Ice Rain

I like the red leather of the booth seats in our kitchen. We hide rags in those chests; the scavenger, if he were to enter that kitchen, would be disappointed by the loot. But luckily, no scavengers come to the 11th floor. I rest my palm on the leather and leave a moist mark. My mother pours tea. She is so beautiful, even when wearing an old tracksuit. The fuchsia of the stripes and the emerald green of the fabric might be faded, but they bring out her icy blue eyes. I have those too.

“You know, Aunt Lydia, she just molds her daughter to be this perfect bride; it’s kind of sad.” She is smug in this moment. That’s how our favorite topic is brought up: We are better than this. We are better because we’re close and friends; she would never put me in a cage, never choose for me, and we’re pretty.

I know that I will disappoint her. I thought about telling her for days, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. She thinks I rose above it; she thinks I moved on. We agreed, not long ago, when she was dying my hair purple, that I would find a better match than Vick. That for a girl like me, it would be easy. But I didn’t believe any of it. Before I met him, any conversation with a boy would become dull in an hour; I used to think something was wrong with me.

I hold the mug in my hands. I barely listen as I watch the moist spot evaporate. If only I were as beautiful.

“Vick’s back in town, Mom. We saw each other.” I blurt it out because I can’t avoid it. She had seen it before, all the happiness and devastation. I stare at the Elvis mug Kristine gave me last year when we planned to go somewhere in the summer. We never did, but planning was so fun.

“Well, he isn’t gonna stay if you’re wondering that. Don’t waste your time on this, Mila.” It’s so easy for her to say that; she was never abandoned. My parents met when they were tweens and never separated. She has seen her friends and siblings' divorces and is proud of never even thinking about one. She was never ridiculed for her looks, never upstaged, and wasn’t cursed with spots on the bridge of her nose that people saw as their obligation to try and clean after licking their thumbs. She scoots next to me and hugs me close. She thinks she will protect me, but I can’t be saved.

I like wasting my time. I can walk around downtown for hours, entering every single shop and touching every single trinket. Sometimes Kristine joins me and we talk about our future record shop / tattoo parlor / lampshade-making endeavor. We try to choose the perfect spot with the best foot traffic and the atmosphere. It’s crucially important, because I know it’s not happening. The fantasy world in which it’s just us, unburdened by truth.

Kristine always gives me stuff. She gave me a pair of sunglasses that make me look like a bug. They are tinted purple to match my hair and are not universally liked. I am not universally liked. I theatrically proclaim the lyrics for the Backstreet Boys songs. The type of girl who needs to be passionate or funny, so the lack in the chest department is overlooked.

My mom likes the French stuff. Music, particularly, she listens to Joe Dassin and Charles Aznavour as she folds laundry. It’s chic. I am sure she imagined me as chic as well. She wears expensive perfume and “no makeup” makeup. I manage the store that pretends to be Japanese. I sell cheap plastic crap to fulfill your dreams. But I smoke French cigarettes, so hey, I am halfway there.

I like to do the same things over and over. I had the same McDonald's order since I was five. Just hamburger, fries, and nuggets. Sweet and sour sauce. So, if Vick’s back, I am back too. When I touch his skin, I feel little bumps and bruises, and I want to kiss each and every one of them. He’s sweet and sour. It’s fine to be like that, I suppose. His bed sheets are mismatched; I don’t think he cares.

“Your beauty doesn’t take away from your brains, love.”

I know that when he says stuff like that, I should be mad. Another version of the “You’re not like other girls” routine, but I am a sucker for it. It’s not a competition, so why do I feel like I won a prize? He talks about Kierkegaard in bed, and I know it’s pretentious bullshit. I know, but "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself." So I dare to love over and over. He pours me a cup of tea and we hatewatch The Kardashians. The opulence of their world clashes with peeling wallpaper. Vic says the show is a mirror of societal collapse, the final stage of capitalism. Sooner or later, people will come for them with torches. I don’t say anything. I imagine what it would be like if I could just do this forever. The ash falls from my cigarette into the pizza box. I tell him that while he was gone, I watched an entire film based on the saying “Time is money.” We exchange pitches for movies based on other sayings: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" is a whole film about people who come to Rome and eat laying down; “People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones” is a comedy where a high tech community crumbles because of teenage boys trying to get attention by throwing stones at panoramic windows; “Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't know” is a film where a sexy demoness needs to choose between two devils; “In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king” is a chilling dark fantasy. By the time we get to “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” I pick children’s names in my head.

I promised my mother not to sleep with him. I knew I lied when I said it. So now, I sit on the red leather in my kitchen, and my mother pours me tea. The windows face west, and in the evening, the place gets hot, so my legs stick to the fabric. We share a honey cake. We talk skincare because I keep avoiding the truth. She is always concerned about my pores. She looks right in the windows to my soul and says after a sigh, “I know what you did, but remember that we are better than this.”

The problem is that I don’t know that. I know plenty of other things: how to climb on the highest shelf, how to make an exceptional road trip playlist, how to teach a dog tricks, and how to do a cut crease. I don’t know why I always need to be better than other people. Not like other girls. It’s exhausting. I might not be molded into a perfect bride like Aunt Lydia’s daughter. But I am molded into something better, and it always cracks.

I like sharing food. Honey cake or French fries, and strawberries. It doesn’t matter. I love reaching into the same bag of chips and touching someone’s hand. I like to be close. When you always compete, you need to get far away from each other. But still I feel like if I stop being better, I will fall.

Vick shares his strawberry milkshake with me like in high school, as we sit on the riverfront. He wears a T-shirt I got him back then with the “Killing Joke” cover. I wish I didn’t know he wasn’t back for good. This summer is as hot as the first one we spent together, and my mother worried about my obsession. I saw him every day, ditched friends, and everything else. And worst of all, skipped movie nights so Mom and I couldn’t dissect JLo’s tumultuous love life. Vick draws floor plans of the houses we want in the sand with sticks. He talks about Kierkegaard again. I roll my eyes, but he persists. “You cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you. You are the truth, Mills.” It’s cheesy, but I have to take it. He must be the prize.

Kristine likes to give me stuff. When Vick first left, she gave me a necklace with the letter “M” on the pendant. That day, he and I stood by the mall, and after feeling dread in my body, I asked if we were breaking up. When he said yes, I wanted to drown. Kristine tells me to look out for number one. She gives me tickets to watch a film about Serge Gainsbourg, it’s French but not the kind of French my mom likes. It’s vulgar and says that a man can leave Brigitte Bardot. No use being banned by the Vatican for moaning too loudly.

I don’t like the fall. He says he’ll be back before the holidays, but it’s far away. The cashier in my store forgot who the manager is. “I met my husband when I was nineteen. I have two wonderful boys. Why do you youngsters refuse to settle down?” she says in a syrupy sweet voice. As if I hadn’t planned all of that, as if I don’t feel the dread of it all being gone again. I make her cry, I don’t mean to, but I am not in the mood to swallow bullshit. I have to teach new girls how to attach the alarm and properly fold shirts. A man walks in and asks for help with a present for his girlfriend. “She looks just like you, but less hipster, and her boobs are way bigger,” he says, knowing that I can’t talk back to a customer. I fantasize about beating him to death with the hanger. But I don’t want to lose the money, I don’t say what I mean. It’s pouring all the time, and even the evening sun doesn’t visit our kitchen.

Kristine throws a New Year's Eve party. It promises to be awful. Intimate gathering with the indie band her boyfriend plays drums in. Nobody has ever heard their songs. Vick pledges to be there, so we can mock them in the corner after Kristine reluctantly extends the invitation to him. I envision the redemption arc for our film: “If at first you don't succeed, try, try, and try again.” While she complains about her beau, I choose a champagne lace dress and purple shoes.

My mom dyes my hair purple as I sit on a stool in the kitchen. She can justify anything by virtue of being better. Angelina got Brad because she’s better, even though he might be a lousy prize. She turns on the news. The ice rain has cancelled all flights for three days. He’s not coming. I cry like a little girl. “Stop, Mila, we are better than this.” The dread is back, and her words can’t make it go away.

But I am not better. A different person would be concerned about the ten people who died in that storm, but I only mourn that something else died too.

This is not how it was supposed to be. We were supposed to write poetry that no one else would read and have the most bohemian wedding, wear corduroy pants, and smoke in bed. And yet, the ice storm dared to happen. And when Vick calls in the middle of the party, I feel utterly, devastatingly alone. He says, “This party blows, Mills.” I take a sip of orange juice and vermouth love child, a drag of a cigarette. “I miss you, I always miss you, Vick.” He responds after a pause, which allows me to hear some laughter in the background. “Ice rain can suck it, Mills, I love you.” And hangs up before I could tell him the same. I barely know who his friends are, I barely know about anything outside of what we are, so imagination creates all those better girls, girls with cool haircuts, the ones who don’t read “genre literature,” and have better boobs. So I watch Kristine make out with her drummer boyfriend until he opens his eyes and stares right back.

I fall asleep on her couch but wake up soon after because my mother’s pearls are choking me. I get to Kristine's blue kitchen and find the drummer, his face lit by the screen of his phone. I know a lot about him. I know how he is burning through his family’s money trying to make something of his band, the hair he takes too much time to maintain, how he was failing to keep a job going, because music that no one got to hear was more important than anything. George is flawed, his hair is stupid, but he is here. Vick was better in every way, handsome in that sad boy way with unkempt dark hair, and almost black eyes that are deeper than any well on this planet, Lake Baikal depth. He reads more books in a week than George read in his entire life. But George is here.

George tells me about his tattoos. They are childish: a goldfish on a skateboard on his leg, the head of Spider-Man on his wrist, “Scotty doesn’t know” written in Comic Sans of all fonts under his elbow. There are toy cars, Bart Simpson, and Ramona Flowers in the classic American style. I ask him if he fought all of Kristine’s evil exes. He says she is not his Ramona. What an odd thing to tell your girl’s best friend.

I sit on the red leather in my mother’s kitchen. She pours me tea. I tell her all about the party, and she tells me all the shortcomings of her friends’ children. I am contemplating quitting the store. I have a lead for what she describes as intellectual labor… I don’t tell her that Vick texted me that he can’t do “this.”

Kristine gives me stuff. So, on an unfortunate spring day, I kiss George. I don’t know how it happened; all I know is that if I did something so monumentally, catastrophically bad, it meant only one thing.

George is my one true love.

“Good thing there’s just one evil ex to fight,” he says right after. I want to crawl out of my skin. Now, there can never be a record shop / tattoo parlor / lampshade-making endeavor.

He tells me that we finally got out of the “will they / won’t they stage” and entered our Endgame. The audience was rooting for us. I must play along. So we do all we're supposed to do. Go on movie dates, share ice-cream, fuck. I joined his burning family wealth project: Madrid, Barcelona, and the Amalfi Coast.

He calls every day, he sends pictures of his breakfast, and screenshots of his stats in Skyrim. He doesn’t know who Kierkegaard is; it’s probably for the best.

A year later, I enter my mother’s kitchen with freshly bleached hair to show her the ring. She seems happy, maybe because she is ready to unleash the scrapbooks of wedding inspo, maybe because she sees this as a guarantee that Vick’s not going to make a comeback. I don’t tell her that George slept with Kristine, a month into our relationship, his manager (which worked in my favor because I took over the gig), or his childhood friend. I am better than that. But when she asks me what I love about him, I can’t say anything but “He’s always here.” She squeezes lemon into my Elvis mug and scoots closer.

She puts her pearly fingers on my hand and whispers, “That’s not a reason to throw your life away; we are better than this.”