A Letter To

TW: SH, SI

Dear Guy That Got His First Tattoo for Me,

Never.

"That's our word," you said in the dark the first time I stayed over at your house. I sat on your bed in your t-shirt and I shouldn't have been there.

You had a flair for the dramatic. I think you still do. You were holding a cigarette in your mouth unlit like a character out of The Fault in Our Stars. I didn't know that at the time. I'd read the book but forgotten the words and I thought every piece of you was original.

"Everyone leaves me," I'd said to you. I'm not good at making friends and my mother only values me for the things she can brag to the world about. The things that make her look like a good mother. By this point I had years of practice at feeling alone.

So, you told me you would never leave and to prove it, Never, would be our word.

A couple of days later, while at my aunt's house for Thanksgiving, you called me on the phone. With my boyfriend in the room next to mine, (unmarried, we weren't allowed to share a bed in my aunt's Christian home) you and I talked in the dark. And for once I felt grateful for my aunt's rule.

"I'm going to get our word tattooed across my chest." That's what you said when I answered the phone. I thought you were crazy. We'd only met a few weeks ago when you joined my college dance team.

I stayed on the phone with you all night. I kept the light off and my voice low, attempting not to alert my family or my boyfriend. I tried to talk you out of that tattoo. It was too big. Too much. Too fast.

We'd never even kissed. I didn't think you should mark your untouched skin for the first time with something that made me significant. I only succeeded in convincing you to make the tattoo smaller. A little line on the left side of your chest.

All the girls on the dance team told me you wanted to sleep with all of us. Like a game or a quest. But this seemed like an outrageous thing to do simply to conquer some random girl's virginity.

My boyfriend's best friend took you to get that tattoo. An irony I will never not find cynically funny. You sent me a picture of the tattoo as soon as it was done. The word never but in Japanese. I thought for sure you had lied. I searched the word on my phone. Kesshite.

Never.

We marked each other.

The shimmering black tattoo on your chest is now a faded blue-green. Two thick scars across my right wrist have gone from bright red to a pearly white.

You burned hot and fast like those cigarettes you said you never lit but your clothes always smelled of smoke. I still have the rusted razor blades and the stained gauze and the shirt with the matted sleeve. Some of the girls on the dance team gave me a gift bag and a card for surviving that suicide attempt – the one after you told me I was nothing but a fling eight days after I gave up everything to choose you.

However, naivety is nothing if not best friends with youth. I went Christmas shopping for you less than two weeks after I tried to kill myself because of you - or what felt like because of you. I'd learn much later in my twenties that I have a disorder distinctly defined by the inability to handle rejection. I bought you a lighter engraved with your favorite quote: Infinite Forevers. I don't know who said it, only that you said it to me, followed by "Sometimes forever is just one second." Which I think is a quote from Alice in Wonderland.

I won't lie, had the choice to cut our time short been up to me, I would have spent an infinite amount of seconds next to you. But I was younger than I am now and things back then felt like the entire world or nothing at all.

Never.

We were in your basement when I handed you the lighter. It was our last dance rehearsal before Christmas break. I'd heard about a blow job you received from another girl on the team on the front steps of her house but I didn't care. I waited for everyone to leave and handed you the little gift bag.

I have to get some lighter fluid before I can use it but I love it.

You texted me with no warning. And I didn't hesitate to reply. I forgot about how much it hurt when you said the word fling at six am on your birthday. I forgot the sharpness of the razor but I remembered how warm sitting next to you felt. And I knew how much better it felt to talk to you than to sit with your absence. You were instantly forgiven.

Never.

It snowed a lot that winter. The sidewalk leading to your front door glittered in the streetlights. I took the bus to your house, my backpack containing pj's and a condom. I'd always wanted to run away and I felt like a runaway on that bus - that night.

You told me you were half-vampire. And you weren't kidding. You wanted me to believe you and I said that I did. We made brownies in your kitchen and I sat on the counter and you kissed me like we were in a movie.

I watched the snow falling from the picture window as I laid on my back under the blanket fort you built us. You shared a room with your brother and you told me this night needed to be special. Everyone was asleep. The world was quiet, the sound sucked in by the untouched flakes nestling themselves into the ground outside. The world was quiet except for the feeling of your body against mine and the hum deep in the back of your throat.

We were naked. I'd never been naked next to a man. At least not on a living room floor about to do what we were about to do.

I remember what you said when you rolled over next to me. But I'll keep that between you and me.

Never.

My tattoo did not remain a singular event on your body for long. A quote across your throat. Vampire bites. Music notes. A rose on your forearm that had a petal falling into the palm of your hand. The petal faded quickly, the thick skin on the heel of your hand rejecting the ink.

I paid some guy in a kitchen thirty dollars to tattoo a rose petal on my ankle almost three years later. I mixed it into another tattoo. It's barely the size of a dime but your impact was never meant to be that small.

Never.

We were supposed to run away together. You turned to me that night on your living room floor and said, "We should go to LA." You had dreams of performing on a stage with your guitar. And I believed you could make it. I still kind of think you could.

My mother didn't love me right and yours saw you as the father, so why not go? Disappear and never come back? We never left Chicago. Not together.

Never.

The first time I heard from you after we'd gone our separate ways, I was crying on a bedroom floor in a fight with my current boyfriend when the text came through.

I hope you're okay. You can come to me for anything.

It was 2:40 in the morning. The middle of March. I don't know how you did it. Maybe you were telling the truth about being something supernatural. Or the universe has an excellent sense of humor.

The last time I heard from you, you called me. I answered. It was the first time you'd called since we were together.

I wasn't sure if I should pick up. But I did. You had just gotten out of the mental hospital. I wanted to know that you were alright. You sounded, better. Good. Older.

You read me your poetry. You were always good at that. The thoughts that plague your mind come out so well in paper and ink. Your voice made memories clearer. Memories that sleep in a box in the closet of my childhood bedroom at my dad's house.

Never.

I'd be your friend if you let me.

Hold your hand while you tell me about the way your life has changed since the day you changed mine. You still proclaim that the tattoo on your chest is for me.

You're not someone I'll forget. Not even if your name fades from my lips or if the freckles on your face get fuzzy. Or if I can't quite conjure up the mixture of cigarette smoke and your skin or the taste of your tongue the day after you pierced it.

Never.

The last time I heard from you was just a few months ago. You don't seem like yourself. You cover the tattoo on your neck with a scarf now and cover your arms with long sleeves. I hope whatever you're holding onto now keeps the dark thoughts away. Because even though I don't miss your lips on mine I think the earth would miss your footprints in the snow. Things would never be the same.

Never.

I watched a video of you singing and playing your guitar this morning.

Sometimes I wonder if there will come a day that I never hear from you again.

Never.

I never thought about it until now. You've been filed away in my head as my first. My first time. The first person I lost my mind over. The first time I did anything other than what I thought I was supposed to do. But I never thought about how I was a first for you. Your very first tattoo.

Always and forever - never,

- Robby