drifter//ily

“Are we just gonna sit here?”

I was on top of the lifeguard stand, he stood on the sand below. He couldn’t reach me here. The sun had gone away, the moon shined just as bright. I smiled. It almost reached my eyes.

“It’s cold.” I know. My sneakers were falling apart. The grains of sand got stuck in my hands as I gripped the old 4x4′s, painted white ten years ago. My eyes met his. I don’t know what he saw. It was dark. The streetlight a hundred feet away in the parking lot taunted his paling skin.

We said it to break the silence most times. I hid my face in his shoulder. I always knew I would never be enough. “Should I take you home?” I used to think it was him.

I’m not the main character in this story.

I fell in love in a car that smelled like crumpled homework and his neighbor’s cigarettes. I didn’t mean to. Five months later he still loved her.

“What was it for?” It stings behind my nose. It’s always worse to hold on, but no one’s really afraid of pain anymore, I think.

Did this chapter make him happy?

“You still want something that can never be the same.” Sometimes looking hurts too much. He didn’t come back to the same smile. I let my nail polish chip away instead of taking it off. We slow dance and pretend the walls broke.

My sneakers have holes in the heels.