She Loves Me

“Is that about me?” she says, grinning madly through teeth like little white pills. She’s bending over my shoulder and her breath is warm and toxic, her hair like some ancient Greek myth slithering over my scalp and neck. I say no and close my notebook and swivel around to face her standing with her hands on her hips. She’s still smiling but its left her eyes and they stare at me and I sit very still.

“It didn’t look very flattering.” I hold her gaze as her mouth reforms into a reproachful pout full of candor and gasoline. She’s very cute when she wants to be. I tell her it isn’t about her; it’s a story about a girl who (I don’t even believe myself) goes to a party and seduces her ex for the fun of it, even though she knows he’s in love with her. She calls it tragic and laughs, relieved, I think, as she flicks her tongue at one of the little pills in my direction. I try hard not to swallow and she sits on my lap, locking her arms around my neck.

She says she wants to know why I don’t write more stories about her. Hasn’t she inspired, aroused me? Her head dips forward and the phone rings. I say I have to take this and her eyes stare into mine and I don’t show anything. She looks away and stands, her head down and searching and I almost believe she’s actually hurt. My chair swivels back around and I pick up the phone. I hear the click of a lighter and something like sobbing and I press the phone closer and block my other ear with the tip of my finger.

When I hang up she’s silent again but I can hear her watching me, like the sound of the lull in the battle right before you get shot. The smell of Crystal Noir and cigarettes drifts over but it reminds me of gunpowder and I keep my head down.

“Come over here,” she begs quietly from across the room. Her nails are tapping and the magazine clicks softly into place.

“I told you I didn’t want you smoking in here anymore,” I say.

She breathes in sharply and I hear her voice crack. “You’re an asshole, Zach.”

She’s waiting for me but I know it’s a trap and I don’t turn around. I open my notebook to write and she wants me to hear her crying again. It almost gets me this time and I have to stop myself. But she doesn’t stop and I have to turn around.

Watching her cry softly to herself she doesn’t look like the girl I know and I don’t know what to say. I know its all an act but she plays it so convincingly and suddenly I don’t smell gunpowder anymore. She sees something in my stare and tries to look away but I beat her to it. I think about the first time we met and how consuming she was before I learned to distrust the spark in her eye, the empty cajolery of her laugh, and why can’t it still be that way? I could be wrong about, I must be wrong about her; she’s so hurt, now, there’s no, maybe never was, no, seducing, meducing, it was just her and what have I been doing? and I think she loves me.