"He needs you."
She looked up at me with doe-eyes. They were wide and scared and angry and envious, but for what reason? Why did she think something was still there when there was nothing at all?
"Time changes everything," I told her in confidence. She looked back at me again with those eyes and wanted to believe me. And thats when I knew- she loved him. She loved him so much, just as I did. And she looked so terrified when I told her how bad it was when it was over. She said the details made her shake.
I felt so indifferent towards the entire situation, so numb and careless. But that changed when I caught him staring at me, eyes as sharp as the knives he stuck in my back. They were smoldering the way they used to each time I felt them on me. My face flushed. In an instant, I lost control. And in the same amount of time I regained my cool, my posture, and went inside. I wasn't going to let him win.
Inside was a mess. There was so much dirt on the floor that it spread like wildfire into the hallway, into my room, which was smoky and littered with half empty, abandoned beer bottles.
"Where's Teenie?" everyone kept asking. When I replied, they laughed. The birthday girl never even made it to her own birthday party- her and Conrad were passed out three hours after midnight.
Everyone else celebrated for her, drinking copious amounts of beer, collecting around the fire we made for her, keeping warm, laughing, throwing drunk slurs around, running, smiling, blushing. Being happy. Being comfortably drunk. It was nice to go to parties and socialize, but it was even better bringing the party home with only the closest of friends. Boundaries drop and personal walls lower. Guards come down. Shoes come off.
I wandered back inside and there he was. He was staring at me again just like before.
"It would be nice if you would stop doing that." I said it quietly and seriously. Without changing his face, his eyes, his arm reached out. His rough fingertips gently grazed my face and the corner right of his lips lifted into a smile. I pushed him away, hard.
"Don't start." And with that, without turning back, I walked outside towards the dying fire. I couldn't help but glance at her and feel bad.
It was like watching history repeat itself through a glass room.
