The End.

The eviction notice was enough excitement to carry Elijah through midnight and beyond. The New Year celebratory fireworks and booze paled in comparison to the thrill of street walking and couch surfing; one never knew what could be found in the jaws of instability.

Elijah folded each article of clothing with care and placed it in her suitcase. She had until sunrise to be out of the studio apartment as rent had went unpaid for the third month. Her overzealous landlady insisted on working holidays and weekends, she wouldn’t miss the opportunity to finally remove her from the property and out of her hair. All the consistent begging and empty promises about how she would finally pay up had brought Elijah a long way, but tonight it ends. She wanted to be angry with the landlord but understood that she had, had more than enough time to figure things out, to get over herself and climb into the shoes of a consistent, working adult woman, but somehow the boat of maturity and responsibility had missed her and left her standing on the corner of temporary pleasure and an immutable heartbreak.

Elijah folded the arms of the olive-green sweater that she met Morris in. A small smile shifted her cheek; she was surprised when she felt wetness touch the corner of her lip. She closed her eyes to stop the flood, a warmth bubbled underneath her lids, it felt like it would do more harm than good to further resist the breaking. She opened her eyes, with vision blurred she sniffed profusely to keep the snot from hanging and making a mess. Her chest gathered up and a small moan left her mouth, unable to be productive with packing she instead folded into herself; chin to knees, holding tight enough to stop the shakes. She tried to offer herself a moment, bargaining that she would allow herself ten minutes to sulk. But only ten. Surely, she deserved minutes.

Elijah thought back to when she was working down at the perfume boutique in the mall, haggling mall walkers to come and smell what the store had to offer. Her boss had been pressing the team to beat last year’s holiday numbers and she was determined to do so just to keep the job. She just needed a little bit longer, a little more time to find something else, a job she could be proud of, something that would say, I-am-a-successful-thirty-year-old. Elijah worked with fervor, “Come on in, just for a second, try one!” She’d wave down an elderly lady who would take an hour sampling only to say she'd consider it and be on her way. “We have something for the special lady in your life!” Elijah would shout to any man with a wedding band. Some would look. But most would resolve to moving along to a more well-known perfume store. The men had no intention of spending hundreds of dollars on perfumes that had no reputation. Elijah would feign disappointment in hopes that her sagging lips and furrowed brows would inspire a transaction, it was a toss-up.

The day was coming to an end and she had only one sale under her belt. The panic rode her- pacing in front of the store she stepped mentally into the future and plotted where she would go if she was to be evicted. Elijah had no family that would take in an extra mouth and her friends only existed over beers and loud music. She was hopeless.

The day was closing and a man who looked smart enough to shop elsewhere came running in right when she was preparing to close out the cash register. He was sweaty. Dark. And friendly looking. He used his deep voice to ask empty questions about the product. He didn't seem to care much about what the answers were, he seemed to want to appear responsible; like the type of man who researches his buys. She engaged. He said he had three sisters and one word to describe them each: hippie, tom-boy, and introvert. Elijah whipped around the store rounding up a dark musk, a light perfume that smelt like a floral bouquet, and something called Arabian Impressions that smelt like rain and indescribable things. The price came to a little above five-hundred dollars, he paid without a blink.

“Yeah, uh, last minute Christmas gifts for the women in my family are rough, every year I say I will do better, but here I am.” He held his palms upwards. “But thank you for your help, I couldn’t have done this without you.” He ran his fingers backwards through his hair. Elijah hadn’t realized how handsome he was until he had made his face more visible. She began to gift wrap the perfumes slowly, making space for him to talk freely. “Every year I try to get ahead of the game but it never seems to work out. Women are much better at this shopping thing.” She could see his sheepish smile out of the corner of her eye.

“Guess I'm not much of a woman then.” Elijah's eyes focused on the wrapping and bagging.

“You look like more than enough woman to me.” He offered. She tensed at the flirtation.

“I’m barely an adult, how could I be a woman?” She looked up from her task to see him moving back a bit in confusion. “Oh no, I mean, I’m definitely a woman, I’m over eighteen, I just turned thirty actually.” She pressed her lips together to stop the babbling hole she could see herself falling into.

“You just had a birthday?”

“Yeah.” She placed his perfectly wrapped perfumes into the gift bags.

“Did you celebrate? Do anything fun?”

“No, not much.” She thought about how she had spent the night screaming into her sofa.

“I had a birthday too, just turned thirty-six, I didn’t do much either.” His own celebratory shortcomings were comforting, she found herself loosening and looking into his face more. And then it happened. They happened. The passion. The lust. The fighting. The indecency. For the entire month of December, they were inseparable.

He offered to take her out on the town for a belated birthday extravaganza. They drank and ate well. They tore up the town. They told each other everything. She found her way around his mind and though it was a short period of time, she thought she knew him well. They considered each other in every step.

Elijah’s home fell to the wayside. She spent so many late nights with Morris that coming into work late with an intimacy hangover was a regular thing. She couldn’t focus on haggling folks who passed by the boutique, there was love on the brain. When her boss fired her, the only person it surprised was Morris. He couldn’t understand why anyone would let her go, he said. He promised to take care of her, said that she could move in with him and begin a new chapter.

Elijah turned her tear-streaked face to the wall to look at the clock, in fifteen minutes the new year would begin, and she could not care less. Time was constant, sometimes you felt okay for long periods of time, sometimes, a lot of times, you felt sad, she thought. Elijah just needed to beat the sun. She didn’t want to be embarrassed by being escorted off the property while people were around. She’d much rather leave in silence. The way Morris had.

She gathered herself from the bed. She had given herself more than ten minutes. Damn it. Elijah stood up to see the work ahead. The boxes were stacked high. The trash bags bubbled over. And she wondered where she would put everything that wouldn't fit in her car. Hands on her hips she laughed loudly into the last-of-the-year air. Upon the edge of her cackle, her eyes caught the olive-green sweater. Grabbing it she pulled the sleeves in opposite directions until it started to tare. It felt good to not be the only thing broken in two. She watched the once adored item separate from itself. The sound of the threads violently ripping through and past each other was the firework she wanted. It was her announcement of new and fresh. The elastic snapped, buttons popped, and her eyes glowed. How pretty of a rag it was turning into, she almost considered keeping the sweater and re-purposing it as a scarf or something other. But she thought better of it, she thought better to let the whole thing go. Right. Let the whole thing go. She looked around the room and said, “you’re staying here.” Then proceeded to pack a few outfits and hygiene products into her backpack.

Morris had abandoned her. She shook her head still in shock. He had come in and told her that everything would be alright. She was much better off when she knew that it wouldn’t be. But he put ideas in her head. Made her reconsider happiness in a way that only cost her more.

Their affair was her permission to give into everything she wanted. He let her run wild and promised he’d run a straight line behind her to cover her blind spots. He processed to yell if anyone dangerous was approaching so that she would know to duck or jump or hide. But when she looked back, he was gone. He started making excuses about his sisters clogging his mind with their foolishness. Arabian Mystique was depressed and needed more comforting than normal, and he felt obligate to spend time with her. Hippie was considering dropping out of college. Tomboy had come out to the family that she is lesbian, and their mother wasn’t coping with the news very well. His family needed him. But she needed him to. She explained this fact to his text messages, to his voicemail, and to his social media inboxes that he stopped responding to.  

Elijah felt insulted that he thought he could get away with this. Making love to the parts of her she didn't know existed. Tampering with her insides. Re-assorting her. He couldn’t just do this. He couldn’t just get away with making her believe in something and then taking it away. This was a scam! This was illegal! Surely? Their love was an act of self-discovery, inclusion, and triumph. Their love mattered. It mattered. It mattered so much to her to be considered and chosen. It mattered that she was enough for once.

But she wasn’t. She wasn’t enough. At least to the people that she knew. At least not to him. To him she could be lost out on. She could be missed.

Elijah put her stuffed backpack on her shoulders. Slid into her tennis shoes. Looked back at the clock as it struck midnight and locked the door behind her.

Morris had made her realize that she could be hurt more. That there was still more of her to spare. That things would go wrong, but that she would come back again and again to keep chipping away at life. This new year is showing to start off on the wrong foot, she thought, but there’s always next year, and hopefully the year after to get it right. Maybe this is what being an adult is all about, becoming strong enough to just keep going.