Photo by Amr Taha™ on Unsplash
by Melissa Llanes Brownlee
The guy I dumped in the Iowa cornfields became my boyfriend in my senior year of high school and I let him steal me from his friend, the nice one, because I wasn’t nice and neither was he. The sex was at-the-beach-and-in-the-McDonald’s-bathroom-and-behind-the-bleachers fun.
After we graduated, I had followed the guy I dumped in the Iowa cornfields to Nebraska for college. He left me alone in a tangerine motel room, left me lonely in my dorm room, left me by myself to hook up with randos, left me homesick in a city where he knew I didn’t belong.
The guy I dumped in the cornfields was driving us to his grandparents’ house for my birthday, no presents, even though he knew I wanted something from home, no dinner out, even though he knew I craved something from the ocean, not a damn thing, not even sex, even though he knew I needed it like air. I wondered if when I finally did dump him on the way to his grandparent’s house for my birthday, and I told him about all of the people I had fucked while we were together, included his friend, the once nice one, if he would leave me in those fields, the heavy stalks towering above me, and just keep driving.
Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer, has work forthcoming in Wigleaf, Bluestem and Cutleaf Journal. Read Hard Skin and Kahi and Lua and look out for Bitter over Sweet. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.
