Even though we had big back yards and parents who were too rich and busy to notice or care what we did in them, we would hang out in parking lots. We’d smoke cigarettes and talk about cars (well, the boys would and the girls would listen) until we got kicked out by the cops for loitering. We were too young to really know what we were doing; we just did it because we knew we weren’t supposed to.

Sometimes we’d drink from old coke bottles filled with whiskey, or whatever other liquor we could grab from our parents’ cabinets. Mostly though, we’d smoke cigarettes. Or weed, if we could get our hands on it.

We’d usually go to the Duchess parking lot first. It was big and we could get food there till 11 pm. When the cops drove us out we’d cruise around town looking for somewhere else to go to. I’d ride in the middle between you and Drex. I still don’t know why we called him Drex, but at the time I remember thinking it had something to do with his huge mouth and even bigger teeth. I’d ride between you two, high off the cigarettes (I almost always got high off the cigarettes because I never smoked them, which you found hilarious) or the weed, and giddy from the feeling of your arm against mine, hoping your hand might brush up against my knee.

We sat in the very back bench seat. Jody, Megs, and Bryan sat in the middle. Torbin and MJ sat up front, changing the music constantly, challenging my mind to keep up with the lyrics, the beats, anything to keep my focus outside of my head and prevent me from getting too far removed from the situation or too paranoid.

During the day in the summers we would drive to Mickey D’s or the movie theater. We’d have to drive all the way to Danbury to do either one but, since half the fun of it was driving anyway, we didn’t care. You’d always get the value meal and give me your Monopoly pieces (that was back when McDonald’s had Monopoly). I was trying to win a million dollars so that I could buy the two of us a mansion in St. Thomas. We’d joke about it all the time and, to this day, I still don’t know if you knew how much I actually wanted that. I came close one summer; I got two Boardwalks, but no Park Place.

Of course we flirted, somewhat harmlessly, or so I assumed you thought. One night we got really drunk at a house party. You asked me to come out to the car with you to listen to a song. U2. You leaned in and kissed me and it was better than I’d ever imagined. You fumbled with the zipper on my Carharts and I had to keep pushing your hand away because even though you told me you loved me, and I was pretty sure you meant it, I couldn’t be too sure.

Right before that, when we were listening to the song, you’d been talking about middle school. Your breath in my ear was hot and butterscotchy. You reminded me of that day after school at the Grand Slam, back when we’d first started “going out” and had held hands for the first time. It still sounded so innocent coming from your lips six years later. Your memory of it was playing tricks on my mind, so, of course, I couldn’t be too sure if you loved me. Besides, I’d forgotten everything you’d said apart from that, as a result of your lips hitting mine, so I wasn’t too sure I’d gotten a completely accurate picture anyway.

Every time I smell butterscotch or hear “With or Without You” I think of that night.

That was our senior year. After that I went off to college in Virginia and you stayed behind to help your dad with his shop. My mom thought it was ridiculous that I was enamored with one of the eight percent of students from my high school that didn’t go to college, but we kept in touch regardless.

During, and even after, college I used to get angry and defend you when people called you a “townie.” Just because we’d all gotten out of town didn’t mean they had any right to judge you. You’d done something with yourself, kept up your family’s business, and they didn’t have any right to judge you.

We never got as close as we did that night of the U2 song, not physically anyway. People go home for strange reasons after high school and none of them are really conducive to rekindling a flame: Holidays, funerals, too many emotions and way too much family. I’d wanted to sneak away with you at our ten year reunion, but you were there with your girlfriend, and I was there with a then friend who would later become my husband.

In fact, I think the closest we ever came again was the night of Jody and Torbin’s wedding. It was after you’d broken up with your girlfriend and just before my “friend” became my husband. We were celebrating after the reception at Aaron’s Rock Bar on the water in Norwalk. I was wearing heels and the ridiculous pencil skirt bridesmaid dress that Jody’s sister had picked out for us. In between Oyster shots you leaned in and asked me if I wanted to go to the bathroom (you were always so romantic). Your breath was still hot and butterscotchy in my ear, only this time with a hint of Tabasco in place of the cigarettes.

We locked the door to the girl’s bathroom, too eager, I think, to even look to see who was aware of us. I remember looking at you with that rotating lighthouse light coming in through the small bathroom window, illuminating your face every thirty seconds. I remember thinking that you hadn’t changed at all since high school. I must have been drunk. I jumped up and tried to wrap my legs around you in a passionate moment, only to rip my dress up the middle. Nothing like wrecking a three hundred dollar dress that you already hated to kill the mood. We sulked out of the bathroom; you holding your jacket up against my backside, while I checked to make sure the coast was clear.

Needless to say, after we snuck back to the bar I didn’t leave my stool for the rest of the night. You fed me Jack and Cokes to keep me preoccupied from my embarrassment, and we people-watched and made bets on who would couple off to their hotel rooms together that night.

That was three years ago, the last I heard from you.

Even though we had big back yards and parents who were too rich and busy to notice or care what we did in them, we would hang out in parking lots. And that’s how I remember you while kneeling next to your coffin twenty years later. Sitting at your funeral, I remember you in the parking lot leaning into me to light your cigarette from mine. I remember trying so hard to not lean in too far and put my cheek against yours, to whisper in your ear that I love you and have loved you for as long as I can remember.

I talk to a God whom I hadn’t wanted to believe in up until that point. I say a prayer, asking him to take care of you, to be better to you than anyone else in your life had ever been, including me. I apologize to you and, like that night in the parking lot, I try so hard not to lean in and put my cheek against yours, to whisper in your ear that I love you and have loved you for as long as I can remember.

I can’t keep the tears from streaming down my face as I walk back to my husband; this man who I all of the sudden realize knows nothing about me. I take his arm anyway, and we walk away from the funeral and back to a home — a home that is so far from the real home I’m leaving behind.

© 2008 Alix Purcell