How It Happened by Nicole Renee Devitt

I am an accident waiting to happen, eyeing the economy pack of razor blades in CVS and drinking way too much for a girl my size. At night, I wrap my body around pillows and pretend I'm spooning this boy who's gone and left a space so huge, I can't not knock into it. All night long, the sound of the phone not ringing, his voice not saying my name, the feel of his hands vanished-these things nestle into my greedy open palms, stones I hold tight while I sink down into just me. I'm breaking apart from the inside out and I've lost the glue. And then she shows up out of nowhere, with her angels and endless comfort food recipes like a miracle or a hat trick. She says, I just can't anymore. Get me? No one's surprised. After all, we saw this coming.

Two years before, at her wedding, the three of us huddled together like Holocaust survivors, my mascara smudged from everything he said during the car ride up and Jennifer's eyes still wide from the night before. No sleep at all and that boy of hers sobbing until she finally handed the two grand over. She pounds three pitchers of coffee and when, two years later, she disappears we know better than to spend too much time looking.

Us three, we sit far back and keep our gazes close (no one talks to us though when they walk by, they walk slow, getting a good look at the bride's whore friends). The three of us wrapped up in compromises and no better offers forthcoming. I smoke two packs of Marlboros and when we hug goodbye it's like being shoved into cold water. Later, in bed, he pushes me away and I know enough not to push back.

But there was more. And hearing the ice cubes rattle in her throat, it comes back. We sat alone, three girls at a wedding, one of them the bride, the boys off elsewhere, we don't ask (that joke? He just went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never came back is only funny if your man don't smoke) when her mother glides over, all Yves St. Laurent-Ester Williams in aquamarine sequins, the belle of the spring cotillion. One by one, this mother of the bride looks us over, tucking the hair behind our ears before pushing out her own cream puff rack and all smooth Carolina drawl, whispers But look girls . . . Mine are real. Like good soldiers, we stand up ramrod straight, sticking our chest out as far as they go, admiring our wise business investments and her good fortune. And for a little more than a moment we think it will be all right.

Now again, us three, sitting alone, holding our own hands and somewhere across the map the bride's mother takes one last look in the mirror before they prep her for surgery, cancer having no respect at all for a nice set of tits. So, when she calls, I don't even think. I just go. And suddenly, I am seventeen again, shoes off, flying down the highway into the sun, cigarette catching wind from the open window, spraying sparks into my hair, hand lying on my thigh, palm skyward, calmly waiting to touch.

 

Nicole Renee Devitt: Nicole Devitt is a recent graduate of Kent State University. She has been previously published in "Hartford Women," "Poetry Motel," and "Newtopia Magazine," and has self-published two chapbooks. She is in love.