Last Summer

S-E-X

I met you on Tinder

At 2 a.m. on a Saturday night

Your pictures were dazzling

A veritable smorgasbord of abs and white teeth and floppy hair

I was hurting from the inside out

From a broken heart that still sent shockwaves through every nerve at the slightest provocation

But I didn't have to use my heart with you

I used my hands and my mouth and so much more yet still so much less than that

We had nothing in common

But we talked for hours about fantasies and kinks and exploration

You sent me dirty texts every day

And I responded with amateur blue films starring yours truly every night

For weeks on end I walked around with a simmering heat between my legs

While you consumed my every waking thought

Finally, we took the plunge

"Lets meet up for coffee" you said

Turns out you spell the word coffee with the letters S-E-X

In the woods, on a cliff, in the backseat of your father's old car

I had almost all of you but I could still never get enough

I had months and months of you, from February to December, but I still wanted more

We wanted nothing serious from each other, that was clear from the start

After all, we met on Tinder at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night, and that spoke volumes

I wanted a casual fling because my heart had just been torn between my ex-lover and my sanity

You wanted a casual fling...because you wanted a casual fling

Perhaps you were fundamentally incapable of forming meaningful romantic connections

But I was a girl raised on a steady diet of Nicholas Sparks novels, this was only ever going to end one way

Around Christmastime, your daily stream of messages slowed to a trickle and then evaporated entirely

First hours and then days went by without me hearing from you at all... I checked my phone obsessively the whole time

I told myself that you were just busy and that I was being crazy

I wasn't ready to face the fact that sometime over the past 10 months, a desire for S-E-X turned into a C-R-U-S-H which then progressed into L-O-V-E territory

I told myself that a global pandemic was the only reason that you were the only one I was with for the better part of that year

It was all about safety, and had nothing at all to with the accidental tangling of my heartstrings with your smile

In January I sent you an obscenely flirtatious message that took me an hour to compose...desperate to break this unbearable silence

You replied with a flurry of words I couldn't understand

I read the phrases "I've met someone wonderful" and "It's getting kind of serious between us" and "I'm sorry, I don't think we should do this anymore" and finally, "I hope you understand"

But I didn't understand

I didn't understand how you spent February to December with me

How you took the time to learn about that one spot at the base of my neck...only to have met someone else

I also didn't understand how in the hell I had gotten so attached

Where was that girl who told you to your face that you were but a living plastic toy to me

And yet here we were

A year of gluing the pieces of my heart back together with the sticky honey you coaxed out with your tongue...all gone to waste

I loved you and I missed you

And as it turns out I wasn't using you for S-E-X at all

You were using me as a placeholder

A stopgap measure to whet your appetite while you waited for The One

Now it's 2 a.m. on a Saturday night

I see abs and smiles and Justin Bieber cuts galore as they cross my screen in flashes

But all I really see is you

I see you under me by the side of the river

I see you behind me against a tree in the park

I see over me through the haze of a steamed backseat

And I see you and me on the kitchen counter ten years in the future

But none of it is real anymore

When I told you I could never fall in love with you, that wasn't real

I didn't know it then, but I know it now

I know it now, and I also know it's much too late

I see you and her in the middle of S-E-X