She reminded him of a traffic light, always red or yellow or green..
When she laid lazily on their futon, manicured toes hanging off of the edge, he thought that she would never look more beautiful. And when he would wrap his arms around her frail frame, he could only see her kaleidoscope eyes ringed in day old eyeliner and every freckle on the bridge of her nose (her only insecurity). He would finger the gold chain around her neck, carrying the weight of a cracked peridot, and remember that night as her copper head fell softly on his shoulder with a whisper on her lips.
But another layer of her beauty, the one she showed to the outside world, would have been exhibited at his sister’s wedding that March.
For months, she would tow him to various shops on various street corners, seating him on the same uncomfortable bench and forgetting him in the midst of speaking avidly about chiffon with a sales assistant. She would search for her perfect dress: black, slinky, and slit up the leg. An ideal far from what he knew, the girl who laid scrunched up on the couch in her pajamas at three in the afternoon. The girl who would occasionally ask for hot chocolate in the peak of the summer heat, thin arms draped in a heavy cardigan.
Later that last month, he decided to surprise this girl he knew with a pair of sunshine-coloured heels, just high enough to invite a kiss on the tip of his nose.
She received them the night before the wedding, expertly fragmented contempt in her eyes, and slid them on her feet. And kissing his nose just the way he had pictured, filled his heart with the utmost love for her. Little did he know that in the early hours of the morning, she had slid out from the baby blue covers of their bed and out of their apartment to the community dumpster, carrying the shoe box with her. When she returned, she tiptoed to her closet and pulled out a pair of cherry-red pumps, admiring them and their wicked gleam.
The next morning, air laced with the scent of black coffee, she slipped on her dress and her red heels and became a different person, no longer the frail girl he loved. It was like the flames that had dyed her shoes had lit her too aflame, entering her bloodstream and blackening her thoughts with the excess of smoke, for when she walked out to see him, ‘I ♥ NYC’ mug in hand, she sneered and opened their cookie-cutter door to his utter surprise.
And upon her return, she was once again simmering, her head further inflated with smog. Her dainty ankles were manacled by thin red ribbons, making her new persona permanent. She yelled and screamed and shrieked insults to pierce his vulnerable skin, ignoring his flinching as her clicking heels carried her forward. And when his ears ceased to hear, and thus ceased to satisfy her need for attention, she left a complementary mark on his cheek, the perfect accessory for her wardrobe’s new addition.
The two did not attend the wedding. His sister sent letters profusely, hurt and then confused and then worried, but she would grind them to shred under her spikes and toss them nonchalantly into the shoe box of her beloved’s.
Months later, she was still a traffic light. Some mornings she would wake up next to him and smile a smile that was too big for her face, and he would forget what she had done. His girl had returned and that was all that mattered. But then she would slowly walk back her closet and look longingly at the shoe box that held all of his suffering, and all he could do was hope that the shoes would not make a reappearance. Despite these prayers, they always would and not five minutes later, her would once again become her new accessory, covered in livid bruises and swellings.
Then one day, he felt oddly confident after days, weeks, months, years of living in constant hesitation. And when her light turned red, he disobeyed the law and kept on driving, making it past the light once and for all.