Snow

4 | family separation in the media

❝i will lie awake and lie for fun,
and fake the way i hold you;
let you fall for every empty word i say.❞

❘❘

A DULL ACHE THROBS in the back of my skull. In that vaguely nostalgic feeling of the morning after a party, a hangover lingers; it ebbs and flows with a pulsating headache and a subtle burn in my chest.

Moments of the night tangle together into a web of fantasies and lies lost somewhere within foggy memories.

There were kisses; soft and gentle, trailing down my neck as I twisted my fingers into someone's dress; fleeting and volatile, branding my skin with the singular notes in an endless soundtrack of bliss.

I'd stared out over a balcony past the Puerto Rican flag, mesmerized by the desire to just jump.

I groan, open my eyes to find him beside me—inked knuckles sprawled across blue sheets, seductively still. Soft snores leave his parted lips.

Julian? Was that his name?

As I sit up, a scorching hot string of bile gathers in the back of my throat. It tastes like smoke and something sweet, burning up into my nose.

I need to get out of here.

I stumble to my feet, my knees buckle, my stomach lurches. A hollow feeling swallows me.

I feel empty as I stand, spare him a silent look and then scramble for the window in crumpled clothes. I feel fucking nothing. A nothingness.

It sucks me into a slow-motion track as time passes; it bleeds into the evening with the same transient buzz, fading, as if it never happened and it never would again.

The world feels sluggish. Everything blurs by in some drowsy dreamscape that I watch from the other side of a thick piece of glass. It's disorienting—dizzying—watching hairline cracks splinter a dirty lens.

I blame it on the hangover I'm not sure I even have.

"So you just left him in bed?"

I take a drag and glance at Emmy. "I did."

It's low key and lulling to a dead night, by the turn in our dazed conversation. Between wisps of smoke and wasting as much time away from the bar as we can afford, our smoke breaks always deviate from stolen kisses into rehashing one night stands.

The smoking area is as quiet as New York City can get. Only distant late-night traffic fills the void as Emmy inhales. She twirls a piece of hair around her finger, quirking a brow at me.

With her thick curves and her wild, cotton-candy-colored wigs, I'd always been into Emmy. Not just because she was the first friend I made in New York or that she insisted on keeping her contact in my phone as Big Papi, but because she was the ideal amount of crazy.

"Why?" Smoke billows from her lips like an invitation. "You coulda gotten yourself some hot morning sex."

Maybe it's not like watching the world from the other side of a sheet of glass. Maybe it's like watching it through a thin veil of smoke. It fades with time, and then suddenly, everything is how it used to be.