“I’m in love.”
Tyler picks dirt out from beneath her nails, rubbing her fingers on her jeans. Here we go again. She had known Chloe for years, having heard this line as if it was rehearsed, but the four letter word still made her cringe.
        “What in the fuck does that do for you,” she mutters in concentration.
        “What?”
        “I said, what in the fuck does that do for you?”
        “It’s not some selfish negotiation. It’s romance, Ty. You don’t like Lenny?”
         “Honestly, at first I thought he was a fucking joke—“she crushes her cigarette out with her fingertip, “but he’s got to at least be good in bed.”
“Of course you think that. Lenny’s a real nice guy. ”
“Think? I know and I’m sure you thought he was a ‘real nice guy’ when you were calling him ‘Daddy’ last week too. Chloe, he’s a good lay. Leave it at that.”
Tyler’s Chap Stick, Camel Filters, and lighter sit aligned perfectly next to each other on the steel table, each end touching another just as she liked it. She pulls a cigarette out to light. Cars move together in the monotonous movement of summer afternoon traffic outside the coffee shop.
“Girl, you are a chain smoker,”
The ashtray on the table still smolders with Tyler’s discarded filter. She raises her eyebrow, stuffing the cigarette back into the pack.
“Fuck. I didn’t even realize--”
“All I’m saying is, love’s not a choice. Some things, they just happen.”
                                                              ---
Tyler takes the long way home. The hubcap and tail light from a car lay scattered across the sidewalk and she steps over them as a car wreck appears at the next block. Turning the corner, the shrill siren of an ambulance comes up 7th.  If Chloe died right now, she’d have to divide up her things. Death is just the end of the ride. She would have to split all the years of photographs Chloe had taken. Pictures of memories; pieces of Chloe that Tyler might not know about. She wants them all for herself. A silver chain dangles from her neck, a heart pendant beating against her breasts.
                                                             ---
The bar was pumping with bass when she stepped inside. Flashing neon signs advertise beer that will taste like water by the end of the night. Smoke hangs over the crowd and Tyler pushes her way through to the bar, elbowing bouncing bodies along the way.
“Slut!” someone calls from the crowd. Rolling her eyes, she orders a Jack on the rocks.
“Tyler, you made it!”
Her eyes sift though the sea of people. An arm grabs her, pulling her into a booth on the outskirts of the bar as Chloe’s familiar arms fling themselves around her neck, embracing her.
“Oh, hey. I couldn’t find you guys. How long you been here?” Letting go, Tyler scans the table. Just the usuals; Chloe drinking a Cosmo, Mark sipping on his rum and coke while fingering the collar on his flannel shirt.  Lenny’s arm around Chloe, playing designated driver as his sober eyes focus on anything but the alcohol in hordes that surrounds them.
“Maybe an hour? We’ve been waiting on you for shots though,” Chloe raises a shot glass in the air, the liquid the color green they only bring out around Halloween, “to being with the one you want.”
Chloe looks at Lenny, who is too busy staring at Chloe’s cleavage to notice she is enamored with him. Chloe just keeps staring at him, a smile creeping along her face until she tilts her head back, taking the shot.
Her eyes look so soft they could melt out of her head. Tyler’s stomach churns. Maybe they should. Tyler makes gagging noises, spit gurgling in the back of her throat.
“To titties and beer,” says Tyler as she tilts her head back to take the shot.
When she looks back down, Mark is just finishing his drink. He smirks at her, making her tingle between her thighs. Images of his bedroom, the single bed, the barred window that never let the moonlight in, his hands on her neck, her hands on his wrists and her on top, looking down at that stupid necklace he always wore that laid jittering on his chest. How she wanted to rip it off his lovely neck at that moment and shove it in his face. Even now, he was undressing her with his eyes, surely yearning for her fabric to disintegrate.  She grabs his empty glass.
“Another?”
“I’ll go get it. But thank you, Ty,” He pushes himself out of the seat, making his way to the bar, brushing against her shoulder. Tyler finishes her Jack and grabs another, the cold sweat on the glass trickling down her fingers.
From the bar, Tyler turns to the crowd, her thick thighs and calves shaped by her jeans. The unwavering thumping from the speakers begins to rattle her hips and shake her shoulders. Tyler faintly makes out Chloe clumsily throwing her arms around Lenny, their lips hitting like bumper cars. Chloe giggles over the drunken mishap, as Lenny begins to check that his lip isn’t bleeding. Clenching her knuckles, Tyler turns away allowing the music to take control as her fingers begin to relax one by one. She dances with herself, closing her eyes, sliding more whiskey coolly down her throat. Her breasts heave heavy on her ribs, beneath them, the smokers’ organs she has left to control her breathing. A tall man with sugar brown skin emerges from the crowd, bumping into her at first before she can make him the object she desires. The black twisting fingers of a tattoo that wrap up his forearm are under her palms when she grabs him, swinging him around behind her, bumping her hips into his until she gets the rhythm back. His skin is slick with sweat when he wraps his arms around Tyler’s shoulders, sliding them slowly to her hips. His chunky dreads hang down, rubbing coarsely along her neck.  He starts slowly moving his hips to the bass, synchronizing with the movement of her body. She never knows what to do with her hands and they fidget along the tops of his shoulders.
“Where are you staying tonight, Lady?” welcoming intimacy, as if he knows her.
“The important question is where I’m waking up. Let’s ditch this shithole.”
                                                               ---
As his hands slide down her thigh, she relaxes her grip on the sheets, the essence of coconut creeping into her nostrils. Her fingers tingle at the tips, hands smoothing over his back, hard mountains of muscle covered by soft skin. She imagines them heaved over her. Her chest feels as if it were a sinking ship. Her eyes dart around the room in complete darkness from corner to corner. A few days earlier, she had walked to the corner store, becoming overwhelmingly uncomfortable as two thugs stared her down, undressing her with their eyes, as she had held her wallet close to her breasts and pulled her jacket closed. She kisses him hard until his rough hands wrap themselves around her body. Her hips spread out wide and full in front of him. And when she comes, he holds her close, telling her he is there for her, that he has her, as if she needs help.
He is breathing heavy on her neck, off dreaming about the curves of a woman, when she cracks her eyes to see sunlight peering in through the blinds. She isn’t second guessing movements; she is barely thinking at all by now.  Escape. She pushes the cracked window open, leaving his bare apartment to meander back to her haven.
                                                          ---
The door is unlocked when she gets to apartment 315. Three, the number of the universe. Fifteen, the age Chloe and Tyler first met. The smell of breakfast was intoxicating to her empty stomach.
“You know it’s a good night when you wakeup with dirt under your nails.”
Chloe is barely holding the handle of her coffee cup. It dangles helplessly over her plate. Tyler drops her ass into one of the kitchen chairs, throwing her bag to the floor and immediately lighting a cigarette. Puffing on the cigarette, she pushes a thick tuft of hair out of her face, examining her nails. They are unabashedly dirty, with black lines along the tender skin beneath.
“So, my hands were a bit preoccupied. You’re going to get dirty somehow,” Tyler says. She pours herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove, the robust and bitter taste sitting on her tongue. It had been sitting there for days.
“Where did you disappear to last night? You didn’t even say goodbye. And who was that handsome island boy you left with,” Chloe pokes at the eggs on her plate at the kitchen table.
“Fuck if I remember his name. I was a few drinks deep. Simon, maybe? Sorry I didn’t say anything. We took a cab back to his apartment.”
Tyler appreciates that there is no need to explain the events. Chloe knows her too well to assume there was anything as innocent as board games that they had retreated to his apartment for. Even if Chloe asked for her details, even if she begged and prodded, there was no way Tyler would give her them.
Chloe is wearing the worn in Police t-shirt that her older brother gave to her at the beginning of the summer before her senior year of high school. Does she remember? Tyler wondered. It had rained almost everyday that summer and Chloe’s parents were gone most afternoons. They would come in from the rain, soaking wet with their shirts suckered to their skin so heavy they had to peal them off arm by arm, sleeve by sleeve. Tyler would steal cigarettes from Chloe’s mother, smoking them in her underwear blowing the smoke out of the bedroom window as Chloe talked about which country she wanted to go to. Each week it was somewhere different. Tyler always talked about space and the vast distance it could extend to while she would stare at the ceiling, connecting the glow in the dark plastic stars with lines only she could see. Tyler used to imagine Chloe connecting every star with the same path as she had each night before Chloe would fall asleep. Tyler didn’t even think she was in the same universe as Chloe, but she found herself wanting to be.  Perhaps an orbiting satellite that might come close enough to stop Chloe’s breathing every now and then. These are things she used to hope for.
                                                           ---
P,Q,R…Tyler reads the alphabetized labels for the vinyl as though she is checking them off of a list. S, T,U,V…When she comes to W, she flips through the records, her fingers rolling along the smooth, multicolored paper that makes up the record jackets. When she comes across a misplaced record, she pulls it out, wonders who would do such a thing if they did not intend to buy the damn album and then replaces it to its orderly position. Tom Waits – Bone Machine. She let out a sigh; it had been months and she had been waiting for the store to get this order in. Tyler recently put Chloe on a Tom Waits kick and was now feeding both their cravings for it. The way Chloe would get while they would listen to the records together was something Tyler could never put her finger on. So empty yet, satisfied. Hugging the record to her chest, she brings it to the register. The clinking of change against plastic in the drawer when it opens rattles inside of Tyler’s head. On the walk home, she stares at the sun until she can’t stand it anymore.
                                                               ---
Dough is tossed from the meaty arms of a cook, barely scraping the ceiling. A name for an order is called. A beer is poured from a tap, frothing at the top of the glass.
Tyler stares down two girls walking into the pizza shop, giggling wildly and twirling their hair in their fingers. She sees them as two hormone-lubricated lesbians and tries to picture them going down on each other. She grows disappointed over and over, realizing there is no pornographic ending.
Tyler squirms in her seat, tension building in Chloe as her brows furrow. Tyler cuts her slice of pizza, the metal of the silverware scraping the silver plate beneath it, that bone-chilling screech that Chloe hates.
“Anything you need to say, Sunshine?” Tyler stuffs an over-sized bite of pizza into her mouth, her teeth smacking together.  Anything you don’t want to say, say it.
“I need to talk about my boy problems--”
“Problems? Then what is there to talk about? Just break up with him.”
“As if it were that simple. After we made love, Lenny started talking about the future, how he was moving in a few months and wanted to take me with him. He knows there is nothing for me in Denver but he isn’t wasting any time just buying me dinner.”
“You know I’ve always said he was an impatient man. Just like him to go trying to run off with you, like you’re some prize.” Tyler bumps Chloe’s leg under the table.
“I’m just not ready to move so soon. Do you think I could come crash with you tonight? I just don’t want to be around Lenny right now.” Chloe drops her fork, and it clamors against the plate as she grabs Tyler’s wrist. Chloe’s little fingers clasped around her wrist, Tyler wanting to unravel them from her bones.
“Of course, as if you need to ask. We can listen to the Tom Waits record I found the other day; didn’t you say you wanted to listen to it?”
“Yeah, I did. That sounds good.” Chloe lifts her chin up a little higher, returning her fingers to her silverware, slowly nibbling at her untouched pizza.  It must be cold by now. Tyler looks at her empty plate with only a few crumbs left.
She aligns all of the condiments on the table by height in order from tallest to shortest, watching Chloe finish her pizza. The sun fades behind the buildings across the street, the sunset blocked from view by these massive monsters of cement and steel except for a faint tint of rose that outlines the rooftops.
“Ty, I’m ready when you are.”
                                                                 ---
The studio apartment is laid out to where she can see everything in it by sitting at any angle in the room. Tyler sits on the corner of her bed, staring at Chloe’s reflection in the bathroom mirror as she examines her face for new blemishes, pulling her brown hair back into a pony tail that sits light on her head, washing her face, and there is a stirring between Tyler’s thighs.
She disgusts me.
Tyler bites her dry bottom lip, licks it, her cotton tongue sliding over the ridges, sticking to the bottom of her teeth. She continues to stare at Chloe going through her nightly routines, bent over the sink with her hips pressing into the porcelain. The cheeks of her bottom rise and slope down perfectly to form her smooth thighs. Tyler puts on the Tom Waits record, the needle of the player bobbing slightly along with his grainy voice and she imagines him eating gravel for breakfast just to maintain his haunting tone. Tyler lights a cigarette, smoke slowly rises to the ceiling as she flicks the ash onto her jeans then rubbing it in, leaves smudges of gray on her knees. Closing her eyes, his voice permeates her chest, his words abrasively stirring her heart.
Lay your head where my heart used to be
Hold the earth above me
Lying in bed staring at the ceiling, Tyler steals glances out of the corner of her eyes as Chloe’s hips curl and unfurl themselves to the music and she slips out of her jeans. She walks, the wooden floor groaning under her bare feet. She falls onto the bed next to Tyler. Their legs graze. The music bellows in the background as Tyler pulls out her last cigarette.
Lay down in the green grass
Remember when you loved me
Chloe’s fingers crawl to Tyler’s wrist and she presses Tyler’s cigarette into her mouth, gradually inhaling in, exhaling out as she closes her eyes and leans in. Chloe’s breath on Tyler’s neck is warm and inviting. Chloe’s fingers tremble on the tops of her knees and Tyler steadies them against her face, kissing the tops of her hands.
Come closer don't be shy
Stand beneath a rainy sky
Tyler licks Chloe’s lips lightly. Her hand curls around Chloe’s neck, cradling it at the base of her skull, tenderly twining her fingers in the delicate hairs. What are we doing? Their hips press together while Chloe rolls over on top of Tyler. Stroking up and down Chloe’s back beneath her shirt, the curve of her spine pressing itself to Tyler’s forearm as Chloe hoists herself upright, breasts out, hair hurled over her shoulder. What are you doing? Chloe smiles at her, the acknowledgment that this is no mistake in Chloe’s eyes allows Tyler’s nerves to relax. Nibbling on earlobes and scratching at the skin that holds them together, Tyler presses her palm to the middle of Chloe’s chest, the thumping of her heart, like a caged bird then locking their chests together, the birds trying to beat their way out.
The moon is over the rise
Think of me as a train goes by
The weight of Tyler’s body pushes itself outward from inside of her. Somewhere in the cavernous skeleton of her body, she is unraveling bit by bit. Her arms outstretch, grabbing for permanence, grabbing for flesh, grabbing for Chloe. Kissing Chloe. There are so many things I want to tell you; so many things I could never say, Tyler thinks of whispering. Chloe giggles in the dark.
Now there's a bubble of me
And it's floating in thee
                                                                 ---
The sun pours onto the purple comforter. The two girls lay on opposite ends of the bed. Tyler’s eyes open, gazing at Chloe’s shoulder blades miles away. She rolls over, kissing Chloe’s neck. Her arm settles on Chloe’s waist and she closes her eyes, lulled back into sleep by the static emitting from the record player. Until Chloe moves, sitting up and twisting out of bed. Chloe goes to the bathroom then begins collecting her jeans and t-shirt from the floor.
“Where are you off to?”
“I have to go meet up with Lenny.”
“Oh, I just thought, maybe we could sleep in? I can make you breakfast.” Tyler gets up, coming up behind Chloe, pinching her butt.
“I have to go meet up with Lenny.” Chloe turns away to focus on finding her purse. “I’ll see you later.”
Chloe pushes past Tyler, her eyes following the floorboards and sprints down the stairs as she closes the door. Tyler holds her breath. The ignition of a car starts outside. Tyler flops onto the bed, her heart bursting in her throat, red and fiery. She runs her hand over the other side of the bed; empty. Her head fills with Chloe, the scent of her hair still lingering as if she had not yet left.  
Turning her head, Tyler gapes at the ashtray on her bed stand, teeming with butts of old cigarettes; old lovers, old nights. She runs to the store to buy a new pack, exactly two blocks to the seven eleven, the same routine she had endured for years. She lifts a cigarette to her mouth, dry and waiting to ignite. Please, just give me this one thing. The smoke burns her throat; she coughs, sputtering out smoke like an old Cadillac. The taste is heavy and dirty on her tongue, something she once relished. The arms of her addiction unwelcoming, Tyler stares at herself in disgust. Before she can panic she thinks of what Chloe would say. Some things, they just happen. Some stars will never align.