Some of our favorites stories and essays about
love lost, love found, heartbreak, and heartbeats.
He looks into the mirror and says thanks for how you’re being with me. And I ask him how I’m being and he says sweet. And I tell him I’m crazy about him. And he smiles and I point and say there it is and put my hand on his face.
I wrap my arms around her. I kiss her cheek. I say the things that can’t be said. I feel like an asshole for hustling her so I can get to my appointment. Cindy’s not that cold-hearted that she wouldn’t understand. I feel like an asshole, yet I look at my watch and realize I have thirty minutes to get to the clinic.
Because she is new to all of it, and shy, and frightened, she does not tell him that it’s a lie, that it’s not a woman that she’s leaving him for but women in general, that there’s no short-haired, hard-eyed gal on the side but scads of possibility, maybe, who knows.
Kissing your tight stomach is my favourite thing. You know this, so you withstand a few before your ticklishness wins and you cave, curling back up. We have a staring contest. Before I even finish the sentence, “I think our bodies might be magnetized for each other,” you flare your nostrils and fake puke between us.
He runs a hand through his hair twice: forehead to crown, forehead to crown. I think of the gesture in stages. First I loved it, like all affectations belonging to a lover. Later it infuriated me; an agitated, pointless motion. Now it’s bereft of any importance. It’s just a movement of his hand, something he does.
At home that night, Louise masturbates to Nirvana. She doesn’t need a man. She has a job, books, television. A clean apartment. The whole bed to herself. A teddy bear. No jealousy, no mother-in-law, no skid-marked boxer briefs. No expectations, no disappointments.
You come to places like this and expect to be called out. You come, expecting glimmering eyes to fall on you, flutter closed, and a voice to speak, clear enough to not be questioned: I see him, newly passed, and he wants me to tell you he loves you, he does not blame you, you were his best friend.
In the split second I have, I know I have to say something sexy and alluring in response, so I stumble toward him and say as seductively as a person can with vodka and spit in her hair, “Yeah.” We come closer until our lips touch, then our tongues, then stomachs.
There are six more after this. Four boys, two girls. Six terrible, terrible crushes. Every single one of them will feel different, and every single time it will play out exactly the same. You won’t notice the pattern until thirteen years have passed, until you’re trading stories with a friend in a smoky Scottish pub.
A voice makes an announcement. It is some boy’s birthday. It is some man’s bachelor party. Men cheer. The players jog out onto the field. I am here, America, land of the steel tracks, land of the golden hour, and I am sad.
