Pizza Face

It feels like middle school. I am destroying a pizza with my teeth, the sauce is oozing from between my lips like blood-- the fake, fun, Halloween kind. The rubbery cheese stretches as I demolish this slice, and I laugh, and she laughs. A dreamy pizzafied laugh. She makes fun of me for trying to speak with a mouth full of cheese and tomato sauce.

Pizza in my arms, her hands in her brown puffy coat, we walk out and into the icy November night. There is a quiet path lit by street lamps, and beyond our college campus, far into the distance, there are people having to work and make money and die.

And then there is us. We are walking on the path, saying how we like boys but mostly hate them, making faces, and laughing all the while. When we get to her door, we say goodbye. She turns away and I watch her with an ear-to-ear grin as I hold my very cold pizza. Then she turns back to me with that goofy, sparkly-eyed smile and she says, you’re one of my very best friends this year.