By Samantha Arriozola
By Samantha Arriozola
2021
My jaw locked when we kissed, and he massaged the sides of my face like we had done this before. We laughed like an old couple having a silly time together, a summer montage moment in the movie where the light is warm and the orgasms are aplenty. He tasted like the best weed this side of Queens County.
An old-school gentleman, he walked me home from my train stop whenever he’d be at the studio down the block. Simply put he didn’t
“…like how dark it was.”
It was always flattering when he’d drop me off, and he’d adjust his pants.
****
He only wanted to sleep over and stay and smoke and f*ck. We didn’t go on dates, we would call on each other every other weekend or so and repeat our cycle. I wanted him in a way that I couldn’t want in high school, so I was wanting him like a high school sweetheart at 25.
In the early days, he talked about heartbreak and his ex and how she lived in my neighborhood.
“Pam,”
he would tell me, years after the snow from their fire had fallen, leaving a shape where we stood smoking on my steps.
He was an aspiring rapper with no job and a habit of always being at least residually high every time I saw him. He would tell me that his time in the studio
(with The Boys,)
would lead to him leaving Jackson Heights once and for all, but he was a man of his neighborhood. He knew the best pizza joint, he greeted people on every walk he carried me to on Facetime, and his former classmates’ great uncles would tell him of his kind face. In moments of pride, he would talk about how his side had better delis and smoke shops, and he was outraged by the price I was paying for rent.
(COLA is a bitch.)
He was 94th Street, but he wanted to be anything and anywhere else. He would always tell me how he loved my space, covered in books and draping plants. Tiny and triple shared, but it was home and he felt it. A sanctuary from the room he shared with his brother in his adulthood.
He loved music and he knew the end goal, but he had no concept of the path for his fame and future. He had been comfortable in the net of his mother’s home, and not even a want of a better or more glamorous life could dissuade him from his mattress and PlayStation.
Even without a plan, he would eventually write songs about this time or songs that I think were written about us.
I’m in love,
Oh I’m in love.
And if you ever need me
you can always call.
Cuz’ I’m the one,
yea im in love.
It was a dream come true.
****
There were always ghosts in his eyes. Early days of melting in laughter were covered in handfuls of fresh soil.
(In my research, I found out you could get a
casket from Costco.)
****
2023
I always knew who he was. Unemployed, a little immature, and we even differed in opinions on the TV volume. The only crossover we had was that we wanted each other. The inexplicable feeling that someone was mine and I was his.
But my own pride would get me in trouble. I had done the work of getting myself across the country to this city, and I didn’t want to stop growing and building my life.
I knew exactly who he was when I started dating him, and I was always blaming him for not being the person that I wanted him to be. And instead of breaking things off, I stalled.
I stalled, even when his grief was all-consuming. The trauma sewn into his skin from losing his friends to 94th Street. The memories of Riker’s and the fists that were expunged. He couldn’t love me the way I wanted him to love me as the terror of his own thoughts would scream at him until he got high.
The habit we shared became coping, and it’s one that he would gift me when we parted.
2021
The day after we matched on Tinder, he gave me an
“Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only ten-I-see”
level pick-up line. The refreshing difference between a “Hey” and a “wyd” was a low bar, but one that was exciting nonetheless.
I was at Hunter College inspiring rising middle schoolers to love writing
(which is hopeful in a mandated
summer program)
and I gave him my number after a day of soft exchanges.
Being on Tinder, I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but every Tinder conversation seems to start with the heavy weight of potential. Potential to be a new lover, potential to steal your laptop after hooking up, potential to get married after two weeks of knowing each other
(we’re all in danger).
Potential, potential, potential.
2024
“Ok.”
The taste of the unsaid sentence was on my tongue.
“I love you.”
Imbalance from the blunt almost knocked me over as I turned to face him. I couldn’t explain myself and why this moment had brought back the same resentment that had stopped me from saying “I love you, too” with more immediacy. I knew I loved him, but I couldn’t say that it would cover days of silence and the hope of another try squeezing between his teeth.
My resentment
bubbled over in the acid of my throat, sour on the tongue. When he ended almost three years in a text
(how modern.)
I caught my breath before it flew out of my window. I gasped and swallowed trying to remember the sound of his
“Baby girl, come here,”
and realized it had left before the text message had even been drafted.
(But I knew that.)
Immature and cowardly, we were always on the same page.
2022
After a year of no contact, he broke the silence.
“Hey, how have you been?”
I pushed back
“Fine. You?”
And he attempted
“What have you been up to?”
Then I
”___________________________
___________________________
___________________________
___________________________”
And
”__________________________
__________________________
__________________________
__________________________”
And
“_________________________
_________________________
_________________________
__________________________”
And eventually
“I’m sorry.”
And
“Thank you.”
And details that can no longer be remembered about how the conversation went, but it ended at a laundromat.
He met me at the Lavenderia Express a few blocks away. It was an “everything” level wash day and I was tending to sheets, blankets, underwear, and everything in between. When the dryer clicked off he called me to let me know
“I’m here.”
I paid for ten extra minutes to dry the blankets, and I stepped outside.
****
(I want you.
I want you.
I want you.)
Don’t carve yourself empty
if they can’t fit inside your ribs.
2024
After
”You want me to get this?”
another meal, we sat down thigh to thigh at the Chipotle on Northern Boulevard. I lay my head on his shoulder and we ate with few words, just touch.
After putting my leftovers in a bag, we walked back to the Q58 stop he would always take to my apartment. We walked, and he told me about his neighborhood.
”That’s my elementary school.”
And
“That used to be a baseball field.”
And, after my panic about them running into the street, he went to give a group of 3rd grade boys the ball they had kicked over a fence and onto oncoming traffic.
“Thank you, baby.”
And we walked again.
I remembered the last time we had walked in his neighborhood, and how we went to the mall and acted young. Teriyaki chicken and all. That night, we ended happy.
The 28-year-old high schoolers making doe eyes at each other across a linoleum table in a food court.
But this night, walking with leftover Chipotle and his scarf wrapped around me would be the last time we would see each other. Carried off to an ending when I forgot to
“I love you”
him home. He left, saying
“I had fun tonight.”
and I nodded
and smiled
and hoped the agreement
made it to my eyes before
the guilt.
Text © Samantha Arriozola 2024. All Rights Reserved.