Cortes 1
Abby Cortes
November 2015
I Literally Think My Life Is the Plotline of a Grey’s Anatomy Episode
It was a perfect, sunny Saturday in the middle of May, and I was at a perfect senior prom photo op at a perfect country club with my perfectly tall, perfectly boring date (we’ll call him Alec). After my cheeks hurt so badly from all the fake-smiling for photos taken at a rich golf course surrounded by red-brick buildings and bleach blonde soccer moms reliving their glory days, my mind started to wander back to what was exactly a year ago from this day—my junior prom with my first boyfriend (we’ll call him Zach). It was just a year, and everything had changed. (Please excuse my attempts to make a dumb high school prom sound more interesting and dramatic than what it is… I realize how stupid I sound, but at the time it felt important, and this is supposed to be a coming-of-age tale, so just roll with it.)
Junior prom was the opposite of senior prom in every way imaginable. It was rainy and muggy, my dress wasn’t quite what I wanted, and one of my high heels had broken. None of it mattered though, because I was there with who I believed at the time to be the most special and important person I would ever meet. You can tell when you look at photos how happy I was to be there with Zach. Zach, to the average person, wasn’t handsome by any means. He was short—only 5’8—and maybe a little chubby. But there was something incredibly endearing about who he was; the way he drank from water bottles, always putting his tongue in first, the way he drove his car home from school, always with one hand in mine, with his slightly shaggy brown hair being ruffled as a side effect of him insisting the windows be rolled down. He was the kind of first boyfriend you’re supposed to have your junior year of high school. He was sheepish and sweet and slightly awkward, with an interesting taste in music and a plethora of fun, although slightly gross, friends. He was the kind of boy who challenged what you thought you knew about politics, made you listen to U2, brought you milkshakes when you were sad or failed a math test. I think all of us have a Zach at one point or another.
Being in the same place exactly a year later, with so much changing over time, made my body feel like it was pumping hot ash through my heart and lungs. For some reason, it just hurt. Zach and I had been broken up for a while (about five months at this point), but it never failed to surprise me how new the pain could feel. After what felt like hours of torturous photo-taking, Alec and I piled into the limo with our prom group. I’ve never been good at hiding my emotions, and I guess Alec could tell.
“Abby, are you okay?” he asked with bright, blinking blue innocent eyes, only made brighter by his perfectly tan skin.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine! Just a little tired,” I responded, feigning yet another smile.
“I have something for you!” he exclaimed, as if whatever item he had with him would save us from this awkward tension.
He conjured a beautiful yellow and blue corsage out of his suit pocket. It was perfect, probably very expensive, from some very posh flower shop that his perfectly sweet soccer mom bought. (Of course.) And it took me back to exactly twelve months before on the front porch of my house…
“Abby, love,” fusses my mother (she had a way of fussing, god bless), “your rib cage is poking through your dress,” she sighs, stage-whispering “rib cage” like it was a swear word. The red, floor-length dress I had chosen for prom this year was slightly risqué, to the anguish of my mother. It showed about two inches of stomach cut in a little triangle, because in my words, “I’m seventeen and I’ll wear whatever the hell I want!!”
“You just look so… bony,” she continues, “have you been eating enough lately?”
I exchanged glances with a pair of knowing hazel eyes belonging to Zach. He nods as if to say, “Be patient; she cares about you.” I know this is what he’s trying to communicate telepathically, because he always said it out loud when I would complain about my mother’s overly-criticizing nature.
“Mom, I’m fine,” I insist, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. Sensing that I needed to be saved from this conversation immediately, Zach lightly touches my elbow and says,
“Uh, sorry, Ms. Cortes but could I borrow Abby for a second? I have something for her.”
In one swift motion he pulls me aside to the bushes beside my front porch.
“I, uh, well, you mentioned one time that peonies were your favorite flower. I know it doesn’t match the red but..,” a beautiful light pink peony (that completely clashed with my dress and made me look like I was hit over the head with a Valentine’s Day card) with a white ribbon appears from his jacket pocket. For some reason the fact that he remembered this small detail about me makes me emotional. He brushes shaggy brown bangs out of his eyes and ties the ribbon lightly around my wrist.
“It’s perfect,” I say. Because it wasn’t, and that’s why it was. At that exact moment, my right high heel broke under my weight, sending me crashing face first onto Zach’s shoulder. He throws his head back laughing like a little kid, and so do I. We’re doubled over in hysterics for a good ten minutes.
I snapped back into reality. I needed to be present, in this moment, not living in the past. I felt bad that I wasn’t happy to be here with Alec; he had done nothing wrong. He was perfectly kind and gentlemanly, not to mention handsome to boot. I was being a brat. I should just be happy. We rode the beautiful limo all the way to a poorly-decorated gym, with tacky string lights and chocolate fountains that for some disturbing reason, tasted like burnt plastic. It was still all charming and perfectly “high school.” And I just wanted to get it over with. I went up to my friends and tried my best to dance and have a good time; at least the DJ had quality, playing all the best dancing songs, with a bass so prominent you could feel it in your chest; for a while it worked…but it worked in the way it had been working for the past six months. I wasn’t happy. At best I could achieve surface-level contentedness, never really getting away from the fact that I would be happier if Zach were here.
After dancing in the all-too-cliched gym, we went to an all-too-cliched “after-prom” party, hosted by a kid who clearly had parents away for the weekend. The house was exactly what you would expect an after-prom party house to look and smell like; cans everywhere, vile rap music, even more vile dancing to go with it, and somewhere in the backyard some poor girl is being encouraged to shotgun some disgusting lime-flavored beer. A nagging thought kept occurring to me; the party house was only a mile away from Zach’s house. I knew exactly how to get there. How crazy would I be to run there and just put everything on the table, confess that I still care about him? (Answer: Very crazy.) Just as I was talking myself out of it in my head, (You’re crazy Abby, who do you think you are, this is not Grey’s Anatomy, this poor boy is going to file a restraining order against you), my lovely prom date nudged my arm and once again asked if I was okay. His niceness being so annoying, I said,
“Yup, fine. I’ll be right back, okay?” and was on my way.
I don’t remember exactly how I got to Zach’s house, and I don’t remember planning what I was going to say. All I remember is that I had my high heels (unbroken this year) in my hands, and that it was either unseasonably cool for the middle of May, or I was so nervous I was shivering. I turn the corner to his house. I notice the basketball hoop that we always played basketball with; “different rules for you,” Zach would always say, letting me win without a fight. I noticed his car and that he still had the bumper sticker I gave him on it—a simple black and white sticker with the word, “Toast,” on it…we never really could figure out where it started, but I called him Toast about ninety percent of the time, and soon the whole school caught on. He was quickly known as “Toast Williams,” rather than “Zachary Williams” to the entire senior class, including his teachers.
I remember noticing that the front door to Zach’s house was painted a different color and, for some reason, this insignificant detail made me sad. Like it was a symbol for the whole new life Zach probably now had without me. And then I got to thinking that maybe this year was different for a reason, maybe Zach and I were apart for a reason. Maybe people were seasonal, and maybe it would be tough, but maybe, somehow, one day it wouldn’t hurt this much. Maybe I was crazy for running all this way to confess love when I was too young to even know what love is. It’s something everybody goes through in life, the loss of a first love. Before this time, I had definitely underestimated just how much it would hurt. It did hurt, and badly. But if it’s something everybody experiences and survives…then maybe I would be okay, too. And with that thought, I turned around, heels in hand, and walked back to my perfect prom date.