Ophelia Study No. 1

Chapter Four

We were an item from the start. What would you expect, it’s exactly what I was looking for, and while I wasn’t sure what she wanted, I couldn’t really care. I was a teenager, and egocentric was my middle name. I didn’t lack empathy, but I lacked sacrifice. I didn’t care, it didn’t matter. I came first and that was what was really important.

We met up in a coffee shop, this little place tucked away in an alley just off West Hancock Street. There we would fuel up before our trudges to school, combating fatigue with caffeine, and in the end creating more stress than there ever was to begin with. It was over coffee that we would tell about our nights, and sometimes she’d admit she had a rough one, and I’d rub her thigh underneath the table. We admitted our dreams and confessed our fears. At that time, she believed in God and myself, karma. We clung to 11:11 prayers with a relentless grip and a refusal to face reality. We had so much growing up to do.

That was when she used to finish her homework and comb her hair, when she listened to her parents and went to church. It was when she used to care.

It was in that period that she asked me to meet her family. I was caught off guard; she’d asked me within weeks of dating. There wasn’t much I could do, not an awful lot of things to say, so I figured it would just be best to agree; that was back when I still cared about making her happy.

And happy I made her. I wore a suit coat and tie to her house, the blazer being the only one I owned, and the tie a recent purchase exclusively for the occasion. I think it’s currently buried under my bed somewhere.

Her home was nothing like what I was used to. Her baby pictures decorated the walls, so many so that I couldn’t turn my head without facing a younger version of my Emily. The house was stripped of all odors, the only scent a slight fragrance of lavender and mint. It was weird for a house to smell like that; over the years I had grown used to pet odors and pancake syrup, fresh cut grass and sweat. To be completely submersed in such an aroma was unsettling, just as any unfamiliarity is.

She had given me a hug for the first time. I wasn’t sure if she had meant it or if she was just playing it up for her parents, and I still don’t know.

It was a short lived night. Her father asked me if I was on the football team, and only seemed a little disappointed when I told him I wasn’t. Her mother would ask me about my grades, and I could lie easily that I was on the honor roll.

Her little brother kicked me beneath the table, and her sister had stolen glances when she thought I wasn’t looking. Her family was easily the most basic, default assemblage I had ever encountered. Her father read the paper, her mother did the dishes, her brother knocked things over, and her sister stood off to the side. Where did Emily fit into the mix? I couldn’t figure it out, and it was unimaginable to not have a predetermined role within your own kin.

It must’ve been suffocating to live in that house. I had really felt truly sorry for her, and it was in knowing her that I got to understanding what empathy really was.

At the end of the night, Emily walked me to the door, again hugging me. I could tell by the way that she licked her lips and bit them, her tooth catching on a bit of dry skin, that what she really wanted was to kiss me.

I had walked out to my car alone, sitting for a few minutes to allow it to warm up. It was then when Emily had tapped on my window, leaning into my car as I rolled it down. She’d grabbed me by the tie and planted a kiss on my lips, a shy, quick peck with her mouth closed. She had blushed nonetheless before waving and running back inside before her parents found out.

The kiss was uneventful, her delivery felt like I was kissing my sister. I didn’t even have any siblings, yet I could use them as a negative comparison, and that’s how bad it really was. Her lips were taut and firm, almost completely rigid. It was like kissing a wall, which was another area I had no experience in, but could imagine it felt close. Worst of all, I had caught a glimpse of her with her eyes open wide, unwavering and plain.

I had brushed it off, all too aware of the fact that the kiss had most likely been her first.

She wasted a lot of her firsts on me. The more I realize that, the less sorry I truly am.