Hey Everyone,

I know that I have been very conspicuously absent, but it has all been for good reason. I have been working on my thesis and am now in the final stretch. My creative thesis (70-100 pages) is now complete and I am on the 15th page of my critical thesis (it needs to be 20 pages). Soon I will be back to posting more regularly, but until then, let me tease you with the content of my creative thesis!

-Michelle

 

“Promises”

Alex thinks it’s all about sex, Mimi tells him it’s just sex, but somewhere along the lines it stops being about that and turns into something more. What the hell do you do when you might just be falling in love with your best friend’s younger sister?

 

Alex leaves the Suds Factory buzzed and finds Mimi leaning against his car. The parking lot is still mostly full, and there are a few people walking by. Her hands are tucked in her jeans’ front pockets, her right leg crossed over her left, her hips jutting out a little and her shoulders are relaxed. Her aviators are still perched on top of her head and her camisole has ridden up high enough to expose a full inch of skin. Alex stops a few feet away, trying to think of something witty to say, when Mimi breaks his concentration with a loud wolf-whistle. Automatically, he frowns at her and she responds with a wide, shit-eating grin that he knows precedes mischief.

“Hey, babe, nice pants. Can I test the zipper?”

Alex shakes his head. “You really are a douche.”

She arches her eyebrows at him. “What? Guys do it all the time, what’s so wrong with me doing it?”

“Just because you bought me drinks doesn’t mean I have to go home with you. I got the right to say no – feminism and all that shit.” He closes the distance between them, towering over her. Mimi scoffs and pushes off the car, her head tipped back, but somehow not appearing small.

“Precisely, we’ll go back to your place.”

“Wait – what?”

“You still drank them.”

Pausing, Alex mourns the fact that he had indeed drunk all three drinks. College had taught him well. Free booze was free. “Being a woman sucks.”

“And soon you’ll be sucking me off,” Mimi tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Gimme your keys, you’re in no condition to drive.”

Alex surrenders the keys, but only because she is right, as he says, “We are not fucking again, I promised – no more.”

Her laughter chases him around the car. “Who’d you promise?”

“Myself.”

They slam their respective doors shut. Mimi buckles herself in and then pinches his cheek affectionately.

“We both know you suck at keeping promises to yourself and obviously you didn’t mean to keep this one. Just look at the way you’re dressed,” Mimi says.

“What? I’m wearing – Jesus – I’m wearing jeans and a – a freaking sweater!”

“As I said, asking for it.” While he sputters, Mimi pushes the third preset radio button and hums with satisfaction when it pulls up the station she programmed nearly nine months ago.

 

“The Pendant”

Michaela thought she was done feeling anything for her ex-boyfriend, but when he dies on deployment she has to face things she has kept buried for too long.

 

For the first month, I tried to keep the friendship alive. Just because we weren’t like that anymore didn’t mean I couldn’t be there for Marcus – as a friend. I stopped calling him every day, limited how many text messages I sent him and refused to discuss certain aspects of our breakup. There was no way to give him the answers he wanted when, up to six days before we broke up, I had wanted to make our relationship work. There were a clusterfuck of reasons I didn’t want to think about.

Then I had to turn my phone off when I went to bed so he wouldn’t wake me up at two am crying. When it became obvious I wasn’t sleeping through his phone calls and was outright ignoring him, he called my mom and my sister and I finally changed my phone number, the phone number I had had for six years. I blocked him on Facebook and all my instant messengers, and I packed the hole he left behind with Nutella and fanfiction.

I cut Marcus out of my life like a tumor.

So why am I on a bus heading home to stand at the back of his funeral? He isn’t part of my life, my identity, my world anymore. I had felt whole and strong two weeks ago. Then Nora, his sister, called and left a new gaping hole. Marcus was dead. His unit had been deployed months ago and I had refused to think about it, but now every fear I had felt during our less-than-a-year relationship had been realized. K.I.A.