The Good Life

Chapter EIGHT



His name was Riley. He was the star goaltender for our champion hockey team. You may remember the story about Winnie-the-Pooh, the guy who took my virginity. That was Riley. He was a master in the net, but a bit of a bore in the bedroom. Not that I minded. I was a high school student, not a porn star. I didn’t have anyone to compare him to anyway.

I liked having a hometown hero as a boyfriend. I felt that his popularity raised my worth as a person. During my freshman year, I just kind of blended in. I didn’t play any sports. I wasn’t in any clubs or the band. I didn’t shop at Abercrombie & Fitch. And even though I was really smart, I was too quiet to speak up in class, so no one knew it. No one really knew I existed.

After working on a Social Studies project together at the beginning of our sophomore year, Riley took an interest in me. Suddenly, everyone knew my name. People said hi to me in the halls. I went from being one of the last girls picked when we divided into teams in gym class to being one of the first, even though I had the athletic ability of a tree slug. I was invited to every party, went to every game, and there was always a seat saved for me at the hockey team’s table in the cafeteria – a seat many other girls were dying to sit in, including the Skank Queen, Caroline Ganier.

Go ahead and call me superficial if you haven’t done so already, but I liked having friends. I liked being social. I liked having fun on the weekends instead of reading Sweet Valley High in my bedroom. When you’re in high school, that kind of stuff matters.

We were the royal couple for the next two years. I was in the bleachers cheering him on at every game, including the away games. We went to every dance together and were both on Homecoming court during our junior and senior years. We were totally on our way to the coveted “Cutest Couple” spot in the yearbook.

It was the end of January, the morning of his 18th birthday, and I woke up bright and early and headed over to Riley’s house with eighteen helium balloons in the trunk of my POS Buick.

I made a list of seventeen things I loved about him and then cut each item on the list into a little strip of paper about the size of the fortune in a fortune cookie. I put one strip of paper in each of the first seventeen balloons. In the last balloon, the big one that said Happy Birthday, I put two tickets to the Incubus concert the following weekend. I filled the balloons using the mini helium tank I’d bought at the party store. Once they were filled with helium I’d tied a string and one of his favorite candy bars to each balloon to weigh it down. It was a lot of work, but I loved every minute of it because it made me feel good to do nice things for people.

My intention was to get into his bedroom before he woke up and set the balloons around his bed so that when he woke up he’d be surrounded by balloons. I’d already made arrangements with his mother to let me into his room that morning.

It was 7:30am when I arrived. I knew nobody who’d been hitting the beer bong with the guys the night before would be up that early. I unloaded the balloons from the car carefully as not to get the strings tangled together. I lightly knocked on the front door. His mom answered right away since she knew I was coming.

I quietly walked up the carpeted staircase to his room, gently turned the knob and pushed the door open softly.

Then I screamed.

Skank Queen herself was in MY boyfriend’s bed, tangled up in his sheets with mascara all over her slutty, ugly face and a major case of bed head in her ratty-ass, over-processed, yellow hair. They both sat up when they heard me screaming, and she didn’t even attempt to cover herself up. She just sat there in his bed, boobs hanging out in the open, and smirked at me. Not just at me, but also at both of his parents, who had come running upstairs when they heard the commotion and now stood there horrified.

“HAPPY F*ckING BIRTHDAY!” I yelled as I dropped the balloons before running down the stairs and out the door.

Not only was she a ho-bag, but she had a big mouth as well. My phone was flooded with phone calls almost immediately. People were willing to get out of bed early to hear that kind of gossip. I ignored the calls. It was too embarrassing. I couldn’t face anyone from school, but there was no way I was going to sit home and sulk while everyone I knew was celebrating that bastard’s birthday at his party later. So I packed an overnight bag and headed to Mount Pleasant.

Mount Pleasant is a city a few hours from Ann Arbor and home of Central Michigan University, where both Adam and Jake were sophomores. Adam decided on Central because they offered him a full scholarship to play for the basketball team. He wasn’t really into the sport anymore, but he was good at it and figured it was the best and cheapest way to get his Bachelor’s degree so he could move on to med school.

Jake had decided on Central simply because he didn’t have the grades, the ambitions or the money to go to a more scholastic school, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Jake was all about the party scene and made no attempt to hide it. He joined a fraternity right away and had been telling me how great their parties were. When he was home on winter break he told me to come hang out and party with him whenever I wanted and I thought a college party was a good way to celebrate my newfound freedom. A one-night-stand would be the best revenge I could get. My goal was to meet a guy who would f*ck me senseless and make me forget all about Winnie-the-Pooh and his stupid, skanky honey pot.

I didn’t even think to call first. I just got in my mom’s car and drove off. When I arrived at the campus a few hours later I used my cell phone, my very first cell phone that I had gotten for Christmas a month before, and called my brother’s phone for directions to his apartment.

“Shit,” he said when he answered, “I’ve got a game in Buffalo tonight. I won’t be back on campus until tomorrow.”

I gulped in embarrassment as my heart raced with anxiety. Had I driven all this way just to turn around and drive right back?

“Do you know the number to Jake’s room?” Adam asked.

Jake didn’t have a cell phone yet. It took a few phone calls back and forth with Adam and a few calls to Jake’s frat brothers, but I was finally able to reach him. Once I told him where I was he said he’d be there to get me in a minute, no questions asked.

As I sat in my car trying to stay warm, I saw him walking towards the visitor’s parking lot. He wore a burgundy baseball cap with a gold letter “C” on it, a navy blue zip-up hoodie with some white Greek letters sewn across the front and loose fitting jeans. He looked like a typical college frat guy. To a high school senior whose boyfriend was just caught f*cking the town tramp, there wasn’t a whole lot more enticing than a typical college frat guy. My heart raced again, but it wasn’t embarrassment or anxiety this time. I turned the heat off and fanned my face to stop the blush I felt creeping onto my cheeks. When did Jake get so hot? And why didn’t anyone tell me?

I stepped out of the car when he approached.

“Where’s your coat?” he asked.

I shrugged and rubbed my hands up the arms of my wool sweater to keep warm. “I left in a hurry,” I explained.

He unzipped his hoodie. “Get in here,” he said as he held his jacket open for me.

I put my arms inside the hoodie and wrapped them around his waist. He pulled the jacket around the back of me and held tight. I didn’t mean to lose it, but with that one move, he made me feel safe and protected and loved, and I can’t explain why, but it made me cry.

He rested his chin on the top of my head and held me tighter. “What did he do to you, Little Girl?” he asked.

I shook my head inside his jacket. If I talked about it, I would cry even harder.

He rubbed his hands up and down my back on the outside of his hoodie, and I let him hold me for a minute (and enjoyed every second immensely, by the way) before I let go of him.

He pulled off his coat. “Here, take this,” he said. “I’ll get you one for yourself when we get to the house, but wear mine for now.”

All he had on underneath was a long sleeve white t-shirt that said Central Michigan Basketball on the front. Aww, he supported his friend. And took care of his friend’s little sister, too.

I felt bad taking the hoodie from him but it was so soft and warm and I really was cold; plus, looking at the size of the campus, I had a feeling we were in for a long walk.

He told me there was a visitor’s lot closer to his house so we drove there first and then Jake carried my overnight bag on our walk to the frat house. He also took my hand since there was some snow and ice on the ground. It seemed perfectly normal that we would walk across his campus holding hands.

What if? I wondered. I had never before thought of Jake in any romantic kind of way. But what if I did? And what if he thought of me the same way? What if Jake and I were more than just friends? What if I came to Central next year? Would he be this sweet to me then? In case you haven’t figured this out yet, I have a tendency to get a little ahead of myself. For a minute I had a montage of images flash through my mind: Jake and I walking to class together hand in hand; Jake and I studying in the library and sneaking kisses in the empty aisles; Jake and I cheering for Adam at a basketball game; Jake and I cuddling on the bed in my dorm room and watching movies; Jake and I doing lots of other things in my dorm room; Jake doing lots of other things with some skanky blonde who wore too much eyeliner and whispering to her, “Please don’t tell my girlfriend about this …”

Insert sound of screeching record – this fantasy was over. I let go of his hand and put it to my chest, trying to comfort the heart that had broken for the second time that day. Just the idea of Jake being another Riley was enough for me to know that I could not survive heartbreak like that in real life. Because Jake wasn’t Riley. Riley was a fun guy with a good future ahead of him, but I’d never been delusional enough to think I was a part of that future. I’d always known in the back of my mind that Riley was just a high school boyfriend. I was devastated by what he had done, but I knew I could live without him. Jake, on the other hand, was way more important. He wasn’t something or someone I was willing to lose.

I gave him a quick glance and tried not to look angry. I wasn’t crazy enough to be mad at him for something I’d only imagined him doing. But I wasn’t dumb enough to let it ever happen either. There were a lot of other guys in this world and a lot of other guys at this school. Jake was off-limits. Not just for tonight. Forever.

My cell phone rang. It was my mom calling. I flipped the phone open, pulled up the antenna (yeah, this was a long time ago) and put the phone to my ear.

“I just talked to Adam,” she said hurriedly. “He said he’s in Buffalo!”

“Don’t panic, Mom,” I said, “Jake’s here.”

“Is he there right now?”

“Yes.”

I heard her exhale the breath she’d probably been holding for awhile. “Put him on.”

I handed Jake the phone. “Hey, Mom,” he said. He’d been calling my mom “Mom” for as long as I could remember. “Yeah, don’t worry about a thing. I’ve got this.”

His fraternity was having a party that night called Get Leid. It was a summer-in-winter themed party where they intended to crank up the heat and give everyone a flower lei at the door … but that was it. Theme parties were definitely my forte and those boys clearly needed help. I pushed my cheating boyfriend to the back of my mind and made it my personal goal to make sure this was the best party of the year.

Jake and I went to the party store and bought drink umbrellas and frozen daiquiri mix. We got a few beach balls and an abundance of cheap grass skirts and coconut bras for the guys. I made an excellent summer playlist for the DJ including DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime” and “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper. I convinced the guys to uncover the gas grill on the back porch and cook up some hot dogs. I dug out a few tiki torches from the shed and lit them in the snow. I even put up the volleyball net in the backyard hoping a few people might drink enough to play. I was right. They did play.

It turned out to be a great night for everyone. Everyone except me! Jake was so worried I’d end up hooking up with one of his fraternity brothers he never let me out of his sight. He knew if that happened he’d have to deal with the wrath of my brother. He followed me around the whole night. Every time I tried to dance with someone, he’d pull me away. Every time I grabbed a drink, he’d dump it out. He even escorted me to the bathroom and stood outside the door to make sure no one came in after me. It wasn’t until after 2am when the guests had left and everyone was cleaning up that I was able to sneak in a few drinks.

When we were done cleaning he took me upstairs to his room and locked the door behind us.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna put the baby gate up?” I asked sarcastically.

“Huh?”

“You know, since you’re my father, and I’m just a child?”

“You’re kinda acting like one,” he said in an arrogant, unapologetic tone of voice that I immediately hated.

“Well you’re kind of an a*shole!” I said loudly. I looked at his roommate’s bed to make sure I didn’t wake him and saw that it was empty. Jake must have asked him to stay somewhere else, probably because he was worried the guy would try to have sex with me in the middle of the night. Because apparently every single guy within a ten mile radius was trying to get into my pants, and it was his duty to ward them off.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asked like he had no idea.

“Nothing, Jake!” I yelled. “Nothing has gotten into me or even near me! Why did you keep telling me to come hang out with you at school if you weren’t going to let me have any fun?”

He sat down on his bed and started untying his tennis shoes. “I know how you are. You think everyone is filled with rainbows and glitter. But people around here can be pretty shady. You’ve seen the after-school specials about frat guys, right? And the Lifetime movies?”

I rolled my eyes at his lame attempt to be funny. “If these people are so bad, why did you tell me to come visit you? What did you think I would do here? Tour the library?”

“I thought you’d have some friends or your boyfriend with you, and I thought your brother would be here. I couldn’t send you out there alone. You would have ended up in one of these beds, outside throwing up in the snow or, in the worst case, passed out somewhere with guys jacking off on you.”

Okay, that was a gross visual. “Ending up in someone’s bed might not have been that bad,” I said after a moment. “Maybe it’s what I wanted.” I sat down in his desk chair, crossed my arms and tried to make a mad face.

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“The look on your face. It’s so funny when you try to look mad. And would you want to be in one of these beds if I told you no one in this house has washed their sheets since September, and there’s a different girl’s DNA left on them pretty much every week?”

Eww. Maybe not. These people are sick!

“Whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes again.

“Is ‘whatever’ what you say when you know you’ve lost an argument?”

I didn’t answer. He had me. I couldn’t very well tell him I would love to contribute my DNA to his dirty friends’ bed sheets. That was just sick.

“My roommate is staying at his girlfriend’s tonight. He said you could sleep in his bed.”

“Ew! Not after what you told me!”

He laughed again. “You can sleep in mine then. I’ll even change the sheets for you.”

He went over to his dresser where he pulled out a folded sheet from the bottom drawer. “Your mom washed these for me over Christmas break,” he told me. “I can still smell the Tide.”

My mom was very motherly towards Jake. She always had been. She felt bad for him because his own mom wasn’t very, well, motherly. She was a bit of a party animal. She was the kind of person who started drinking as soon as she woke up in the afternoon. She didn’t do a lot of laundry.

Jake’s parents were teenagers when he was born. They broke up when he was a few months old and had been fighting over him ever since. They didn’t fight over him the way most separated parents fought over their kids, though. Most of the time the parents both wanted more time with the kids, but in this case, they both wanted less time. The fights went like this:

“What do you mean you can’t take him this weekend? You promised you’d be here! I have plans!”

“Oh give me a break! I had to keep him two extra days last month and still had to pay you child support! Unless you want to give me some of my money back, you can keep him this weekend.”

The reason why I knew about these arguments was because they would often have them in front of other people, including my brother and even Jake.

Jake always acted like such a tough guy and pretended it didn’t bother him, but I knew the truth. I’d never forget the first and only time I’d seen him cry. It was Father’s Day. I was about eight, which would have made Jake about ten. He had spent both Friday and Saturday nights at our house which was pretty normal, especially during the summer. His dad, who had gotten married by this time and had two more children that he actually seemed to love, was supposed to pick Jake up from our house on Sunday afternoon to take him to the zoo with his brother and sister. But he never showed up. My mom tried calling him for hours and kept getting his machine. She finally called his mom to come pick him up. I’m not sure what Jake’s mom said on the other end, but we could all hear what my mom said on our end, and we knew Jake’s mom wasn’t coming to pick him up either. It wouldn’t have surprised me any if his mom said something along the lines of, “This is Father’s Day, the one day a year I’m guaranteed my freedom.”

We had a table in our living room back then that was covered in my dad’s plants. Some had vines that hung down over the edge of the table and some of the vines nearly reached the floor. That table was a great dark place to hide under during hide-n-seek. It was under that table where I saw Jake that night while my mom was on the phone.

He hugged his knees to his chest and cried; the Father’s Day card he’d made for his dad ripped up in pieces on the floor at his feet. It was a quiet cry and he had his face pressed down into his knees, but I could tell he was crying by the way his shoulders shook. I’d seen my brother cry plenty of times as a child, but Jake seemed tough and strong, and even though I should have moved on and acted like I never saw a thing, I was so surprised that I froze for a minute and gawked. That was when he lifted his head up and saw me looking at him. He stared at me for a minute with his big, brown eyes bloodshot and wet with tears. I couldn’t just walk away after that so I crawled under the table with him and held his hand.

“It’s okay, Jake,” I whispered. “I can ask my mom to take us to the zoo next weekend if you want.”

He didn’t say anything or even acknowledge that he’d heard me. He just cried even harder. So I let go of his hand, put my arm around his shoulder, pulled him toward me and let him cry.

My mom found us a little while later and she, too, crawled under the table.

“You know you’re always welcome here,” she told him as she patted his knee. “Now let’s get out from under here, you two. Dad wants pizza!”

It’s funny how certain memories stay with a person. I didn’t remember a whole lot about my life as an eight-year-old, and Jake and I never spoke of it, but I didn’t think I’d ever forget that Father’s Day. It was the first time I’d ever felt real love for someone that wasn’t related to me.

Even at his frat house ten years later I still had a soft spot for Jake, and it was hard to stay mad at him, especially when he was willing to make a bed for me at almost four in the morning. I sat at his desk and watched him pull the old DNA-covered sheets off his bed and put the clean ones on. When he finished, I yawned, stood up and stretched my arms over my head.

And that was when he walked over and kissed me. It was so unexpected and happened so fast. One second he was at his bed, and the next second he had crossed the room and his lips were on mine. It’s hard to make a move like that and get it just right. Usually the guy ends up missing the target or smashing teeth to teeth. Or the girl ends up choking on bubblegum and needs life-saving maneuvers. This, though, was just right. It was the perfect amount of sexy mixed with the perfect amount of sweet. Since my arms had already been over my head at the time, he put his hands on them and gently pushed them against the wall behind us. I don’t know if it was all the crying I’d done earlier, or the fact that I’d been awake for almost a whole day, or the two plastic cups of beer I’d stolen from the keg when no one was looking, but I suddenly felt weak and dizzy. It was like I was falling. When he ran his tongue along my bottom lip I felt like I was falling off a cliff and never hitting the bottom. In two years Riley had never, ever made me feel that way.

But then Jake pulled away. and it felt like a crash landing. He put his hands to his head and grabbed onto a few clumps of his hair like he was frustrated. “Shit, Rox,” he said. “I’m sorry. You’re just so cute when you try to look mad.”

I was still so dizzy from his kiss that I couldn’t figure out how to form words. I just stared at him with what was probably a deer-in-the-headlights look.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his hands now clasped behind his head. “I’m gonna sleep downstairs. Make sure you lock the door behind me, okay?”

He walked out the door. I was pretty disappointed he didn’t stay, but when I remembered the pain I’d felt earlier when I imagined him betraying me and breaking my heart, I knew he did the right thing by leaving. Because if he had kept kissing me like that, there was no way I could have said no to him.

The next morning Mom called and woke me up bright and early. There was a winter storm on the way and she wanted me to leave early so I’d be home safe and sound before it started snowing. I was headed out the front door of the frat house when Jake called to me from the couch in the living room.

“Roxie?”

I turned around. “Yeah?”

He sat up and yawned. His blanket fell down and exposed his tattooed chest. I’d never been a huge fan of tattoos before, but he really made them look good. Think Justin Timberlake in Alphadog, but with darker hair. Smokin’!

“Are you leaving?” he asked.

“No,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m going outside to build a snowman.” I smiled to let him know I was only teasing.

He stretched his arms and yawned again. “Let me buy you a coffee first. You can’t get on the road without caffeine.”

I could have gotten my own coffee, but I didn’t argue. We walked to a coffee shop on campus. It was kind of weird. The silence between us seemed to magnify the other sounds around us, like the sounds of our feet crunching into the snow.

When we got into the café he ordered two coffees and we sat down in a booth. He looked tired. His eyes were bloodshot and he had his hood pulled up on his head because his hair was a disaster but he still looked damn good to me. Seriously, when did he get this hot, and how did I not notice?

“So what do we have to do to make this not weird?” he asked.

I smiled at him. I love a guy who gets right to the point and doesn’t bullshit. “In the movies we’d probably go outside and get into a snowball fight to cut the tension. There would be a montage of scenes of us falling into the snow and laughing together …” I paused as I thought about it. “But it’s too cold for that shit.”

He grinned.

“It’s not weird,” I told him with a shrug. “Shit happens. People get drunk and make out sometimes. It’s fine.”

“I didn’t have a single drink last night.”

“Oh,” I paused, surprised. “That explains a lot.”

“Explains what?”

“Why you were so annoying. A few drinks would have done you some good.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“But really, it’s not weird. I’m glad you kissed me.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. I was hoping to get laid at the Get Leid party. I thought it would make me feel better about Riley. So I’m glad I got at least a kiss. I kind of think you owe me a lot more than that for twat-blocking me all night.”

He actually choked on his coffee. “I can’t believe you just said twat-blocking.”

We both giggled.

“I guess I’ll have to take a rain check,” I told him with a wicked grin.

I could tell he thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t sure I was. A relationship was out of the question … but maybe, just maybe, we could pull off a one-night-stand someday. A girl could dream.