The jacket he used to wear still hangs in her closet, next to a red crop top and a gray dress. His jacket: paint streaked and a deep denim blue. After they broke up, she saw men wearing jackets like his, and even though she knew it couldn’t be him because the man was too old or too short or too fat or to thin, her heart would beat in her throat.
At night she sits in the dark cave of her closet, fits her arms into the sleeves. Breathes in his scent and wishes she could bottle it up forever, that smell of dried paint and hair gel. This has become a ritual; one she does every night.
It’s not that she thinks he’ll come back, wanting his jacket returned. Because when she closes her eyes, fingertips touching soft denim, a rumpled texture of creases and lines, it’s almost like he’s there with her, that she’s not just sitting alone and afraid in the dark.
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