Check the Margins
About the Author: Abby is a junior at the University of Arizona, double-majoring in English and Journalism. Any spare time she has is spent reading or writing. She reads every genre from contemporary to non-fiction, although she tends to love classical fiction and romance fantasy stories! She writes short stories and is currently in the process of publishing her poetry manuscript. She aspires to work in the publishing industry after graduation and to publish her own books someday soon. She also enjoys horror movies, art, and film studies.
Content Warning: Profanity, suggestive language, tobacco and substance use
There’s a slow curl to the smoke that falls from my lips, nearly invisible against the winter scene casting me in bitter snow. A building could catch fire down the block, and we would all be glad for some warmth. Winter never seems to end, but then it fades to summer, and we curse the sun again.
“Say something.” His voice has a desperate rasp, as if he’s the one who’s been smoking packs of Marlboros since the news came out.
“What do you want me to say?” Snowflakes bite at my cheeks and eyelashes. I blink them away with the annoyance I’d give an insect.
“I don’t want you to say what I want to hear!” Familiar frustration breaks through his tone. If I looked his way, I’d see that vein in his neck pulsing with anger. “I want you to say something—fucking anything!”
I dare to look at him. The wind pushes against me, as if warning me not to. I don’t listen. I never do.
His profile looks the same as the day I met him.
Memories of him always come in waves, not the small kind that brush your feet and kiss your skin. No. He’s a tidal wave, slamming me underwater with the coral and sea urchins.
There was a time before I knew the truth of what I’d gotten myself into. We were driving down the mountain with Claire and Derek, who sat up front in the black Tacoma he swore no one else could touch. With the windows down, we could taste the pine trees. We hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol, yet he acted as if he were drunk.
“Run your fingers through my hair,” he begged, his eyes half-moons. As if I could ever say no. Love had always been my weakness, and he knew how to use it.
“I shouldn’t.” I swallowed my fears and prayed he’d go easy on me.
“It’s fine.” He grabbed my hands, bringing them to his hair, then rested a hand on my knee. “Friends do this all the time.”
But we were never friends, and we never could be. He had her waiting at home while I waited for him to choose me. I kept waiting, like a child on an elementary school carpet, hand outstretched to the ceiling as if that would make them pick me.
I knew he was a flirt. But I saw a flicker of loneliness in him that called to me. It buried itself in my soul, and I fear it might never leave. It’s why I smoke now. It’s why I’m here, talking to him again all these months later.
I know she’s at this party, probably wearing a beautiful yellow dress that outshines my envy-green one. I can’t bear to look for her.
At first, I enjoyed the reception. Thornless roses scattered the beautiful room. The bride laughed, the groom laughed, and the clinking glasses sounded like wind chimes.
The music died when I opened my eyes and saw him walking toward me, as if tethered to me. His charming smile salted the wound I’d spent months trying to heal.
A ghost of my own self-sabotage. Eyes whose true color I never learned. Blue or green? Somewhere between, perhaps, a shade I could write a poem about.
Time must have been at his disposal, for it froze as he willed it so.
He kissed my cheek and asked how I’d been. My answer was as short as the messages he used to send. He asked me to dance. I lit my cigarette.
I don’t remember how we got out here. I don’t remember what I said to upset him.
“Okay.” I blow smoke toward the beautiful patio. The winter air swallows it as snowflakes attack like piranhas.
The entire party has moved outside, as if we’re stuck between past and present. Perhaps weddings make us nostalgic, yearning for things we can’t have.
“That’s it?” His frown almost mocks me. I want to shake him and tell him he knows nothing of confusion or hurt, nothing of crying on bathroom tiles.
“What do you want me to say?” I take another drag. I don’t even like the taste.
“I want you to talk to me!” He throws his hands up. “You’ve been avoiding me, and I just—” His voice breaks. “I miss you. I miss us.”
The cigarette falls from my lips. It isn’t strong enough to help me now. The star of my desires and fears stands before me, demanding things I cannot give him.
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what?” His brows furrow. “Talk to me?”
“No.” I look at him, truly look at him, as I’ve avoided doing since that night in the car. Tears gather at my waterline. I wonder if the air will freeze them before they fall. “I can’t do this.” I gesture between us. “We can’t be friends.”
“I don’t understand.”
That makes two of us.
“I can’t keep doing this.” My words threaten to quiver. “It hurts too much.”
“What are you talking about?” He reaches out, as if one touch could still my thoughts. “We’re friends. You can talk to me.”
“No, I can’t.” I laugh without humor. “I never could.”
“What does that even mean?” His voice softens, as if I’ll soften with it.
“It means I was never your friend, and you were never mine.” The words come out steadier than expected. “You knew what I wanted and dangled it in front of me like I was a pet.”
“Don’t make me sound like the villain.”
“I wish I could.” I laugh bitterly. “But we both knew what we were doing. You’d lead me on, and I’d follow. You’d pull away, and I’d beg you to come back.”
“I never asked you to do that.”
“No,” I nod, bitterly. “But you didn’t have to.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way about me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
There is no universe in which he couldn’t have known. The things we said over telephones, the things we did on crisp linen sheets. The tears he kissed and the protections he swore to me.
The first half of my twenties, all given to him.
I cannot get that back.
“I—I don’t know what you want me to say,” he stutters, almost giving me a glimpse of justification. His words were always steady; mine were always unsure.
“Then it seems we’ve run out of things to talk about.” I smile, an ironic curl of my lips. A love song drifts from the speakers onto the snow-covered balcony that wishes we’d leave.
My name falls from his lips.
“You should go dance with her.” I nod toward the yellow dress over his shoulder. She’s glaring daggers at me, as if I could threaten the love of my life, who does not want me.
I should leave it there, let our complicated relationship end with grace. But as my mother often tells me, I have a petty bone.
“And give her this. She might need it.”
I press the pack into his chest. He catches it with cold, pale hands, nothing like the ones I used to dream of holding mine. Funny how reality disappoints compared to the dream.
The trail of my dress brushes his feet as I walk into the reception’s warmth, where the bride and groom dance beneath rose-colored neon lights. Tears brim my eyes, but I don’t glance back.
I don’t need to.
I leave him there—
a ghost in a suit, holding my pack of Marlboros to his chest.
Abby Tuer, Pine Reads Review Writer, Editor, and Website Manager