Zipping Between

Zipping between restaurant tables with a pencil behind my ear, I found my first lover. You’re welcome, she said, as she pressed a napkin into my hand. XOXO, a phone number. We made love in my tent at the back of the trailer park. Vowed eternal company.
_____“Umbrella?” she offered me one morning as I crawled out of our tent. Too late, I was dripping cold. She wrapped me in blankets, put a cloth to my forehead. 
_____“Remember the napkin, three years ago?” she said. Quaking. Pulling my face to hers.
_____Own your choices, her eyes spoke. No one will love me if you don’t.
_____“May I go now?” I asked, and she nodded.
_____“Love you,” she said.
_____Keep her company, that I could do. Ignore her company, that I could also do.
_____“Hello,” the man said when he opened his trailer door. “Good to see you again.”
_____Fingers in hair. Eyelashes on skin. Door wide. Couldn’t miss us from the tent.
_____“Be well,” she said when I returned, kissed my forehead. “Another time.”

Samantha Steiner is a visual artist and Fulbright Scholar. She holds a B.A. from Brown University and is an M.F.A. candidate in nonfiction at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work is forthcoming or published in The Emerson Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and The Citron Review. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @Steiner_Reads.