Crowded Past by Susan Gibb

She could count lovers on her fingers if she included her thumbs. Was that bad? Did it make her desirable or just loose? Angela was twenty-eight. She loved sex, had rubber-band flexibility, and though she hadn’t loved all her lovers, there were two or three that meant something more than just sex. One of them had been Andre. It was on a European vacation after high school graduation. She’d stayed in hostels because it was the trendy way to “do Europe” then. She hadn’t listened to her mother and packed a blanket. It was a cold May in France and Andre was not only warm but handsome in that skinny Frenchman sort of way. He put her to sleep at night with whispered poetry she didn’t understand. Her mother insisted she return to the States immediately. She left him standing on the Left Bank waving goodbye. She often thought of him fondly, blowing kisses and sweet purple violets into the Seine waiting for her to return. Another was Greg the Hobo who dressed in old ripped sweatshirts and jeans. Her mother had sabotaged the relationship when she brought him home on semester break. He was Dr. Greg (the Hobo) today. Her last love and the one she was now swallowing pills in her bathroom over is Paul, a musician who told her he loved three other women besides her. Simultaneously. Her mother phoned an hour too late.

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