To my unvalentine [alternative version]

This is Megan

I sat across from him and smiled and laughed. He was funny and interesting, but I couldn't concentrate. Maybe it was the second beer making its way to my blood stream.

"I love you," or that's what I would have said if I was a different person. But I'm not. I'm me. The girl who sits and smiles and drinks when she doesn't really want to.

How can I change this?

"You're too fucking clever," he says as I recite a line I've said a million times before in my head. I'm a cheater, a fake. I don't really care. Whatever works.

I try to remember when should-be compliments started feeling like insults.

I take another sip of the sour substance in my glass and try not to choke as I pull out a cigarette. This will make everything different. As I fumble for my lighter, he coolly reaches across the table and lights my cigarette without speaking a word. I hope someone saw that. I inhale and try to purse my lips just right, but he's already making grand gestures and passionately talking about something else.

I disagree with him, not because I really have an opinion, I'm just good at reasoning any argument. I think he likes that about me, or at least respects it. He likes to be reminded from time to time that he's not always right. Maybe it reminds him he's human. I know he feels some degree of separation from the rest of them.

I guess I do too. Let's create a new species made up of others like us. So far it's just me and him. I can't tell if he's hopeful for more.

"Maybe we're boring," that's his treatise on life, a lighthearted spin on existentialism. Anyone else would say, "Maybe we're different." It would mean the same thing. This separation in his mind seems to be the difference between laughing and crying. I'm a cryer. Still, I understand this in him and I think that's why he likes me.

A girl bends down to pet a dog at the table across from ours. I don't have to wonder what he's thinking, I'm thinking the same thing.

I nod and consider what she'd look like naked. I wonder if she's a talker. If not, she might be uncomfortable, but that doesn't really matter.

He walks over to her and immediately she's eating right out of his hand. At times like these I wonder, does she even notice me? This isn't normal; you don't automatically flirt with a man you just saw sitting with another woman. But this is how it always happens.

It's him. He's the type of guy girls say is special, "There's just something about him." I know it's all a ruse, a carefully crafted combination of confidence, flattery, and self-deprecation. From a distance he's perfect, but really he's just a painting. Pretty colors covering a canvas that once taunted its painter. He's better with a red, velvet rope protecting him.

I look up and see him dotting his i. It's done. He gets quicker every time. I stopped feeling bad for the girls a long time ago. I guess I think they should feel worse for me. It's not that I participate out of obligation, in fact I enjoy it, it's that I'm still only a participant. One without which the show could not go on. It's a cliche, but I think that's how he'd word it.

Our act is a limited performance. A masturbatory performance at that; performing only for ourselves. A lot of it is just to say, "I did that." So what? In the scheme of things, none of that matters. So I guess, why not?

He puts his hand on the small of her back as they ease back over to our table.

"This is Megan."

She'll do.

Secret Link