Can't seem to think of a title...

...which is unusual for me. Let me know if you have any ideas. -- Nancy Dancehall

“See you later,” she said, but what I heard was the damning finality of “goodbye.”

She’d been the only sober one at the party, and yet she was the center of it. I couldn’t stop watching her move her hands while she talked, bracelets jangling up and down her arms. Her bare feet never stayed still, but danced under the long translucent skirt. She laughed at everything. I thought at first it was an act, but it was genuine. Everything and everyone truly delighted her. I’d never seen such a woman.

She approached me. Later she said it was because I looked like I wasn’t having any fun, and she wanted to change that.
Aurora.

The first time we made love and I approached climax, she pushed my face away from her neck.
“I want to hear you the way the room does,” she gasped.

The first thing that bothered me after she moved in was the number of times her vast and intrusive family called. Aurora was always on the phone solving one crisis after another, all with that laugh, those dancing hands. How could someone be perpetually happy, especially in the face of everyone else’s troubles?
I asked her one day.
“How can I not be happy?” she shrugged. “Life is good. You need to remember that!” She kissed me on the nose before sweeping off to one class or another. “See you later!”
Never goodbye. That word wasn’t in Aurora’s vocabulary.

My friends were jealous.
“She takes up great handfuls of life and flings it into the air,” one of them said.
She’s dangerous, because not only can you fall in love with her, you can really like her.” “Aurora’s perfect,” said another.
I’d thought so too once, before I lived with her. With that perpetual cheeriness.

She worried about her mother’s lupus, I know, but it never showed. Aurora propped up everyone else. One day her mom called and I answered. Aurora was in the other room, but her mom wanted to talk to me first.
“I can tell Aurora needs support now.”
“She’s fine,” I answered.
“I know. She’s always fine. But trust me, Aurora doesn’t know how to ask for support. She keeps giving. Sometimes you have to just give it back.”
“I support her.”
“Of course you do.”
“You don’t have to tell me about supporting her,” I said.
“Of course not. Is she there?”
“No. I’ll tell her you called.”
“Who was that?” Aurora asked, coming into the room. She was smiling, completely guileless, innocent. Happy.
“That was your father. Your mom just…died.”
The light went out of her eyes while her smile froze. A little noise came from her, and I watched her expression collapse into grief, like a bridge under too much weight. She sank to the floor, sobbing.
I stood watching her. The words had come out of my mouth before I thought about them. I wished I’d just backhanded her instead.
The phone rang again. She leapt up before I could stop her.
“Jeeeennnnnny,” she cried into the receiver. “Mom…Mom’s gone…”
I took a deep breath.
“Mike just said dad called and told him…” she turned her face to me. “What do you mean…?”
Her face changed. Her tears stopped.
“Mike’s got a weird sense of humor,” she told her sister. “I’ll call you back.”
“I…I’m sorry,” I said. “I…I…I don’t know why I—”
“You. Cunt.”
I didn’t know that was in her vocabulary.

She left everything behind. Thought it was tainted, I guess. Unimportant.

I’ve kept it all; books, clothes, shoes, makeup. She traveled light. Everything fits into twelve cardboard boxes.

Four and a half years later, I saw her on the street. I couldn’t help but stare. She seemed perfect, absolutely perfect, sipping on her iced tea in the neighborhood café.