Have You Ever Been With a Girl?

I

"Have you ever been with a girl?" he asks me.

Yes. She was beautiful. She was brighter than the sun. She smiled at me like happiness was our inside joke. I kissed her fingertips, her knuckles, her palms, as if she were holy. She placed her hands delicate on my throat, as if any second she might choke me, might break me. And she left me. I drank vodka, neat, never apple vodka. I cried outside a McDonalds on a motorway in the middle of the night. I left her voicemails and begged her not to listen to them, but she did. She was my best friend and then my nothing.