I Took A Plan B In Mexico City

“What a perfect time to practice your Spanish,” you joked quietly in the pharmacy. I told you I didn’t know how to ask for what we needed. You asked me to try. Just to you, in an aisle quietly and that you would try not to laugh. All I remembered was that the Spanish word for pregnant sounds a lot like the English word for embarrassed and I was hoping in just a few minutes to know I would only be one of those two.

Your pharmacies are different. There weren’t even bottles of water for sale so you asked for one from behind the counter, in Spanish of course. That much I could understand.

When you handed me the brown paper bag and tiny airline style water bottle I laughed. I started unboxing the pills before realizing you didn’t expect me to take them right there. Standing in my latex boots I bought off Instagram, my first reaction was to take them and open my mouth to prove it, like I used to have to with my parents after I got caught doing drugs a few times, maybe between three and twelve. But drugs bad enough that it was enough to ruin the rest of high school and why I wasn’t allowed to take any pain medication after getting my three wisdom teeth removed.

I only had three, naturally. It’s no wonder I’m not that smart, I thought. If I ended up here standing in a pharmacy at 1am in Mexico City.

Before any other customers could take too good of a look, I stuffed the bag into my purse and took a few sips of water to wash out my mouth that still tasted like sex but would soon be filled with Mezcal, which I still honestly don’t love.

For a moment there, before getting into the Uber I called by tethering off your iPhone’s internet, I felt like you trusted me. That you knew that I would take them. Leaving potentially the rest of your life, and future, and mine, in my hands. In a small brown bag, in a cab on the way to a club and that maybe that is what love, the impermanent and sometimes just lasting a few hours type, feels like.