Atomic Dustbin

My junior year prom date was named Zach. I really didn’t know him. He used to sit behind me in CCD (that’s bible school for Catholics, peeps) and bag groceries at the grocery store. I sort of knew who he was.

He called my house and told my mother that he’d like to ask me on a date. My mother gave me the message, so I called back and he asked me to prom. For that very same night. Why not?

I was out somewhere during the day, and it must have been a pool or something because when I came home I was super sunburned. Zach was there already, sitting on the porch swing with my mother in a gray suit he’d bought at the Bargain Hut for $11 after I’d said yes to prom. While I got dressed, he and my mother made a most gorgeous corsage for me out of lilacs from the back yard, and he pinned it to my dress. We took pictures, and we’re both smiling uncontrollably and I’m red as a lobster.

We went to prom. We danced and stuff. Then we went to Fort Wayne, the nearest metropolis about an hour away, and still in our prom threads, and went to an underground punk bar named Monkey Lust. It was fabulous amounts of badass fun. He lifted me up on his shoulders so I could see the band, and I gave him a fake tattoo in the parking lot. Then we drove down Hoosier country roads, the narrow ones with the dips where the tall grass flattens as you zoom through. They had an enormous trampoline in the back yard. We jumped on the trampoline in the middle of the night in our prom clothes, then we laid down on the trampoline and ate ice cream out of the container. The sky was black and full of stars and more stars the longer you looked at it, just millions of them.

We became great friends. I went to Europe that summer and he sent me giant packages with mixed tapes (Fugazi, Nine Inch Nails, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Nirvana). Four months passed till I saw him again, and I was dating a boy named Ted. Ted and I dated and Zach and I were friends. Once, home from college for Christmas, Ted and I were having troubles. Zach and I went to a party and drank too much and kissed. And we both felt weird. So, whatever, we were drunk and it was stupid and we agreed to pretend it never happened, and I pretended I didn’t hear him say he loved me. Maybe he didn’t say it at all, but I’m pretty sure he did.

I dated Ted more. Then Ted and I broke up. I wanted to date Zach, but he was dating Anna. All summer Zach and I went swimming and ate ice cream and lounged in a hammock. He dated Anna, and Anna was beautiful and wonderful and I liked her. Once, a bunch of us were swimming at his house, and for reason we were in his bedroom (the whole big attic) and I don’t know how it happened, we hugged or something, and we could have kissed. But we didn’t.

Then I went to Europe again, to study, and he sent me letters. The old fashioned kind, remember? Hand written on notebook paper with clippings from the small town newspaper that he thought were funny. “Pig Falls from Three Story Window.”

In the first letter, he said he had broken up with Anna. I sent him jam from Herrods and pictures of books that I thought were beautiful and he sent me collages and pictures of the awards he won at art shows—he was always winning awards at art shows because his art was fabulous.

I was gone again for four months. I went to Prague the weekend before finals with my friend Erin, from Oxford. We were talking about Zach and she convinced me that this crazy him-loving-me-when-I’m-not-available and me-loving-him-when-he’s-not-available stuff had gone on long enough. What? FOUR years? She was right: When I got home, I would tell him enough was enough. I loved him. And he loved me. It’s time. Yes, I would do it.

When Erin and I got back to school, there was a letter from him waiting for me.

He was engaged. To a woman named Erica.

I did it anyway. It was hard. I didn’t tell him we should be together. I took him to a park and I remember that I was wearing something hooded, because I kept stalling and pulling the hood down over my face because I couldn’t look at him. I said something like…. I promised myself I’d tell you this before I knew about Erica, and I’m going to tell you anyway. But I want you to know that I’m not intending to upset anything, or to date you, or to harm your relationship. I’m telling you because I need to tell you. If you want to marry her, I want you to, too. I love you. And I’ve loved you since the ice cream on the trampoline.

And now he’s married and has two kids. We aren’t friends.

I wish him well. And I can’t smell lilacs or eat chunky monkey or listen to Gray Cells Green without thinking about what a really great guy he is.

The end.