Chapter Six
Grace,
I’m sorry I haven’t written for what must seem like months now. I’m currently sitting on my rucksack, with an envelope addressed to you on the bed. I’ve been writing you back lots of things in my head, but I can’t seem to find one minute to actually put pen to paper. By the time you get this, I’m not even sure where I’ll be.
I ended up getting two of your packages at the forward operating base. Mail delivery is really spotty of late. We are all cursing and celebrating the supply truck’s appearance. Cursing because it never gets here on time and celebrating because of its assful of goodness.
I was the most popular guy for a day when I opened those packages. And yeah, we got a ton of mileage out of hazing Bo with the movie The Notebook. He does kind of look like the guy who plays the lead.
Yours,
Noah
P.S. Weather. So cold I’m wearing socks to sleep.
Grace
I slammed the apartment door open. I’m surprised we don’t have gouges in the wall from all the times I’ve banged the door open.
Lana was lying on the sofa, and Amy was sitting in my chair painting her toenails. Being used to my door dramatics, Lana didn’t move, but from Amy’s curses, I must have made her mess up a nail.
“What happened?” Lana called as I walked over to the kitchen to pour myself some water.
“Noah just asked me to go on a date with him,” I paused, and Lana and Amy started to squeal with excitement. “But I’m going with Mike Walsh, and Noah’s bringing a ‘good’ friend.” I held up my fingers to do air quotes around the word good.
The squeals turned to groans of dismay. “No way,” Lana said.
“Yes way. Worse, this girl who I work with was there when Noah set up the double date, and she has a crush on Mike. She looked like I had stabbed her in the heart with a fork.”
“You kind of did,” Amy pointed out.
“How’d this happen?” Lana asked.
“I told Noah I was interested in Mike,” I admitted. Groans from both girls filled the air.
“Why?” they both exclaimed.
“Because I didn’t want him to think I was some pathetic dolt who sat around waiting for two years for some guy to come and say ‘Let’s be friends,’” I gave a half-hearted defense of my stupidity.
“Bet you didn’t expect this,” Amy said, completely deadpan. I almost lunged for her. Lana glared at her, and Amy drew back and made a zipping motion with her fingers over her mouth.
“What are you going to do?” Lana asked.
“Have the best damn time of my life tonight.” I stomped into my room and slammed the door shut.
“What about the picture?” Amy called after me. I held back a sigh. I had already bailed on the picture once, and Amy was super nice to let it go. She didn’t deserve any blowback for my recent wave of flakiness. I picked up my backpack that carried my camera and my laptop. My phone was fully charged, so I quickly scrolled through my contacts and found Mike’s number.
Meet you at library tonight?
Sure, came the quick response.
The campus movie theater, the Varsity, sat on the very edge of the south end of campus, down by the diner. We’d just walk. I didn’t want this to appear any more date-like than it already did.
I pulled the backpack on and picked up my tripod. Opening my bedroom door, I said to both, “Let’s go.”
As we descended, I could hear footsteps on the stairs below. Noah’s face appeared around the next turn.
“Great. I didn’t want to be late for my tutorial,” Noah smiled at us. I heard Amy give a breathy sigh behind me.
“I’m the assistant,” Lana told Noah.
I muttered, “Fine,” motioning him to turn and go down the stairs.
At the porch, Noah stopped me and tugged at my backpack with one hand, grabbing the tripod with the other. For a moment I resisted until I realized how ridiculous we looked, as if we were two dogs fighting over a bone. I let both the backpack and the tripod go.
“Let me guess—something to do with your momma.” I rolled my eyes.
Noah shrugged on the backpack. “I had it easier than you, you know.”
“I don’t think that just because you lost your mom when you were born, and I lost my dad when I was twelve that you had it easier than me,” I replied softly. I didn’t want Lana or Amy to hear me, but I also didn’t want Noah to believe I thought his loss was less than mine. As if sensing I needed a moment, Lana hurried a reluctant Amy along.
“It’s true. I don’t think you can miss what you don’t know,” Noah replied.
“Sure you can.” I think Noah missed his mother more than he ever would admit.
“I don’t have memories of her, but you have twelve years of them with your dad.
“I also didn’t have someone blaming me for my dad’s death like your dad has.”
“Are we going to try to out-horrible the other?” Noah ran a hand through his hair.
“Out-horrible?”
“Like my life is more horrible than yours?” Noah explained.
I shook my head. “Is that what I’m doing? Because I didn’t mean to.”
“I know it wasn’t,” he let out a deep breath. “This is too heavy a discussion for a sunny day.”
I looked up and squinted. Full midday sun.
“What’s wrong?” Noah asked. Maybe I did have a black-ants-on-a-white-blanket face.
“I’m just hoping for a little cloud cover.”
“Why is that? I thought pictures needed a lot of light.”
“Full sun is great for taking photos of the sky, but it casts hard shadows and makes even really beautiful people look kind of awful. You have to have a lot of experience to take good full sun pictures, and I’m not there yet.”
Noah opened his mouth, but I jumped in to add, “And don’t say that’s why I should major in art, because the best way to become a better photographer is just to practice.”
“Fair enough. Tell me about how you create these pictures that look like Bo’s old mechanical football game with the tiny plastic guys.”
“I’ll do better than that,” I said. “I’ll show you.”
After climbing the three flights of stairs to a messy room at the top of the Delt house, I was grateful Noah was carrying my bag and tripod. Lana and I were both a bit winded, as was Jack, who escorted us up. Two younger Delts stood in the room frantically trying clean up, but it was too late. While a path from the door to the windows had been cleared, it still smelled like old socks and pizza boxes. Red plastic cups lay haphazardly on their sides, and the two desks pushed away from the window were piled high with video game boxes, textbooks, and a variety of T-shirts.
“Sorry,” Jack said as we entered. He glared at the two fleeing Delts. It looked like someone was likely to get a house punishment later.
I took my tripod from Noah, and set it in front of the window. “Can we take the screen out?” I asked Jack.
“Sure.” He walked over and peered around the sill. I could tell he didn’t know how to remove it. Noah gently nudged him aside and pulled two clips from the bottom, tugged the screen out and set it aside.
I pulled out my camera and clipped the base onto the tripod. Noah stepped closer until his arm brushed mine.
For a moment, I just paused. It seemed too unreal that Noah was standing next to me while I was taking a photograph. I wanted to yell at him, and, at the same time, I wanted to burrow under his arm and wrap myself in his scent. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath to clear my head, but instead my nose filled with the clean, warm male aroma that made me think of parks in mid-spring when all the greenery was sprouting and there was freshly turned dirt in all the flower beds.
“So Lana, you do this stuff too?” Jack’s overly loud voice reminded me why we were all here. Or at least why I was here. And it wasn’t to sniff Noah’s T-shirt and imagine we were running through a field of daisies.
“‘This stuff’ as in photography?” Lana replied, waving in my direction as I positioned my camera. I peered through the lens and saw Amy signaling me from across the street. I debated whether I should get a stronger zoom lens out.
“Um, yeah.” Jack sounded confused by the impatient tone in Lana’s voice.
“I told you last night I was a psych major.”
“Oh, ah, that’s right.” Clearly Jack had little memory of the night. Too many tequila shots. “So a psych major. That’s like head stuff.”
Noah and I looked at each other, and I could read his expression just as well as he could read mine. We shared a private grin. Jack’s presidency here at the Delts wasn’t due to his big brain. Either that or Jack’s ability to think was being short-circuited by Lana’s presence. This was a definite possibility. If anyone I knew belonged on a magazine cover, it was Lana.
She was one of my favorite subjects, although she rarely allowed me to take her picture. Her eating disorder left her with a distorted self-image, and, though the photographs I took of her showed how gorgeous she was, she never quite believed I didn’t use some secret photography trick. I’d given up trying to explain that the distortion happens in her head and not with my lens. But I guess we all had our blind spots. Mine was standing right next to me, so I couldn’t judge Lana too harshly.
“Tell me how this works,” Noah ordered. I refrained from rolling my eyes and saluting. If I did, it might give him the idea he could give me instructions all the time.
“Most of the time, when you take a picture, you are trying to take a straight-on photograph. With tilt shift, you’re tricking the eye into thinking you’re seeing something closer than it really is by focusing on a point or object from a distance and then blurring the edges. I have the camera on the rails so it can move up and down,” I gestured toward the two thin metal rods on either side of the camera. “The tilt is the pivot here on the lens.” I moved the lens and tilted it up and down to show how it hinged at angles away from the body of the camera. “Some real pros can do it without all this equipment, and some just use computer hacks.”
“So is it like the opposite of a rearview mirror?”
“Kind of, but imagine the rear-view mirror being able to shift up and down and then tilt.”
“Do you have to be high up to make it look like a model toy town?”
“Not always. Some people are able to take ground level shots, but I’m better at taking them up high and at a distance.”
“Is it harder with people?” Noah seemed really interested, and I could talk about my hobby all day long.
“No, people make it great. They give it scale, actually. This type of thing is really well-suited for having the girls against the backdrop of the house.”
I made a few more adjustments and then turned to Lana. “I think I’m ready.”
She texted someone. A few moments later, the Alpha Phis began streaming out of their house. They were all wearing red shorts and white and red T-shirts with their Greek insignia on the back. As they formed a line, I took a few pictures. Action shots were the best. Like the one I took of Noah kneeling in the library when I thought he was some random lacrosse player.
“Have them move around some more, like in a circle or something,” I called to Lana. She must have relayed the message, because the girls on the lawn moved into a round formation and started walking in unison. I motioned for Noah to look through the viewfinder. I noticed that he was careful not to touch anything, like Lana always was. Most people would’ve put their hand up to the lens or bumped the tripod. I held the remote in my hands and took several photos while Noah was looking.
He stepped back. “That’s pretty cool. I want to see the bigger versions, though. It’s hard to get the full effect with the tiny viewfinder.”
“I always tell Grace that I can’t see what she sees,” Lana interjected.
Noah nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I mean I kind of see it, but it’s not the same as the prints Grace sent me.”
“What ones did she send you? My favorite is the football one with Josh,” Lana said. I let the two of them chatter about their favorites while I raised and lowered the camera and adjusted the tilt, taking several photographs.
The Alpha Phis had gotten tired of doing circles and were breaking into small groups. A few sat down on the stairs of the house and some others stretched out on the lawn. The different body positions gave the image so much more composition. This was the photo. I would still review them all, but this one spoke the most to me, and I just knew that when I scrolled through the images this would be my favorite.
The sisters might choose something else more polished, but the relaxed and conversational nature of the scattered crowd would be the best image of the set.
“I’m ready,” I said, straightening up. I rubbed my neck a little to ease the slight ache that had gathered from bending over the camera. I felt a warm hand push mine away. Large, strong fingers cupped the base of my skull and flexed against my neck, gently but firmly massaging me. I closed my eyes for a moment and allowed the pleasure to wash over me.
The room was utterly silent, but I could feel Noah’s body, the heat and mass of it, next to me. I wanted to place my hands on him, stroke that marble-hard chest that Lana and Amy had patted down last night. But I knew that would be an invitation I wasn’t prepared to extend.
I curled my hands into fists, and the sting of my nails in my palms brought me back. I opened my eyes to find Noah staring at me, his hand still on my neck. His brown eyes had darkened and the skin over his cheekbones was pulled tight. He looked hungry and more than a little predatory. I shivered, a matching hunger building inside of me. It would be so easy to drop my defenses and tumble into his arms, but what would happen when he let go? I didn’t think I’d recover from the fall.
His fingers tightened for a minute and then dropped away. I took a deep breath and turned to dismantle my equipment. “Thanks for your help. I’m going to go over to the house for a little bit and look through the photos. See which ones they want.”
Noah understood that this was a dismissal. “I’ll walk you over.”
He carried everything for me, down the four flights of stairs, across the street, and into the front reception room of the house. The girls fluttered around him like butterflies trying to alight on the same flower. He didn’t talk or flirt or even acknowledge them. He set down my things and then hooked his hand around my neck again, turning me so I was looking directly at him.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.
I only nodded my response.
It took longer to fend off questions about Noah than it did to pick out a picture. The consensus of the rush committee was to use the image that had them circled around the Alpha Phi sign on the front lawn. It was one of my least favorites, but with a little processing, I could make it acceptable even for me. I ended up eating dinner at the sorority house, so I had little time to get ready for my date with Mike. And Noah. And whomever Noah was bringing.
***
“What’s showing?” I asked Mike when I met up with him at the library.
“Some movie with subtitles. I never thought Noah Jackson would be into this sort of thing. Who do you think he’s dating?” Flip went his hair.
“Dunno,” I mumbled. This thought had tormented me all afternoon, and by dinnertime I had stoked my anxiety into anger. Mike seemed nervous, and maybe if we were on a real date, I would be nervous too. Instead, I was kind of angry, and anger burned away nervousness and made me feel stupidly brave. Anger: the sober student’s high.
I broached the Sarah subject with Mike, figuring this might be the only time I’d have alone with him before the movie started. “We should’ve invited Sarah.”
“Why?” Mike asked, this time pushing his hair back with his hand.
“Because she’s a cool girl, and I think she’d have liked this movie.”
“Really? I got the impression she didn’t like movies,” Mike said.
“How so?”
He shrugged, shoving both hands in his pockets. “I asked her to a few, and she always had excuses not to go. Maybe she just didn’t want to go with me.”
Good lord. Was it possible that Sarah’s unrequited feelings were actually returned, but through a series of miscommunications, Sarah and Mike each thought the other didn’t return their feelings? It was like a classic romance novel, where I could play the adorable Cupid matchmaker, doing something productive for once. In the book, however, I’d have tangled red curls. I always loved the heroines with red hair—and so did their male counterparts. Before I could ask any questions, though, we arrived at the theater.
Noah was already standing there, and Bo was standing right next to him. There were three theater students, all beautiful, talking to both of them. One of them had tangled red hair. The universe hated me. Was this like a multiple couple thing, a sextuplet? An orgy of moviegoers? Noah broke away from the group when he saw us arrive.
“Which one’s your date?” I asked, bracing myself. Please don’t let it be the cute redhead, I prayed.
“Bo’s my date,” Noah smiled, turned and gestured for Bo to extricate himself from the others.
“You two are dating?” Mike asked, mouth agape. Apparently, to Mike, Noah Jackson liking movies with subtitles was less astonishing than Noah liking men. I could only sigh in relief that I wasn’t in competition with some gorgeous romance book heroine with red hair.
“Nope, just needed some bro time,” Noah said, and he turned and bumped fists with Bo.
“Bro time at a foreign, subtitled film?” I asked, skepticism heavy in my tone.
“Sure. Aren’t we here to be better educated?” This was from Bo. He handed out tickets to Mike and me.
I stared at Bo and Noah’s smiling faces when the reality of the situation struck me. Noah hadn’t brought a date. He’d brought his best friend and battle buddy. Most importantly, he had brought a guy. I felt guilty at all the angry thoughts I had directed at him earlier while having dinner with the Alpha Phis. I felt even worse having used Mike as a defense against my feelings toward Noah. Neither one of them deserved that.
“Thanks,” Mike snatched his up. He didn’t offer to reimburse them.
“What do we owe you?” I asked. Bo looked offended, and Noah shook his head in mock dismay.
“Bo’s momma is still alive, but hearing that her son didn’t buy a girl’s movie ticket might send her to an early death,” Noah said, drawing out his vowels to exaggerate his Texas accent.
I rolled my eyes, but Mike just shrugged. When we got inside, Bo said, “Why don’t you and Noah grab some seats, and Mike and I’ll field the refreshments.”
“Why don’t you and Noah go get the seats, and Mike and I will get the popcorn and stuff.” I wanted to speak to Mike about Sarah before the movie started, and being separated wouldn’t provide that opportunity.
“Since you paid for the movie,” Mike added. I realized that Mike’s silence on the tickets wasn’t him being a cheap jerk, just picking his battles. Maybe I had misconceptions of Mike too. This made me want to work even harder to get him together with Sarah and make up for my jerkiness.
I left Noah, Bo, and Mike debating who was going to buy popcorn, soda, and water (the latter being Noah’s drink of choice), and found an open section a quarter of the way down the auditorium-style seats. The Varsity Theatre was old and the royal blue velvet seats hadn’t been updated for at least a couple decades. The cloth was worn through on the arms, and some of the springs’ resilience had been weakened, so when you sat in them, the seats kind of collapsed.
A movie here was about the cost of a soda. I don’t even know why I argued about paying my way. If I really meant for Noah to be deterred, I should act like I didn’t care. Arguing over everything and ignoring him were obvious signs that I was trying too hard. I resolved to try to be friendlier and less bitchy. I wanted to project an“ I don’t care” attitude, not an“ I’m so hurt that I can barely stand to look at you, yet I don’t want to be away from you either” message.
Looking around, I was surprised by the number of people in the theater for a Saturday night, early on in the year. I figured everyone would be at some house party, or over on Greek Street, or in one of the campus bars.
I leaned over to a girl next to me. “What’s the movie?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “Lust, Caution.”
“That doesn’t sound very French.”
“It’s not. It’s Chinese. Directed by Ang Lee,” She bit out each word as if I was five years old.
“I thought it was a French film with subtitles,” I couldn’t let go of the fact that it wasn’t a French film.
“You got half that right. It’s got subtitles.” With that she turned away and resumed her conversation with her friend. I think it had something to do with half-wits and how they shouldn’t even come to subtitled movies if they weren’t serious film students.
I pulled out my phone to do some quick searching on“ Lust, Caution,” but I heard a commotion and saw the three guys at the aisle, trying to get through to the seats I had picked out.
Mike led the way, followed by Noah and then Bo. When Mike started to seat himself, Noah grabbed his arm and pulled him upright.
“No, you sit over there,” Noah directed Mike to the seat I was in. “Grace, sit here.” And then, as if he thought his orders would sound better, he added, “Please.” I wasn’t planning on moving, but Mike stood there uncertainly, with Noah’s hand still gripping his other arm.
“Move, girl,” I heard from behind me. “The movie is about to start.”
I let out a loud and ungrateful sigh and moved one seat over. Everyone collapsed in their chairs, and I heard a“ finally” behind us.
Now I was in the worst position I could imagine, in a dark theater sitting next to Noah, so I leaned into Mike as far as I could without making it seem like I wanted to get intimate with him. I tied to portray a certain nonchalance over the fact that I was going to watch a Chinese-subtitled film with Noah Jackson. I probably looked like I had overused the distortion or blur tool on my computer photo-editing program right now.
“The film isn’t French. It’s Chinese,” I felt responsible for dragging Mike here, so I tried to impart what little knowledge I had.
“Oh yeah? I just heard that it had subtitles and assumed it was French,” He whispered back. I gave him the I know, right? look. Then, he offered me a drink of his soda. I moved away and gave a mini-shudder. I wasn’t going to suck on the same straw he had in his mouth. Who knew what kind of backwash Mike sent into the soda? Now, Noah’s drink? A couple of years ago I’d have paid money to place my lips around something he had touched. Cripes. Who was I kidding? I wanted to suck on that water bottle of his until you couldn’t tell where his DNA started and mine began. I sunk lower in the seat.
The nearly three hours of sitting between Mike and Noah in the dark watching an extremely erotic film was possibly one of the most uncomfortable situations of my entire life. The movie was about a female spy sent to seduce an opposition leader. It was scene after scene of sexually explicit and forbidden love. The first sex scene was fairly violent, and I could see Mike shift restlessly beside me, while Noah was stoically unmoving. I could feel myself dying of embarrassment. I tried to look at it from a filmmaking point of view, separating myself from the action on the screen and examining the angle of the shots and the placement of the shadows. It didn’t work.
As the movie played on and the love scenes became increasingly graphic, I stopped watching. I was acutely aware of Noah. At one point, he propped his arm on the armrest, and I could feel the warm cotton of his sleeve and the soft tickling sensation of his hair against my arm. I wanted to rub up against him, place my cold nose into his throat. I wanted to pull his arm around me and drape his hand on my thigh. But I remained in my own space, arms tucked close to my sides as if I was afraid that one movement might send to me lurching into his lap to try and act out some of the scenes on the screen.
A strange tension began to seep into my body as the movie ticked on. I imagined Noah lifting his hand from his own thigh and placing it on mine, moving up and down my bare leg in long sweeps, higher with each pass, until his fingers tucked right under the fabric of my skirt. The thought of Noah’s hand between my legs made me shift. Discomfited by him, I crossed and then uncrossed my legs.
My inability to sit still didn’t go unnoticed. Mike looked at me impatiently and moved away, as if I was adversely affecting his enjoyment. I clenched my hands in my lap and closed my eyes, which only made it worse, because now all I could hear were sounds of the rustling sheets, the fall of the cloth onto the floor, and the crescendo of sounds, both human and instrumental. The air felt thick and heavy around us, like I was breathing underwater. Each breath felt labored and sounded harsh to my own ears, and I wanted to stop altogether.
At the moment I thought I would explode out of my seat and flee the theater, I felt a large, warm hand cover mine. Noah’s touch was completely unexpected, and I froze. But instead of this causing me more anxiety, Noah’s hand soothed me. I unclenched my hands. The block in my throat dissolved, and I was able to take a few deep, calming breaths. Each muscle that had tensed up seemed to unknot and relax.
The movie went on, but I noticed little of it. Instead, I focused on the tendrils of warmth that curled outward from the hand in my lap like vines on wall. The hand never moved, not throughout the entire movie. I glanced to see if Mike had noticed, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me.
The heat, the dark, the sudden cessation of panic—it all made me drowsy. Noah shifted and I felt his shoulder close to my head like an invitation. I looked at him, but his eyes were focused straight ahead. It was like his arm was detached from his body. Perhaps it was mine now.
I rested my head tentatively against the shoulder that was in my space. No one moved. I stopped worrying about what Mike would think and allowed my eyes to drift closed and my thoughts to wander into nothingness.
The noise of dozens of spring-loaded seats being snapped back in place woke me up. I jerked upright. Noah’s hand was no longer in my lap. I straightened and tried to look like I hadn’t spent the last half of the movie sleeping and holding hands with him. Too late, though, as Mike was standing up and looking down at me with a puzzled expression.
At least he didn’t look angry that he’d found his“ date” asleep on the shoulder of another guy. I wiped the sides of my mouth as surreptitiously as possible and stood up. To Mike I said, “So do you want to go to the CoffeeHouse?”
Mike looked surprised, and I heard a choked-off noise behind me. I ignored both reactions and smiled as widely as I could. Having not practiced this in front of the mirror, though, it could have looked like the joker’s grimace.
“Sure.” Mike was either baffled by my behavior or intrigued. Either way, he was willing to place himself in my company for at least another hour.
“Great,” I heard from behind me. “I’d like a coffee.”
I turned then and looked at Noah. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I was deeply embarrassed by my actions tonight. I needed to make things right with Mike and then figure out what I was going to do with Noah.
I turned back to Mike and motioned for him to exit the theater. When he didn’t move right away, I pushed him slightly and his inertia dropped away.
I don’t know where Noah and Bo went, but when Mike and I exited the small theater, they weren’t behind us. We began the twenty-minute walk through the heart of the campus to get to the coffee house on the other side.
Summer was refusing to release its hold, and the night air was sultry instead of cool. Tall, wrought iron lampposts lit our way, interspersed with emergency call boxes.
“That’s probably the weirdest date I’ve ever been on,” Mike broke the silence as we wandered down the sidewalk bisecting the east and west sides of the campus. “Did you ask me out to make that other guy jealous?”
“No!” I exclaimed and then confessed, “I might have said I thought you were cute, and he thought he was trying to help me out.”
“So what was with the hand-holding and snuggling during the movie?”
Had I really been snuggling? “I was having a panic attack, and Noah must have known it. He was just trying to calm me down. I wasn’t snuggling. Honest.”
Mike shrugged. “I didn’t think you were interested, so you kind of surprised me.”
It was now or never. I placed a hand on Mike’s arm and stopped him. “The situation kind of got out of hand. Noah and I go way back. But I do think you are missing out on someone. Just not me.”
“No?” Mike looked adorably confused now.
He hadn’t been whipping his hair out of his face for at least ten minutes, which seemed like a new record. When he wasn’t in a group, he wasn’t insufferably trying to make himself seem more attractive by hitting on every female in a twenty-foot radius. Maybe Sarah spent a lot of time alone with Mike and this was the guy she was attracted to.
“Why aren’t you dating anyone, Mike?”
This question clearly caught him off guard, because he stammered before he defensively replied, “I’ve had hookups.”
Ugh, classic Mike response. “So are you only interested in hookups?” I needed to feel him out without throwing Sarah under the bus.
“No,” he replied slowly and then swung his hair out of his eyes. “I asked a girl out a few times in my first year, but it didn’t go anywhere. Hookups are easier, you know. Less pressure.”
I did know. My few college experiences had been drunken make-out sessions with guys equally drunk, but I didn’t think anyone truly enjoyed those experiences.
“What about Sarah?” I offered up in what I hoped was nonchalance.
“Who do you think I asked out in my first year?” He laughed but it wasn’t a funny sound.
“Really?” I was completely surprised by this. Sarah looked at him so longingly but maybe it was with regret, not unrequited love?
“Wait.” Mike caught my arm. “This isn’t a bad idea.”
“What isn’t?” I hadn’t proposed anything yet so I wasn’t sure what idea he was talking about.
“We can pretend to be interested in each other, and can make Noah and Sarah jealous at the same time,” Mike sounded enthused by this.
“That never actually works out in real life,” I pointed out.
“It was just an idea,” Mike muttered. We walked a little farther and then he asked, “So what’s the story with you and Noah?”
“I haven’t had nearly enough to drink to divulge that. How about you and Sarah?”
“She seems to only like me when other girls are into me. If I’m not dating or hooking up with someone, she has zero interest,” he said, bummed.
“Sounds like a mess.” Was I really thinking I could play Cupid or something? That wasn’t in my skill set. This night was officially a disaster. I’d fallen asleep on Noah’s shoulder, possibly drooled, and now made Mike go from enthused to sad in five seconds. I was the opposite of Cupid. Instead of shooting love arrows, I shot depression arrows.
“I thought she might have put you up to this,” Mike confessed, sounding almost hopeful.
“I wished she had,” I replied sullenly, “but instead she gave me the evil eye, so you might want to go to the library tomorrow and strike while the jealousy-iron is hot.”
“See, we should carry this on for a while. It’d be good for both of us.”
Mike was trying to be encouraging, but I had seen the light. “I have enough dysfunction in my life,” I told him.
We were closing in on the CoffeeHouse, but I wasn’t in the mood to go there anymore. I wasn’t going to orchestrate any big love connection between Mike and Sarah. I wanted to go home. “Do you mind if bail on you?”
“Nah, I might as well go home anyway.” We changed course and Mike walked me to my front door, just two blocks away from the CoffeeHouse. He gave me a big hug. “Thanks for the effort tonight, Sullivan.”
After saying goodnight, I slipped inside. It was early yet and the apartment seemed huge and empty. Lana was at her sorority house and might not be back anytime soon. I pulled out my laptop and crawled into bed. Only nineteen and I was already staying home, alone, on a Saturday night. I might as well start my cat collection.
Noah
I’m not sure how being around Grace managed to f*ck up my decision-making process so much. I felt like I was pushing the shoot button on my Xbox controller every time I wanted to jump, resulting in stupid, self-inflicted casualties.
Bo had to physically restrain me from following Grace out of the theater. I fought back the urge to tackle her, throw her over my shoulder, and escape through the back exit. I’d take her to my truck and we’d drive to San Diego. Or maybe South Carolina. There had to be someplace within the 8,000 acres of Marine property on Parris Island where I could stash her.
“I think you’re supposed to take your girlfriend to an erotic film, not your best male friend,” Bo commented. “Unless you’re trying to tell me something, in which case I have to tell you that I’m flattered, but I play for the other team.”
My only response was to bare my teeth at him. I thrummed my fingers on my jeans while staring after the empty space left by Grace and her“ friend” Mike.
“You don’t really think she’s interested in him, do you?” I turned to Bo.
“Nah. Chick doesn’t hold your hand during the entire movie while being into the other guy,” Bo assured me.
“But she left with him.” Self-doubt was creeping in. Success had no room for self-doubt. I checked myself. Was I starting to sound like a creepy motivational poster?
“I’m thinking you got hit too many times in the head last night,” Bo said, gently knocking me in the back of the head and pushing me forward at the same time. “This is Grace. She sent you a care package every month for four years.”
That was the mantra I had held onto since getting out. After reading The Odyssey, I had convinced myself that Grace was Penelope and would wait for me until I had finished my battles and returned home victorious. Why else would she send me that book?
“It’s early yet. Let’s go down to Mick’s,” Bo suggested. Mick’s was a seedy bar on the South Side that was frequented by angry townies. It was a good place to get drunk and get in a fight, something Bo enjoyed doing on an all-too-regular basis.
The transition from Marine to civilian hadn’t been easy for either of us, but Bo seemed to particularly miss the adrenaline rush of always being in danger. While going to a bar populated by guys hopped up on steroids and nursing a hard-on for Central college kids wasn’t exactly the same as being on patrol, it was something.
“You should go put on a polo shirt,” I told him, nodding my acceptance of his offer. The T-shirts we had on weren’t quite the right look to incite the type of antagonism that would rid us both of pent-up frustration.
“Nah, we’ll just hit on one of the girls there, and that should be enough.”
Bo was right. Three beers and five numbers later, we were thrown out of the bar for breaking a bar stool and roughing up some town toughs.
“I shouldn’t have let the last guy land that blow to my face.” I looked in the truck’s rear view mirror. My lip had been cut by a punch to the mouth. No mouth guard meant my inner lip was lacerated too.
“No kissing for you tomorrow,” Bo said, checking out the bruise that was forming under his right eye.
“I’ll tell her that I had to fend off your advances after the movie.”
“You wish.” He turned and grinned at me.
It wasn’t the way that I wanted the night to end, but it was better than sitting in my truck all night behind Grace’s apartment.
Bo blew a kiss to the bartender as we peeled away.