Dating Flora was the single most overwhelming thing I had done in my life. She was exciting, mind-numbing and intoxicating, just like the body shot she did off me. I tried to piece together the night and I could only get fragmented memories like puzzles that didn't match up. Jake had his arms around random girl A. Dylan was talking to random girl B and C. One of them told him that letterman jackets aren't cool anymore, and the other was saying if he really wanted one they sell it at Gap.

The last memory I had of that night was lying shirtless on the pool table and the warmth of Flora's tongue on my body, right between my navel and my belt buckle. She was licking a dash of salt off my stomach, before taking a shot of tequila, then she sucked off a wedge of lime that I held between my teeth.

Perhaps I should go back to earlier that day.

My friend Dylan was in an especially bad mood that afternoon as we were getting dressed in the locker room.

"I'm never getting back with the psycho bitch from hell again."

Jake and I exchanged a look. "You mean like the last five times?" I asked. I was so sick of this rerun. Dylan and Sydney had more drama between them than the soap operas Flora watched, all thrown together.

"This time I really mean it," he said, dropping each word slowly. "Listen to this. She threw a huge fit last week because I promised her we'd watch some movie together, then I went and saw it with my mom."

Jake and I both knew not to mess with Dylan's mom. Ever since his dad passed away a few years ago, she was all he had left for family and no one dared make fun of his "mommy issues". We liked her, though. She was a lawyer and always let us play pool at their house, and she pretended that she didn't see all the beer cans.

"That's it?" Jake asked. "Just go and watch it again with Syd."

"No, that's just the prologue. At the game last Friday I let Diane wear my letterman jacket because I was mad at Sydney, but we made up afterwards and I thought everything was fine again. I gave my jacket to Sydney again, and this morning she gave me this."

Dylan yanked open his locker and took out a paper box. It was light blue with ribbons falling around it. "There was also a card," Dylan said and shoved it in my face.

"Something for you to think about," I read.

Jake lifted the lid of the box. "What the-"

I peered at the content. It appeared to be filled with shredded fabric. I reached my fingers in and pulled out a handful of what used to be Dylan's proudly owned jacket.

"She cut it with a pair of scissors because she doesn't want anyone else to ever wear it again."

"Just when I thought the story's getting old, Sydney managed to come up with something new to surprise us," I said. I had always known Sydney was crazy, the bad kind. She was a year younger than us, still a sophomore, and Dylan had told us it was lust at first sight. The moment she entered our school, Dylan fought off all the leering seniors so that he could deliver his big confession of love, something along the lines of you give me a boner every time I see you.

I don't know if it was the attitude or the tattoos or getting detention for literally fighting for her, it somehow worked, and they had been dating for a year already, although more often off than on.

A few months ago Dylan had shown up with a weird looking scar on his temple, and I had commented on what a peculiar hickey it was, when he nonchalantly told me Sydney had stabbed him with a pen. From his tone I gathered that domestic violence was something he lived and breathed.

"You really need to stop sticking it in crazy," Jake said. "I'd hate to see you on the evening news someday."

Sydney would win the title of most likely to cut off boyfriend's package with scissors at graduation, no doubt, but I knew better than to speak of her too negatively. It would just come back to bite me on the butt. Two weeks later they would be back to double-dating me and Flora and haunt us with their nauseating groping in public.

"Let's hang out at yours tonight," I said. Pool and beer was our solution to everything. Dylan gave me a curt nod, and I went out to find my girlfriend.

"Let's go to a bar tonight!" Flora clutched the sleeve of my jacket. "Let me see if your fake id's any good." She said it like it was a basic requirement for survival and was astonished that I didn't have one. "So you have never been to a bar?"

"I want to save some things for later." I had done more sneaking around since knowing her than all my previous seventeen years added together. So far I had broken into a swimming pool, cut a class, snuck out of my house at four in the morning, and I didn't need an arrest to add on top. "And I promised Dill I'd go to his house. He was pretty upset about the break up."

"You mean after the 8 billionth time, he still gets upset?" Flora shook her head. "But I'm not doing anything tonight."

When Flora said she had an opening, it was like the hippest restaurant in town called you and said you could have a seat right now instead of waiting for six months, like you originally planned. You take it and don't ask questions. "Maybe later? He gets wasted very soon. I can meet you afterwards."

"Okay. I'll find something else to do. Maybe later I can go to Dill's and join you guys?"

"I don't think he'd want to see us together right now."

"Oh come on, Dill is my friend too. I can cheer him up much better than you can. I'm on to it." She patted me on the chest before she left, leaving a trace of her jasmine perfume in the air.

***

We were pretty easy to please when it came to alcohol. Anything that made us drunk, we liked. The quicker the better. Jake had his resources and he would often be the provider, and we usually took whatever he could scrape up.

When Flora showed up, we were all half-drunk already. Alan was waving around the cue stick, hitting anywhere but the balls. He hung out with us sometimes when he didn't have anything better to do, and as his eyes refocused I could tell that something better came up.

Flora didn't come by herself. She was with a couple of cheerleaders from the rivaling school, and I wasn't even surprised. Only my girlfriend could make friends with the ease of sending a friend request on line. She knew the names of her doorman's daughters, she had the phone number of the guy who sold us popcorns at the theater, and when we went to a muffin shop near her place, the shop owner offered to name a new flavor she came up with after her.

"You refuse to come to a bar, so I take the bar to you," Flora said to me, her eyes radiating lights like she was a chipmunk on coke. She set up a roll of shot glasses at the edge of the pool table, asked Dylan to get lemon, lime and salt and Jake to turn up the stereo, and the party jumped up several notches.

My friends were all transfixed, knowing we were skipping a few years ahead. A keg at a party used to be our oasis, and we all made sure we were on good terms with Raymond Corbett so he didn't forget to invite us. Warm beer and red plastic cups were too vulgar for Flora's taste. She taught us how to lick off the salt, down the tequila and bite into the lemon, like a rite of passage.

The new girls' faces were a blur before I even took a good look. I wasn't a big fan of making small talk with strangers, but never mind that. Three shots of drinks later we were all suddenly best friends, and I suspected Dylan couldn't even remember Sydney's last name even if she was holding a knife to his throat.

The lime. I remembered the lime.

After the tequila burned a tract down my throat, the lime tasted strangely juicy, sweet and foreign, like something I'd never encountered before. Through glazed eyes, I located Flora and I thought, this felt so...exotic. This felt like a wild night out in Ibiza instead of with my high school girlfriend. She was more like an unpredictable hot stranger. Her eyes were enormous and hypnotizing, and she was so beautiful she burned away every shred of my sanity.

I was infatuated with her.

Amidst all the madness, I faintly realized I didn't really understand my girlfriend, even though I was fascinated. She was like a wild, endangered species only seen on discovery channel, and when she was in the flesh I didn't know what to do about her.

I watched her, and I failed to decide if this feeling of detachment came from the alcohol or from her.

***

A few days later Flora was in her room showing me everything she'd bought. After all the packages were opened and laid carelessly across her bed, she started trying things on for me to see, asking me for comments.

What comments could I possibly give? She looked great in all of them, and I had a lot more interest in the body underneath.

"It's hideous, please take it off." I pretended to be stern. "All of it."

She chuckled. "I think I like this one best." She slipped on a red dress, the material falling wonderfully around her curves. Red was definitely her color. "How was your day, by the way?"

I started to tell her about the lab project I was doing, but she cut me off. "Wait, let's take a photo together. I'm feeling it."

She hopped on the bed next to me and held up her phone. I hated selfies.

"What's the occasion?" We weren't doing anything interesting.

She tilted her head to one side and grinned innocently. "I want you on my Facebook, so that other girls know to stay away."

"I thought that's why we took the last fifteen photos."

"They need a constant reminder." Flora gave me a quick peck. "I need to show the world you're mine."

"I am yours. I won't be able to get a date for the next fifty years, don't you worry." At least it was better than cutting up my jacket. I let her post the photo, and I tried to start again about my day.

Flora nodded absently but I knew she wasn't even listening. Her fingers were flying over her phone. I cut my story short because I knew it was not interesting enough to hold her attention.

I constantly felt pressured in making her feel excited, because I sensed that she got bored easily. Even when we were going out with a crowd and enjoying ourselves, she would announce out of nowhere that she'd like to change venue. There really wasn't a favorite hangout place for us, since Flora seldom dined at the same restaurant twice.

"What do you want to do this weekend?" she asked.

"Can we go skating again? It was really fun the last time." I had been so proud when I came up with the idea the last time, because Flora had skied but never ice-skated. She had been delighted with my choice and I was glad that I could actually teach her something.

"Again? But we already did that."

I found it difficult to guess what Flora wanted and what she liked, as her interest kept changing. One day she would suggest eagerly about us taking a golf course together, but by the time I brought it up at the next conversation, she would have switched to scuba diving or aerobic boxing already.

"Let's go to a themed party," she said. "I have two invitations. One is Cast Away, and we're supposed to dress like we're stranded on an island. I'm thinking I can just grab two large shells and cover my breasts. Or we can go to The Hunger Games party. I know! We can party-hop! You should just wrap yourself in a rag or something and throw on some nets, and we can tell people you're Finnick Odair at the second party."

She was so excited I didn't know how to refuse. If it was up to me I wouldn't mind just seeing a DVD at home, but with Flora it seemed to be the last resort if all else failed.

She received a million phone calls every night and I always got the busy tone. She sometimes accused me of not spending time with her, but the truth was she clearly had a full schedule planned and she just wanted me to fit in whatever time slot she had left. She joked rather than communicated. Whenever we had a fight it usually ended in a heated make out session.

I never brought these topics up, but between her short attention span, her bursting social activities, her scorching phone line, and the flirt gene in her DNA, I feared that something bad was bound to happen.

But put all that aside, I really liked Flora a lot. Most of the time I just sighed, gave in and accepted the fact that I was just one of her many fans. "I don't like parties that much, but if that's what you want to do, I-"

"Yay! Then it's decided! Oh, before I forgot, I got you something." She went over to the mountain of shopping bags at the corner of her room, rummaged through it for a while before picking out a small black paper bag. I only had limited fashion knowledge, but this one I recognized.

On the bag it said Prada.

"Prada?" I asked in alarm.

"You know it? I'm so proud of you." Flora beamed. "Open it."

It was a keychain roughly in a heart shape, but the heart was metal with a lot of toothed gear, like the inside of a clock.

"Is it too girly?" she asked worriedly.

"No, but this must have cost you a lot."

"Oh come on, this is the cheapest thing you can possibly find in the store." Flora rolled her eyes.

"Thank you, baby. It's just that I don't feel comfortable when you spend money-"

"Please. This is nothing to me. You should be glad that you have a rich girlfriend."

"I'm not dating you for your money, Flora."

"Don't hold my money against me. Just embrace it, okay?" Flora crossed her arms. Her beautiful face hardened subtly. "Asking me not to spend money on you is like...you deliberately disfiguring yourself to make sure I'm not dating you for your looks."

Huh? "That's a really bad example and doesn't make any sense. Besides, I know you're dating me for my looks."

She nodded, her expression grave. "That's true. Your looks and nothing else. Come on, I mean to tell you that you have my heart. I offer you the best two things I can give you." She paused dramatically before holding out her arms. "Label, and love."

"That's not the best you can give me." I smirked. "I'll give you a hint. You can give me something that starts with a b..."

"Sean, a baby?" She frowned, pretending not to get it. "We barely know each other. Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

That part is true, I thought. We really don't know much about each other.

She threw me the best parties with a snap of her fingers, she gave me expensive gifts, she bought all of us a round of caramel macchiato at Starbucks as she pleased, took me on the craziest dates...

But ungratefully, sometimes I worried.

How about five minutes of direct eye contact, quiet talk, and a hand-written card?

***