16. Greta
16
Greta
People Do What They Do
I know it’s not unusual for the sex to be exceedingly hot in the beginning, and of course, someone can easily consume your thoughts when you’re at that stage, but damn.
Walking past the take-and-bake pizza in the grocery store should not make my panties wet. And I should not feel the urge to take my clothes off when an errant dog toy shaped like a baseball bounces off my foot on the sidewalk.
I roll the ball back to the clumsy black dog who’s anxiously scampering between all the cars searching for it. Poor guy. His owner runs over to thank me with an empty leash in her hand.
“That ball is his favorite thing in the world. When it fell out of his mouth and started rolling down the sidewalk, he snapped the leash ring right off his collar! Time for a harness, I guess.”
“We’ve all got our favorite things.” I shrug and give her a smile.
“Thanks again,” she says, jogging off to catch up with her dog, who is already running in circles in the park across the street.
The smell of strong coffee and fresh lemon pound cake hypnotizes me when I walk into Coffee not that it was ever that great to begin with, now that I look back on it. Now that I have something so much better to compare it to. Hell, I had better before him, too. Maybe that’s why it was easier to let go of whatever we had left. So many maybes.
We weren’t great together. But we stuck around long enough to get comfortable. We put in the time and knew all the mundane stuff, like which allergy medicine the other preferred and the name of the coworker they couldn’t stand.
Would’ve been helpful if I’d known I was the only one whose sex life had gone stale.
I should’ve never judged my friend for staying when she just had a different type of comfort. Maybe our own lived experiences are all we can ever truly understand.
But why do people put themselves through hell when there’s nothing beyond the physical? What is it that draws people back into those black holes of heartbreak just for another round of hot sex?
Am I that boring? Or are they just addicted to the darkness of an obsessive attraction?
Without another thought, I pick up my pen.
The Way I Love the Dark
It’s a stunner of a sunrise
The promise of a clean start
Birds singin’ in the trees
As a clear dawn breaks
Know it’s a light that should fill my heart
But the way I love the dark
New boots for an old rundown bar
The promise of a heartbreak
Sunglasses on my dash
Parked next to your truck
Yeah, I know I should avoid this place
But it’s fun here in the dark.
Last call always comes way too soon
The promise of more regret
Fumbled keys in the lock
Fallin’ on your bed
No denying this is a mistake
But it feels right in the dark
Drag my fingernails down your back
The promise of one more lie
Empty words from your mouth
Tangled up in these sheets
It’s still impossible to forget
The way you love me in the dark
I’ll stall when my friends ask me why
The promise of all their wrath
Too shameful to explain
Sure I’ll do it again
I wish I understood it myself
Just the way I love the dark
It’s something. It’s more words than I’ve been able to string together since I wrote the song about longing. But I don’t long for what’s happening in these lyrics. I may have been a fool for far too long, but when the end finally came, I could let go.
I wouldn’t spend another night with Brick if he crawled across broken glass and begged.
I’ve just written about a woman who knows she’s hurting herself when she has the power to stop it. Or she should have the power. But what does it mean? Is it about reconciling her loss of control, or maybe facing the fact that she never had as much as she thought she did?
Huh. I close my notebook and slip it back into my purse.
Writing is so weird. Just when you’re afraid your creative well has run completely dry, new words show up out of nowhere.