had not mattered to him in the least, and no matter what else he said to me after that, it always sounded like he was saying the words, “I'm never going to give you what you want.”