Chocolate: A True Story

Once upon a time in the land that social consciousness forgot, there was an aqua blue Chevy Beretta. It carried them on long drives fueled by conversation and Venti coffees and mom's gas card. They talked about a future when there would be things like vintage homes tastefully renovated, a coffee shop with cats, and books and books and books. They were a complete unit and they and their turquoise V-6 bullet of dreams could go anywhere.

They stopped at a RiteAid and like the map with the big, black X, it was full of treasure. Beautifully packaged boxes of sweetness, two days past their prime and waiting for them there. The red cellophane, like lipstick, promised such soft and delicious delights within. Unable to resist the scarlet sirens that called like emergency, they bought the lot of them: piles of hearts and plastic flowers, I love you's in fancy script; shining with possibility and promise. The store had overstocked on love and they were the beneficiaries, purchasing this neglect at thirty cents on the dollar.

They bundled back into the car, breathless and laughing; unbelieving of their good fortune. Best to make a quick getaway before someone noticed the error and recalled such bounty. He drove while she ripped at the stubborn plastic with the shaking, impatient fingers of a lover. And finally opening that heart, she delved and reveled - the intoxicating smell, the neat and tidy rows of the beautiful morsels each in their own frilly paper skirts. Where to begin? Greedily, at random she grabbed the first with a reckless abandon and shoved it in his mouth. She watched as he chewed, waiting for the relief of satiation to soften his features.

"What was that?!" he choked, and spat it out his open window. "I think it was filled with dish soap!" Horrified, she grabbed her own and took a bite. "Blech! This one is cough syrup!" The garish, gooey center stared back at her with its wicked teeth-mark grin. It mocked her with its indecency and frightened, she threw it out the window. "Let's try another one," she said and went back in for more.

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They sped the afternoon away through hill country and subdivisions alike, partaking of this strange sacrament. A bite, a chew, a judgement, a toss. Their fingers and mouths were sticky with disappointment and chewy, artificially flavored bites of love. Their heads were spinning with cloying sweetness and false promises. Yet still they tasted and licked and sniffed and hoped. This one will be better, they thought. This will be the one that changes the rest of what went before. Sick with trial and error, they worked their way through boxes and boxes of misbegotten gain. The red became leering and cheap, no longer an enticement, but a tiresome bore, motions to go through to inevitably reach that empty discouragement of dashed hopes.

Finally they parked, ill and afraid that taste would never go away. They sat amid the destruction of wrappers and the heart boxes all opened now, their insides prodded and shoved aside, revolting, distasteful. They sat and they laughed. They laughed until the tears came and they laughed some more. The tears for the miles of road with jettisoned promise that lay behind them. The bites and bites and bites of all those little loves, tasted and discarded, now melting in the gravel on the side of the road, forgotten or collected by birds. They laughed because now it was just them and the wreckage of a failed experiment - all those paper candy box hearts. They laughed and they promised never to believe that lie again. They laughed and she kissed him, tasting of coffee and all that had gone before.