A real friend.

Misty was the cutest girl I ever had any type of relations with. She was drop dead gorgeous and the only thing that kept her out of the cool kids group was her insane parents. One time the cops had to come pick up her dad, he had flipped out completely. She had run out of soap, and for the whole week had been using shampoo as soap. Shampoo was too expensive to waste that way, but she was too scared to ask for more soap, because every time she did he would yell at her for leaving the soap under the running shower water and wasting it. They had a townhouse in a mid level community, her mom drove a beamer, he drove a Lincoln, but they both seemed to hate having an extra mouth in the house. We never dated or had a "thing" we just started hanging together all the time, she said she liked the way I kissed and I loved the way she'd hang out with me doing anything, or nothing at all for hours. My friends were all jealous as hell because she was so beautiful. My exes that saw her got flames in their eyes and chewed on their tongues. She had a lot of sex before hanging out with me. She got a reputation of being a slut honestly and early, but when I met her she had just come off a boyfriend that was in jail for assaulting her. I created a comfort zone for her, even the times we made out I never pushed her for anything more than just some friendly groping. She used to start sobbing for no reason, and if I was there she buried her face on my chest and her whole body would just heave with the force of her crying. I couldn't imagine how terrible it was for her when someone wasn't there. Some days I was terrified to leave her alone, but she never told me a thing about why she cried. When she was done she'd wipe her eyes, give me a soft kiss and we'd go back to what we were doing. She found herself a boyfriend, ran away to Philadelphia to live with him for a few months before coming back. Turns out her whole family had started counseling and they were all on some kind of meds. She seemed stronger hearted, things were going pretty well for her. We didn't see much of each other, too many heavy embarrassing memories. A year or so later when I had a really messy break-up, I spent a few days by myself writing teenage angst filled poems then I called her up, she drove over to pick me up and we drove out to this little country fair in one of the small towns nearby. We smoked some pot and spent the night wandering among the carneys, just talking and smoking cigarettes. We spent a couple hours lounging in the front seat of her Father's Lincoln chainsmoking, reading poetry back and forth. We talked only about the new things that were going on, She was going back to school, her parents took her to Europe over the summer. She made me promise to not ever do anything permanent to myself over any girl ever. Then she dropped me off squeezed my hand then gave me a peck on the cheek and she drove off. I was standing there on the curb trying to figure out what the hell she had been talking about. I had never considered doing anything to myself, and for a long time I thought I had given her the wrong impression when I had called her. We never spoke after that, and I never saw her again. It was a couple years later before I added it up. It was summertime (August I think) she picked me up wearing a long sleeve coat that she never took off. I thought she had sprained her wrist or something because every time she used her left hand on the steering wheel she winced. Her new therapy with the family and the drugs she was on. It finally hit me one day and I stopped completely stunned I had missed it. I heard later she had 2 kids, and had moved back into her parents. She ran into one of my friends and asked about me but I had already moved out of state. I wrote her a letter about what I had done after that. She sent me a picture of her holding two cute baby boys. Long sleeves but a genuine smile.