Tonight the Streets Are Ours

October 10

I called Bianca three times before she finally texted to ask what I wanted. “I want my stuff back,” I replied. Come on, Bianca. Cut me a break.

She insisted on meeting at the bookstore because she didn’t want me to come over to her house, and she refused to come over to mine. The bookstore, where it all began. What cruel bookends. She got there five minutes after I finished my shift.

“I can’t believe you’re already back at work,” she said.

“Life goes on,” I told her. “It has to.”

“Yours does, maybe.”

“What did you think was going to happen if we met at your house?” I asked. “Did you think I was going to throw you down on your bed and start ravishing you?”

“No,” she said. “But I thought you would have wanted to.”

“I still want to,” I said. “And we’re not anywhere close to a bed. We’re at a bookstore.”

“Ha,” she said, handing me a tote bag of my stuff. There wasn’t a lot in there. I never left much at Bianca’s house, for obvious reasons. I knew that already, but I wanted it back anyway. Because I wanted a reason to see her. So sue me. The bag contained just a T-shirt, two books, and an opened bag of Cheetos.

“Really?” I said, looking up. “Some half-eaten snack food, Bianca? You couldn’t have just thrown that away?”

She shrugged. “You said you wanted your stuff.”

Why can’t you love me as much as I love you? I wanted to ask in that moment. I thought about the events of these past few weeks, and I just felt so defeated and indignant. The world has cracked open over my head, like a smelly egg. Why doesn’t anybody love me as much as I love them?

“You’ll find another girl,” Bianca said as we stood across from each other. At a bookstore. Like strangers. “You’re Peter. Girls love you.”

As if all of my feelings for her come down to the fact that she’s a girl and I’m a guy. Substitute in any other guy and any other girl, they’ll fit those empty spaces just as well.

“I don’t want another girl,” I said. “I want you.”

I didn’t get her, though. I got my Cheetos. Then I threw them away.

Who were these people, Peter and Bianca? Arden wondered. They could be any age, living anywhere in the English-speaking, book-shopping world. Peter could be a fifty-year-old physical therapist in Akron, Ohio, with a fondness for Cheetos. But she felt like he probably wasn’t.

She read on to the next post.



October 12

Why do I lose everyone who matters? First my brother. Now Bianca. I don’t really know which of those losses hurts worse: my brother, because he has always been a part of my life, or Bianca, because I chose her into my life, and I thought she chose me, too—but I thought wrong. I will walk down every street and avenue knowing that she might be walking right in front of me, but she will never again be mine.

I hate that this is how life has to be. The progressive loss of everyone who matters to you. That’s all there is to it, you know: if you live long enough, your reward is that you get to watch everyone you love die or leave you behind.

Oh, but I am being ridiculous. I know. I know. Death and a broken heart are not the same.

Now Arden didn’t just want to know what happened with Bianca, why they broke up. She wanted to know what had happened to Peter’s brother, too. She wanted to know everything. She never had been able to manage a calm, reserved interest in other people.

Maybe she needed to start at the beginning. That would make this whole story become clear, if it unfolded in chronological order.

Peter’s very first post was from nearly a full year ago, but it said nothing about Bianca or a brother, or love or loss at all.



March 21