Loved Halloweekend. This is my favorite picture, taken on Friday night before heading out to Senior Night. I am the last queen of France, Maine native Laura is a moose, and Houlihan is ineffably, and always, himself.

Nathan woke me up by offering tea, I remember. This seemed ridiculous: I was hungover, obviously, but we were in the middle of South African sweltering summer, and a hot beverage sounded about as appealing as another shot of gin. I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes.
“What are you thinking about, cupcake?”
“I want this t-shirt,” I said, looking down onto the logo emblazoned on my chest. Pretoria Boys High.
“Take it,” he said. “I have fifteen others in the closet. You can wear it home.” His smile was so sad. With everything we’d talked about, how he spent the whole night crying, this was the most trivial thing he would have to deal with all day.
“Plus you owe me,” I said. “For misleading me about being gay and everything.”  I was the only one he’d told, and we both knew the road ahead would be long, but I still felt the need to banter him.
“I do,” Nathan said. And he looked at me with real pain and tenderness, and I pitied him. Then he drove me home. It would be the last time I came to the house in Claremont.

Waking up alone in my Pretoria Boys High t-shirt— 9,000 miles away from where I acquired it, Indian summer now over, rain beating down on my roof— always calls to mind an easier time: when love was a sweating cocktail waiting to be gulped down all at once, when the sultry weather made sharing a bed unbearable, and when goodbyes were given with a parting gift.