I suppose you didn't hear my friends ask me why you didn't come over to say hi. You also, I guess, didn't hear them tell me what a jerk you were to sit right there. And since you didn't hear that, you most definitely didn't hear me tell them how much I still love you.

Fireworks flicker across the harbour. The thunder rolls around behind us in the mountains. I see the flashes reflect off your face.

After, I sit in the car alone and shake with crying and tears. Why oh why does it have to be like this? The tears continue and I drive drive drive, faster than I should, racing home to warmth and pen and paper.

Barefeet are silent on the blacktop as I unlock the gate.

Inside I throw down my blanket and listen to the message on the machine. Not him: unimportant. I go wash my face and try to resist the heroin draw of the telephone. I can't resist it. My hand is typing his number mindlessly despite the seven months since I called his house. Ring, ring, ring three times. He answers.

I exploded on him. "You've been on vacation for three weeks. You have 24 hours a day of time and you can't manage to return a call. You call my house when I'm visiting Mom, and when I answer you ask for my sister without asking me how I'm doing. You finally return a call, but it's at 2pm when you know I'll be at work. We talk on ICQ for five minutes one afternoon, and all you have to say is how you saw hot girls at Loft 6. Then, tonight, you sit down just one blanket over from us, where we can see her blonde hair and your every move."

I try to breathe but the same shaking sobs are out of control.

We talk some more and he explains some things. I feel like a fool for calling him, it seems so obvious now how he wants me gone. Gone. Quiet. Invisible.

He says, "I've been going through some f*cked up sh*t." I finally get him to explain, and it of course involves some girls and their games. "Oh my boyfriend is in town this weekend so you can't call me." "I'm 17" "She looks in every window we pass - not at the displays but at herself" I curb the reflex to say "If you date stupid fake-n-baker's expect to experience their self-centered worlds". Somehow, I don't consider that 'f*ucked up'. I consider death, drugs, depression and such to be f*cked up.

He then says, "You are the only one in this city that I can really be myself around."

He talks on about himself and his life. This and that. Him and her. An hour later, I blatantly interrupt and ask "Have you been down to the ocean this summer yet? The water is amazing - you can just float and roll about in the waves and the kelp" This sends him on a tangent about going to the beach with some buddy in his convertible Mustang.

Finally, he asks me about Me. "You been getting any nookie?"