justin, part three

i didnt know that stagant florida night that one day over christmas break, years later after i had moved and he had gotten kicked out of college, justin would cry to me in will's driveway; i didnt know that he would look down at the pavement and say to me

why can i not stop thinking about it.

i didnt know that night as i held a beach towel together with one hand and a half drunk bottle of cheap red wine in the other, as i stood on the wooden stairs that led to the beach and listened to him break and crumble in front of all of us, that he would beg me for a kiss under the clear winter sky as i was leaving in hoodies car.

the air was suffocating, even at night. it was senior florida; our only chaperone was the manager at a restaurant judson worked at, a 30 year old named gray who insisted on showing us his penis piercing and offered us lines of coke from the top of his dresser. the night we graduated justin kissed kristas friend natalie. it hurt but it was satisfying too, because i had perfected the art of telling myself that i was better, that he would never find anyone like me, that he was lost and aching and i had made it feel better and that scared him away. that she was just some girl, and thats why he could do it- he knew he wouldnt ever have to think about it or her or who he was when he was with her, or without her, or who he was becoming in relation to who she was becoming.

i dont remember what set him off. i was walking down the stairs to the beach, i remember feeling drunk and happy, i remember the way that week felt like a dollhouse, like something eeriely real but too quaint and perfect to really exist. like something you can manipulate and rearrange, like something you can keep in a certain position for the rest of your life.

he came out of the sliding doors to the kitchen of the house we were renting. he had come along, of course, because he had been coming on these annual trips since before i or most of us even knew they happened. it was an underground operation, but established enough to have a name, "senior florida," and rules- there had to be some sort of chaperone, and the left over money from the senior t-shirt sales would go towards the cost of renting the house. the school knew it happened but, like so many things at altamont, was ignored because we had a reputation to uphold of being the liberal ones, the wild ones. even the headmaster loved the idea of it.

i was trying to steady myself on the way down when i heard him call my name. this was months after the domincan republic trip. my finger still had a bump on it but had stopped hurting me long before he had. there were people on the porch- judson and his girlfriend, molly and maybe a few others. i was on my way to find hoodie and ryne on the beach, to try and tell if there was a storm coming by the way the waves crashed against the shore.

"what the fuck is wrong with you?"

i turned around, carefully keeping the towel above my bathing suit. i didnt say anything, but i opened my mouth like i was going to.

"its over! it never really happened!"

my eyes widened as i tried to make room for the tears.

"i know...i mean, i didnt say it wasnt."

"i can kiss whoever i want to! i like natalie ok! i dont like you anymore!"

i started walking back down the stairs, trying to make them out underneath the tipsiness and the stinging gloss of tears.

"dont walk away- i want you to say something. just say yes or no- do you understand that its over?"

everyone on the porch was silent but no one was looking anywhere but straight ahead. i had stopped walking and was looking at him from between two wooden rungs on the porch.

"yes, justin. i understand."

"OK" he nodded violently as if to say, well then. thats all.

i gathered the towel up and started running for hoodie and ryne. i remember the pavement on the street between our house and the beach, and the noise my bare feet made with each slap. i found them huddled by a giant dune, counting the seconds between waves like it was thunder and lightening.

i didnt know that night that even after years of boyfriends, after relationships that burst into flames in front of my terrified eyes and relationships that disentegrated like candy in my mouth, no words from a boy i used to kiss, a boy whose ribs id counted with my lips in the dark, would stab me quite as hard.