This one isn’t about you. It’s a story you’ve never heard before.

            It’s about a guy who looked just like you. A guy I met on Tinder, who just happened to have the same facial structure as you. And who mentioned through our messages he liked late-1960s rock and horrible early-2000s comedies, just like you. Who had almost the same number of tattoos. Who lived in the same suburban town outside Milwaukee.  

            I would have sold my soul to find your replacement. The months between us grew, and the wound wasn’t healing; if anything, it was expanding each day without you. Everyone says time heals, but I was never going to find the cure by sitting on the same bar stool at my favorite bar, our favorite beer drained in front of me. 

            If I couldn’t have you, I’d search for your clone, your carbon copy. I tried to find you in every guy I talked to. I developed a type: facial hair, tattoos, an obsession with Star Wars.

            But this story isn’t about you. It’s about the guy I fucked because he reminded me what it was to feel adored for just a few moments.

            He told me if I wanted to see him, it had to be that night. He would turn twenty-two at midnight and what a way to start his year. I couldn’t turn over and look at the American Traditional tattoos on your arms, so I set out for the bed of someone else.

This story is about how I snuck out of my house at midnight and drove to his place, right down the road from yours. It’s about how he greeted me at the back door in a dark blue robe and nothing else. How I walked down the stairs to his basement, trying to make small talk about the college we both went to, about work, about anything.

            It’s about how instead of kissing me or making me comfortable, he spun me around, away from him, his hand in my pants before I could object. In the back of my mind, I knew this was why he asked me to come over, but I wanted to pretend for a few moments this was someone else I could fall in love with. Someone who wasn’t you.

It’s not about you, though, but about how I let this stranger fuck me on a blow-up air mattress in his dad’s suburban basement. About how, when I was naked and the lights were finally off, he came toward me, condom on his dick. As I waited for the pressure between my legs, I opened my eyes, and there was enough light in the basement for me to see that he’d put his glasses on.

            I had to force myself not to say your name.

            This story is about how this stranger bent and twisted my body in ways I didn’t know were possible. In ways I didn’t want. It’s about how, in the process of bending and twisting me, he didn’t realize the condom broke. How he didn’t realize he came inside me. That I wasn’t on birth control.

            With his bare dick in front of me, a piece of ripped latex hanging limply, my head felt clouded in sadness and my legs couldn’t support my weight any longer. I collapsed onto the air mattress. I cried. I yelled at him for being an idiot. I yelled because how could I be so dumb? I risked so much just to pretend this guy was you for ten minutes. Where you were gentle and caring, this stranger used me like a doll. In that basement, I felt like a shadow of who I once was with you.

            As I walked back up the stairs, he told me he would pay for half the abortion if it came to it. He kept saying he couldn’t believe this happened on his birthday. He directed me to the closest Walgreens and slammed the patio door shut.

            I spent my last $50 on a Plan-B. Later that week, when I asked my mom for money so I could eat, I lied, telling her I’d had to buy unexpected supplies for a school project.

            At 2:00 a.m. in the Walgreens parking lot, I fumbled with the packaging for the pill. I felt dirty, like his cum was ruining me from the inside out. It took ten minutes to get the single pill out of the package and force it down my throat with shaking hands.

            As I drove home, I remembered last winter when I had a panic attack in the middle of us having sex, and instead of making fun of me or forcing me to go any further, you stopped. In the darkness of my room, you grabbed the nearest clothes and began to dress me. In your sweatpants. In your t-shirt. In your arms, you held me until I stopped shaking.

            But this story isn’t about you. It’s about how I drank gulps of nighttime cold medicine when I got home, hoping it would drown everything inside. How I wanted to be numb. I wanted sleep to come quickly. To feel nothing again. In the darkness of my room, the bed empty next to me, I thought about how I did all of this to try to erase your memory.

            The next morning, I ended up back where I started.

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