Everyone Wants to Be Loved

Claire wanders downstairs and notices the party has changed. She smells the pheromones - desire thick, a maelstrom of conflicting wants and needs. She imagines bright burning stars, shedding light on each other, white hot, others are red or blue, content to be, and then the occasional black hole, sucking up the light. She feels a small singularity in her chest and she frowns.

The counter is a sea of discarded shot glasses. She's offered tequila with a lime chaser as soon as she walks in the kitchen.

"You look like you need one of these," Derek says. He's the host and takes his job seriously.

"Thanks."

Claire salts her hand, drinks, licks, tastes the lime juice sweet and tart. She smiles and Derek smiles back, there's a tug in her chest but that's all there is. He resists. Anything else would be inappropriate.

She steps into the living room and takes her heart out of her chest. It is pink and bright and smells of tawny port, evergreen, carnations. No one notices. They are acting out, focused. Rachel is dragged to the floor as her husband watches, an immovable object. Justin pulls off her boots, her socks, her jeans - Derek finally steps in, pulls Justin aside.

"Not in my house."

Claire pulls her friend off the floor, smiles, makes eye contact - but there is an absence. Rachel doesn't feel the tug. Claire and her heart are invisible.

She steps outside with the smokers, and stuffs her heart back in her chest to keep it warm. Justin sits on the front step, shakes his head, flicks ash into the night air.

"I didn't mean to - you know, it went too far, I just wanted, to feel..." Justin trails off as the others finish their smokes and glide back inside.

She has a lover back home, everything she has ever wanted, but the energy is infectious and she needs more - this is the here and the now and her heart is in her hand. She realizes that to get what she wants, she's going to have to yell, to scream, pull off her shirt and point at the hole in her chest, rub her breasts in someone's face, stick her tongue down someone's throat. But she doesn't want that. She doesn't want to compete for attention. So she leaves her heart on the counter and curls up in the chair in the corner. Derek brings her mudslides whenever she raises her hand.

The party fades like an old photo in the sun. Claire sleeps.

A gauzey white haze envelopes her in the morning. She hears a couple snoring in the guest room, the only other sound in the house is the drip-drip-drip of water from the kitchen faucet.

Claire finds her heart hidden behind two empty liquor bottles. A cigarette butt has been burned into the top. As she lifts it off the counter, she feels the bottom slick and sticky with the remains of a mudslide that didn't make it from the bar. The pink has faded, the outer skin sensitive to the touch.

She washes her heart in the sink. Tears trickle from the corners of her eyes as the soap burns and stings, but eventually, it is new and pink and clean, and the pain no longer comes. Everyone wants affection. Not everyone understands it. Not everyone gets it, but -

"Everyone wants to be loved," Claire says. And she kisses her heart, holds it against her cheek, and places it back in her chest.