my star

by Amanda Parrack

Nobody really writes about it cause it's cliche, unless—it's a song, the afterwards of a breakup. Most teenaged girls prefer to sing it out in their car or.... take long bike rides? Yeah, I wouldn't want to spill my guts about it, too, like that time I drove to her house in the middle of a snowstorm that was way too dangerous to drive, and she still didn't let me in the house. Left me on the porch half frost bitten with frozen blue tears to my face. Something about choosing herself because she wasn't ready. Something about the last seven months with family introductions, shower sex, and intimate conversation about their dead dad. Something about that, huh?

I moved back in with my parents.

“You know you can have that again with someone else,” my mom says munching on some bacon at the local diner.

I have a breakfast sandwich in front of me that I slowly stop munching on.

“You know you can have that happiness with someone else?”

She’s in my arms on the apartment floor. I'm laughing to tears about some dumb conversation we are having.

“I know,” I lie.

But the truth is... I thought about never dating again.

Theres this dumb, little story I used to write when I was in middle school. It was about this depressed angel that lived on earth with other angels, but no one can fly cause its illegal. The angel looks to the stars and swears he's going to reach one someday. At the same time, there's this romantic connection with Eris, another angel, and to stop him from hurting himself Eris says something like, “My star, was you”.

“We should have nicknames for ourselves, like baby or babe.”

“No, I don't like that cause it's too cliche and overused,” I say to her.

“We could do different languages or something like honey but in Spanish?”

“How about... my star? You know our inside joke about satellites being stars?”

“I like it.”

“My star.”

Needless to say, some part of it was traumatizing. I think this is the part most people don't write about in songs or sexy slut novels. How do I trust the next person or anyone in my life? How do I know they mean it when they say, I love you? She said those things the past seven months, held my hand in the car hiding a rose behind her back, something like,

“I’m frustrated because there are no words to describe what I feel for you, how much I love you...” and then hands me the rose I would dry on my apartment wall.

Something like our last conversation.

I'm at the grocery store buying sanitizing wipes to clean my apartment. I’m moving out to move back in with my parents, to start over. My heart is racing knowing she works here, but I had no other choice; it was the closest one, or maybe some part of me hoped this would happen.

She bumps into her.

“What are you doing here?”

“I needed to clean my apartment.”

They hug.

She starts to walk away.

“Wait!”

She turns around.

“How are you?”

She says something like, “Eh.”

She walks away.

She cries in her car.

She cries and wails so hard and it's raining outside.

It's raining outside and all that is left is her crying.

Photo of Amanda Parrack

BIO: Amanda Parrack is a graduate from Missouri State University and works in China as a teacher. Her first short story was nominated for the Robert J Dau prize.