The Facts of the Fire
By Susanne Salehi
Mallory, I don’t know why you still haunt me but you do. Maybe it’s the lack of finality. A door left ajar, light spilling out. You’re an Etch-A-Sketch I can’t shake and erase.
Five years later and I can form coherent sentences about you, start to put facts together in an attempt to understand what happened.
Fact: Your name is Mallory.
Something less than a fact but not a lie: That summer you plagued me like a fire burning underneath my skin, a relentless heat I could not escape.
You heard out my feelings in your dented navy Jeep, even the careful addendum: I respect your relationship. Back then I compulsively vomited personal truths to irresponsible people, didn’t yet know how to choke on my tongue.
More than anything, I wanted to be as sure about something in my life as you were about everything you did. You walked into rooms like you owned them. Your smirk made every gender quiver, and your enthusiasm for anything competitive was infectious.
You kept driving while the silence swallowed me whole.
I worked hard at forgetting. Had almost managed by the time I walked out of Neil’s, a dive bar long since burned to the ground. The humidity pressed at my throat, while dust rose from my footsteps to choke me. My dad was calling and I needed to be somewhere that sounded less like the raucous party it was. I shoved into my car, trying to fake sober and focus on the conversation.
You opened the passenger door and slid into the passenger seat, your lanky frame bending into and overwhelming the space. You must have followed me out. You must have looked over at me.
You must have done something before you started trailing kisses up my neck.
You were drunker than me. Had to be. I ended the call as quickly as possible, but you didn’t want to be the focus of my attention.
You laughed and left me there.
Mallory, I owe you for introducing me to my first lesbian bar. Another indisputable fact. The night was a blur like every other, a gold standard for that summer.
We bought a cheap pitcher of beer and you filled my red plastic cup to the brim, screaming, “Chug, chug, chug,” a few inches from my face. I can still see you hysterically laughing while I spit half the warm beer back into the cup and ran for the bathroom to finish throwing up.
You liked to see how far I’d go for you.
Sometime in those feverish months, we slept together. Alcohol was involved, the girlfriend you lived with was out of town, and I lied to myself. Nothing was going to happen.
But our group blitzed through three or four bars, and when we dragged ourselves back to your shared apartment, we tumbled into bed.
You leaned over me, your eyes softening as you shared an earnest smile. “Because if this is the last time I see you like this, I want to remember it.”
In that dark, anything felt possible. I spun fantasies of moving away together, doctoral programs, children, but all I said was, “No.” As in: not the last time. Pleading for something more than a fragment.
I have to imagine you watching me implode, amused and unbothered, from a great distance. It’s the only way I can understand that summer. I can’t think of you as deliberately cruel, though it has to be a possibility.
You said I was a straight girl just experimenting, like so many others before me. I told you not to delegitimize how I felt and you laughed, told me I was too young to know how I felt about anyone.
Sometimes I wondered if I would ever have a crush again. If I would ever find someone so irresistible I’d try to sneak glimpses of them, stutter and blush when they spoke to me. If I would ever be stricken with the kind of yearning that left me breathless, let me excuse cheating, let me long for someone that was never mine in the first place.
After you, I swore never to date another woman, if you can call what we did that summer dating. I told myself my heart only had enough space for you. I told myself I didn’t need to date women if dating women made me into a creature, ninety percent madness and ten percent longing, all bad poetry.
Men were delightful because I could lose them without damaging every nerve ending in my body, without wondering what they’re doing with their lives years later, when they’ve moved up north and don’t remember my name.
I still wonder about you. It hurts that I do, but it’s a compulsion I can’t dig out. Women get under my skin and hollow out a home in the beating mess of my heart.
Especially you.
Mallory, once you stopped inviting me out only to ignore my excited replies, once I stopped posting cryptic social media updates, you reached out for the last time. You apologized and admitted you’d been avoiding me. Said it had been a bad time.
Let me come see you?
By then I was more ash than ardor, so I agreed.
We were back in your Jeep, our differences stark in the space of a few months. My hands stayed tight to my sides, seatbelt buckled. I told myself not to think of unbuckling it or leaning over.
You didn’t look at me when you asked if we could be friends. You said you wanted that.
My agreement was a lie before it left my mouth.
I only saw you once after that, more than a year later, across a ballroom at some gala that brought you back into town. You were surrounded by friends and your laughter carried.
Mallory, I would tell you I forgive us both for that thoughtless summer, but I don’t think you’d care.
Susanne Salehi (she/they) is a queer writer of Iranian descent residing in the American South with their partner and two cats. She’s a Taurus, sticker collector, and puzzle fiend who spends her free time reading, cross stitching, gardening, and acquiring silly tattoos. Formally educated in applied anthropology, they are also a part time MFA student at Emerson College, busy writing the epic sapphic heroes they've always wanted to see. You can find her work in Fruitslice and Secrets of the Goat People and her book reviews over at the Lesbrary and Gertrude Press. More @susannesalehi or susannesalehi.com.