Both pictures show us leaning on the black wrought iron fence, with challenging curlicues, that I scraped and painted with effort, time and pride. One picture is with the one who let me get away, the ex fiancee. The other picture is with the thin, long haired college boy who replaced him, the new one.

The new one and I have been together a whole week, we are fresh with longing and desire. He calls me several times a day, on the landline, and somehow we find a lot to say.

My mother interrupts my phone call to tell me the ex fiancee is outside. I say goodbye to one and go to the other. We stand by my mother’s blooming roses. It’s a beautiful warm evening. The park at the end of the street has a few lights on but the full moon outshines them all. We are distracted by the boys from the block jumping on the park benches, howling at the moon. The drug dealers sway on the swings patiently waiting for their regulars.  He turns back to me and says he loves me still and offers the ring that I returned.

I had decided to go back to school, to college.  When I told him, he said I could go to college after I married him. He set a bar, a foretelling. Now, he says he has come to bargain in good faith. I can’t. In my rebellious mind, I sing, “You don’t own me.” I think he heard. He steps outside the gate, walks, turns and pauses, to give me time to reconsider. He is tall, dark and delicious. I say good night.

I close the iron gate with an unintended clang and we both wince. I watch as he leaves my casa blanca and disappears into the night mist just like in the movies. I was missing a hat and trench coat, and he was missing me.

Nilsa Marino was published in the Stone Canoe and has been published online in Muleskinner, Five Minute, Wildgreens andMicroFiction Monday Magazine. She is most proud of having a short story published in the inaugural edition of Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul.