I am beyond fake.

I challenged myself to write for 30 minutes. I put a song on repeat for the 30 minutes, “Doll Parts” by Hole. This is the result.

It’s raining. We’re in our prom outfits, sopped and soaked and sauced. Five-sixths of a six pack, clinking glass against the pavement and passing one last “champagne” between our lips. It tastes like corn and everything smells like the inside of a mall; vanilla and rose and plastic chemicals. Her panties dangling off the side of my Chuck Taylors. An image I’m already saving for the deathbed slideshow. Young romance, rose-tinted and dewy without the fear of authority or morning-after pills. Her blonde curls coiled around her face, framing a melting madonna as she laughs at an angry sky pouring fury and retribution down on us as if to cleanse our sins by pure volume and deluge.

She kisses me like an apology, and I feel the rush of decades pushing down on top of me with the cosmic knowledge that one of us won’t live to see 30 and the other will live forever or close enough to it as the suburbs will allow. If it weren’t for the fear, I’d wish the death for myself as my hand slips inside the soft padding of her bra, to cup her almost-breasts and feel the warmth of her skin against the cold of my insides.

She steals the bottle from my hand with a smile against my lips and slides the rest down her throat. She flings the empty bottle, but it refuses to shatter against the damp ground. She laughs and sinks her head into my shoulder. I wonder if the color has washed from her dress or if its’ always been white. Long pale legs wrapped around the wet fabric of rented tuxedo slacks.

You can see the lights of the city from here on a clear night. But nothing’s clear. Nothing but gray rolling and tumbling over itself in chaotic turmoil, dripping and soaking without rhyme, reason, or purpose. No lights on the horizon.

“I love you.”

“We’re out of beer.”

“It’s raining, too.”

“Yeah.”

I dream of folding her up like an origami unicorn and cradling her in my hands, but the rain never stops, the winds blow eternal, and if you put her down, she’ll just gallop away.

“We should go.”

“Yeah.”

“Or at least change into something dry.”

She’s growing uncomfortable living in the memory I will live inside every quiet moment until the grave, waiting for that slide with the red panties canted off black Chucks to cycle through. Everything soaked through with hope and promise and a mortal inevitability. I say nothing, and she rises, trying to lift me by the lips as she opens the car door and spills into the passenger seat. I ball up the red lace and tuck it into the empty slot of the six-pack, toss it under an emergency blanket in the trunk and fall forever behind the wheel.

The headlights come alive. The blades clear the rain from the windshield, but there’s nothing ahead except two parallel illuminated paths that disappear into black. The CD player whirls. “Doll Parts” starts playing low against the heave of the engine.

“I love you, too.”

“I know.”

Some day you will ache like I ache…