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I'm in bed with Jeff, and I’m laying down, and I’m naked. And he’s naked, and his skin is soft like you’d told me during one of our late nights in the cabin, when we weren’t so tired. We were trying to pretend it was one of our normal sleepovers. One of the ones we’d have every Friday night after school, where we’d talk about school gossip and cheating boyfriends and you’d ramble about anything Jeff had done that day. If he bit your lip this time.
His thumb rubs the soft inside of my wrist, like you had chatted to me about in adoration and reflection on what you missed so badly, as we walked the forest and you twirled your somehow perfect ringlets. Moments before you told me he said “I love you“, the day before the crash, and you didn’t say it back. I could almost feel the baby guiltily growing and inflating inside me as I leaned against the tree. You said you missed him more than cheesecake. Better than the bite of my Oreo cheesecake from Roxie's in NYC when your parents took us for your birthday, and I got an Oreo slice and you got caramel, and we swapped bites. You never stopped talking about that cheesecake, never. Walking through the uncharted forest, you asked if I was okay, I said I was just hungry. You gave me your last piece of jerky.
He's inside of me. I want to be sappy about it, I know that if you had this chance, you’d tell me every detail. How he’d feel and how he’d touch your hair. He’s not gentle, but he always asks first before doing anything or makes sure I’m okay. I wonder if you’re supposed to be thinking so much while it’s happening, if it’s normal for your brain to tumble down other paths while having sex. When I focus on it, all I feel is “dry slop-brain” as you’d say to describe any of the many boys that’d always hit on you. I was so jealous, I wanted to feel that “dry slop-brain“ if it meant someone would see me like that. But it was never me, cause it was always every guys dream to get with Jackie Taylor.
But I love him, I love Jeff, I kiss his mouth, praying he can't see that I’m seeing you when I look at him.
When I close my eyes, you replace him. In this daydream, my eyes are open. I’ve never done “it” with a girl before, I don’t know how it’d work. It’s weird , anyway, thinking about this when you’re gone. Or at all. In the daydream, you’re wearing no disguise. You’re makeup is stripped in the way I had only known and waited for before we’d go to bed at sleepovers. You’d leave makeup wipes on the floor, with streaked mascara, and I’d slip them into my pocket to throw away later, but I’d always forget. I’d find so many discarded makeup wipes in bottoms of laundry baskets. I’d never throw them away, they’d always make it to the shoe box in the top of my closet filled with my (or our) keepsakes. I think I’ve almost forgotten what you look like with mascara, the last time I had seen you in anything close is when I had done yours with what little makeup I had, in the meat shed, when it felt like you were still around.
It was a terrible makeover, I know, and you’ve teased me since. The stark blue eye-shadow wasn’t one of your assigned colors, it made you look colder than you already were. We were all cold out there, but you were the coldest out of all of us even before you died. They tried to take your clothes, when you froze out there, but I didn’t let them. I promise I didn’t, Jackie. You couldn’t ever sleep in the cold, would always insist we slept at your house cause it had better AC and more blankets, you’d stack a cotton sweater on long sleeves and sweatpants and wool Christmas socks. The lipstick was the right shade but too matte and sparse and smeared, almost like your dead skin couldn’t hold on to the pigment. I didn’t use any mascara, of course, that was a recipe for an eye infection out there.
You erase him, Jackie. If I squint, I can almost see you.
In a way.
I wanna feel guilty that I can’t love him how I should. I keep trying to force myself, because I know I can never leave him. In a way, I feel like it would be a sort of betrayal to you. I should be able to carry out whatever you were planning with him. I know he’ll never leave me. I think he still loves you. Sometimes I catch him sniffing in the old clothes I took from your room. One of your old sweaters, the brown and red one we got cheap at the thrift store. I loved it so much, but knew it wouldn't look as good on me as it did you. I wanna feel that it's wrong that I’m still with him. I wanna know peace again, Jackie, but you’re haunting me.
I'm in bed, laying down, naked. You're inside of me, stuck chanting in my mind nonstop, insulting me in unintended movie quotes. Your face twists, a frown and an outing. I want to see you under me like this, laying over you. I wish you had stayed in the wilderness, so that maybe you could’ve seen everything I did for you; because of you. Maybe we’d talk enough that you’d forgive me. I can’t even begin to describe the taste of you. Sometimes I can still feel your digested fat and muscle weighing down my belly, even though it's been a year now. I love him, kiss his mouth, saying:
"Oh yeah, Jackie, touch and touch and touch and touch me."
I wanna know peace again, without you in my ears and the dead skin under my fingernails as my fingers rake against his back. I don’t want to see you in brown and gold and lipgloss anymore. In the deli section at our grocery store, when I look at the glistening of the clean-cut steak. As I pick up the yellow foam plastic-wrapped dish for my mom, and steak juice leaks to my fingers before I wrap it in a produce bag. I always slip on a scarf and mittens, when I walk into the freezer room at Costco, even though I know I look crazy, because I can’t stand feeling the cold again as my fingers grace a jug of whole milk, remembering having to swipe the snow off your face to make sure it was really you.
Fallen snow was stuck to your eyelashes when I found you out there, and I could almost convince your peaceful sleep was what really kept them closed.
I don’t know where you end and I begin. I’m sorry, I love you.