A Love Note 3

What’s weird is that I only have two memories at an old Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through, and one of them involves you. I don’t know how long we sat there in your car, watching the rain skim lightly across the windshield. It took me a while to remember I had no reason to be wearing my seatbelt.

I know that you only wanted me to break up with my boyfriend because you thought that you and I might be better suited. Maybe if I had let you kiss me then, you wouldn’t take so long now to respond to my texts. There’s only so much I can do to make you fall in love with me.

Remember when you came to my pool? I was so nervous. I knew the sweatshirt I was wearing didn’t show any of my curves, and I was afraid you had already forgotten my personality. You were about to be free; I was so bound to the fall semester. We were on the brink of studying abroad—the experience we both banked on as giving us adulthood. In a way, it did. I broke up with my boyfriend. You broke up with me.

What’s kind of funny is that we went to prom together. I was sober the whole time, but I did that drunk thing where I look for the prettiest boy in the room. Maybe you’re him now, but I didn’t think so then. I remember prom as the flash of plastic jellyfish hanging from the ceiling, I remember it as a blue tank with a few ubiquitous dolphins. The food wasn’t seafood; that was a blessing. But you weren’t my boyfriend, and I felt alone. At least my dress was beautiful. The pictures my mom took of us are really sweet.

I don’t drink to forget you; in fact, it’s only in certain flickers of time that I remember you at all. Isn’t it sad how delicately life moves on? We spend so long feeling immersed that we forget that where there is water, there is a surface where it ends.