You Own Me (Owned 1)

“Sometimes I do that,” Lissie offered. “It’s a cool sensory experience.”

I gestured “see?” at Zoe, trying to get the focus off me.

Zoe, apparently no longer interested, threw down a stack of papers. “Here is all we need to know about Smarty Pants. Let’s get started.”

Vic’s not one for writing letters. I’m not surprised by that either. The guy’s got an impressive music collection, but his bookshelf is quite pathetic. A third of his bookshelves are filled with maps, a few random classics, backcountry guides, and more maps. The rest are just shelves used to display art. He doesn’t have an e-reader either.

Typically, I wouldn’t consider getting serious with anyone who didn’t read. Dean had thousands of books and was so well-read he probably knew more about a book than its author did. Dean turned out to be horrible for me, though, and Vic turned out to be . . . well, everything. I guess that goes to show sometimes you can’t even trust your own rules.

Every now and then, I’ll get an anonymous letter. The first one I received made me nearly shit my pants, thinking Dean actually had returned from the grave to haunt me. It was around letter number five that I could finally open up the envelope without heart palpitations.

I keep all the letters. I’m a fool like that. I can’t move on, but then his letters don’t really give me a chance to move on. Not that I would ever want to take that chance.

Letter One.

Letter Two.

Letter Three (later the same day as Two).

Letter Four.

Letter Five.

Letter Six.

In Letter Seven, he gave me the rare opportunity to reply to his message; I didn’t. It was too hard. His letters keep me tethered to him in a way that I need, but by not responding I can continue to lie to myself that I’m moving on. I need that. I need to believe that there will be a future without Vic, because I can’t have a future with him.

Letter Eight came, and now I don’t know what to think.

I don’t know how to reply to that without jeopardizing my heart. It’s absolutely, without any doubt, the most beautiful thing anyone has written to me. I didn’t need a letter to know I was in love with Vic, though. I knew I was kamikaze-in-love with him two weeks after we met. All his letter does is make it harder for me to break my own heart and kill myself by saying goodbye.

I pulled out my pen and stationary and began to write an old-fashioned letter. It had been years since I’d done this. Everything was electronic now, after all.

I started the letter off by addressing it to him. When all was said and done, tears stained my cheeks like unwanted tattoos and dusk had turned into bitter night.

It was nothing, seeing as how I’d spent hours composing it, but it felt like I’d written it from the inkwell of my soul. Heaps of crumpled paper piled high on the floor and in my trash can. I’d written Vic entire sonnets and trashed them. I’d cursed him out, blaming him for everything. I’d cursed myself out, apologizing for what happened between us. In the end, that two-sentence correspondence was all I could make of our love.

If Vic came home tomorrow or even next month, I would do everything to try and be with him, but he wasn’t going to come home. In truth, I didn’t know if he was ever going to come home. I’d lost my chance with him, and the only thing these letters were accomplishing was pain. Each letter he sent gave me a sizable paper cut on my heart.

I had another dream. I was standing at a clear blue river. Across the way, I could see a woman. You guessed it, she was in white. I could go into the details of how I tried desperately to get across the river, because I wanted to talk to the White Lady. I wanted to ask her why she was always fucking up my life.

Halfway across the river I drowned, or woke up, you can look at it either way. When I woke, I felt refreshed, clear, and un-sad for the first time in months. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t cripplingly depressed.

I have a key to Vic’s apartment, the one he gave me way back when I was living with him. That was only a couple months ago, but it feels like a lifetime. Sometimes I go to his apartment; it’s a habit I can’t break. He’s in my dreams most nights, but recently I had a nightmare that he was dead. I had to go to his place in the middle of the night to make sure his stuff was still there. I fell asleep in his bed, and, instead of smelling like him, I woke up still smelling like me—it was awful.

Vic comes home sporadically, and when he does, we’re magnets. I know when he’s home, it’s like a sixth sense: my “Vic Sense.” I wish I could say I ignore him. I wish I could say that I’ve met someone new, but I haven’t. Whoever I meet vanishes the moment Vic is home. We have an Ouroboros relationship. Breaking up, making up, but never truly one or the other.

There’s a ghost of us playing out our past, present, and future. It exists in our hearts and keeps us both from moving forward. Neither one of us dares to exorcise it.

He simultaneously gives me pain and washes it all away. He is my red river and my blue river; he is the fog and the clearing.

I’ve got a billion and one shitty metaphors and excuses about Vic. When it comes down to it, though, none of them really matter. Only one thing rings true: I will always belong to Vic.

FOUR MONTHS LATER

The Annual Regal Halloween Party

The guitar and the piano go so well together in this song. It’s like they’re communicating to each other. Like me and Lenny. First goes the piano, strong and overpowering. Then comes the guitar, soothing the piano into compliance. It’s a dance inside the melody.