New Year's Superstition Regarding First Loves
A short story by Savannah Massey
Tonight, I fell asleep on my couch with the poor man's champagne in my hands. I dream about you like I always do. In my dreams, I’m always going somewhere and, most times, I’m just going back to somewhere I left to look around and make amends.
Tonight, we meet with old friends and talk about our time outside of each other in my gravel driveway. Then, you pull me behind the house like I’m a secret. The curls your mom hates dance right above your pursed eyebrows as you tell me that I seem too ready to see you again. You ring your fingers around your thumbs like you carry your 8th-grade tendencies in your knuckles.
“You seem too rehearsed to talk to me again. I can tell you’ve been dreaming of me as if neither of us are the same anymore.” Logically, I know we are each different now, but you will always be the same eighteen as when I first held your hand. I don’t care if you’re twenty-one and living across the world. I wouldn’t know the difference. I’m still sixteen and a fool for falling in love with an idea. I hope you know, I still haven’t fallen out yet. I’m held in the liminal space of Valentine’s decorations marked on clearance and roses awaiting their wilt.
I’m tripping over my words like each stutter is an answer to the question you didn’t even ask. Suddenly, we’re standing among the bleachers of some football game that doesn’t belong to us. Here, I don't wrestle with the liminal space between my head and the ground, the grass and my feet, or my body and yours. I just wait: arms folded neatly by my side, bright red mouth pinched shut, dance uniform wrinkled and too small. The mosquitoes fighting for their space in front of the floodlights buzz to keep the silence away. We are actors in a scene from three years ago. There are no words between us but we both know what to say. I’m back with the someone I left and I’m trying to make amends. I don’t speak and we both know this eye contact is an apology. We both know I’m sorry for leaving but it was for the better. We both know that I am still too ready to talk to you and it’s not for the better. We know each other and are both asking if it's actually for the better. I feel so guilty about how well we got along. I miss not feeling guilty.
When I wake up, the sparkling grape juice is tilted against the side of my plastic champagne glass. The clock resting above the mantle reads 12:02 a.m. but it has always been three minutes too fast. I’ve always had a superstition of sorts that the night of New Year’s Eve and the morning of New Year’s will predict the upcoming year for me. I’ve always had it, carrying the idea in my pocket for 364 days before I need it. I remember sitting with my spine bent towards the window when I was fifteen, reading some shitty YA romance book and wishing for someone to hold hands with. I know this superstition is a self-fulfilling prophecy because I can’t think of all the possibilities of the next year and expect to be surprised.
The skinny second hand of the clock keeps ticking forward and I come to terms with the fact that I will go into the new year the same way I did the last: falling in love with conceptualization.