I opened my eyes, only to slam them shut again against the morning’s blazing sun that streamed through Taylor’s window. The itchy carpet had ingrained itself into my chest and stomach—just another Sunday morning, waking up on the floor of Taylor’s basement. With a good deal of effort against the dull throb that was beginning to bloom at temple, I lifted myself off the floor whose texture and smell of stale, cheap beer, had become all too familiar.


Taylor had passed out on the couch, a can of Bud Light inches away from his face; his arm resting on the back of his on-and-off girlfriend, Sarah. Walking over to the bathroom, I know that when they wake up, Sarah would think that waking up by Taylor’s side—hung-over, bloated and bleary-eyed was the sweetest thing.


I closed the bathroom door behind me and after setting my clean clothes on the small counter, I looked in the mirror. My thin, brown hair was a mess and there were bags under my pale blue eyes. But besides that I think I looked fine. No one made a coloring book out of my face, male genitalia weren’t scribbled in permanent marker ink on any places that I was aware of.

I turned the hot tap on all the way to a full blast before turning the shower on. Taylor’s water heater liked a heads up of a hefty order of hot water. I rubbed the crust from my tear ducts and allowed them to make their way down the drain before I turned off the sink and pulled the knob of the bathtub’s faucet.


I’m glad that Taylor mimicked nearly everything I did; the result was a bathroom well-stocked with the entire line of Axe products and a closet lined with fluorescent tees and shoes. I was not sore, but the hot water against my back felt good. I turned the knob a little more, just to make it a little hotter. And a little more…and more. In minutes, the bathroom was completed fogged with steam swirling its way past the shower curtain. But it was never quite hot enough in comparison to last night.


Her smooth leg against mine. My hands on her waist, itching to slide down, but knowing the game would be over if I did. Her eyes darker—if even possible—in the crowded gymnasium; her pale skin flashing like lightning under the dark, strobe lights. I wanted to stand there with Charlotte forever.


She could have whatever she wanted—anything. The world would have to ease back into movement, the clock would have to start ticking once again once the song ceased to blare from the speakers by the DJ’s turntable. My mind wandered as she ran her own nails—not fake, glittery ones, I checked—in lazy circles along the neck of my nape. She was so close and so far away, and I knew that was what she had in mind.


I was this little marionette in this play she had planned, written and directed. I wasn’t even the main character, I was just some guy in the background waiting for the right chance (that would never come) to win her heart. Charlotte Mosshart had me in a place that no other girl had ever shown me before.


I was flirting with a barbed wire line and getting cut, drawing blood on the rusty, dull wire was inevitable.