A Bull in the Sky with a Broken Heart

His right pinky was an inch away from my left and that space in between was lit with the energy of the galaxies far beyond and above us. We had our backs flush to the ground, our feet firmly pressed in the grass and our eyes fixed up at the sky.

His chest rose and sank like a melody. I tried to match his breath but my oxygen intake was hallowed as I moved my pinky closer to his. The grass swayed neatly around us, fitting us like a glove. There were a few strands of grass blocking the way between my pinky and his and I wanted to flatten them with our touching skin, but I didn’t. My breath caught in my throat and I faked a yawn.

“Tired?” he asked.

“I suppose,” I lied.

It was a cool morning. The sun yawned too. She hid behind a cumulus cloud then appeared and warmed our skin. She went behind a cloud again and the hairs on my arms stood like the few grass strands guarding his hand from mine. She remained hidden for some time as clumps of fluffy clouds scanned the sky in our eyes. White, heavy, with shadows of grey amongst a pale blue. He suddenly lifted the hand inches from mine and my heart stopped. He pointed pass me to a floating cloud.

“Hey- doesn’t that look like a bull?” he asked. “You see the flared nostrils, there and the horns above it?”

The bull took its form and charged slowly into a deformed mist and was something else altogether.

“Yea, I see it,” I replied meekly, still trying so hard to breathe like a normal person.

He didn’t catch on, though. Sometimes, I wondered if he really noticed me at all. Based off the time we spent together, he was my best friend. He knew my hangover order from the local sub shop. He knew my favorite shot at the college hangout. He knew when I was home from class and would crash my dorm room unexpectantly to hang. He knew my secret spot in the library during exam season when it was hard to find a seat. And he knew if he ever needed a ride or a study buddy or a last-minute date to formal, I would always be there.

But, he didn’t know the curve of my back. How I nervously placed my hair behind my ear when he talked to me. How I wore my low-cut pajamas when I knew he would stop by. He didn’t know that it took me three hours to get ready when he asked me to formal day of because his other date bailed. He didn’t know how I cried myself to sleep when I went to the bar to get us our favorite shots and when I returned, he was making out with some blonde bitch.

I know I’m pathetic. My girlfriends tell me enough. They tell me how his guy friends give him shit about me. “Why hang if you’re not going to fuck her?” they apparently say. And he apparently responds, “It’s not like that with her.”

I don’t know what it’s like. When we are alone like this laying in his backyard looking at the sky passing around a fat blunt, he tells me he’s scared of the future. He doesn’t know who he’ll be after the partying stops. He says he wished he had my smarts and my drive and then tells me about a cute Zeta he met at the Tuesday mixer that he asked on a date.

The weed made me feel light headed. My pinky was stiff like it was detached from my body. I said to it, in my head, to touch his hand, but it didn’t listen. The cloud above morphed into a flying dove then drifted into nothingness. Another fleeting moment missed. Another opportunity of bravery passed.

“So…you’re moving out at the end of the week?” he asked.

“Yea. Dorms are switching out for summer school, so I think I’m just going to crash with my parents for a bit until I leave, leave,” I responded.

“But, you’re coming back for graduation, right?”

“Yes, of course. Mother wouldn’t let me miss that for the world.” I rolled my eyes for theatrics.

“You can stay with me, ya know. I mean…if you need a place.” He turned his head to the side and looked at me.

My breath stuck in my chest again. I kept my eyes fixed on the clouds. “You know my mother wouldn’t allow it. She already has our daily itinerary planned to the second.”

We both chuckled. Everyone knew how my mother was.

“Well, shit, Sophie! When am I gonna see you again? Before you jaunt off to Europe and leave me here?”

I awkwardly laughed because I really didn’t know and if I didn’t laugh, I might’ve cried.

“I’ll be in Europe for an entire year. You can always come visit. It’s not like you go to class!”

He took a deep breath. “Yea…and that is why I’m forced to do another year in this shitty college town.”

I actually snorted. “Oh, please! You love being King of the campus.”

He didn’t react how I thought with a retort or a joke or some comeback sent directly from God, but instead looked away and didn’t say anything at all.

He sat up and fingered another blunt from his pocket. I watched him from the corner of my eye. He turned his head away so I couldn’t see his face as he sparked it and inhaled. He passed it my way, still without showing his face and I thought it was deliberate.

I took the blunt with my right hand and put it to my lips. He leaned back on his palms. I hadn’t dared move my left hand. My pinky still hung on hope that it could close the gap between us, but the electricity faded when he shifted positions and moved his hand farther away. I sat up and crossed my legs to pass the blunt back to him, but the pass hung mid-air between us because he hadn’t noticed my movement at all.

“Here,” I finally said looking at him.

“Shit. Sorry.” He took the blunt, careful not to touch my skin, careful not to look at me.

I leaned back on my palms, too, mimicking him. I felt the fire between our pinkies light up again. Could I do it this time? Could I just move an inch and touch him? I looked at him again, but his face was turned away. His cheek looked wet, but maybe I was just high.

I laid back down, exasperated and took a deep breath. The sun was still hiding. The clouds still passed: a menagerie of distorted circus freaks going nowhere fast. My mind saw a heart form then break, but I convinced myself I put it there. That it wasn’t the clouds mocking me.

“What if I don’t want you to go?” he asked.

If my heart kept stopping like this, I would surely die. I remained silent for far too long, but he still didn’t look at me lying beside him in the grass, a summer babe about to pass the fuck out from shock. I took an audible breath in and sighed.

“Well…I would say welcome to the land of the normal where people don’t always get what they want.” I laughed when I said it to make it less of a blow.

“I’m fucking serious, Sophie. I need you. Here. With me.” He dragged out each word. He had to know what he was doing.

I wanted to tell him that hearing him say that was all I ever wanted. I wanted to tell him that I would save myself for him and we could be together when I returned, but I didn’t say any of that.

“Why now?” I finally blurted out.

He took another hit. “I dunno, Soph. I don’t know fucking anything. I’m all fucked up.”

He laid down beside me, turned his body towards mine, grabbed my paralyzed hand with the yearning pinky and kissed it to his lips. He had tears in his eyes and looked at me as if he was pleading me to give him purpose.

It was all I ever wanted, but not like this. My body remained facing the sky. Only my face turned towards him. I let him kiss my hand over and over. I let him give me his best puppy dog eyes. Is this the power he had felt with me?

He pulled my body towards him, away from the sky and wrapped me up into his chest. He kissed my forehead then my cheek.

“I love you, Sophie,” he said and then he kissed me for real and I closed my eyes and let him. His lips were so soft and full and the electricity that had been building sparked out and left us lying there together in the grass and I suddenly became annoyed. I closed my eyes tighter and forced myself to kiss him again.

He pulled his lips back, but still had me in his arms. He smiled and looked smug.

“Did I convince you?” he asked.

“John…” His eyebrows raised as he waited for my next sentence.

“I can’t do this right now,” I said.

His face melted into hurt anger. I picked myself up and walked through his backyard to his back door, passed his kitchen sink piled with used red solo cups, passed his living room where his roommates hit a dank bong and watched cartoons and out his front door. I got into my car and mechanically drove away.

I pulled over a few streets away and sobbed into my hands. He laid on his back and looked up at the sky. He watched the clouds form a heart that eventually drifted apart and broke in two.