The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

by Mariana Zapata

When life gives you lemons, you get to choose what you make out of them; it doesn’t always have to be lemonade.

When I was a kid, I learned the hard way how expensive the truth was. Sometimes it cost you people in your life. Sometimes it cost you things in your life. And in this life, most people were too cheap to pay the price for something as valuable as honesty. In this case, I could tell the price tag had hit Aiden unexpectedly.

“I’m not going to disappear on you in the middle of the night. I always go through with my promises, all right? The only place I’m going soon is to El Paso next month for a weekend, but I’ll be back after a few days. I’ll be around in two years, and I’ll still be here three years after that. I don’t take my word lightly.”

It was right then, in that instant, that I realized I might be a little in love with Aiden.

“I’m starting to understand that you can always make time for the things that matter.”

“Since when do you care what he thinks? Trevor is an idiot when it comes to anything that won’t make him money. So what if there’s a chance some people that you don’t know don’t like you? Their opinion shouldn’t matter. At the end of the day, you’re still going to be you—the you I know who would flip me off in the middle of a stadium—and no one’s opinion will change that.”

“I’m going to miss you a lot,” I told him just so he’d know it wasn’t going to be some casual thing, like missing him when I’d first stopped working for him. That hand in my hair dug deeper, reaching my scalp, holding more hair in those strong fingers. He exhaled, his breath washing over my chin. He didn’t say he was going to miss me back. Instead, his lips went to my chin, then to that nook between there and my lips. His breath was hot, his mouth moist as he trailed it an inch higher. It was me who cut the distance between us. Me who nipped at his lip. But it was him who went for it. Aiden turned his mouth to the side and sealed our lips together, going from chaste to hungry in one second flat. He went one direction and I went the other, our tongues clashing instinctively. Dueling, dipping. Aiden ate at my mouth and I let him. We kissed and we kissed. My tongue brushed his over and over again, and it wasn’t enough.

“That’s my girl. That’s my fucking girl.”

Maybe that was the thing about love I never understood before Aiden. Like football and art, like anything that anyone in the world has ever wanted, love was a dream. And just like a dream, there were no assurances behind it. It didn’t grow on its own. It didn’t blossom without food to feed it. It was the greatest in its subtleties. It was the strongest in its selflessness. And it could be forever with someone who wasn’t afraid to never give up on the possibilities it presents.