Lipstick on a Glass

He offered me a taste of his Margarita and I said, blushing—we’d just been introduced, after all—that I didn’t want to leave lipstick on his glass, but he told me that I shouldn’t worry, he was used to lipstick on his glass, so I accepted his drink, took an icy, salty-sour sip from it, and then handed it back to him, and at the end of the evening he asked for my number, saying he would text me his favorite Japanese TV shows, though I never heard a word after that, so I thought I’d been ghosted before our relationship even started, but then I heard from a mutual friend that he had died suddenly in his sleep due to an undiagnosed heart problem and, there I was, completely at a loss because I wanted to mourn him but felt I didn’t even have that right after just one brief moment of intimacy.


by Nina Zolotow

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