Mistress.

I press my head against the bones in the crook of her neck, where things are softest. We are leaning against the cement wall beside a café, where we can hear terrible rap music rolling like jagged thunder from the glass windows and doors. I am wearing the dress that I bought for six dollars from a second-hand store in Semaphore. I had spent what felt like hours standing before the dressing room mirror, it was either yellow or pink - “buy the yellow one”, my friend Lulu demanded, “It looks better with your skin”, she said. Lulu has been my best friend for the past two years. Initially, I met her at a party which I was invited to by a friend of a friend. She was the quirky girl who who had the boys "lining up around the block", as they say, only she had a tendency to choose the one’s who would end up breaking her heart. It was inevitable. Lulu has had her heart broken six times this year alone, and like most girls our age, she fails to recognize that all teenage boys are pigs.

“This is so romantic.” Ava says, breath thickening. I rest my head on her shoulder and wonder what her definition of romance is, and if she can smell stale coffee on my breath.

How did I get here? We kissed under yellow strands of caution tape, and in a phone booth while anxious people waited their turn. I just wanted a warm body. I search my head for a twinge of guilt or remorse and find none. Maybe it’s the dark, or maybe it’s the medication – it blurs things at the edges.

She’s certainly not bad-looking. Her short black hair teased with hairspray is spiked up into a Mohawk style. The tips of her hair have been bleached and dyed dark purple, but the colour seems to alternate depending on her mood. Her eyes are sunken pools of grey. I once asked if she wore contacts, she said no and made a joke about being undernourished. I like the black shirt she is wearing. She has torn holes at the bottom of each sleeve so that she is able to poke her thumb through, giving off the reminder of fingerless gloves. Some people would say that it was a waste of a good shirt, but I thought it looked cool, and kind of trashy. She wore lipstick the colour of the blood which boiled fervently below the surface of her skin. Ava was the kind of girl you’d see in a busy street and walk in the gutter just to avoid bumping into her.

“You’re very attractive”, I said, before swallowing hard.

“Huh? What did you say?” she asked.

“Just that you’re very attractive. That’s it”, I said, and casually looked away into the spines of the streetlamps.

She twists her hand into mine and our fingers mate.

‘You look beautiful’ she says calmly, and even though I know she won’t believe it next month, next week, or even tomorrow, I still embrace it. I’m afraid that when she sees me in the light I’ll be narrowed down to nothing more than a small body with a hangover attached. I nudge her in the side with my elbow, smiling.

The night is sticky with the heat of summer and the droning buzz of insects occupy my ears.

”We should go, I have an early start. Do you feel like walking me back?” I ask.

“Sure.”

On the way home I spot a boy leaning underneath a tree like a cliché James Dean. Beside him is a girl I can only assume to be his girlfriend. She looks as though she has soft skin, and she is wearing tall black boots that I want.

Ava and I stand silently in the doorway of the house. She is looking at me like someone who is waiting for a good-bye kiss on the front porch.