They call it a broken heart for a reason. Something inside me really was broken. She was with him at this very moment, likely in his bed, being touched – I massaged my chest in a dull sort of agony. I thought of her on the floor, wasted; me lifting her onto the couch. ‘You’re like a sack of potatoes,” I’d said.
    ‘My dad used to call me that when I was little,’ she said. ‘Then he’d rape me up the ass. You can too. I know you want to, everybody else does. I’ll just wait.’
    ‘Wait for what?’
    ‘For you to be done.’
    A little later she was lying on her back with her head in my lap. “You’re the only one who didn’t,” she said. “The only one ever. Why didn’t you?”
    “I’m a hero,” I said.
    “You’re my hero.” Her slender fingers brushed my jawline, my cheekbone, curled my hair back over my ear. Three days later she was fucking her coke dealer and a week after that her number had changed.