Page 39 of Hot for Her
11
Aiden
-TWO WEEKS LATER-
Two weeks. That’s how long it had been since the most intense weekend of my life.
Fourteen days since the girl I’d spent all summer lusting after, showed up in my bed like something out of my wildest dreams and we made love until the sun came up.
Roughly three-hundred and thirty-six hours since she gave me her virginity, the precious gift of being the first man inside her beautiful body. And the second, and the third.
Then she fucking disappeared like I imagined the entire ordeal. I woke up alone. But I know I didn’t imagine anything. It was real. She was real.
I can still smell her on my sheets, still hear the echoes of the sweet sounds she made while I was inside her.
Day after day, I jogged along the water’s edge, back to the property where the carnival had been, hoping to see her. I’d pushed myself to the limit in order to stop thinking about her. Running six miles every morning on foot, skating who knows how many hours on the ice, and busting ass setting up my classroom.
She’s like a ghost, not on social media, not in class—not anywhere.
She steals into my mind over and over, and I have to remind myself to focus. I existed just fine before her and I’ll exist long after.
But no matter how hard I try to forget, she’s always there. Standing down by the water’s edge among the phantom memory of a carnival. In the bleachers during hockey practice, silently watching, morphing into another girl with similar hair when I move in for a closer look.
I even caught a whiff of her scent while building the bookshelves in the classroom where I’ll be teaching Government and coaching hockey this fall at Fillmore High School.
She’s everywhere and nowhere and it’s driving me mad.
I don’t know where she lives. I don’t even have her number. She has mine. She hasn’t used it.
When she didn’t show for class or our art history final, I made my way to the Edward Yancy art building. She wasn’t there either, but the student showcase was up and I recognized her art work before I saw her name on it.
From a distance, it looked like the ocean.
It was painted a deep shade of turquoise with some red elements popping out from the canvas and textured in a way I couldn’t understand until I stepped closer.
If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought she’d painted over trash. But I did know better and I saw each element of our time together beneath the water.
A red carnival ticket. A receipt from the Patty Wagon. A hot chocolate envelope. Ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise packets. A peanut butter M&M’s wrapper. A Coors Light bottle cap. The edge of a Parker’s Pizza box.
A condom wrapper. That one threw me, but I checked closely—it was my brand.
A hospital visitor’s badge. The corner of a napkin from High Octane, displaying their vintage gas pump logo.
I ran my fingers along the red baseball threads that connected everything together.
Down in the corner, I saw the small white card that confirmed what I already knew.
Picking up the Pieces – A Mixed Medium Production by E. Tyler.
Maybe she had blown me off, but what her words didn’t say, her art did. Our time together had mattered, maybe as much to her as it had to me.
After that, I started going to the coffee shop twice a day every day to see if she was working. She wasn’t. Not one single time.
I thought of asking a manager when and if she was on the schedule, but that seemed a little over the top and desperate. Which I was, but there was no need to announce it.
By the first day at my new job, I told myself it was time to let it go. She’d gotten what she’d needed from me and that was that. Being blown off had wounded my heart and my ego, but it was time to stop nursing those wounds and focus on my future. I had classes to teach and hockey team tryouts to prepare for.
That morning, I showered, trimmed up the beard that had grown in since I quit shaving two weeks ago, and put on khaki Dockers with a button down pale blue Oxford shirt. I spent five minutes in front of my full-length mirror deciding whether or not to wear a blue and red striped tie that reminded me of her painting, finally deciding I might as well.
