Artificial Sweetness

Karina Salgado Cruz

Lila Rayes is a bitch. I know that, she knows that, everyone knows that. But I've always known I have particular taste in friends, in people. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm not a good person, that these are the type of girls I’m attracted to. Maybe I’m just shallow and like artificial beauty, but that’s an insult to girls like Lila because nothing about her is just surface level. No, she’s made out of complex layers upon layers with walls so high that I just love to edge myself over her peak. She never lasts long—in relationships of course.

Sometimes I think I love Lila. But then she does something so fucking irritating I feel like ignoring her until she panics. But Lila is too good for that, so instead she waits me out until I come back begging for a scrap of her damn attention. That’s when she’ll indulge me, she won’t mention how she had sex with her ex in the back of his car, she won’t tell me about how she rode him so good and for so long just for him to come too soon, leaving her unsatisfied. No, she’ll finger a strand of my long hair as we sit next to each other and smile a little too sweetly and giggle as her bare thigh touches mine because we’re in her room and she’s beautiful and she knows it. Sometimes, I hate Lila.

Lila Rayes is sweet. She’s sweet as she bats her eyes at me and smiles shyly as she asks to braid my hair. She’s gentle in the way her hands caress me. Lila Rayes is so sweet I feel my gums ache as I smell the too strong scent of strawberries lingering on her tongue from the flavored smoke she breathes out. But she’s so mean when the smoke clouds the room and her eyes turn hazy and teary. She’s so mean when she leans in close and teases me. She tastes like cherry wine and I wish I wasn’t high on her leftover fumes. I wish she wasn’t either because she’s so mean when the next day she looks away even as all I can see is the cherry stain of my lipstick on her face.