It was a mid-summer party. Half the crew team was away for
the term. The other half was hanging out in Gainesville, either taking class or
just wasting time. On any given night,
there was always a party going. And Jon, ever the recent graduate, wanted to
spend his last couple weeks of freedom with friends, drinking and enjoying
being 23. I, ever the caring A-girl, obliged to make his last weeks memorable.
I love that I have to call myself
the A-girl, not the girlfriend. God forbid, a B or C girl came around. So even
if he wasn’t spending the night with me, I at least had a role. I’m still not
sure if this was a compromised arrangement, or just a humiliation dressed in
casual clothing.
As per tradition, it was 1 a.m. and
I was ready to go home. Jon just started another round of beer pong, and I was
left to small talk on the porch, seriously considering taking a nap in
someone’s car.
“You really love him, don’t you?” a
voice said, while I was staring out onto the empty parking lot. It was Dave, a
guy on the water polo team, a grad student very much older than me.
“Yeah, I do unfortunately.”
“If you were mine, I’d never leave
you out here alone.”
I’m
frozen. Did he really just say that to me? After this entire weekend, this
entire summer, this entire year of drama, never being on the same page. After
all of that, he says that to me.
It keeps echoing in my head. We’re
still laying in bed together, his arms haven’t loosened, even after multiple
attempts of trying to push him away. Was something lost in translation? Does he
really think I’m going to stay after what he said?
He offers to sleep on the couch if it’ll make me feel better.
But what will make me feel better is getting the fuck out the damn apartment.
“I can’t stay here. I need to leave, now. “
The words barely come out of my mouth. A single declarative
sentence was always very hard to get out around Dave, even when I wasn’t
emotionally shattered and feeling like I got hit in the face with a
shovel. So much faith, just wasted with
one sentence. It’s like he planned it for that very moment, when I was finally
off my guard.
In the car, my mom’s car nonetheless, I’m still trying to
figure out where to go. My apartment was
still mine, but I’d already given my keys to the Leasing office months ago. I
don’t live here anymore. My mom was working, and it’d be a little wrong to go anywhere
at midnight, still in my pajamas, with a face completely tear-stained and
swollen. There was one place to go, and it would the ultimate,
tail-between-my-legs moment. I drove over to Jon’s house. Jon, my last semi-ex
boyfriend who told me for months that Dave was not the person I should focusing
my attentions on. Jon, who I just visited hours ago, who I just tried to
convince that my four-day trip to the Keys with Dave was actually a good time.
I spent the next 10 minutes knocking on the door. If there
was ever a time I needed someone who was a significant friend, not just an ex,
not just someone to run to for a distraction, this was it. Just wake up, let me
in, so I can sit on your couch and fucking bawl my eyes out until I fall
asleep.
After knocking on his window, something I know as a bad omen,
he woke up and opened the door. “I hate to say I told you so. What did he do?”
“I think, after everything that’s happened, I have an idea of
the kind of person I want to be with, and you aren’t it.”
Even as I said the words, I just shook my head, like I knew
this was coming. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I flew down at his request,
jumped at the opportunity to spend time with him, like a real girlfriend. I
tried to pretend that the long, late night phone calls, or even just the fact
that he called to begin with, was a sign that things had changed.
It took me hours to fall asleep, trying to figure out how I
was going to get through the two-hour ride to the airport the next morning.
Torture. What’s one more terrible, humiliating experience?
The
next couple weeks trudge by uneventfully. I’ve only had one conversation with
Dave since I got back from that horrid trip.
Day in, day out at an internship at my old boarding school on the river,
it’s not a terrible place to spend your time. Strangely it’s the only place I
feel like home, even if I’m just in an empty dorm room eating mac and cheese on
the floor, off plates I borrowed from my Headmistress.
Every night I sit in bed, thinking
that one day, I might forget what he said. That one day, it won’t haunt me. I
hoped the hurt would eventually turn to anger, then maybe to just a numbing.
I didn’t talk to anybody in weeks. I didn’t want to keep
reliving the conversation, analyzing it, trying to find what I did wrong, what
clue I missed, what I shouldn’t have said on that trip. I admit, letting an “I
love you”, the first one ever in this relationship, slip out mid-coitus, was
probably more than just a mood-killer. Then, the next two minutes after I spent
“taking it back” probably didn’t improve my situation. I knew I was dead in the
water. So why does this still hurt?
Two A.M. and phone buzzes. It’s Dave, calling from his trip
to Chicago, probably drunk.
“I just
wanted to hear your voice.”
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