//------------------------------//
// Ode to a Cold Tomato Salad 
// Story: Tending to the Heart's Forgotten Garden 
// by Botched Lobotomy 
//------------------------------//

I met a girl at the deli the other day. I say at the deli: she works there. Thursdays and Fridays. She’s tall, blue, maybe a year or two younger than I am, and has this amazing turquoise hair she’s tried to tie into a bun, but it keeps wanting to fall out all over the place. Every time I see her I want to reach over and fix it, tuck a strand behind her ear. Watch her blush. I’d complain really, but she’s pretty, and I haven’t had a hair in my salad yet, so instead I just smile and leave her a generous tip. The latest development is I told her some inane joke about the paper she’s always reading, and she laughed. It was a whole moment. I like her. I think she thinks I’m cute, too, but...I am so not ready to be in a relationship right now. I can hear Marble in my head, with that. ‘Rebound, rebound!’ and maybe in some ways a rebound does sound sort of nice. Someone to hold onto at night. Someone whose hair to tuck behind their ear. It might fill the silence, at the very least.
But...she couldn’t be Sunset, though, could she? That’s what I’d be trying to make her into, and you can’t just replace the love of your life with the girl at the deli and hope everything is going to be fine. That’s not fair to her, and that’s not fair to you, and that’s not fair to Sunset, either. It can’t just be replaced like that, and right now, those twenty years are all I have. Damned if I’ll cheapen them like that.
Besides, that girl deserves to be more than just some rebound. She deserves someone who can love her for herself, because she’s who she is, not because of who she’s not, not because she’s just a warm body in the right place, at the right time. I can’t just use her.
Maybe I’m just scared. Maybe I’m a coward, and it’s been so long since I’ve been alone that I’m only now remembering it. Maybe this is what everyone else could see, for all these years, and that’s why Sunset left, and our friends have barely called me. Maybe I’m just a disgusting, pathetic, terrified
Okay, that’s not helpful. Step away. Breathe.


And back. Deli girl...some part of me wants to just say yes. Some part of me wants to go in there and ask when you get off, and say it with my eyebrows raised, with a grin at my own lazy joke, and take you out, and get taken out, and try it all again. (Or, more realistically, ask for your number after a couple minutes’ nervous small talk.) Maybe you’re enough, maybe you could make the silence small, and the nights feel less alone. I want that so, so badly. I need to know it’s true, I think – that I haven’t ruined my only chance at happiness – and the thing I’m scared of most is that you can’t, that Sunset was the only person that could do that, and now she’s gone, and now I’m alone again, forever.
Ugh.
Maybe we could just be friends. Friendship, I could deal with. But I’m hardly in the right mindset for that, either. I want more friends right now so I can lean on them, so I can sniffle over the phone that yes, I’m doing well, well as can be expected, and take comfort in the fact they care. She wouldn’t – not her fault, just that no one wants to hear about some ex they never met, from someone they’ve only known since Friday.
That’s the issue with any of it, right? Any new relationship I have – romantic or otherwise – is going to be coloured by her shadow. And Sunset casts a long one.
It has to stop at some point, though. Surely. It has to. I can’t just not meet anyone new for the rest of my life. I can’t just be defined by her forever. So the question really is: how long is long enough?
I don’t have an answer, not yet. Ten months on, and I don’t have anything even approaching an answer. What if it’s the same thing in a year? What if it’s the same in five? What if deli girl is secretly my soulmate, and I miss out on the perfect woman because I’m too caught up in my own head to try it out? ‘Some people live only in their heads.’ I’m not sure where I heard that, but it’s been ringing truer ever since. I’m playing all this out, thinking it over again and again, and at some point I’m going to have to make a move – not with her, perhaps, nor with the next, but soon, with someone – or accept that this, right here, right now, this diary, is how it’s always going to be.
The drama.
Well, I’m allowed to be dramatic. No one else is ever going to read this, after all. The whole point is to say things I can’t tell any other soul.
Like the fact I’m terrified.
Deli girl, I don’t even know your name.


Sunnybuns


19:13
Hey, you should try writing a diary


19:13
You think so?


19:13
Sure
19:13
Might help with what you were talking about the other day
19:14
Being forgotten, and all that
19:14
It would be like a record


19:15
Like evidence?
19:16
Are you trying to get me convicted of a crime?


19:16
Of course
19:17
Only thing left I need is an admission of guilt


19:18
You won’t catch me, officer. I’ve sent twenty to the psychiatric ward. Forced retirement. Early graves.
19:18
You think you’re any different?


19:19
Honey, we both know I’m not like those other girls
19:29
We’re alike, you and I
19:20
Day and Night. Yin and Yang. Alpha...
19:20
And omega


19:22
Don’t think such tricks will work on me. We’re nothing alike. Don’t pretend we’re on the same level here.
19:23
You’re the law, and I’m so, so far above that.


19:25
No one is above the law, honey
19:26
There’s only one thing that’s certain in this forsaken city
19:27
And that’s that justice will prevail
19:27
Don’t mistake me for those other cops
19:28
You may be above the law, but nothing’s higher in this world than justice


19:30
Nothing except you, you mean. Pretending to be my friend. Working your way into my life. Making me *care*...
19:33
Is that what justice is? Deception? Betrayal?


19:34
Sometimes you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette
19:35
Waters been boiling for a while, so slow you didn’t notice
19:36
And you’re goose is pretty much cooked, my friend


19:38
No amount of food metaphors will save you now, Miss Shimmer. You’ve made a big mistake. Your last mistake. This is the end of the line.


19:40
No, Miss Blush. I don’t think you quite understand. The line ended half an hour ago
19:41
I’ve got this place surrounded
19:42
Hands in the air
19:42
I’ve got some handcuffs here with your name on them


19:43
Kinky.


19:43
Shush, you
19:44
But seriously
19:45
You should think about it
19:45
The diary thing, I mean
19:46
Not the handcuffs


19:46
:’(
19:47
I don’t have tiiiime to keep a diary though...


19:48
I mean it’s just a suggestion
19:49
Who knows, it might help
19:49
What’s the worst that can happen?


19:50
More police role-play?


19:51
Okay, fair.
19:51
I understand your hesitation
19:52
But sometimes sacrifices must be made
19:53
Miss Blush
19:53
;)


19:55
You’re terrible.
19:56
But I’ll think about it.


19:57
:D