“To men,” she said, on the second glass, “I hope they die a horrible death.”

“What, all of them?” I asked her.

“Every last fucking one of them. You know how peaceful our world would be if women ran it?”

“It’d actually be kind of bitchy,” I muttered.

She paused. “You’re right. Fucking China would talk behind Russia’s back, and once a month all the jealous allied countries would go against each other. Fucking France would be stuck up, and the Germans would think they cooked their sausages the best, while England walked away with their fucking awesome accents –”

“Stop it,” I laughed, wrapping my arm around my stomach. “You’re killing me!”

“Yeah, taking your mind off your soulmate?”

My laughter slowly died. “My soulmate?”

She tilted her head to the side and raised a thin brow. “After leaving that concert, even I’m unable to keep Carter out of my thoughts. He looked incredible.”

“He did.”

“I’m talking beyond incredible. I’d completely forgotten how hot he was.”

“He’s pretty hot.”

“Bet you he’s swamped with groupies as we speak.”

I tensed, trying to appear casual. “Right.”

“That’s just the lifestyle,” she added, glumly taking another gulp. “Him and Rome and the rest of the boys… Just fucking anything that moves, I bet.”

The mood immediately shifted after that. We didn’t drink for fun.

We drank to forget.

*

I collapsed into bed much later and stared up at the ceiling for a few moments. After thinking about the band, my mind wandered and my insides twisted with warmth. A minute later, I got off and bent down to grab the shoebox I’d placed under the bed a very long time ago. I turned on the lamp and wiped the sheet of dust off the box before opening it. When I laid eyes on the contents, I blinked away the tears.

I kept a whole stack of pictures in here of Carter and me. There were also small little things that I accumulated from our time together: arcade cards; black and white photo booth images; a couple guitar picks I’d stolen off of him; a pen that he used to write his lyrics with; some loose pieces of paper he scribbled random lyrics on, with one paper in particular that had a line at the top he’d written absently, which read, “Leah has nice tits.” I chuckled at that and leafed through the items, purposely ignoring the letters until they were the very last things in the box.

There were four letters, ones he’d sent me the year he’d left after I didn’t return his calls and changed my number. I knew it was old school to resort to writing me a letter, but I assumed, in his own logic, it was the only way he felt he could get a hold of me.

I never opened up the letters. I was mourning the loss of him, and in the process of trying to move on, I hid the letters away. I promised myself that when I was truly over him, that I would open them. But… with the way things had gone tonight, seeing him there on stage, looking the way he did, singing from the bottom of his soul…

I wasn’t anywhere near ready to opening them yet.

I didn’t keep this box because I was consumed in him. It was just that I missed him. I missed having that connection with another person. Aside from all the amazing sex we’d had, he was truly my best friend, and having these little treasures was a reminder of a happy time in my life.

With a heavy heart, I very slowly placed them back into the box, making sure they were neatly positioned. There was an old watch of his that I kept, only discovering it on his dresser after he’d left. I kept it because there was that faint smell of him lingering on the leather band. I brought it to my nose and lightly sniffed it. Maybe it was in my head, conjuring up the smell because it’d been so long, but I felt the nostalgia just the same. When I finished, I returned the box beneath the bed and climbed back under the light covers.

Then I sat there some more before I grabbed my laptop from the night stand. You can call it stalking, but I prefer curiosity being the reason I looked up Carter online. I’d never done it before. It would have interfered in my getting over him stage, so I’d done well distancing myself from the internet where it was a playground for Carter Matheson articles.

Now, before anyone thinks I’m a loser that is falling into the trap of obsessing over Carter again, I’d like to make a case against that. I wasn’t pathetic like I used to be. Simply put, there are residual feelings you get from every important moment in life because it was a part of you, and completely burying it isn’t likely to work.

I’d like to think I’d moved on, mostly. I didn’t pine for him like I used to. If anything, I felt like I’d woken up the second he left to travel down a path that might have ultimately led him to his early grave. I saw things for the first time. I wasn’t in a love-sick daze. I was a realist, learning very early on that love didn’t exist the way I thought it did. I had deluded myself into believing in a fairy-tale romance, where men gave you their hearts without pause, and women swooned into their arms and stayed there forever. Happily-ever-after with another man was a dream that needed to be burned and mutilated.

I learned to make myself happy. Learned to depend on my abilities. I made money, and had a good nest egg in case of rainy days. I experienced a whole array of firsts on my own: finishing school at the top of my class, buying my own car, paying my own bills, having my own credit card… I didn’t need a man there to hold my hand. I didn’t need to walk on eggshells because of their attitude changes. I walked into a relationship with eyes wide open, and the second they treated me less than I deserved, I dropped their asses faster than a grenade.

So, I didn’t like to think of this as a moment of complete weakness. I wasn’t vulnerable and my heart wasn’t bleeding for him, but I needed another dose of Carter after watching him fuck the crowd with his eyes. Perhaps I wanted closure, to know for sure that he’d moved on. I wondered if he was so well into his fame that he forgot all about me, and us. Our time together seemed like such a lifetime ago, when in reality it had been only three years.

There’s something particularly odd the moment Google rewards you with 4,510,000 results. It’s sort of a what-the-fuck kind of moment. The face I’d stroked infinite times looked older, more chiselled. He got a few tattoos, was broader than he’d ever been, and I wasn’t sure if it was Photoshop, but his abs looked especially impressive. I chewed on my nail as I scrolled through the images, ignoring that disappointed part of me for giving in.