August Cherries

ON THE SUN-SOAKED HILL’S OF APRIL’S CALIFORNIA, I remember the way November’s New York air ripped through her.

***

The last day I see her the city lies frozen over, the only reminder of fall coming from children’s porch carved pumpkins, just beginning to rot from the gut. Shades of gray mingle and melt into a mid day’s portrait, and I look up to see steel tips meet the mist of low-hanging fog. I keep my eyes fixed on the sky — a poor habit I picked up over the years, hoping to catch a glimpse of something shiny flying by. But all that looms overhead are dark swirling clouds threatening to drop the first snow of the season.

***

Today, I like this bar because the stale cloud of cigarette smoke feels like a warm blanket around my skin. Before, I liked this bar because of the ugly wallpaper, quiet music, and slightly over-poured beers that guzzle down the sides of glasses to lick unsuspecting fingertips. I make my way to the slanted bar counter, the waitress with her hair pulled up and fading freckles hugging her cheeks, smiles at me as I approach.

“What would you like?” She asks, her voice seeming to harmonize with the quiet music playing overhead. I clear my throat before ordering a whisky sour. I watch her head tilt slightly to the side, and at first, I think maybe she didn’t hear my order, until I see a recently familiar “wait, I know you” form on her lips. Before she can say anything else, I bring my finger to my mouth and make a shhh gesture. Her eyes grow bigger but she nods in understanding before whispering, “I love your song.” I smile and thank her, both for her words and the drinks.

As I walk back to my table, my glass nearly slips through my hand, spewing shards and booze along the linoleum floor. I feel my throat swallow my tongue as a face I’ve seen so many times before — on TV, billboards, in magazines — a different life — walks in. My feet are coated in wet cement — heavy but still able to move if I want them to. I don’t want them to.

As she walks up to the bar, I watch the blood drain from the waitresses face, turning her skin a concerning shade of milky white. The room seems to notice her all at once, and soon she’s surrounded by a small swarm of mid-day bar dwellers. Her complexion glows in their awe. She manages to clear the crowd one by one, and when they’re all gone, I notice her eyes locked with mine, and I sink immediately into their soft brown earth. A long smile splits her face in two as she throws her head back and laughs, a big sound that wraps me up in its longing familiarity.

“Of all the bars in the city, the winner of the Rising Star Award walks into mine,” she says playfully. A month’s worth of relief washes over me — she saw it.

Later in the night with my palm still warm from gripping false gold, and my body stumbling under moonlight, soaked in velvet and champagne, I wondered to myself if she had.

She’s sitting across from me now, with words I’ve been meaning to say hanging between us, keeping us company in our silence. I watch as she dips her napkin into a glass of ice water, peeling back her jacket and dabbing tender red flesh.

“What happened to you?” I ask.

“Why? Are you gonna tell me I should quit my job again?” She leans over the table to grab the napkin that sits on my side. Her hair smells like smoke and ash.

“Actually, I was going to tell you, you should stop playing with fire.”

“Ha,” she fake laughs, “stick to singing.”  I look her up and down, long rips slice through her thin layer tights, all the way down to where the brim of her boots meets her knees. There are black melted welts on scuffed up leather and hundreds of loose flecks of gold glitter peeling from her clothes — smeared across her thighs up to her stomach.

“Seriously, though, why do they keep you in such a ridiculous costume?”

“It’s part of the job. I could even ask you the same thing,” she smirks. Blue velvet at midnight flashes through my mind.

I look down and notice she’s reached across the table to swirl the cherry around in my drink, an old habit I secretly love. “Go ahead,” I say in fake aspiration. Both her eyebrows flick up in happiness, and all her teeth meet to form a flashy grin before biting into the booze-soaked fruit. She plucks the stocky red stem from her lips, weaving it through her fingers before tying a single knot and placing it between us.

A deep throbbing moves through my chest, and my heart skips back a few beats, sending an involuntary ache through my bones. Aching for the girls who would walk into brightly lit diners and order two Shirley temples — one with dinner and one for dessert. Then, swap sweet plump cherries, like they weren’t just plucked from the same jar in the kitchen corner. And when the world felt still and small, I would taste the sticky red juice again on her lips.

Aching for the girls chasing fireflies in moonlit fields upstate. When ideas of making it out of small wood houses and endless stretches of green weren’t supposed to be real.

Aching for the night, she asked me if I wanted to chase stars, and even though I wasn’t sure what she meant, I didn’t care. “Yes,” I said. A devilish smile played with her mouth as she reached for my arm, and before I could process what was happening, she raced me closer and closer toward the impossibly black blanket of sky, lit only by tiny flecks of light that didn’t seem so tiny anymore.

Aching for one last August — when her secret belonged only to us. Before we outgrew the lives each other were living.

Back in this life, I keep my focus glued to a chink in the table until her voice brings my eyes up to hers. She grabs my hand, and it’s like all the words lost in the last five years have been here all along — swimming in hazel. Just as my lips part to speak, the world outside us explodes with a loud bang, and a blinding flash rips through the windows. People around us panic and scream.

She whips her head to meet the daylight now pouring through broken shards of glass.

“I have to go.”

“I know.”

After she’s gone I can still feel the warmth from her palm in mine.