ii. tinsel - 12/8
My roommate’s name is Valentina. She’s tall and pretty and outgoing and always out at some party or another. She invites me to every single one, but in nearly six months of sharing a dorm, I’ve never gone. She comes home with her dress askew, smelling like smoke and alcohol, laughing dizzily behind her hand, and I don’t want that to be me. I don’t say a word, though, because I really do like her even though we’re two very different people.
Valentina is a psychology major, and she wears homemade bead bracelets up to her elbows. She made me one before we even met and handed it to me the moment I walked into our dorm in September, and even though she didn’t know me then, that bracelet just happened to be the same blue as your eyes.
I’ve told her all about you, and she loves listening to my stories even though I’m sure I get repetitive. I never told her how much I miss you, but for my birthday in October she gave me a book about the science of missing someone.
Like I said, she’s a psychology major.
Anyway. We’re decorating our dorm today, and Valentina is standing on top of a rolling chair trying to hang tinsel from the ceiling fan. It’s not really working because the chair slides every time she reaches up, and all I can think is that if you were here, you’d hang the tinsel without a problem because you’re tall enough.
I was decorating our miniature tree earlier, but I stopped because I remembered Christmas decorating at your house last year and how you’re not here now and it made me sad. I was all right for the first few months, like we promised. We promised that we’d be all right, even if there are three thousand miles between us.
But now it’s December again, and all I can think about is you.
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dedicated to farah because she had such a violently positive reaction to this story and because i know she loves sam.
