MY “HAPPY ENDING”

Models Julieta Bea, Halle Burton, Soph Coru, Theo Devlin, Carlos Gimenez, Mason Kuzmick, Devon Limcangco, Addison Meek, Lorella Quispe Messarina, Vishwa Ramanakumar, Valentina Del Rio, Nihar Soman, Alexandre Spallone, Radhika Subramanian Photography Brieanna Andrews, Natasha Badal, Katalina Enriquez, Stephanie Garcia, Ian Alvarez Ward Design Liv Vitale

The kaleidoscope of lights is heavily pulsating behind my eyes as I sway my hips to the intense thrum of the vibrating bass. Sweaty bodies knock against mine as firm, calloused hands wrap around my waist. “You are absolutely ethereal,” the stranger whispers in my ear with a breath hot and heavy on the side of my neck.

Circling around in a jagged and cloudy haze, my heavily lidded eyes connect with ocean-blue framed by loose brown curls. The intense gaze behind the stranger’s eyes sends me swimming as a buzzing numbness spreads from my head to down to my toes.

Moving in unison, my arms encircle the stranger’s neck as their hands lightly graze my body up and down. I feel them reaching out, but I’m already kissing them. Their taste, their smell, their feel so close, skin to skin.

This high is one I never want to come down from.

The lights fade out and, all of a sudden, it’s just me and complete darkness.

Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?

My head snaps up, and I choke for air. The pill bottle looks back at me, joining the rest of my depression troupe: crumpled-up tissues, burned-out cigarette butts, an empty bottle of red wine and photos of them.

Photos of me and baby-blue eyes and soft curls.

I scream deafeningly and no one hears. My voice is reaching and attempting to fill the empty voids in my body carved by lucid dreams.

I wrap my arms around my empty torso — hoping, wishing, wanting, something, anything, someone — them. CASSANDRA DESVERGERS