Sat in the backseat of Luke’s pick-up, your first relationship smelt of leather and cold tobacco. You were ditching last period, mouths pressed against each other when his tongue pushed your lips apart, straying inside you. The surprise opened your eyes wide, but you didn’t push him away. He kept his closed and didn’t slow down. It moved around, something alive and wet like a slug, exploring the roof of your mouth. You went along despite the disturbing feeling of his saliva mixing with yours. You didn’t think you were ready but maybe he knew better. He was a senior.
Nobody wanted a girlfriend who kissed with her mouth closed. The following day, everybody in the school hallway looked at you differently, you were one of those girls now.
***
Nicholas was older and sophisticated. You met him at a party a friend dragged you to under the premise that you needed cheering up. From what, you weren’t sure. You didn’t know anybody, and she had disappeared on you shortly after getting drinks from the kitchen. You were sitting on an emerald velvet sofa with an uninteresting glass of coke when a blond woman collapsed in the empty space next to you.
“Don’t you think Nicholas is a babe?” She asked, over-sized earrings pulling at her earlobes. They were made out of several hard shapes of colourful plastic held together by small metallic rings. You found them simultaneously mesmerising and appalling. You needed someone to help you form an opinion on them.
“Who’s Nicholas?” you asked.
“Our host. Don’t you know him?” You shook your head. “You must meet him. Here he is. Nicholas!” She waved until she caught his eye, and he came to sit next to you.
You were the last guest to leave the party, finally existing when Nicholas led you by the hand the next morning for breakfast at the café around the corner.
His hand always guided you, around tables at restaurants, crossing streets, navigating the rise and fall of his naked body. Under his instruction sex was an enjoyable act; the dedicated student, you were paid attention, eager to please.
***
“Everybody loves Sam,” Ashley said as you got out of her car.
Your fate was sealed with her words. If you wanted to be anybody then you had to love him too.
Sam was too much: smiles, words, energy. Loving him was exhausting, like chasing a kite caught in a storm. You watched him skate on a strip of asphalt, a black ribbon against the white sand of the beach. Eyes squinting hard against the sun, you molested a piece of gum while you cheered him on. Sam found smoking deeply unattractive, so you gave up that part of yourself for him. He rewarded you with kisses, joked that finally your mouth didn’t taste like an ashtray. He helped you believe you were that girl.
***
Sprawled on bed, phone wedged between your shoulder and your ear, you listened to the steady flow of Ashley’s words as she filled you in about her new boss.
“I met someone,” you said when she asked what’s new.
“Oh… that’s great.”
“What?” you asked, lighting a cigarette, the first one since Sam ended things.
“Nothing, I’m happy for you.” Silence hardened between you; she broke it first with a laugh. “It’s just… you know how you get.”
The comment unnerved you, the long drag you took from your cigarette turned your cheeks hollow. You dedicated yourself to each relationship to make a success of them, tended to them like your grandmother had looked after her bonsai trees – with meticulous care. Ashley should be supportive of your efforts.
“Anyway, do you want to catch a movie this weekend?” she asked.
“I can’t, I’m going to a Yoga retreat with Tom.”
***
“What are those?” Adam asked, opening one of the last boxes you brought over. He pulled out a couple of books about Tuscany and Australia.
“Nothing, just books,” you replied.
“I didn’t realise you were into travel.”
You weren’t. He had just unearthed the last relics of your relationship with Quentin. You had held on to those to remember the girl you used to be, like the blender you used with Tom gathering dust in a kitchen cupboard, or the rollerblades that had belonged to the girl you were when dating Sam.
***
Nicholas loved eating out, which helped you hide your under-developed cooking skills pretty well, but you would learn to develop those for Tom.
“What’s good here?” you asked.
“The salmon,” he answered, his eyes still riveted to his menu.
You flinched inside. The slimy consistency of fish irked you, as if it was a food group not to be trusted. Seafood had its fair share of culpability in a lot of food poisoning incidents.
“What will it be for you, Miss?”
You fingered your menu jittery at his scrutiny and request for an answer.
“The salmon,” you blurted out.
***
Online dating was a one-time disaster. You typed the website name, clicked the ‘Register’ button, but never got past creating your profile. The cursor blinked at you like an expectant heartbeat, waiting for your answers. ‘Describe your hobbies’ — how were you supposed to know what the right answer was?
***
Sam was impossible to satisfy, always throwing his arms in the air or rolling his eyes after you answered, “whatever you want, baby.”
“Come on, can’t you make any decisions? Have opinions of your own? I need someone who’s their own person,” he told you the night he packed his bags.
Holding back the tears, you said, “Just tell me who that is, and I’ll be that person for you.”
He never gave you an answer.
***
Steve knew what he wanted, and you hadn’t learned how to say no. You sat in a room full of shadows, watching the movie he had chosen while munching on his salted popcorn. He held your hand; let you wear his varsity jacket, showing you how much he liked you.
Now it was your turn to show your affection. Taking your hand, he placed it on his zipper. Your body stiffened but it stopped there, you were the girl who wanted to make Steve happy. The rough metal grated your fingertips with every stroke.
“What if somebody sees us?”
“Shush. It’s fine.”
You believed him because you had no reason not to. Afterwards, he took you for chilli fries and coke at Denny’s and he paid.
***
Everything told you that the world was built for two. Down the aisle of the supermarket, you picked up packs of two steaks two chicken breasts, before dropping the lasagne and fish pie that served two. When single you froze the second piece of meat to stop it from going off, but they never left the freezer, turning the Arctic drawers into a cemetery dedicated to victims of your singleton status. Tom made you clean out all the ‘bodies’ when you started dating.
“Let’s go to the cinema,” Tom said, kissing your stomach.
“It’s so expensive.” You would rather stay on his bed and have him kiss your navel all night.
“It’s Wednesday two-for-one night.” Leaving you alone in bed, he picked up his jeans from the floor and got dressed. The end of his sentences never curved into questions. His decisiveness attracted you, nestling in it you relinquished all powers to him. The surrender slowed your breath.
“What’s on?”
The prospect of his lips on your stomach for the rest of the evening waned with every layer of clothing he added, so you held on to the last kiss he had left on your skin as a memento. You didn’t search for the moment it was agreed that you were going to the cinema, instead you looked for a dress to slip in.
“The Rialto’s playing A Bout de Souffle.”
Your mouth twisted at the French title; the edges of the words blunted by an American accent.
“Sounds great,” you said, taking the hand he extended.
***
You ate your peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a park bench. Lost and single for the last four months — the longest you had gone without a defining relationship.
Across the path, an old couple sat close together feeding breadcrumbs to pigeons. You looked at their similar lopsided smiles, the way they both wiped their hands on their lap after throwing the crumbs. Did they start out that way or did the year together blend their features and gestures, until they melted into one another?
***
You were a blank piece of paper Tom knew the right words to pen on, translated the gibberish of your emotions, underlined your flaws. Like the day you told him you saw him over by Alfredo’s. You called but he didn’t hear you.
“That wasn’t me.”
“Are you sure? You were with a colleague, that blonde girl who works in sales,” you said, uncorking a bottle of red. It made a pop, the sound of a good wine, Nicholas had taught you when you were both together.
“What are you insinuating?” He gave you a look that shrank your spine.
“Nothing. I just thought you didn’t hear–”
“Please drop it. It’s getting silly, it wasn’t me.”
You hid in your glass of wine. Tom was correct, you were being silly. He knew you better than you did.
In the end he left because you weren’t able to be the confident woman he needed.
***
You were talking to Jessica during first period recess when Robbie marched over to you. He stood legs apart, fists on his hips.
“We need a princess.” His hand closed around your wrist, crescents of dirt caught under his fingernails, and he dragged you away from Jess.
“Okay, you’re the princess now.”
“Sure,” you replied.
He placed you on the chessboard of his childhood, a piece he instructed and moved around. He gave you purpose; grateful, you committed to be the best princess in need of rescue.
***
You sat on the edge of Steve’s bed, making out. Door closed, his mother cooking a pot roast downstairs. The smell of meat wafted though the half-open door. His kisses were strong, bending your spine until you collapsed onto the mattress. He made you fearless because that’s what he wanted.
His hand stroked your thigh, hitching higher until it disappeared under your skirt, finding its way under the elastic of your underwear. Because you were his girl you didn’t stop him. You didn’t regret it until you were with Jeff because he loved you so much more and made everything special.
***
You sat on your daddy’s lap; the place where you started.
“Daddy look at my drawing,” you said, tugging at the sleeve of his shirt.
His attention was on the match on TV, on your brother’s little league games. So, you abandoned ballet, trading pas-de-deux and entre-chats for shin guards and the offside rule. You missed the pirouettes and the outfits, but your father’s eyes on you dulled the ache.
Your adopted love of football wasn’t enough to stop him from leaving. You were too small to do it all. You didn’t speak to your mother for a month.
“It’s your fault he left,” you shouted at her. “You didn’t try hard enough. You didn’t even try to like football.” You slammed your bedroom door in her face.
***
You were running late for work, flying down the hallway when the reflection in the mirror caught your eye. The girl staring at you in the mirror looked familiar but who was she? Nicholas’ girlfriend, or was she Tom’s? The dark circles under her eyes suggested that she might have been Sam’s.
She was a nobody, one of the many unremarkable single girls, populating the sidewalks and one-bedroom apartments in the city, who ate cereal for dinner, whose place was cluttered with the vestiges of old relationships, of whom she used to be.
© Laure Van Rensburg is a French writer living in the UK. Her short stories have appeared in various publications and placed in competitions. They can also be found on her website: www.laurevanrensburg.com. She is an accomplished librocubicularist. Twitter handle: @Laure0901
