Six Days
Why did she agree to go on a date with him? Butterfly was utterly bored in her monogamish relationship. Three years in, exploration was rotting overdue. Rainbow had asked her out at just the right time.
She was a freshly minted European philosopher wondering what she was doing in Alberta. He was a lonely tech guy with too much history and too few boundaries.
She arrived at his loft on time, her hair still smelling of shampoo. She was not attracted to his body. Yet when his fingers brushed her bare breast, the dinner already forgotten, she became God’s own existence—the room flooded with the soft white glare of the video projector to the sound of Bowie’s last album.
“What drug did you give me this time?” she asked.
His first interest in her had begun after he’d given her froggies—the most potent psychedelic. Her experience was unpleasant at first, but she persisted. Her boyfriend and two other friends drifted through the open-plan loft in their own altered states. A few puffs in, she felt warmth climbing through her body. She opened her eyes and glanced at Rainbow, sitting on a kitchen chair across from her, watching as she jiggled softly on the leather sofa, her hands idly exploring her own body.
She came. Rainbow asked her out the day after.
They met every other week for an evening, then overnight stays, then twenty-four-hour dates. He would pick her up in his convertible, waiting at her door while she got meticulously ready. Lunch sex was added to the alternate weeks. Soon errands, short walks—then daily morning coffees and vanilla bombolinis.
The meeting agenda consisted of sex, drugs, fine dining—and more sex. He was quick to confess love. She found it premature—hard to take seriously. Hers came a few weeks later, but to her he remained a side curiosity. They both had plenty of free time during office hours, so they texted prolifically and frivolously.
Rainbow was dating four women, but spent most evenings drinking alone at home. His primary girlfriend was away in Europe for nearly a year. The other three lived with their primary partners, all friends with Rainbow—except Butterfly’s, who barely tolerated him.
As Rainbow grew closer to Butterfly and his primary’s return home approached, his anxiety rose. Three days after her arrival, a panic attack landed him in a hospital bed for six hours. He called 911 from his apartment—alone. When the tests came back normal, he texted his girlfriends one by one, explaining where he’d been.
One day, Butterfly wrote to him, “You know if you break up with your girlfriend, I won’t have more time for you, right?”
“I’m not going to break up with her,” Rainbow replied.
His words held for six days before the relationship collapsed. Anxiety subsided. Drug consumption rose.
Butterfly feared he would leave her six months later—one night, while exploring his favorite other universes. Distant ambulance sirens. Cause of death: ketamine overdose. She had imagined it often—the sirens, the call, the stillness afterward. Butterfly shook the thought off.
When he fell off the table, she thought he was gone. He wasn’t. She didn’t break up with him, despite serious doubts. Then, her boyfriend broke up with her. It was snowing when Rainbow helped Butterfly move in. When dreams come true—
November 2025
Edmonton