Dear Aaron

by Mariana Zapata

P.S. Live your life for both of us while I’m over here… hear me? Don’t let some idiot “rejecting you” make you think everybody will. It’s hard for me to believe you didn’t have a long line of guys trying to hook up with you.

“You’re gorgeous,” I said to him almost painfully, prying the words out. “Like… the army should put you on their recruitment ads or put you as the face on their website. I feel like I can’t look you in the eye or I’ll turn into stone, and they’ll need to add my statue to a garden of other women who have made eye contact with you before and lost their lives.”

Looking back on it, it’s weird thinking about the moments you don’t realize are important. The sentences, the touches, the actions that seem so innocent in that second, you take them for granted. The words that make water into wine in the course of your life. But I would never forget the way his words made me feel. The way he made me feel right then.

“I was a goner from the first time you gave me hell.” Aaron smiled. “Maybe even before then.”