Our Ashes Will Fly

VII. So This is the New Year

“It happened like this . . .”

            The New Year. Two years ago. Beer bottles in the trash can, their contents on my breath. I was sitting on the kitchen counter, wearing my favorite jeans, the new ones that clung to my legs and sucked me in, until I was skinny, beautiful.

            And Harris wrapped his arms around my waist, and whispered, “ready for that last kiss?”

            “Harris was my boyfriend. We had been dating for a year. He had these really nice curls that always fell down into his eyes . . .”

            I brushed his curls out of his eyes. They were soft, soft as his eyes when he looked at me. Soft as his breath on my neck, even though it reeked of alcohol.

            “His hands, too. He had great hands. Guitar player hands.”

            I was ready for that kiss. I had imagined it, over and over again. We would stand on the front porch of our friend’s house, the radio playing faintly in the background, playing songs that soon we would laugh at, call them so-last-year. The ball would be dropping in the background, but time would stop for us.

            We were going to kiss at midnight. I had a boyfriend with great hair and pretty hands and eyes that looked straight at me. Harris and I were alive. We were in love, and we were invincible.

            Christine walked into the kitchen, a glass of wine in her hands. Because Christine drank wine. Christine was sophisticated. Christine set down her glass and flipped her dark hair over her shoulders, and grinned at us.

            “Christine was my best friend. I mean, I guess she was. She was the one who invited me to the party. Christine wore vintage dresses and drank wine and listened to jazz, and when pretty even when she was wasted.

            “And she was in love with Harris and we all knew it. And tonight was the night she going to get him.”

            I saw it in her eyes. Drunk, but not on wine. She was drunk on his eyes, on his smile, dizzy with the idea of his lips against hers.

            She put on arm around each of our shoulders. She smelled like vanilla. “Well, come on you lovebirds. Let’s go watch the fireworks.”

            Harris said, “But Sylvie is afraid of fireworks.”

            Christine threw her head back, her hair flipped again, and laughed at me. “That’s stupid, Sylvie.”

            “I told her it was because they were so much bigger than me. Fireworks lit up the sky, they were bigger than all of us. We set them on fire, and then just went. Once we lit the spark, there was no going back. And that scared me.”