— Day 6 -

She and Jack were sitting on his couch as she answered softball questions that he slowly lobbed at her. It hadn’t been a week since she met him at a party, the first of many parties that summer, and this was the first time they had really stopped to talk.

She was still a mystery. He was still curious.

As she answered questions, Anna twisted her promise ring around and around, rolling it between her finger and thumb. It was a habit she had developed soon after she received the ring years ago at a small ceremony with the rest of her bible study class. A purity ring. She didn’t believe in God, but it felt nice to make the promise — to imagine that if she was good, someone would watch over her.

It was an easy conversation, talking about school and plans for the time off. He made silly jokes and she giggled.

But when he started to ask real questions — about her childhood and who she was inside — she felt her voice changing. She tried to keep her tone normal as she gave him non-answers, but her chest bore down and pinched the sound.

Jack seemed so old and grounded to her. Not that 23 was much older than her, but Anna was 20 going on 16, and she had been for the past 10 years. She had tried to grow up as fast as she could, but never really finished, so she acted like an ornery teenager — spoiled and insecure, flittering like a magpie through this life. She had no tolerance for reality.

— Day 14 -

She picked at a hole on the thigh of his worn out jeans. They had stopped on a late night walk to lie in a patch of grass and stare at the stars and the dancing reflections on the water. His idea of course. He was a little bit romantic. Different from all the other guys she’d known. She thought maybe it would rub off. She wasn’t romantic at all, but she was fun. Always down to party. Fun. Fun. Fun.

Without warning, she made a joke about how he didn’t care for his things. Then laughing at her own comment, she listed his other recent transgressions like a petty housewife. She couldn’t help herself. Her own passive aggressiveness often caught her off guard. The jokes were back-handed and sharp — the veil of humor thin as paper. His eyes clouded slightly as he reflexively withdrew from her and laughed it off. Somewhere deep down she was driven to make sure he knew he was as imperfect as she felt.

Jack had been thrilled with the idea of a proper summer fling, but this broken bird with the big eyes hadn’t played her part. He was already becoming used to her barbs and was losing hope that he could soften them. He looked at her under the moon, in this picture perfect moment, and told her she was beautiful. Not because he believed it right then, but because it seemed like the right thing to do, like it might help. She laughed, sounding like a baby bird caught in a wind chime.

— Day 15 -

The next day, tired of keeping up one-sided conversations, he covered her hand that was spinning the ring. “You know those rings don’t really mean anything, right? No one takes them seriously. No one actually waits these days…” His sentence trailed off.

He suprised her with his forwardness, and she felt more empty than before. So much for her romantic. She had gone far with so many others, but she had somehow still kept her promise — at least in the strictest of definitions.

“I’m not that kind of girl.”

The phrase rang untrue. They both knew it. They had been close already before, and even last night, before she blacked out again, she had whispered in his ear the things he wanted to hear. But he knew at the time she wouldn’t remember those words, and he had let her sleep it off as he moved alone to the couch.

— Day 62 -

When she did talk about her life, it was laced with saccharine humor — calling herself a momma’s girl as she took the last swigs of champagne straight from the bottle.

He had met her mom once, and although she drank a couple glasses of wine too many at the old Italian joint where they shared a pizza, it had been a reasonable night. He remembered Anna saying, “Wow, she was almost pleasant. She usually has no filter and no idea what her own tolerance is. You’d think after almost 40 years she’d have learned.”

He did not say “like mother like daughter.” He didn’t say it. He wished he hadn’t thought it.

— Day 96 -

It hadn’t been long after his proposition that she had shown up with only a tan line where the ring had been — resigned to be broken.

They lasted through the end of the summer, once Jack stopped trying to turn their relationship into anything meaningful. He found that when he no longer actually cared about her or what demons were inside her, he could almost have the summer he wanted. She was beautiful, and if he didn’t listen closely, he could almost believe her laugh.