3 Girls
She is a smokey, whispy thing - a mere slip of a girl. In boyish clothing, sneaking glances at you on the first day of your new, crappy part-time job.
When you break for coffee you know she will too, and you smile inside as she tries to start a small conversation, tries to read what you’ve written on your shoes, tries to find meaning in the bracelets and wristbands you wear. She is so tentative and earnest, and to see her self-consciously touch her hair and try to mask her accent to appear more feminine… these things make you laugh inside. Because you are so sure of yourself, a little king, so sure there are hundreds of creatures like her, waiting to meet you and to be with you.
And on the second day of the job she arrives in make-up and carefully chosen clothes, and inside you laugh and laugh and laugh.
Grinning, you mock her slightly to see her protest and swear softly in her accent because you know she likes the attention, to laugh with you. She amuses you so, this seemingly artless creature, in her slinky jeans and strappy top (the straps keep falling off her shoulder) and her earnest naivette amuses you more because you think you know everything.
You plan chance encounters around campus, sometimes, to boost your little ego - so you can see her blush, tilt her head, brush her hair aside.
And one night, on one of these encounters, you find yourself walking hand in hand, trying to find your friends in a loud, smoke-filled club and, as you pass through a quiet room, you look down at her and see in her face she doesn’t mind or care where she is because she is tipsy and holding your hand and you laugh inside, your knowing laugh, and think “why not”.
Later, amid the thrills and kisses and grins of undressing, you find yourself looking up at her and she is suddenly so serious, so earnest. You stop and grin, unsure of this new game.
It is then, right then, when she leans forwards and plants a firm, quick, serious kiss on your lips, leans back and regards something inside you, something even you can’t name… it is then, unknowing, that you give her the only true thing you have to give.
She says she has a sea inside her.
Small and round and perfect.
When she is angry it is deep green and rolls and has tiny dark clouds above it. And when she is happy it is light and blue and little winds run over its surface, giving its wavelets tiny white crests.
She says there are sometimes tiny creatures inside it, sometimes not. Seahorses, she says, they are the most common. They cling to tiny strands of seaweed, bob back and forth in contemplation. They help her think. It’s the male seahorse that carries the eggs, she confides. Did you know that?
And when you see her again, months later, she smiles nervously, introduces her new boyfriend.
She clings to him like she was drowning and he were a lifesaving piece of wreckage.
She clings to him like you would take him from her.
You are sat at the bar in a foreign city, and she has been regarding you for a while from across the bar. It is late, and it has taken you 3 beers to work up the courage to head out alone into this loud city of a different language.
She walks up to you, shouts something over the music. She is blonde, slim, fake-tanned.
What, you say.
She shouts louder, unitelligibly.
Uh, Englayski? you shout.
She laughs, leans over her shoulder to say something to her two friends behind her.
She leans across the bar, steals a pen, some post-it notes. You note her leanness, her angularity. She is something like a blade - keened on some whetstone, you think, drunk.
She writes: Gay?
You blush. No, you write. Just English.
She laughs, raucously, shows the note to her friends. They laugh too, leave her alone with you.
She regards you keenly, chewing gum. When she translates in her head she tilts it to the side, looks up at the ceiling, adjusts her blonde fringe, as if she got all these movements from some old movie - Marilyn Monroe or Betty Davis. 50’s Chique.
She is cheeky and outgoing, flirting with the barman, stealing more post-it notes, buying you beers. She shows you her tongue piercing, all the while staring at you with her shallow-blue eyes.
Eventually you run out of post-its, start stealing bar napkins and you have to focus with one eye closed, too drunk. She’s been sipping the same Coke the entire evening and you find yourself staggering outside now. And that’s all you remember. She laughs at you, calls you her pet.
You wake up face-down, fully-clothed, hungover on your couch the next morning. Your rented apartment is large, empty, smelling faintly of furniture polish.
All you have of her is a faint memory of a single, chewing gum kiss, the metal tongue stud scraping across your teeth.
Hungover, on the couch, you realise your pockets are still filled with your conversations.
