Remember the days
When beers and warm nights were enough
Where I carried my shoes on the walk home
And I lied to a good man
By letting him think
No one else had been in my bed
The night before him

Three years later it’s easy to see
The memory play out like it’s on TV
I told myself then that it’s not a lie
We just weren’t talking about it
I told myself I have no loyalties

I guess I was right

It was August and the air in the attic where I lived
Just felt like summer – moist, suffocating
Hard to sleep in – painful to wake up
Strange smells clung to my sheets
Deep purple – My mother bought them

I ate breakfast with him
He paid – a gentleman
Even on nights when I was
too drunk
too tired
too uninterested
To let him touch me

In the back of my mind … somewhere …
I worried about when he’d ask me
To be his girlfriend
I worried about when I would have
To make it unofficial

But in the thick humidity of that summer
Our apathy was enough to keep the parties going all night

And every morning when the sun blared through
My tiny, attic window, waking me
And drying on the sweat that reeked of Budweiser
Reminding me subtly – that it might time
To grow the **** up
To have the tough talk
To learn the art of saying no

I made plans for later that night