Her shadow loomed large on the wall, a hunched figure furiously typing. She was going to make her deadline even if her fingers bled--and her words were meaningless.
When she finally hit the enter key for the last time, she stood up and stretched. Her window showed only the inky black of midnight, but she would have time to edit her work one more time. Her lower back ached. Her feet were cold, bordering on numb. She slipped her feet into the fuzzy house shoes that had been kicked off hours ago. Stomach growling, she padded to the kitchen. She was met by mostly empty cupboards, she held a can of pinto beans and considered her possibilities. Then, a white and pink box glinted at her from a forgotten corner. She grabbed it with a smile and headed back to her desk.
Editing her own work was a form of self-flagellation, maybe the sugar would make the process go down smoother. She tore the top off of the box and spilled a half dozen pastel hearts into her hand. She lined them on the edge of her desk, in a linear rainbow while her printer spewed out her work like so much word vomit. She read the first line slowly, sounding out each word and wondering if she had made the right choice. She picked up the first pink heart, "call him." She popped the heart in her mouth and sucked. She let the sugar dissolve on her tongue, savoring the artificial strawberry flavor. She read the next line, making an alteration in a red pen as if she was in grade school. She picked up another pink heart, "please." She frowned but ate it in the same fashion as the first while reading the next few sentences. She picked up an orange creamsicle smelling heart and examined its message: "call Matt now."
She sat back and stared at the heart she had in her hand as if it had started bleeding and beating. Her hands shook as she set the orange heart back down in the parade on the edge of her desk. She set her red pen down on the stack of papers and counted ten deep breaths. She then looked at the hearts again, the first orange heart still read, "call Matt now." It was too much to hope that she had gone made after so many hours staring at a computer screen. She then went down the line and flipped over the hearts whose messages were face down:
"Matt,"
"Matt," and finally,
"You love him."
She raked her fingers through her hair and wondered. Her eyes traced the outline of a rectangle, the bare nail a reminder of what had been there. She walked toward the living room and found the cardboard box with "Matt" scrawled on one side in neat capital letters. Her hand reached for the picture frame that once hung on the wall next to her desk. The picture was of a man looking toward the horizon. She traced the outline of his face, a silhouette that she could draw with her eyes closed. A tear splashed on the glass and blurred his face.
She had been an entomologist in their relationship, pinning bits of him to cardstock but never getting too close. His smiles were butterflies that she saved but inevitably killed. Never letting herself be anything more than a scientist pulling the wings off of his beauty. She deserved to be alone. She had held a magnifying glass up to his faults, and she was sure he had grown to hate her. He had found someone else who could just be happy.
She looked at the rest of the box. A sweatshirt to a college she did not attend, a half dozen books she would never read, and pictures--pictures of Matt and of her with Matt. She sat down next to the box, her head resting on the back of the couch and continued to cry, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
She bit her lip until she tasted blood, stopped crying, and went back to her desk. She swept all of the pastel hearts into her hand, put them back in their box. She went back to slashing her words with red. An hour later, when she reached the end of her edits, she took a cold shower and a couple of shots of whiskey, drifting off into oblivion.
The alarm rang out from her phone, declaring a new day. She hit the snooze button once, twice. She got dressed and grabbed her laptop, walking purposefully to the coffee shop down the street where she would transfer her red pen edits to her word document. Sipping her cappuccino, all she could think about was the box of hearts in her waste bin next to her desk. She was not going to get anything done if she did not read all of the pastel messages. She went back to her apartment, pulled the box out of the trash. It was a pink and white waxed cardboard. There was nothing special about the packaging that she could tell. She spilled all of the pastel hearts on the floor. All of the candies were printed with the same messages: "call Matt now," "You love him," "Matt," and--the only word she had not seen yet-- "apologize."