Janice

I am lying on the grass, under a tree, in the rain. I can feel water soaking through the back of my shirt as I stare up through the branches. If I stood up, I'd probably be covered in mud, and my clothes would stick uncomfortably. But instead, I think I'll just stay here.

A drop of rain falls into my eye from somewhere above, and I don't bother blinking it away. What's the point? I stare fiercely up at the clouds, until it starts burning and I relent and wipe my eyes with my hand.

I guess lying out here could give me a cold. I don't remember the last time I did something like this. And suddenly, I do remember, and I wish I didn't, because it was with her. Janice.

It was years ago. We had been out walking in the park near her house, when there was a huge clap of thunder, and it started pouring with rain. We were both drenched in a few seconds, and I was running for her house when she called out to me to wait. I turned around and she was stripping her shirt off and smiling her evil smile and then she caught me and grabbed my shirt too and then somehow we were holding hands running through the park in our underwear chasing each other and throwing leaves and trying to shout louder than the thunder. And then my mind caught up, I took my clothes back, I made her get dressed too. Then I took her home. Her mother glared at me as I stood, dripping on the front doorstep, and tried to explain why her daughter was cold and rained on and missing the top three buttons of her shirt. Janice just stood there giggling as I tried, until eventually I gave up and went home.

I wipe my eyes again as reality comes back. That Janice is gone. Well, not gone. Just unavailable to me.

She is still the girl I fell in love with. She still loves thunderstorms, crosses both her fingers and her toes for good luck, never eats icecream without chocolate sprinkles... still has the crazy sense of adventure, free-spirited fun, driving her.

I know too that she will never love me. That is why there is no point getting up, moving out of the rain, going on with life. I can never make decisions the way she wants. Spontaneous, crazy... fun. She thinks I'm boring and responsible. She says that all the time.

I wish I was fun like you, Janice. Then I could choose who I want. Dump losers like me, because I would be amazing, like you, and no one would care what I did. Then I could date cool people who would stick their hands down my shorts like you did for Timothy Zolandy, and I would be the one girlfriends cheated with and not the one they cheated on. I would never walk in on the girl I thought I knew and loved as she pushed another guy towards our bed. I would never be boring or unloved or the responsible one. I would be Fun.

But what I'd be missing, Janice, is a sense of decency, respect for other people, and I'd be missing someone who actually loved me like I loved you.

Because now, because you're you, and you have your fun, you will never have me again.

I stand up. I dry my eyes. I wipe the rain away, and I kick the tree. And I go back inside to break up with Janice.