Forgive Me If I've Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz-Waters

Author:Karelia Stetz-Waters [Stetz-Waters, Karelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ooligan Press
Published: 2014-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

I had treasured that heart, but it was a cold comfort.

“You know,” Chloe said, her mouth half full of soufflé. She had pushed the gray part off and dug into the yellow middle. “I was wondering … ’cause I knew you were going to be here … would you like to be my friend? I know it sounds massively dorky, but I was thinking that you were probably missing Ursula, and I was missing Ursula, especially now that we’re back in school and, you know, she’s not. So I was wondering if you’d like to hang out sometime. You know: be my friend?”

I remembered that night in the warm darkness of the Bensons’ woodstove when Ursula had sighed and said, “Chloe said she’d only go abroad if her boyfriend was going. She said she didn’t want to miss out on spending time with him. Can you believe that?”

I had shaken my head, enthusiastically shocked.

Another time, Ursula had told me that Chloe had dated a twenty-one-year-old when she was just thirteen. “And her mother approved,” Ursula had said, as though that was also Chloe’s fault. “I hope that my mother would never let me go out with a twenty-one-year-old, at least until I was … say … eighteen and legal! Chloe is so boy crazy. I hate to say it, but she’s kind of a slut.”

I had trilled, “That’s awful,” and my heart had opened like a gilded cage. Ursula liked me better! But now Ursula was in France; it had been forty-two mail days since her postcard.

“Yeah. I’d like to be your friend.” I heard the question mark at the end of my sentence, but Chloe didn’t.

“Great! Awesome!” Chloe waved at a boy on the other side of the room. “That’s my boyfriend, Aaron. I told him to give us some time so I could talk to you. Come on over, Aaron. She said yes.”

I had to laugh. “Did you think I’d say no?”

“Ursula said you and I had nothing in common. She said you were an intellectual. Are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, whatever. I thought if Ursula liked you so much, I’d probably like you too.”

I was still puzzling over the bra.

“Ursula thinks I’m slutty,” Chloe said, as though reading my mind. “Am I slutty?” she asked the lanky, dark-haired boy who had just appeared at her elbow. “This is Aaron.”

Aaron seemed perfectly balanced between fish-eyed adolescence and beautiful adulthood. One moment I thought his Adam’s apple was about to pop out of his neck, he was so skinny and gangly, but then he’d turn to look at Chloe and his concentration was handsome beyond measure.

“I don’t think that,” he said thoughtfully. “I think what a woman does with her body is her own business.”

I stared at them. Aaron wore a dress shirt, tie, and sweater vest. Chloe had matched her lipstick to her bra.

“So what do you like to do?” Aaron asked, taking a seat next to Chloe.

“Nothing. Write.” I shrugged.

“Cool,” Aaron said. “You going to eat that?” He pointed to the gelatinous lump of egg on my plate.

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