By Samantha Arriozola
Part 1
On the right side of his face, running from his cheek down, was the name Brianna. Knowing it was suspicious, it was the first tattoo he explained to me.
“My aunt,” he smiled, “that lady raised me and it wasn’t easy.” I hadn’t imagined him smiling but I imagined that I would be the one to bring it out of him. Hard faced and committed to ink from his waist up, covered in names and drawings as big as 360 angel wings on his neck, as small as a fang under his lip. From the time I matched with him on Tinder, I had fabricated a future I fought hard to shake. I unwillingly sat in the fantasy that his low-effort kindness was enough to date long term, that I knew him within the few minutes that we had sat down at the park. But the truth was, I was trying to prove something. Sam, the miracle worker who was able to change the trajectory of this born-again fuck boy finally ready to date for the long haul. I was his first match at the end of spring, less than 24 hours since I had re-downloaded the app and fussed about how my 28-year-old face looked in all of my pictures.
You don’t know him. You don’t know him.
I attempted the mantra approach I had learned in chapter six of You Are a Badass. Self-help books filled my Spotify recently played section, ousting Ice Spice and other guilty pleasures. I had decided that this was the year that I peeled off the anxious attachment that had followed me throughout my dating life. I had welcomed men who had absolutely no business coming into my home to land on my clean sheets with outside clothes. Sweat-soaked pillows in the summer and tight holds in the cold. Six months after the ending of a three year situationship, a time that nearly killed my plants and brought back the acid reflux in my throat, I was back in the dating scene and holding an “Open for Business” sign on my neck. Unknowingly to myself, or maybe choosing to push it down, I was ready for the trouble that Taylor brought.
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