I am telling you this story because you are the only person who will not judge me
And you didn’t get all that mad when I borrowed your silk blouse without telling you and spilled cheap cabernet down the front of it in a long, grape-y smudge that the cleaners couldn’t get out.
Do you remember that?
You were still with Tyler then—oh Tyler—and you could never really be with a Tyler because of the shaggy bangs, dirty blonde and keg-o-rators and cars with iffy transmissions, floorboards mashed with remnants of Taco Bell.
I remember that blouse, smooth between the fingers and robin’s egg blue, draped across my torso like a slick, bright waterfall.
It happened when I went to meet Brett, who had a few pictures in that show, black and white photographs—
Remember how we thought black and white was the height of sophistication, like filet mignon and restaurants that park your car for you, where the cheapest bottle of wine is over fifty bucks and we’d pretend not to care. That wine of our youth, fermented in memory, all the bottles and glasses and stained clothes and the all those things we wished with each satisfying pop of the cork.