Fiction.

I have a secret.

It’s not a huge secret!! It’s not like I stole money or have a crush on my best friend’s boyfriend or anything! Although I did once forget to charge a guy I liked for his drinks and never said anything about it to my manager, but it wasn’t my fault! I was nervous, and I thought he was about to give me his number, but it turns out when he said “You’ve got my number!” he just meant that I had brought him his bottle of Stella without him even having to ask for it. I always forget to play it cool. So when he said I had his number, he meant it, you know, like a METAPHOR. “You’ve got my number!” “You really have me pegged!” “You sure are obsessed with me!”

I spent a good twenty minutes trying to figure out how to let him know that, actually, I didn’t have his number at all and I wasn’t sure why he thought I would have it in the first place, but that I was really interested in not only getting that number but calling it repeatedly and inevitably freaking him out by saying something retarded like “At what point am I allowed to call you ‘baby’?” As his beer dwindled, I decided to go over to his booth and casually slip him my number while I was bringing him a new bottle. Well, of course, I tripped and spilled the contents of that bottle into his lap. Frantic and fumbling, I started to wipe up the mess with the towel I keep tucked in my belt, and without even thinking about it spouted out the most offensive thing I could have possibly said.

“I am so so sorry. Oh my God, I hope these jeans weren’t a present from your mom or something.”

As soon as it was out of my mouth, I sensed it was the wrong thing to say, and it doesn’t help to say the wrong thing when you’re bending over the lap of the guy you have a crush on, aimlessly batting away with an already dirty towel at the parts of his anatomy that you fervently do not want to be frightened of you. I felt him freeze.

“My mom passed away last month. And these jeans were a present from her.” My heart stopped. Are you kidding me?

“I…”

“Just get me my check, please.”

The stammering ridiculous person in that exchange was me, obviously, and the guy roughly pushing me away and getting out his car keys was him, obviously. Then those demons that possess me and make me act ridiculous in front of nice, decent guys decided to gather together all their strength together for the grand finale. Without any further hesitation, I reached into my back pocket and blurted, “My mom’s dead too! Here’s my number!”

And with that, he left.

So I suppose I didn’t technically forget to charge him. He technically walked out on his tab. But it’s not like I ran after him. It’s not like I said “Sir, sir! Please! Wait, let’s just start over! My name’s Amelia, I know I’m sort of awkward, but I really mean well, and my mom really did die eight years ago, I didn’t just say that because YOUR mom died, I just meant that I totally understand how awful and crippling that experience is, and I really felt for your pain, and apart from that I really like you, even though you’re probably doing something really great and helpful for the world, and all I’ve done is to drop out of college to come back to Richmond and wait tables at a bar, and also you owe me $4.50!” I guess I could have tried to catch him.

But I didn’t. I just stood there, mortified, as the bartender – this vicious hipster kid that I hate more than anyone in the world – started singing that stupid old song “There She Goes” until he stopped short to shout, “Jesus Christ, whoever’s messing with the lights again needs to curl up and die, and I’m not even kidding!”

And that’s my secret. My stupid fucking secret. I can’t cook, I can’t play sports, I can’t talk to a guy I like without spilling beer on him, and I can’t get through a single night without waking up crying for my dead mother, but I can make light brighter and shiny things shinier just by thinking about it. Isn’t it just precious? I make things glitter. Isn’t it just adorable? I’m the most useless superhero in the world, and it’s absolutely fucking perfect.