She liked to tell me everything.
To this day I’m not sure how much I believe, but I suppose that doesn’t matter. Each time she knocked on my door with a bottle in one hand and a blanket in the other I knew it was coming. And as the months went by I yearned for it desperately.
The first time it was causal. An accident almost. We were walking to class and she told me she fucked her ex-boyfriend the night before. He visited from home and they got carried away. Just when I thought she was done–before I knew her fetish for details–she said one last thing. She leaned in conspiratorially and whispered it to me before dashing off to Bio-Chemistry.
After that, it became a pattern. She’d knock, I’d let her in, she’d hand me the bottle, I’d fetch two glasses with ice, and then she’d curl up on the single chair in my room and let it all out.
Once it was two boys at a party. Drunk enough to let go but not so drunk as to regret it, she let them take her back to their room. One got hard enough to fuck her–the other came in her mouth while still soft. They looked like brother’s she giggled into her scotch. It was fun, but now she walks the long way around their house on her way to the diner.
Her roommate was an affair that lasted for nearly a month. One night the girl slipped into her bed without warning and asked quietly if she’d make her come. With a boyfriend at home and another down the hall, it took two quiet fingers and dirty words whispered in the dark to bring about that first needy release.
Whenever she kissed my cheek as I handed her the scotch I could smell the other girl on her lips.
On two occasions it was tears and regrets as I held her gently. The details aren’t mine to share, but those nights we sacred and profane and so full of anger and grief I barely knew how to survive them.
When I think of her it’s always with images I never saw.