Eat Your Heart Out by Katie Boland Page B

says.
    Grace is unsteady on her feet. Her dress has slid off her shoulder. She pulls it up. She touches her face.
    â€œI look crazy. I’m going to the washroom.”
    â€œYou don’t look crazy,” says Sam.
    â€œStop lying.”
    Sam smiles at her, and he’s certain she can feel him watching her walk away.
    Sam sits slumped on his chair waiting for Grace. He can’t feel his legs beneath him.
    He’s going to tell her.
    Be brave, Sam.
    Forget Lily, forget everything, forget everyone.
    Be brave, Sam.
    Tell her. Go on, love her.
    Love her forever.
    Grace comes back to the table. She sits down. She looks like she’s been crying.
    Be brave, Sam.
    â€œGrace, I . . .”
    â€œSam, I have to go.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYeah, I’m just really fucked, and Luke just texted me back and apologized and I just have to go see him. I’m going to just take a cab home. I’m just really fucked. I need to go to bed. I’m really fucked. I don’t feel well.”
    She gets up, and so does he, but the sound is sucked out of the room.
    â€œSam, tonight was really fun,” says Grace, but she sounds like she’s under water.
    â€œYeah, it was really fun,” he can feel himself say, but he’s surprised when it comes out of his mouth.
    It echoes.
    â€œIt was really good to see you, I really missed you,” she says.
    â€œYou too.”
    All he can hear is his own voice in his head. Be brave, Sam.
    â€œI have to go, I’m so fucked, I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says.
    â€œDo you need me to walk you out?”
    â€œNah,” she says as she throws her coat on, graceless and uncoordinated.
    She hugs him, and kisses him on the cheek.
    â€œBye, Grace.”
    â€œBye, Sam.”
    And Grace leaves Sam just how she found him; alone at a table with half a drink.
    Be brave, Sam, he says to himself once more.
    All he can hear is his heart beating; the noise he sat there making, not daring to move, not even when the room goes dark.

Forever Ago

    To Marianne, forever ago.
    There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think of you.
    When Amy smiles at me, the morning light hitting her face, having left some in shadow, I see you lying next to me. There is something about her expression, the sadness under her skin. You both share a vulnerability brought on by sleep.
    Amy, that’s my girlfriend.
    I see you when I’m not looking, when I don’t expect to see you at all. A woman passes me on the street with hair like yours. Is your hair different now? A friend at work talks how you do. I eat lunch with her, ask her questions I want to ask you. Amy falls asleep in my arms when I’m drunk and I drift into the arms of elsewhere.
    Elsewhere holds me.
    With all the time, you’ve become two-dimensional. You are like a photograph, not close enough to touch, bent and worn. Pictures are criminal. No one ever looks like themselves because no one even wants to, but still these images of you tunnel into me and stick like the cavities in my teeth.
    Why can life only be understood?
    We were twenty. We walked through the concrete, suffocating streets of the city and you wore a flowered scarf. You’d got it from your grandmother. Pink with red flowers. I thought it was ugly and I told you. You wore it because you loved her smell.
    I know she’s dead because I saw the obituary you posted on Facebook. I wrote you to tell you how sorry I was. You never wrote back. You didn’t have to, but I felt so bad about what I’d said about the scarf.
    I wonder now if you searched in vain for my obituary, curious if I was dead or alive, if you ever needed proof that I existed once and no longer.
    I keep seeing that scarf. It won’t leave me alone.
    In the park, you told me you were sad. I asked why. You said the worst loss was the kind you could feel happening.
    I didn’t know you were talking about us.
    I have become a person I