The summer I turned nineteen, I began sleeping with Adrian because he looked like Bryan, who had broken my heart.

When I say sleeping together, I don’t mean sleeping as a euphemism for sex, although we did that sometimes. We would squeeze into an old green sleeping bag and wrap around each other, like how DNA coils around histones to support itself. He would kiss me, stroke my hair, and sing “Wonderful Tonight” or “Better Man.”

Adrian and I both had tremors: mine from anxiety, his from chemicals and Desert Storm. As he sang, our bodies stilled. It was the first time someone sang me to sleep.

Bryan was a friend’s cousin. She took me to a family BBQ and he was there, playing pool. The minute I saw him, I wanted to fuck him. I gave him a blow job in the kitchen. I had never desired another person so strongly and believed him when he told me that he felt the same. We got together whenever we could over the spring. It made sense that we had to meet on the down-low because he was in the midst of getting a divorce.

He left me a voicemail.

“It’s really hard for me to say this, but I’ve decided to not go through with the divorce. I’m going to work things out with my wife.”

I cried and drank and smoked too much pot. I got a tattoo to remind myself not to be so stupid again.

A month after Bryan’s message, Jason invited me to a party. He’d been pursuing me for months. The party was at a large two-bedroom apartment that smelled of old greasy food and weed. It featured dim lighting and taupe walls. The only furniture was a worn brown sectional sofa that huddled around a console TV. Pollockian stains splashed over the once-beige carpet, relieving the monochromatic landscape.

Adrian was sitting on the sofa, strumming an acoustic guitar and singing. He wore a Metallica t-shirt and Army boots. With shoulder-length dirty blond hair and a slight muscular frame, I was stunned by his resemblance to Bryan.

Jason kept trying to entice me back into one of the bedrooms.

“They have the Zima back there.”

I stayed close to Adrian and the cheap beer. It was the beginning of us.

Adrian shared the apartment with two other guys. He was lead guitarist and vocalist for a cover band. They were starting to get regular gigs at small local bars. I would go watch his performance and then drive him home because he didn’t have a car. Usually, he was too drunk to walk. I would carry his guitar case and help him get inside the apartment. On the nights the complex gate wouldn’t open, I’d boost him over the wall and then slide his guitar over. It would land with a thump next to his passed-out form.

A loud, constantly changing crowd came and went all hours at that apartment. One night, near the end of summer, I was dozing in and out on the couch after smoking a lot of pot, my feet propped in Adrian’s lap. A new girl was there, slim and pretty, with long dark hair. She’d clung to Adrian all evening, a burr stuck to a sock. I heard her ask him, “So, who’s she?” I felt rather than saw she was gesturing at me. Curious what his answer would be, I kept still, eyes closed.

“Oh, she’s just someone that comes around. I’m not sure why.”

I never went back to the apartment, and Adrian never called. I didn’t get a tattoo.

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