My Best Girl

“Is that the way you feel?”

It seemed like such a simple question. A throwaway, just in the middle of a long conversation kind of thing. A softball lobbed out over the plate.

Never did I see it as a gurgling, teeming sign of what was to come from this girl. This woman that I’d fallen in love with. Plummeted even, into love.

“I don’t play the guitar,” I replied with a smile. That smile I get when I’m trying to be cute. The girls always seem to like it, and I’d never really thought I was doing anything differently. But, years later, when my teeth started to look like that of a street urchin with 20 years of heavy meth used under their gums, I realized that I didn’t smile like that anymore…

“That’s not the point,” she said. “Do you believe those words?”

Those words were this…

“The only girl a boy can trust, is his guitar.”

Yeah, based on my experiences, that’s been pretty well the truth so far. That’s what the song means to me, I said, continuing : But I don’t think it’s an absolute. That’s exactly why I’m sitting in this car with you, because I want you to be the girl that proves it wrong.

“I just think this song is mean,” she said. “All girls aren’t bad. We aren’t all liars. You can trust me.”

I do trust you, I told you that, I said. I knew right away that I phrased that really poorly. But hey, like the man said, “I was never that good at the words, anyways…”

We drove a little bit longer. This was one of the few times she was actually driving. Always her car, as my 1988 Acura was definitely not date friendly -- no air conditioning, bad brakes, and windows that didn’t work. Her car? A 2008 Ford Focus. Funny, that car reminded me more of my ex-girlfriend than the one I was driving did. And that used to be her car.

Why? Because we used to drive around and when we’d see a Ford Focus, inevitably one of us would say “Ford Focus Probe.” Again, why? Because we were dorks who hated both of those cars. It’s one of the few things that I can sit here now, years later and hear her voice. I once had a tape of her voice. A tape of the last phone message she left me before she broke my heart. Strike that, before she stabbed it with a rusty screwdriver and mashed it around a bit. Yeah, that’s what she did. I listened to that tape just once after we broke up. It made me cry.

I threw it away during the great purge, but that’s getting ahead of myself. Or maybe telling a completely different story. I do that. Lost in thought, the train of it gets off track.

So we’re driving to someplace, my guess is it was at lunch for me -- dinner for her. This was before she had moved in. Before I fell in love with her three-year old kid. We were still getting to know each other.

And maybe my answer to that question. Maybe my insane obsession with the band that sang that song started to make an impression on her.

She knew my heart was fragile. This we “talked” about via e-mail, myspace messages and texts.

I look back on that now and all of that was research for her. Finding out my passions. Finding out my weaknesses. Finding out what made me, well, me.

And my broken heart was part of me.

I told her about Emily. I told her how she did me in. How I spent so long just drinking and moaning and wasting time.

So my feelings about a song by my favorite band about how women, you know, break you heart, should not have come as a surprise.

“I just hope you don’t look at me that way,” she said as we got out of the car to go to Logan’s Roadhouse, a cheesy steak joint in town.

Baby doll, I said, I’d break my guitar for you if I had one.

She smiled and kissed me. Groping me in just the right place right as we got to the door of the place. We pause for a second, kissed one more time. She looked at me with those gorgeous eyes and I just plain melted. I’m just a sucker for them. Always was. Still am really. Last time I saw her, she still had that power.

She had me in her hands, could have done anything to me and I would have smiled and said yes to it.

She slipped her hand into my shorts. I got a hard on just as the doors opened an a couple came out.

“Oh, sorry,” she said.

We ate dinner, she a giant steak, me a catfish plate of some kind.

After paying for the meal, we get in the car. She turns on the ignition.

“…and she’ll neh-ver breaaaak myyy heart….”

“Ugh…not this,” she sighed.

It is a great song, I said with that same smile.

“You would think that, wouldn’t you.”

I should have known right then, it wasn’t gonna last.

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My Best Girl

(*Inspired by the Lucero song and a real night in my life)

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