let’s always

let’s always be friends, she said, desperate and whole, wholly unflattering under the fluorescent light of the women’s third-floor bathroom. i said, sure, thinking, she can’t possibly hold me to this, we’re in a bathroom, and after all, do we even like each other now? her cold nose pressed against my ear in some foreign gesture of ultimate companionship (some country, somewhere, must do this) and before i knew it i was being kissed, by a girl, not a girl, the girl, the girl who was supposed to be my friend and was now decidedly feeling me up in a bathroom and all i wanted to do, really, was check my hair and pee. you won’t know this now, she said, but this will be a moment that will change your life. you will look back and you will...