There’s a heart-shaped hole cushioned in between the seats of Alan’s couch. I put a finger in and count - 10, 20, 25, 35, 85 cents. Strings of thread are caught under my nails, stretching across the gap, interweaved. I tug at them and watch them snap.

  “So did you come to my house just to finger my furniture, or?” Alan shoves a cheese cube inside his mouth. He looks like a frog when he’s eating, food protruding against the walls of his mouth, as if attempting escape. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. The corners of his eyes wrinkle a little bit. It makes him look squeamish. I want to fuck him so bad it’s driving me crazy.

  “You look so much like a frog right now, you have no idea.” I reach towards him and steal a block of cheese off his plate. He tries to bat my hand away, but to no avail. “Is this brie? Is this what brie cheese tastes like? This is so good, Alan.”

He cradles his face in the palm of his free hand. “You haven’t even eaten the fucking cheese yet.”

  “How old even are you?”

  I’m 15.

  “I’m 19.”

  Alan purses his lips, sticking his hands in his pockets. He’s Ari’s TA, or RA, or something like that. He’s also Ari’s boyfriend, technically. But only if dating is all about heartfelt confessions, and doing homework, and watching sunsets, or whatever it is that Ari’s stringing him along to believe.

  He’s Ari’s boyfriend, but not in any way that counts.

  “Is Ari with you right now? Can you tell her I’m sorry?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Are you even listening to me?” He clicks his tongue. His teeth are jagged. His incisors are too sharp. It makes him look a bit like a vampire. I wonder if Ari’s ever told him that. “I’m 22. Can you tell me where your sister went now?”

  “Nah. Not like she tells me anything either.”

  “Oh my god.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’re incorrigible.”

  I kick him in the shins so hard he nearly topples over. He makes a little sucking noise, fucked-up-vampire-teeth digging into his bottom lip.

  I laugh, “I don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  Ari doesn’t come back from her trip for another 3 months. That is to say, I was supposed to break up with Alan for her ages ago, but I swing by his apartment every week and get distracted by how he’s extra blonde-looking on certain Saturdays, or how he shoves cheese cubes in his mouth, or how he wears oversized woolen sweaters even though nobody’s asking him to and it’s the middle of July.

  She calls me at 4:30 in the morning, knowing I’ll pick up.

  “How’s the weather over there?” I ask, still kneading the languor of sleep out of my eyes.

  “Why are we acting like you actually give a shit about the weather here?”

  “Cool. Fair. Sorry.” I tuck myself back in.

  “How’s mom?”

  I yawn. “Why are we acting like you actually give a shit about how mom’s doing?”

  It’s this, mostly. We call one another at unfathomable times in the morning and send a silent prayer that the other won’t pick up. We always do. We say things to each other that we’d never say in real life, like: “We’re worried about you.” and “I love you.” and “I think I want to fuck your ex-boyfriend.”

  A pause on the other line. Something shuffles. “...Cool?”

  “Cool. Goodnight, then.”

  “Wait, like, for real?”

  I hang up.

  I visit Alan’s apartment twice a week. We exchange stories about my sister, half of which I’m convinced are made up entirely. “She talks about you a lot, you know.” He eats another cheese cube. Every time I come over this guy is devouring a fucking cheese cube. He’s obsessed. Charcuterie. I think. Do you just start being obsessed with eating this shit once you become an adult?

  I kick my legs up on his desk. He glares at me, indignant, before sighing in resignation. “We used to walk on the beach together, picking seashells out of the sand. She’d talk to me about you, then. You and your… I don’t know, fucking vandalism or brass knuckles or whatever. There’s a really good ice cream stand at the beach near your family’s house. She loved strawberry. Things were so good back then.”

  My mouth opens. It closes again. I steal a grape from his charcuterie board and pop it between my teeth. I’ve never owned a pair of brass knuckles in my life. I want to say. Though I probably should. The guy who ran that ice cream stand paid me 30 bucks to suck him off once and scoffed at me when I asked him for 50. My sister hates strawberry ice cream. My sister hates the beach.

  “My sister fucking hates you, man.”

  Alan blinks. He blinks again. Tears well up in his eyes. In another world, I would own brass knuckles, and my sister wouldn’t be a million miles away in San Francisco. In another world, Alan wouldn’t have his stupid dirty-blonde hair, and I wouldn’t dream of running my fingers through it every morning. In another world, I wouldn’t be Ari’s snot-nosed, 15 year old brother, and I’d crawl to Alan and his stupid armchair on all fours, and I’d kiss his tears dry.

  In this world, Alan points to the door, and tells me to get the fuck out of his apartment.

  “It was his hair. I really think it was his hair. I’m a sucker for blondes.”  

  I buy a 75-cent popsicle at a 7-11 right outside Alan’s apartment. It’s strawberry flavoured. I pocket the change, in case I ever have the chance to shove it back inside Alan’s couch and its stupid heart-hole. I’d nestle it somewhere in between the pulmonary and aortic valve, probably. I open the zipper to my bag and pull out a crumpled Biology exercise worksheet. Yeah. I smile. Pulmonary. Suck it, Mrs. Wong.

  The homeless guy sitting next to me folds his fingers over his palm, gesturing toward the worksheet. I hand it to him, and he hums. “You gonna become a doctor, kid?”

  “Nah.” I slurp on my popsicle, thinking about charcuterie boards, and turtlenecks, and seashells on the beach. I would’ve liked that. I think. I would’ve liked to pick seashells out of the sand. “What about you?” 

  He stares at me for a split second, before laughing, heartily, arm pressed against his stomach. “I probably could’ve become a doctor at some point, but there are too many probablys in the world, and not enough money for med school. You get me?”

  “Not really.” There’s a badge pinned to this guy’s lapel. It’s blank - eggshell white, and the word “G0d” is scribbled on it with red crayon. “So, what’s the deal with your…God…thing?”

  He runs his finger through his beard, eyes pinched shut, deep in thought. The ice cream melts. My fingers are gooey, strawberry juice webbed between my fingers. Pulmonary. I think, watching threads of red coagulate and stretch as I pull my fingers apart. The 7-11 sign flickers. From the side, God is luminescent, radiating neon green and orange. Heaven, so far, is shaping out to be everything I thought it’d be.

  “I think I’ll pass on being God. Seems complicated. I’d rather drink booze and talk to my dog, yeah?”

  “No, man. I don’t really think I do.” My phone buzzes in my back pocket. It’s a quarter to three, which could only mean that Ari’s calling me. I wonder if we’d talk about Alan, or the weather, or mom’s homecooked fettuccine. I wonder if we’d talk about how love shreds your heart out of your chest and leaves it, still-beating, in the cushions of some guy’s shitty, pretentious-looking couch. I wonder if we’d talk about how I’d give anything to tear myself out of this body - live, instead, in the space between his arms, in the crooks of his neck.  

  The door to the 7-11 swings open, and the cashier walks out, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. God dusts himself off, walks up to him, and kisses him on the lips. He freezes.

  The sight of it makes my head reel. I feel the weight of gravity on my bones, in my skin. Heavy. The concrete below me is cold to the touch, seeping in through the fabric of my jeans. A brisk chill tickles the back of my neck. The insides of my jacket wrap around me, closing in with my every move.  

  I’m sitting across myself. I tilt my head, watching from a distance. I can feel everything, no more than an indistinct buzz. If I squint, I could pretend as if it weren’t me at all. As if I were just an audience to my own tragedy. My head tilts forward, burdened by its own weight. The pads of my fingers sting. I watch, closely, as I pick up a tree branch off the side of the road, and saunter up to him. Reeling my arms back, I swing the branch, clobbering him over his sides.

  The 7-11 cashier screams, sprinting away.

  I pummel him. Arms. Knees. Chest. I relish in every crack, every whimper. He begs for forgiveness, words frantically streaming out of his mouth in between heaves and sobs. I kick him over his ribs. The branch makes a loud ‘thwack’ noise as I slam it into his body. Blood squelches out of his wounds, splattering onto my shoes. My head is still heavy. My hands still sting. My heart thrums against my chest, stretched thin. I’m still here. I don’t even realise I’m crying until a tear lands over the side of his face. He’s unconscious, at this point. I hit him once, twice more, just for good measure.  

  Under the streetlight, he’s illuminated, a pale, white glow cast over his bruised, mangled body. Light traces over the rim of his lips, peeled and bloodied, bones prodding against the confines of his skin. A poor man’s heaven. I press my ear to his chest. It rises, then falls.

  My phone rings. It’s an unknown number. I pick up.

  “Hey, it’s Alan.” He clears his throat. “Does Ari like charcuterie?”  

  I blink. Kneeling over, I lie down, gently, next to God, cradling the branch between my arms. His blood, puddled along the concrete, leaks into the fabric of my jacket, staining it murky red as if it were my own.

  “Not at all, dude.” I laugh. “You gotta take a fucking hint.”