The first time that I met Peaches, I was in a basement at a party. Parties were never really my thing but it was my junior year of college and I was tired of being an outcast. Most of my friends were done with college now and moving on to bigger better things. And there I was in a smelly, sweaty, frat house basement. Sometimes I feel like all I do is move backward, while everyone marches into their lives without me. 

One of my friends (friend is used loosely here, a classmate) told me I should go with her, I held my hand over her drink as she danced with people I had never met before. The basement was foggy and dank; the flashing red and white party lights gave the room the effect of floating between Hell and Heaven. That is precisely what it was like to be around her. The first thing she said to me was, “You look uncomfortable,” 

I couldn’t hear her over the sound of the music blaring from the speakers, so I leaned in closer to her and yelled, “What?” 

She smiled sweetly at me, “Take a seat.” She patted the empty seat next to her. I didn’t see my ‘friend’ for the rest of the night. But I didn’t mind. She tried to yell over the ungodly loud music, but I only made out maybe 40% of what she said. I hung onto every word. 

I couldn’t tell you what drew me to her in the first place, it could have been her short bright green mullet, her piercing blue eyes, her crooked smile that seemed like it was just for me, the glitter that bedazzled her face, covering it in a shimmery rainbow or the piercings that decorated it as an alter. Most likely though, it was because she was the first person to pay any attention to me.

She guided conversation easily, her dreams, things that upset her, her interests, I nodded along, merely mesmerized by her energy. It wasn’t until I finally yelled over the music “You know, I can’t hear you that well!” that she grabbed my hand in hers. It was freezing cold, it always was. 

She led me upstairs to one of the bedrooms, and as she closed the door blocking out the sounds of the party, she reassured me, “I’m friends with one of the guys that’s throwing this party, he won’t mind if we hang in here.” Then she winked at me. I stood awkwardly close to the door, but she sauntered over to the bed and sat delicately on the end of it. I followed behind her trying not to stare. Her party dress was short and black. Reflecting back masses of light like an oil spill. I sat down next to her. 

“So, do you smoke?” 

I laugh, “No. Cigarettes are like, horrible for you.” 

She made a disgusted face, “No, silly. Pot, Maryjane, weed? Only jaded people smoke cigarettes nowadays, and I am the opposite of jaded.” 

I could tell from the smell emitting off of her and the dilation of her eyes that was probably already high. “No, I am not really good with drugs, they stress me out.” She laughed like a windchime, delicate, natural, and airy. “That’s cute. Maybe you just haven’t tried the right ones, but by all means, don’t let me destroy your innocence.” I liked that. Innocence. Something that I felt like I lost so long ago. It was a rebirth to be categorized as such. “Why did you talk to me?” I said avoiding eye contact and messing with my hands in my lap.

“I could tell you were uncomfortable. I was just being nice, you know.” the windchimes returned and shook me to my core. “I mean, I could ask you the same thing, why did you choose to talk back?” 

I thought a minute, and went with honesty, “I mean, why wouldn’t I? You are pretty and your energy is nice and I just thought maybe I would want to spend more time with someone who gave the awkward girl in the corner a chance.” 

Then, she kissed me. 

I didn’t really know if I liked girls at the time, but now I was certain. 

Her lips were warm butter, but mine were chilly ice. My entire world was filled with the smell of artificial peaches and the taste of her pomegranate Burt’s Bees lip balm, the kind that made your lips a tint of purple. 

Since then, she was my muse. I didn’t know what we were. Friends, lovers or something in the middle, but it didn’t matter to me, I got to be her apostle. Where she went I went, when she said jump, I said how high? I defended her to my other friends when they would get mad about this, that, or the other. She crossed boundaries a lot, pushed buttons, and made messes. I let these things go. Accepting that this is who she was. If I wanted to keep her I had to sell bits of my soul each time she crossed a line and let it go. I have never met anyone who lit my soul on fire the way she did. 

I learned that her home life was rough, her parents never got along and she was kicked out of her house in high school. I learned she went to college because she wanted to open a bakery and the only way her grandparents would fund her venture was if she got a “proper education.”

She always put on a funny voice at that part. She once told me “I already have a proper education.” 

“Really?” I said skeptically from her spinning chair in her dorm room, “How so?” “I have learned more about the universe and the meaning of life than most people will ever know in one lifetime.” 

She fancied herself a religious guru. Her room was littered (not only with energy drink cans and pizza boxes but,) with crystals and tarot decks, and if you really went searching, you could find what she called her “connection to the spirit realm,” aka, her supply of acid, weed, mushrooms and other things that I had never really heard of. Whether she called it this ironically or not, I still can’t quite tell. 

Sometimes I thought she was genuinely delusional, and looking back, she probably is, but at the moment it felt real, visceral, and revolutionary. 

“Who is to say I didn’t create the world?” 

“Hum?” We said we would study in the library but she kept looking at me sweetly before asking me a question about herself. I looked up visibly exhausted, but happy to be entertaining her for the time being. 

“I mean, I wouldn’t know if I created the world.” 

“I get what you are saying, it’s called ‘Solipsism” 

“No, no, that is the idea that your mind is the only one that exists.” I was surprised she knew that already, “I am saying I created this world for myself. You still have a mind, everyone still has a mind, I just made it.” 

I shook my head. I didn’t like the idea of anyone making my brain or the concepts that ended up there but me. “Like a god?”

“Yeah!” She beamed at me and I was grateful that the second floor of the library didn’t have any workers, so instead of being kicked out we simply got a few dirty looks. “I don’t know, Peaches. Maybe you are.” 

“I think so.” 

In the end, I never found out if Peaches was a god believe it or not. 

I finally met someone who was worse about changing and growing than I was. I had always been competitive but suddenly I wanted to see someone else succeed. For every class she failed and had to retake, it was another workload added to my plate. Staying up late studying mathematical equations for classes I wasn’t taking. She would always throw a fit halfway through, breakdown crying saying she should just drop out. Sometimes I was too tired to argue and would retreat to my bedroom, all the while she cursed me for being such a bad friend before falling asleep on my couch. But most of the time I would talk her off the ledge. If I was going to graduate, I was going to drag her there too, her kicking and both of us screaming. 

She never did graduate. But I don’t hold it against her. Her dropping out was probably what was best for both of us. Spending so much time helping her study made my own GPA plummet and only ever helped hers slightly. College isn’t for everyone. 

I like to think I loved her better than anyone else. I was her most devoted follower, but I know that’s probably not true. After college we grew apart, I got a full-time job and didn’t have time to dedicate to her anymore like I used to. I felt guilty, and she resented me. 

When the sun falls from the sky and rests its legs on earth many take notice, even if they don’t admit it. I helped her through a series of descending qualities of men that would enter her life, each time she would run to me. I could hold her when she didn’t know what she wanted, and

take care of her when she couldn’t take care of herself. These moments gave me hope that things would change. Everyone who came into her life left. They couldn’t take the heat. She clung to me solemnly. It wasn’t easy holding her down. She walked and ran and I just followed along as her shadow, keeping her attached to the planet in a tangible way. I was scared if I ever left, even for a second she would float away into the stratosphere and never come back down, taking my soul with her. 

When she first started dating Ray I figured it would be a lot of the same. He was fifty, a CEO and she was thirty-five, now living in an apartment near the city, working at a daycare. It started how they always started a swipe on a dating app, a singular date, a blip in time to someone like Peaches. But one date became two, and two became three, till they all added up to him kneeling on Main street at Disneyland. I helped him pick out the ring. 

When all was said and done, I couldn’t take the heat either. I thought I could. As her soon-to-be husband walked down the aisle, I stood on the altar, as a maid of honor. It was a small ceremony. It was his third marriage, he didn’t want to go through the motions again and Peaches pretended to understand. But I knew the truth. I thought I could stand there, grit my teeth and get through it. But then I saw her in her white dress, the one thing he did agree to use a lump of his blood money on. She wasn’t wearing a short black party dress anymore. She didn’t have a green mullet, now it was a rose gold bun on top of her head, and while she did have glitter on her face it was restricted to her eyelids, but her smile was still crafted by the gods to make me weak, but I stood. 

Of course, I gave my speech, tears falling freely. I could tell it pleased her to see how much I cared. “I’m sorry, I just never thought I would see my party girl grow up,” I said after a particularly bad choke-up after recalling Peaches' excitement over the phone after Ray proposed.

It wasn’t until after she drove off in his expensive sports car that I departed from the venue. Not staying to clean up the way I promised. 

I knew how I felt after the first kiss at that party all those years ago, and I think she did too. She loves the attention, but never loved me. Not the same way. 

Now, in my home after the wedding, I look around at the pieces of her left behind. Her lipstick is left on my bathroom counter, and the pictures of us hanging on the fridge. Even my college diploma in my office feels like it is intrinsically linked to her. I gave everything to love her and keep her. And now she is with her husband on her wedding day and I sit alone in my pastel pink maid of honor dress, removing pieces of her from my life. Dissecting who I am without her, and I don’t think I really know.