Cold Pressed

The day before he and I were meant to spend time together, I could barely contain myself, so when I started to feel the pressure and fatigue of some vague illness, I drove out to a corner of town with an obscure and strange shop with colorful and expensive juices in colorful rows of unpasteurized vitamins and nutrients. I paid $8 for a brackish concoction of honey, cayenne, black pepper, turmeric and lemon. It stained my lips yellow when I drank it, but my resolve was strong.

In the evening, I went for drinks with a friend. I wanted a beer so badly, but I couldn’t put my immune system at any sort of risk. I had to keep myself pristine from the inside out, so I sipped on water while my friend tried out a new beer.

In the morning, I felt the rush of excitement one gets when a day they’ve been anticipating has arrived—I’d fought through the doldrums of the week for this day. I did chores and thought about how I could make my home cozier. I washed my sheets and comforter—or I was planning on it anyway, but I imagined the comfort that we would both share in freshly laundered linens.

I had kept the day nice and neat so that we would have all day to spend together without interruption. I declined plans with others, naively protecting the time I had set aside for him. I still felt a little under the weather, but that would be inconsequential once I was wrapped in an embrace and the oxytocin flooded in.

Perhaps my critical error was admitting that I was feeling less than perfect. Or maybe he had just been waiting for any text to inform me that his, “bud [was] in town,” and, “if you want to hang out tomorrow instead, I’m down.” A tomorrow that, despite my juice expense, would never come.

I felt the day fall around me as if all the rain had come out of the clouds at once in a burst of torrential sadness and anger. I thought of the week before when I had brought him cookies I’d made when he wasn’t feeling well. I thought about the $8 juice, about skipping a beer, about anticipating his comfort in my environment.

What will happen when I’ve had everything squeezed out of me? Will all that’s left behind be bitter pith?

I’m angry with myself. For being ripe, for being willing to be picked, for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, for not only being tempted, but being the object of temptation—so it goes, when you are destined to be turned into nothing but your essence, repackaged and sold, staining the mouth of someone who just needed a boost.