This is the current draft of my favourite yet-to-be-published novel. Initially titled Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend, I changed it to Why Not Me? to make it more 21st century friendly, if you know what I mean. Anyways, I wrote this about 25 years ago – hence some of the references – and it’s still pretty rough. (I had to go through and censor a lot of the swear words.) As with all my other writing on this page, it’s all rights reserved by me but if you are a legitimate publisher and wish to publish this, email me and we can discuss.
PROLOGUE
THE END…AND THE BEGINNING
I pretend not to hear the horn. After the third one, it gets easy to no-sell. Of course, since I’ve spent a lifetime having morons honk at me as they drive by, I’ve gotten better at it.
Still haven’t gotten used to it.
I guess I can see the point today. Some desk-jockey is driving their SUV home from their house in the suburbs, and they see some four-eyed dork walking through this cold, miserable downpour, what else can they do but honk?
Seeing as how they’ll pull an identical vehicle into an identical driveway in front of an identical three-bedroom, two-bath, and talk about an identical day to the same wife and 2.3 kids and dog as their neighbor and their neighbours neighbor, guess there’s no point to assume they can come up with anything original.
If the situation was different, I might have given myself a pat on the back. The asshole will probably go home feeling better about himself and his situation in life, because at least he’s not that dork in the rain.
But then, the situation’s not different. The situation is the way it is.
A lot of people would find themselves, standing out in the rain on a Wednesday afternoon and ask themselves “How did I get here?”
But you know how you got here. Doesn’t make you any less pathetic.
Wanna get technical? I’m standing on a curb amongst the cul-de-sacs and crescents of inner suburbia, maybe a quarter of a mile away from the little strip mall where I work, and another quarter of a mile from the apartment where I live with my folks.
Lemme guess. Out of the forty-some odd words in the proceeding paragraph, the part you…all of you…immediately concentrated on was how I, in my mid-20s, am still living with my parents.
Go on. Make all the comments and snide remarks you want about how pathetic it is that I still live at home with my parents and work at a minimum wage job at a video store at the age of 24.
You won’t be the first. Hell, everyone I know has made the same exact remarks in the same exact tone at some point. Didn’t matter if it was someone I had just met or had known for years. Some were nice enough to wait until my back was turned and they thought I was out of earshot, some weren’t. Some made out like they cared, some didn’t. A few kind souls even tried to play “Good Samaritan” and give me some long-winded talk about how I’d be so much better off if I got out on my own and became independent. It’s amazing how despite never living a day, an hour, a second of my sad existence, everybody’s an expert on how I should be living my life and where I should be at this point in the story.
But you know what? Who gives a ****?
A year ago, a month ago, hell…a half an hour ago, I might have spent hours worrying about what anyone thought about me. Might even have expended the energy to try and explain why I live the way I do or why circumstances have put me in the spot that I am in. But like I said, who gives a ****?
To be honest, by the time you come to the end of my little tale of woe, you’re going to see that my living arrangements are pretty far down the list of sad and pathetic things about yours truly.
Yes, and that list should probably include your inclination to go off on self-pitying tangents like this one.
Well, Will, since you’re the leader of the band on so many of those particular numbers, I don’t really think you should be the one criticizing me for it.
Hey, ya idiot! That’s my job!
So where was I? Oh yeah, back on the curb.
I’m just standing there, the events of this previous twenty-four hours replaying over and over again in my head, like some video on an endless loop that just keeps playing and playing but that you’re too stunned by the images to go find the remote and turn off. Like a documentary on the devastation of nuclear war or some famine in Africa.
Hell, maybe it’s more apt to say it’s like one of the trailer tapes corporate forces us to play in the store. You know how everybody says “Oh, it must be cool to work in a video store. You can just watch movies all the time.” Yeah…nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, it’s the same two dozen trailers, repeated over and over and over again, for eight hours (or if you’re me, fourteen hours when someone calls in sick and you have to cover for them).
Or maybe it’s more like seeing a car crash, a bad one, off in the distance, and knowing that what you’re going to see will haunt you for the rest of your days, and yet you find yourself strangely drawn to it, like you want to sear the images into your brain, in some weird, perverse way.
When I woke up this morning, I believed that something had changed for me. That I was no longer the person that I had been since public school. I finally had proof that I was different from the way people saw me, and I had finally found the one person in the world who was going to help me show that to the world. Instead, she had simply been leading me back to the edge and pushed me over. I had struggled so hard for so many years not to just fall into the dark void where everyone wanted me to be, and in the end, that’s just where I ended up.
I had “misinterpreted the way things were between us”? I shake my head, so vigorously that the water flies off my hair. I imagine that I must look like one of those English sheepdogs, an unflattering image for sure.
Hey, dummy. You’re standing in the middle of a rainstorm, drenched from head to toe, with a sour look on your face. There is no flattering description that anyone could possibly come up with to describe the way you look right now.
If last night was so wrong, why had she allowed it to happen? If we were never meant to be together, why had she initiated everything? Why did the tone of this letter, which remains crumpled up in my left hand, the rain erasing the hurtful words even as I speak, sound like I was so in the wrong for making more out of last night than she believed it to be?
Am I really that wrong? Can’t she see that we were meant to be together? Can’t she see that both our lives had been leading to the point we reached last night? How can she go back to him? How can she not see that it’s me and not him who she should be spending the rest of her life with? He hurt her so much, why does she want to stay with him? So he can hurt her again? I would have treated her like the most important person in the world, because to me she was. She was everything, she was…
A car rushes past me, the way one has every few seconds or so, the occupants staring at me for the few seconds that I pass through their line of vision, like some abstract work of art that they see, barely acknowledge and then dismiss as nothing they want to bother with.
How many times in my poor excuse for a life has that happened to me? How many times have I been dismissed as some little nothing that no one really needs to pay attention to?
It’s probably a tie between that and the number of times someone has paid attention to you simply so they can go out of their way to put you in your place, sometimes none too subtly, as that insignificant little nothing that you already know you are.
They don’t care why I’m standing there. To them…hell, to everyone I know, I’m just some geek…but to these travelers, I’m a geek that’s too stupid to get out of the rain. I figure…hell, I know that just about every passenger in every car that’s gone by me has turned to the driver and made some wise-ass joke about my situation. Their only regret is that they can’t stop the car, roll down the window and yell something at me…although they probably would if they could.
To the rest of the world, today sucks. I don’t mean in a 9/11 kinda sucks or a “my wife was diagnosed with cancer” kinda sucks. I mean, just weather-wise, although it’s funny how people will look at grey clouds lurking overhead as far as the eye can see and decide that the day sucks just because you have to wear an extra sweater, like that’s some great tragedy, when in reality, that pales in comparison to all the other of life’s tragedies. People don’t realize when they have it good, so they bitch and moan and complain about the little inconveniences of life, like a few clouds in the sky or some crumbs on their blazer or a red light that costs them a whole thirty seconds in traffic.
The weather today doesn’t really bug me that much. Actually, the weather makes for the perfect backdrop. A cold, miserable day, spitting rain which I guess is appropriate since the world always seems to be spitting on me, only this time literally instead of figuratively.
To me, it’s perfect. To the rest of the world, today sucks.
Not for the first time in my life…hell, not for the first time today, I want to cry out “Screw the rest of the world!”
I glance up and there’s some middle-aged yuppie-wannabe driving his sedan back to suburbia. He’s probably got the pre-requisite Grateful Dead CD playing in his Volvo, like he’s still trying to be hip, yet responsible at the same time. He glances back at me, gives me that look which I’m sure is supposed to mean that he’s getting ready to give me the finger or something worse if I don’t look away, which I don’t. At least, not right away. He looks pissed off at the weather, at the world, at his hum-drum life and I guess I’m as good a target for some non-verbal outrage as any.
The sad part is that he’s not the first guy to look to me vent some of his frustration at. Not the first by a long shot. Sorry Pal, I think to myself, I’m pretty sure that the number one spot on that ever-lengthening list belongs to somebody I went to high school with, possibly even public school.
Sometimes I wonder if I wasn’t put on this earth for no other reason than to take **** and abuse. Certainly, the world has never given me one ounce of reason to believe otherwise.
I want to tell this jerk off. To hurl some creative expertise at him about being so quick to treat a total stranger like **** as some sort of outlet over the rage he feels about his own life. Part of me wants to get into a verbal or perhaps, and I’m scared just how much I want this, physical confrontation with this guy. I want him to get out of the car just so I can punch him, kick him, scream at him, get all my frustrations out in one violence-filled exchange.
But then I also want to tell him that if he’s going home from a decent job to a wife and kids who love him or at least give a rat’s ass that he exists, he’s miles ahead of me. But I don’t do any of that and in a moment, he’s gone.
And I remain behind, and, in my mind’s eye, I see myself the way that he, and every other motorist must see me. This sad, pathetic little dork, standing alone in the rain, soaked to the bone, his heart broken, his last remaining hope of finding that special someone dying a few miles away, at city hall, in front of a justice of the peace.
And then it hits me, as hard as the thousand of sloppy rain drops are nailing me on the head. The more I think of it, the more the day seems perfect.
A bitter cold, miserable day. It suits my mood. I’m bitter, cold and miserable. I’d add heartbroken to that list but to say that my heart is broken is putting it too mildly. Is heart-demolished a word? How about heart-destroyed?
The voice in my head, the one who’s guiding me along this little tour into hell, figuratively and perhaps literally, laughs bitterly, reminding me that I’ve got no one to blame but myself. For the tenth time since he went on this little “I told you so” kick and for the millionth time in my stupid little go-nowhere life, I begrudgingly agree with him.
You idiot! A couple of hours ago, your life was one big pile of crap and yet now, it seems like you were living in Shangri-FN-la. You got up, you went to work, you got treated like **** for eight hours for a wage that’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad in comparison to the work you have to do, and then you went home, maybe checked your e-mail a few dozen times in case you finally got that non-existent letter from some old friend who had long forgotten you ever existed. That was it, the end of story. No fuss, no muss.
But hell, even by the time you walked in the front door of that hellhole you call a workplace, things were already in motion. You had no control over it, not that it mattered. Even if you’d been given one ounce of opportunity, you would have just screwed it up anyways.
Silence for just a second, then it starts up again.
See, this is why I was always telling you NOT to get your hopes up. This is why I never wanted you to get excited about the possibility of anything in this life. Because I knew, I always knew that the up was not worth the down. This morning, you believed you were on the verge of a new chapter in your life, you thought that you had finally seen the place where everyone else lives, but that, to date, you had never even been allowed to visit.
And yet here you are, half an hour from thinking you were able to believe in all you’d hoped. And instead of being able to make plans for a future that was never going to exist, here you are.
Here I am, indeed. I’ve been standing in this drizzle for maybe ten minutes now, in short sleeves and slacks. If the situation was different, I might worry about catching pneumonia. You know, the pneumonia your mother and my mother and everyone else’s mother used to warn you that you’d get if you went out in the rain without a jacket.
I don’t really care about pneumonia or a bad cold or even my mother’s warnings at this point. I’m too busy trying to leave the words in her letter from my head by concentrating on the number 4.
As in four times.
Four…and I mean, four tops, is the number of times that I’ve ridden the Number 42 Crosstown bus in my entire, miserable life. If I had had to take a guess, I’d say the last time was maybe about six months ago when I went to see an afternoon matinee at the Metroplex.
Four times in twenty-four years.
So, that should give you the idea that ol’ Number 42 hasn’t really played a key factor in my life up to this point. Still, it’s with no great sense of irony as I see this bus chug on down the street towards me. I can’t tell from this vantage point just how many passengers are on it. It’s heading towards the strip mall and the office buildings that surround it, and with the rain, there are bound to be a lot of people riding that bus today. Some of them have probably even taken note of the sad, pathetic, worthless dork standing before them, maybe a half a block away. And there are probably a good percentage of them who have already thought up some snide remark to either hurl my way as the bus passes me, or just blurt out for the amusement of themselves and the others within earshot.
I’ve decided that it makes no difference how many people are on that bus. In the end, what does it really matter? Six people or sixty? Who really gives a damn?
I notice that despite the sound of its engine -these buses always sound like they’re one pothole away from disintegrating- it’s rapidly picking up speed. No stops for another block or so, and the driver sure as hell won’t stop for me. He’d be hard-pressed to do so even if I was at one of the regular stops. Nope, he’s gonna chug on through, maybe even hope there’s a puddle he can splash me with, again to the delight of his passengers.
No matter, the faster it goes, the better I’ll like it. He can gun it up to 55 for all I care.
Makes things easier. It’ll all be over that much quicker.
Everything’s in place, Morrison. The bus is comin’. You’ve made your decision. The only thing you have left to do is to take that first step. I mean, I know that summoning up the courage to do anything that needed doing has never been your strong suit so I’ll give you a few tips to make it easier. First off, just pick out an object on the other side of the street, keep your eyes glued to that object and just start walking towards it.
This was Will’s idea, so I guess it’s appropriate that he be in charge from beginning to end.
Screw you, ya geek! Don’t blame this **** on me. You got yourself into this, Morrison! I’m just helping ya out. Just trying to help a friend in need.
It occurs to me now, that, in the end, Will really is the only friend I have in the world. I take small solace in the fact that everyone who ever told me how I “have no friends” was wrong.
Well, considering I’m one of those people, maybe you should reconsider just how much solace you should take in that.
Actually, forget that for now. See that tree across the road, keep your eyes glued on it, block everything else out, and just start walking.
I look down the street, at the bus as it looms larger into view. I think about the people on that bus again. I wonder how many of the passengers are headed to the store I work…worked at. I wonder how many will be disappointed when they find out I no longer work there and they won’t have me to treat like ****.
It’s like Nixon said, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around next year!” Only in this case they won’t have Emmett Morrison to kick around next year…or next month… or next week.
Last night…and again this morning, I wanted to believe that I had finally found the reason I was here. That reason is gone. I might as well be, too. If I had more time, I’d contemplate just why the hell God or Buddha or whoever is in charge of this place wasted his time, my time and everyone else’s time putting me here in the first place.
But since I’ve run out of time and reasons to stick around, I decide to take that first step towards putting a stop to all that wasted time.
I sigh.
One foot in front of the other, right?
CHAPTER ONE
THE BEGINNING…SORT OF
Winston Churchill, in one of his post-Battle of Britain speeches, stated that as the threat of Nazi invasion subsided, it was not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it might be the end of the beginning.
As I start this particular chapter, I can safely say this is not the end.
Like they can’t figure this out! Damn…if this was the end, what are all those pages doing after this one? Left blank so people can make little flipbooks?
Nor is it the beginning of the end…hell, this isn’t the end of the beginning. In fact, this is the beginning of the beginning (prologue notwithstanding!) and while the story I am about to embark on telling you has nowhere near the consequence of the Battle of Britain, it is my story…and therefore is of great consequence to me.
Yeah, like anybody really gives a **** about a screwed up one-sided love affair that you didn’t really have. Let’s be honest here, Emmett, it’s just page after page of pointless pining.
Some of this story is made up. Other parts are stuff that I imagined. Still more of it is what I wish I could say was true. It will be up to the reader to figure out, if you have the time and inclination, which part is which.
Or you could just decide that it’s all total bull**** and get on with your lives. I mean, really, do you have nothing better to do? I mean, Jesus, get a ****ing hobby.
I wonder where I should begin this tale. Should I start it when Sarah first told me that she had a boyfriend? Should I start it at that moment that I first realized that I had feelings for her?
Maybe I need to go back farther…and start in the beginning.
In the beginning? Wasn’t that, like, the Bible? I mean, no offence Emmett but you do that you’re going to run into some serious copyright issues. Besides what do the Psalms and Jonah and the Whale and Noah have to do with this story anyways?
I meant, maybe I should start at the beginning of the relationship between Sarah and I.
“Relationship”?!? “Sarah and I”?!? Come on, get your mind out of fantasy land there, dumb ass. There was never any relationship between the two of you.
But we did have a relationship, at one point. I mean, we ended up…well, don’t let me spoil the ending just yet. No matter what else Will says, we did have something, at least for a moment.
Get out the violins. You’re allowing your grandiose delusions get the better of you, again.
How could that ever happen, Will, when I have you right there to tell me what a piece of crap I am?
The “Sarah” to which I refer, in all of this, is Sarah Reynolds.
And as, much as I hate to admit it, I guess, in the end, that’s how I have to think of her. Just as Sarah Reynolds.
Just Sarah.
As in “Sarah did this” …or “Sarah did that”.
But it’s just like Will said, it’s not as in “Sarah and I did this” or “Sarah and I did that”.
In all the time that I’ve known her, I’ve never been able to say “Sarah and I had dinner at her parents” or “Sarah and I drove up to the lake over the weekend”. I never have and never will be able to start any story with the words “Sarah and I”.
Because you see, there never was, is not now, nor will there ever be a “Sarah and I”. Of course, there’s never been anyone with whom I could add an “And I” to. I’ve never been invited to dinner with anyone’s parents, other than my own. I’ve never gone to a lake with anyone over a weekend. There’s never been anyone else to do stuff with or to be with. EVER.
And with that painful admission right out there in the open, let me go back to the beginning. Not the “In the Beginning” in the Biblical sense, but the beginning of the story that I am about to impart upon you.
First day of college. 9:00 a.m. The Tuesday after Labour Day. Four years ago.
Living in the dorm meant I had gotten about two hours sleep the night before, mostly in bits and pieces of five or ten minutes, the result of a party that started about four o’clock the previous afternoon and would continue to rage, pretty much non-stop for the next two years. For all I know it might still be going on even as we speak with many of the original cast members still involved.
Not that I really took part in it. I was too busy hiding out in my dorm room, expecting some wild band of roving Seniors to barge in and toss me into the shower, or just unleash some drunken barrage of obscenity-filled insults about me, my manhood, my intelligence, my looks, my decorating habits, or whatever else they could think of.
But none of that happened, and I just ended up missing out on all the “Let’s Get Acquainted Over Massive Amounts of Booze” festivities. And, despite some idiot three doors down playing Tears for Fears “Shout” non-stop for three solid hours (until another of my dorm-mates, who I shall always be grateful to, smashed his stereo), I still managed, somehow, to get enough sleep so as to be able to, somehow, show up right on time, like the college mark that I was, for my first class.
Introduction to Journalism.
Maybe it was just the beginning of my paranoid, conspiratorial mind but even back then I thought that the faculty at McCallum College must have hated us journalism students, because all our classes were in the very lowest level of the main building. They referred to it as Level 01. We referred to it by what it was. The Basement. Sometimes we ever referred to it as “the Dungeon” but without Stu Hart (the latter bit being a joke that I told a couple of times, only to quit when it became apparent that no one was getting the reference).
In the winter, we would freeze. As in not even wearing sweaters and winter coats kept us from shivering. Of course, on the day I’m talking about, the tail-end of a very hot summer, those of us not so hung over as to still be in bed, were frying, even in short sleeved t-shirts.
Some well-paid but ultimately naïve administrative assistant in the main office of McCallum College would number the freshman Journalism class of which I was a part of at thirty-four but I doubt all thirty-four of us were ever in the same room at the same time. Still, OFFICIALLY, there were thirty-four first-year journalism students that September morning of four years ago.
Over the next few months, that number would get whittled down to barely a dozen. Most would leave at Christmas. A few more would decide not to return the following September to start the second year of the course. From then on, the number of students in our class would remain almost a constant. Every few months, a student would drop out in mid-week and the circumstances surrounding that student’s departure would be the buzz for a few days after, what we didn’t know, we would make up. We were journalism students, after all; we took to gossip like bees to honey, always excited about a fresh supply and hungering for more.
That morning, eight of us showed up to be part of our first class of the semester and of the two-year program. I should point out that those eight were entirely of the student body. Not even the professor, Mr. Rowell, had made an appearance…and at ten minutes past the hour, that had us worried.
I had been there for almost half-an-hour already and so I was bored. And the best way to kill time that I could come up with was to check and to recheck my schedule to make sure that this was, in fact, where I was supposed to be. I wasn’t exactly alone.
“You guys are all in the journalism program, right? I mean, this is ‘Introduction to Journalism,’ right?”
I looked up to see a chubby guy, wearing a Green Day T-shirt, slouched against the wall opposite to where I was sitting. His name was Patrick…or Paul…I forget, something with a “P.” Other than the T-shirt and his voicing the same question we had all been wanting to ask, I don’t recall any more about him. Oh, except that he went home for Christmas that first semester, having flunked two of his exams, and was completely forgotten by the rest of us by the second week of January.
The rest of us nodded, a couple even chuckled. As I said, we had all been wondering the same thing: was this EVEN where we were supposed to be? I felt a little better with the knowledge that I wasn’t the only one who had gathered down here in the basement…but only a little.
Just then, our motley group was distracted from Peter/Paul’s nervous question by the sound of approaching feet. We all looked down the corridor, probably all with the same dumb look of hopeful anticipation. This HAD to be Rowell, right? Fashionably late but arriving just the same to put us out of our misery.
But it wasn’t.
It was Sarah.
I suppose if this was a movie, she would have been moving in slow motion, captured in a soft filter, with a spot of sunlight shining only on her as she deftly tucked her hair back behind her ear, some mellow soft rock song playing in the background.
In reality, she came hurrying across the rest of us, like she figured she was about to get **** for showing up late, then realized that there was no one there to give her ****. We never talked about it when we reminisced about college, but I always figured that she was probably all at once relieved and a little perplexed at this sudden strange turn of events.
Actually, I didn’t take too much notice of her. Being a guy, and a hetero guy at that, I probably gave her the once over, then decided to find something to read, so as to pass the time. Since she clearly wasn’t Rowell, my first reaction to her appearance was one of disappointment.
“Is this supposed to be ‘Introduction to Journalism’?” she asked, setting her bag down in a clear spot against the wall, a couple of bewildered students down from me, both of whom nodded.
“I think this is McCallum College’s way of telling us we really DIDN’T get into college. Break it to us gently by sticking us down here in the basement until we get the message and go home.”
I had to shake my head a tad when I heard that. Mostly because it was me who had said it. I couldn’t believe it. It was thirty-seven well-articulated words, probably thirty more than I had said to my classmates in four years of high school.
The half-dozen or so would-be college students sitting in the basement with me all seemed to think that was funny, including Sarah, and all laughed at that joke. And it was a case of them laughing “with me” rather than “at me” which was the case in high school. It was kinda of a new experience for me and wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
I’d like to recall that Sarah’s laugh was the sweetest, most infectious laugh that I’d ever heard, that our eyes met and we had a “moment”, something that went unshared with the rest of the group gathered in that basement hallway, that we both knew, despite it being unsaid, that our lives would forever be intertwined. I’d like to say that for a brief instance in time, we were the only two people in that hallway.
But to shoot with you, I barely took any more notice of Sarah than any of the rest of my fellow students. I was just so relieved that my first attempt at social interaction had gone over so well that I really didn’t notice anything but the fact that I hadn’t been ostracized immediately upon my arrival at this school. I joined in with the laughter that filled the hallway, chuckling maybe a little louder than I normally did, out of sheer relief that these people hadn’t turned to me and told me to “shut up, ya geek!”
Rowell would eventually show up. Apparently, McCallum College had originally intended for us to have a “Fundamental English” class with a rather crotchety old spinster woman named Miss Garrison that first period, and Mr. Rowell was still operating on the old schedule, not expecting to have to teach until 10:40.
After that rather shaky and delayed start, my first couple of months in college went by pretty fast and, to be honest, rather uneventful. Despite the promising start that my social life seemed to offer, what with me making a joke that didn’t fall flat, I soon found myself only a tiny bit better off than I had been in high school. I wasn’t a constant source of public ridicule, but no one was exactly inviting me over for tea and crumpets either.
When I was in class, there were a couple of people that I talked to, mostly in a “do you understand this any better than I do?” sort of way. I was still the part-time King of Hallway Comedy, tossing off the odd one-liner or two as the situations presented itself while we were waiting around for one teacher or another to show up and usher us into class. It was those few moments when those fellow students conscientious enough to show up early to class found my humour at least bearable, that I began to think that maybe, with some more effort on my part, I might just make some friends around here.
However, by the time they stopped serving supper in the residence cafeteria, I found myself alone in my dorm room, working on whatever assignments needed to be done, or reading. My night-time social life was pretty much status quo from high school, at least.
The situation in Res was pretty similar to that in school itself. I knew a few people there, as well. Most were from class, a few others from hall meetings and just being in the right place at the right time in terms of cafeteria conversations. When I walked down the halls at the Residence, I could always count on at least a few people saying “Hi, Emmett” as I walked past them. If I got lucky, I might even have someone ask what they were serving in the cafeteria, or if it was still raining out. That kind of inconsequential chit-chat that you exchange with people who are just a step or two above total strangers.
I kinda half-ass remember seeing Sarah once or twice in the Residence. Her room was just down the hall from mine but despite this and the fact that we were both in the same course, our social interaction was pretty much limited to saying “Hi” to each other whenever we passed each other in that hall.
As far as I know, the longest conversation we had during those early months was Sarah asking me if there was a quiz in Fundamental English the next day, just as a double-check. I answered that there was. She had made this face that immediately belied the fact that she wasn’t looking forward to it. I laughed, told her that I felt the same way and she went on her way.
And then, the pages on my desk calendar were torn off, one by one, until they came to one particular November night.
You know those moments you have in your life that you always remember because even though it seemed trivial at the time, it turns out to be one of those events that alters your life forever? The moments that you can remember so clearly, down to what song was playing in your head.
It was the night before our “Media Studies” mid-term. I was sitting outside my dorm room, back against the wall, reading all the high-lighted portion of my text book, wondering not for the first time if it would have been easier to highlight the stuff I didn’t think was important, as it would have saved a lot of yellow highlighter ink.
I’m not sure why but I concentrated better sitting out in the hall, the noise of a dozen ghetto-blasters playing the same Guns-N-Roses tune, a hundred bits of conversations and several TVs blaring away all just mixing together to form some kind of weird atmosphere that made me want to study and retain information that the relative silence of sitting at my desk never could.
After a while, I just kinda zoned out all the noise, all the activity around me and kept reading about Neil Postman and his arguments about how television was leading us all to ruin. The frequency with which people walked by me was so great that after a while a herd of buffalo could have stampeded by and I would have not realized it. As they walked by me, some people seemed to have to make some kind of comment about me sitting there in the hallway studying but most just said “hi” and kept on walking. It had been hours since I had paid any attention to anything people were saying. If, somewhere out of the corner of my brain, I managed to hear the voices of those who walked past, I just nodded, recognition enough of whatever they had said to work them into thinking I was listening.
Somehow, though, when the shy, quiet female voice asked “You’re Emmett, right?” Those words, those three small words, managed to break through and caused me to look up.
It was Sarah.
After not taking much notice of her when she showed up for our delayed first class, I can still remember the blue t-shirt she wore, the words “Oakdale High School” emblazoned across the chest, that she wore and the light pink sweatshirt she had tied around her waist.
Maybe I was still wasn’t with it after being awakened from my self-induced studying trance, as it were or maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, something caused me to do a double-take, to pause for what must have been a very long split-second, like some love-struck guy in some cheesy movie who can’t talk when the girl of his dreams speaks to him.
Of course, I didn’t realize she was the girl of my dreams at that point. I wasn’t in love with her at that point. Heck, I was barely even in like with her, since I hardly knew her. I didn’t find myself tongue-tied because I was head over heels in love with her, it was more that I had very little experience in friendly banter and social interaction. Truth be told, I was so overwhelmed that someone had come up and started talking to me, it took me a second to make myself believe it was really happening. Even once things started to register, I didn’t know how to react.
So maybe the first true impression I made on Sarah was that I was a complete dork, unable even to answer the simple question of what my name was. Thankfully, she either didn’t notice or didn’t let on.
She had asked me the question like she knew the answer but just wanted a way to open up this upcoming conversation. I figured the least I could do was, eventually, answer the question.
”Yeah, that’s me!” I replied, hoping that I sounded a lot cooler with that horrendous reply than I probably did. I wasn’t sure what was coming next, but figuring it couldn’t hurt to find out.
She cocked her head down the hall, the way she’d come, I realized. “A bunch of us from class are studying, and basically shooting the bull in my room. You wanna join us? We could use all the help we could get!”
She laughed, just slightly, more like a smile with a soundtrack, then. I’d like to think that I played the whole acceptance of her offer real cool like, disinterested even, like I was doing her a favour by showing up. Some parts of my brain, who you’ll come to know as Will, will tell you that I leaped to my feet and ran off like a starving child offered a piece of chocolate, all but slobbering at the prospect.
In reality, it was probably somewhere in the middle. No matter how it all played out, a moment or so later I found myself in Sarah’s room. There were four other people, three guys and another girl, all of whom I recognized from class and who recognized me just the same.
When I first came in the door and four pairs of eyes swung towards me, following Sarah inside the room, my knees got week for a split second. I quickly scanned the four faces, waiting, almost expecting, for someone, to cast me out, almost Biblically, to reject me for being too much of an outsider.
Maybe it was because it was still early in the first semester and everyone was too scared about their initiation into college and dorm life to toss aside anyone who might become a friend, but I never did find that face of objection to my joining this study group, which in short order became a group of friends, at least for a time.
I said a quick “Hello” which I somehow managed to direct to everyone in the room. My response was a couple of hellos, a nod and a quick wave.
Within about thirty seconds after I showed up, Ryan, one of the four others broke into some long-forgotten explanation of one of Marshall Mcuhen’s theories and just like that, it was like the six of us had been friends or at least classmates, for years.
And much like Sarah had promised, the half-dozen of us split time between studying and talking about non-journalism subjects. It seemed that just about any topic could be broken off into a sort of “introduction” to each other.
It was late when the study group broke up for the evening, the time passing almost in an instant or so it seemed. We had gotten on a roll and it just went from there.
I purposely took my time collecting my things so that I was the last person to leave. As I took my leave, however, I stopped in the doorway and turned back towards Sarah, who was putting one of her textbooks in her backpack, prepping for tomorrow, I assumed.
“Hey, Sarah,” I began, waiting only for her to look up before continuing, “Thanks for inviting me.”
She smiled and shrugged, “No problem. I kinda noticed that you were just sitting there in the hallway studying and, like I said, I figured we could use all the help we could get.”
“You guys do this often?”
“No, this was actually a first,” she replied, “but I kinda get the impression that it may not be the last. Group kinda had a good dynamic about it, don’t you think?”
Nodding, trying to come off as being as introspective as I could, I replied “Yeah.”
“A good dynamic about it.” That sounded about right in describing it.
CHAPTER TWO
FOUR MONTHS LATER
As it turned out, Sarah was right about the good dynamic of the group. That night wasn’t the last time that the six of us got together. At first, it was just the same study group situation as that first night. We got together the night before any major tests to quiz each other and discuss what we thought were the important points going into the test. After a while, somebody suggested getting together on Wednesday nights for a kind of rap session about different topics that we were discussing in class or to exchange ideas for term papers, seminars, etc.
Things stayed like that, status quo, for a couple of months, through the first set of exams and Christmas break. For a few weeks, it was all such a shock to my system. If I included a couple of high school buddies from back home, I actually had more friends than I could count on one hand, a real first for me. The days and weeks seemed to just fly by. My biggest fear was that I would flunk out and have to go home, leaving these new friends behind.
And your second biggest fear was that all of this was going to turn out to be a dream and you’d find yourself back in high school, condemned back to your life of isolation and loneliness.
Christmas came and went and with it came the news that I had passed all my exams….
In some cases, barely.
…and course, and would be welcomed back to McCallum College for the new semester. When I returned to the residence, I noticed more than a few empty rooms. Some people hadn’t been so lucky.
Lugging all the laundry I had taken home for the holidays left me damning my luck for living so far away from the main entrance. No small part of me was relieved to see that Sarah’s dorm room was open, and I could hear music playing from inside. I had always pegged Sarah as THE top student in our course so I hadn’t really expected she would flunk out like so many others. Still…
You figured the Morrison curse might have skipped you and nailed her, like some weird twist of fate might have caused her to screw up royally on the finals?
As stupid as it might sound, it was something like that. It was strange because I would have thought that I would have been content to just spend the few hours I had before turning in for the night in my room getting unpacked and maybe reading or something. Instead, once I knew that Sarah was back in the residence, I just dumped my suitcase in my room, gave the ol’ homestead the once over and headed down the hall to Sarah’s room.
“Emmett!” she exclaimed as soon as she saw me poke my head in her doorway.
“Hey,” I replied, “I just got in and noticed you were already back so I thought I’d stop by and say ‘hello’!”
“It’s good to see you. I got back this afternoon,” she explained.
Now that I knew that Sarah was back, I decided I should probably ask if our group had suffered any casualties. As much as I liked the rest of our group, I found myself being immensely relieved at being reassured that Sarah was still with us, to the point where any other absences wouldn’t really make a difference to me.
Of course, I couldn’t really say that. Part of me really didn’t know how I felt at that point. I mean, I knew I liked Sarah but…
You didn’t know you wanted to see her naked?
I was going to be more diplomatic than that and say I didn’t know I LIKED her.
“Have you seen any of the others?” I asked.
Sarah thought for a moment, mentally running down a checklist of everyone else in the group and their whereabouts.
“Rachelle and Michael came back about an hour or so ago but they went to get groceries. Don e-mailed me at home about a week ago saying he couldn’t get a ride back until tomorrow morning, so we probably won’t see him until after lunch…and Ryan beat us all back. He came in yesterday morning and is camped out in his room watching the new DVD player he got for Christmas. If you’re interested in watching the first two seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, head over to Ryan’s.”
“Hmm…” I replied, making a show of pretending to think it over, “I think I’ll pass.”
Sarah laughed.“I was tempted, but I have stuff here to do,” she informed me. “Still, nice to see that all of us made it through exams.”
At that, she lowered her voice, and so I stepped into her room to hear her better. “There were a lot that didn’t. I heard someone in A Hall claim that about a quarter of the incoming freshmen…that’s in every program, not just journalism, but a quarter of incoming freshmen will NOT be returning.”
The figure, whether it was an estimate, rumour or fact, was pretty staggering. I gave my best “that takes me aback” look and whistled in astonishment.
Meanwhile, you were thinking that it was better them than you!
Damn right!
Sarah motioned towards the room next to hers.
“Remember Mr. Heavy Metal guy who liked everyone to listen to his Metallica albums every night? GONE! I guess he knew it even before exams started and was just killing time until they told him that he wasn’t going to be welcomed back,” she explained. “I just hope whoever gets his room will have better musical taste.”
Just then, Ryan, having torn himself away from Buffy, came sauntering down the hall.
“Emmett, how goes?” he yelled. I turned, realizing that everyone within shouting distance now knew my name if they hadn’t already.
“Ryan, how was the break?” I told him, shaking his offered hand.
“Well, I made it back here in one piece,” he replied, slightly shrugging his shoulders like he was slightly surprised at that fact. “Hey, you guys up for doing a little bar-hopping? One of the guys in my hall says that there’s some band playing at the Golden Spit that’s supposed to be pretty good.”
I was about to beg off when I heard Sarah reply.
“Yeah, I heard something about that. What the hell? When Rachel and Michael get back, I’ll see if they’re up for joining us.”
Then she turned her head just slightly, so that she focused on me instead of Ryan. “What do you think, Emmett, you up for a ‘night on the town’?”
I had never been to a bar before. Never really wanted to go. I barely drank and the image I had of bars was some loud, dark, smoky den of wall-to-wall people where you couldn’t talk or think or move. And I had always had this image that the moment I walked in, everyone would stop and stare at me and I wouldn’t get two feet inside the door before someone called me a dork and demanded to know what I thought I was doing there.
Hey, that imagery was some of my best work. SIGH! I can be so good when I want to be. It’s a gift.
And yet, within an instance of Sarah asking me if I wanted to come along on this “group outing”, I heard myself, as nonchalantly as I could, telling her that sounded like a good idea.
And so I went, and while I’m sure someone probably saw me and called me a dork, the music from the band (I don’t think I ever found out their name and have long forgotten it anyways) drowned them out long before I ever heard them. The bar was loud and smoky and dark, and there were a lot of people there but it wasn’t too bad. And I felt comfortable being around Sarah. She made me feel as if I belonged.
And you figured the more you hung out with her at these bars, the more likely you’d both get drunk and end up in bed together.
WRONG!
RIGHT!
Eventually, the six of us began going out to the clubs on Friday nights together. Rachelle and Michael had been a couple long before we came together, even as a study group, and Ryan and Don both had girlfriends back home (although sometimes the girlfriends came up on weekends and joined us on our treks to bars or wherever). That left Sarah and I kinda lumped in together.
What’s weird is that, at the time, I never really had any kind of inkling of the feelings that I would develop towards her.
Oh, screw that, Emmett, you wanted to nail her from the moment you saw her in that hallway.
I thin you’re over-reacting, Will. I don’t think that I was lusting after Sarah as early as all that. I will admit to giving her a once-over glance and thinking that she was pretty cute. However, that was pretty much the last time I thought of her romantically for the first three years of our relationship.
Lie to the poor slob who’s reading this confessional why don’t you? What about all those times you two ended up talking until two in the morning after you came back from those bars?
Yes, TALKING! That’s what friends do! Sarah and I always came back keyed up from being at those clubs and weren’t ready to call it a night, so we would go back to her room and talk.
Okay, so what about all those times you’d go back to your dorm room and lie awake for two or three hours imagining about what would happen if your relationship ended up in the very place you SO wanted it to go?
Okay, I can admit that. I mean, it was three or four in the morning. My mind took me to weird places that, with the right amount of sleep or at a decent hour, it never would have even approached.
Ah, but it not only approached, it went far and beyond where it was supposed to stop. I mean, come on, remember that night you imagined every single sordid sadistic detail of the two of you fuc…
STOP!
Yes, I remember. It happened one time … ONE TIME … and it’s an image I’d kind of like to forget, to pop into the recycle bin of my brain and hit ‘DELETE”.
I wish the hell you’d stop bringing it up.
Okay, buddy-boy, why don’t we move on to something else?
Thank you.
Anyways, since Will was nice enough to bring it up, I guess it might not be such a bad idea to discuss the many nights that I found myself sitting on the desk in Sarah’s dorm room, as Sarah lay on her bed…fully clothed I must jump in with before Will decides to get in a snide remark…
What snide remark? I’m just here listening to your story.
Anyways, the two of us would hang out in Sarah’s dorm room, talking about anything…movies, classes, life in general. Unspoken, our conversations would follow a loose and general pattern. We’d start out talking about what we might have, had we ever really come out and discussed it, termed “safe topics”. As I said, stuff like whatever movie we’d checked out on the weekend or the Led Zeppelin album I had picked up at the used record store downtown that I had started to frequent or whatever our professors had been trying to teach us in class that day. Basically any topic that, if overheard, wouldn’t lead to bitter embarrassment for either of both of us.
I can’t speak for Sarah but I know there were times when the clock couldn’t move fast enough towards the unofficial cut-off point of 11:30, when most people, at least those who wanted to get a full-night’s sleep and be in somewhat decent shape in the morning, started to head off to bed.
It was a weird phenomenon. At 11:00, the dorm would be pandemonium personified, with stereos blasting, people running up and down the halls screaming, all sorts of strange noises emanating from behind closed dormitory doors, food fights, shaving cream pranks, even the odd physical fist fight…but in twenty minutes to a half-hour later, the place would be quiet. Not the pin drop quiet, I mean, with 300 students living under one roof, there was bound to be noise: the evening news on the television from the common room, someone heading to the bathrooms to relieve themselves before heading to bed, even people just chatting like Sarah and I…but the difference was just incredible.
By 11:30 things had died down enough that Sarah would usually get up and partially close her door, so we could go on talking without disturbing anyone or, more importantly, without anyone disturbing us. Sarah would sit on the edge of her bed. I would take the chair at her desk and we would share cold pizza and our thoughts.
It was that closing of the door that signaled a different chapter in our nightly talks, and the one that I always preferred. Not that chatting with Sarah about the “safe topics” wasn’t fun, but once the midnight hour came and went, we ventured into some uncharted territory at times.
Maybe it was the late hour. Maybe we were tired and not completely in control of our inhibitions, but Sarah and I seemed to talk about things with each other that we might never have said to anyone else at any other time.
“How often do you think about death?” Sarah asked me during one of these midnight rap sessions.
The questions took me aback at first. By this time, our late night chats had become if not quite a routine, then frequent enough that I knew what I might be getting myself into, and yet was something I looked forward to, anticipated. The topics had ranged anywhere from religion to politics to relationships, nothing seemed taboo or out of breadth of possibility.
And yet, a question about how often I thought about death left me speechless, at least for a few moments. At the time, Death wasn’t something I thought about on a regular basis. A fleeting moment here and there, perhaps, when I watched a movie where the main character bought the farm. Certainly not with the rate that I would in later years, when death became almost something to be looked forward to, as a way of escaping the harshness and fruitlessness of reality.
And death didn’t exactly seem to be a topic that I ever figured that Sarah would spend a lot of time contemplating either.
It was one of the few times that I could ever hear Will urging me to do something, say something, rather than sit there gaping like some group-home idiot.
I shrugged, finally. I had no clue how to answer Sarah’s question so I just kinda went with the first thing that jumped into my mind.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
A sure-fire winner of a response if there ever was one. How impressed must Sarah have been to bear witness to your genius?
“I mean, I guess I’m like a lot of people. I know it’s coming, it’s out there. I mean, I’m not naïve to think that I’m immortal or that I’m 100-per cent guaranteed to live to a ripe old age, but so much about life is uncertain and so why should death be any different?”
Eh. Not a half-bad way to try and salvage the horrible start.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, might be the closest to an actual compliment that I’ll ever get from my buddy, Will. However, at that point, my interests lay with what Sarah thought of my answer.
She didn’t say anything at first, which kind of worried me. I wasn’t sure how to take that, whether she was mentally composing her own reply to my reply or whether she was so disgusted by my lack of a thought-out answer that she was gearing up to rake me over the coals for it.
Instead, she waved it all away.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be discussing stuff like this,” she said. “It’s just that…well, remember about three weeks ago when my Great-Aunt Carol died?”
I nodded, indicating that I remembered.
“It’s weird because when I had heard she had died, I wasn’t really broken up over it,” she continued, “I mean, it was sad but the woman was something like 87, 88, something like that. I hadn’t seen her since I was six and she came over for Christmas or something. All I remember is that ‘Viva Las Vegas’ was on and she said she liked Elvis movies. That’s it…that’s my entire memory of her.”
I laughed at the “Viva Las Vegas” reference, which caused Sarah to stop her commentary and laugh as well. At first, I felt bad for laughing at her story about her dead great-aunt but the guilty feeling soon passed.
“I know, it’s silly but that’s the one memory I have of her,” Sarah explained, her laugh continuing for a moment before fading, “So, I’m at the funeral and all my relatives, my parents, all my other aunts and uncles and even some of my cousins not to mention all her old bitty friends, they’re all combining their efforts for this big-ass eulogy. I swear, I’ll bet the funeral lasted for like an hour and a half, all these people talking about all the things my great-aunt Carol did in her life and all the people whose lives she touched and all this…and it got me to thinking. What are people going to say when I die? How many people are going to be moved enough to stand up and talk about my life and what I meant to them…and I realized that death is almost like a deadline. You only have so much time to accomplish things and make your mark because when you die, you’re judged in large part by what other people have to say about you based on your life’s actions.”
She paused for a moment, then laughed off her recent statements. She didn’t, however, proceed to immediately change the conversation, trying to steer it back towards a safer subject.
“I don’t know. I guess, I just started thinking about life and death and how I might be remembered.”
Our conversations never approached that level of depth or the topic of mortality after that night, and yet it is one of the nights that I have thought about the most in the years since graduation. No matter what else we talked about, none of the topics ever did as much to give me the impression that the relationship between Sarah and I was on a much higher plane than friendship, the type that existed between either of us and the rest of the study group that quickly had grown into a tight-knit circle of friends.
Sarah’s discussion of her great-aunt’s funeral and the feelings and thoughts that had arisen in her during and after the event made me believe that she saw something in me and her relationship with me that she didn’t see in her friendships with any of the other.
Soooo…when do you recall the time that you started kissing and the next thing you know, they cut to the two of you waking up in bed together the next morning?
Well, I hate to disappoint you Will, bsut I can’t very well recall something that never happened.
That’s not what the scuttlebutt around the Residence was.
Yeah, I know. Believe me, I had enough people tell me, mostly in jest, that there were rumours circulating that Sarah and I were sleeping together. I never talked to Sarah about those rumours, although she knew, she had to have known. She was more active in the general social scene around the Residence than I ever was, and therefore most certainly had many more conversations with scores more people than I ever did. The topic must have come up at some point. If and when it did, however, she never told me about it, just like I never told her when someone dropped the hint in my direction.
Through it all, no matter how loud the whispers got or how mean-spirited the jokes became, never once did it enter our minds to put an end to these late-night chats. I guess neither of us wanted to bow down to peer pressure.
The fact of the matter was that we never so much as kissed.
It’s an old adage but it fits here: Time flies while you’re having fun. The balance of the two years I spent with Sarah at McCallum College seems like so much of a blur to me now. One moment I looked up and there she was, asking me to join her impromptu study group…the next there she was, walking proudly across the stage at graduation.
Yeah, she was looking hot in that black gown! I wonder if she was wearing any panties. Not that you’d know.
Once again, Will, you manage to take the truth in any situation and warp it so we’re left with something disgusting and putrid. And while Will may have twisted how I was feeling, Sarah was looking so beautiful in her graduation gown. My Mom took pictures of just about every person I knew in college (and a few that I didn’t so I’m not sure if she took pictures of everyone whose name sounded familiar or what) and I have the photo in an album at home.
Sarah had graduated with honors…
And didn’t you have to bust your ass just as hard to graduate bottom of your class and on academic probation?
Thanks for bringing that up, Will. Heaven forbid we should leave out any fact that puts me in a bad light. Hey, at least I graduated.
Yeah, and you should be so proud of how much that your diploma ended up meaning to you in your later years, as we’ll find out in future chapters, I’m sure.
That was the future, Will. All the mediocrity of my adult life was still to come. Nothing had been written in the great book of my personal history. At that point, on that hot June day, with every one of my classmates (those that didn’t drop out along the way, at least) in attendance, everything looked possible. I think that might have been the pinnacle of my life. I had a college diploma in my hand, I had good friends all around me, my parents were looking on, very proud. It was like I had changed so much in the two years since I left high school, it might as well have been in another life.
And I didn’t even hear so much as a peep from you that day, did I, Will? I mean, where were you on that Graduation Day, huh? I mean, you could have swooped in and told me how this chapter of my life was over, how there was this big scary world out there and I had no clue what I was going to do with the rest of my life?
I’d snagged an invite to the bitchin’ party back at the Residence (the one you DIDN’T get invited to) and decided to head over early and scope the place out, see what hot babes were gonna be there, load up on all the free brew.
Okay, I’m kidding. Actually,, I decided to be an asshole and not forewarn you about any of that! Besides, originally I had planned on doing all of that and more but that keynote speaker the college got put me to sleep. I mean, he kept going on and on and on about how we were at the crossroads of our life and we held the future in our hands and today was the first step in a long road of accomplishment and how our education was the key to our success and yada yada yada. I swear to God, if there is a website out there now where you can download generic, run of the mill graduation speeches, his speech is probably there, along with his award for most students lulled into a coma during a single speech.
I can’t argue with you there. All I remember is watching Sarah get her diploma…well that and having to go to the bathroom really bad.
Sorry, bud, I dropped the ball on that one. Had I been awake and not on “vacation”, I would have reminded you not to drink that third glass of water before you left for the ceremony.
Before I knew it, though, it was all over. The ceremony ended. Most of the newly graduated made a bee-line for the nearest exit, ready and willing and able to get the hell out of Dodge and away from McCallum College. I guess they figured they had spent enough time in college, it was time to move on.
Too bad you didn’t follow their lead, moving on from that whole experience would have been the best thing for you in the long run.
The rest of us remained there, mingling with our now former classmates, saying our goodbyes and taking one last look at the old place.
And some of you couldn’t move because your legs had gone to sleep from sitting so long.
And there were some I saw, as I looked around, who just kinda stood there, dazed and confused, like they were waiting for something to happen.. Like they were waiting for that one last thing that their professors to come up and impart one last bit of wisdom before they were sent off to fend for themselves. I even saw one or two students, male and female, standing there, holding onto their caps for dear life, crying. As if they’d just been told a loved one had died.
They knew, Emmett. They knew this was the end.
We all knew it was the end.
No, I mean, they KNEW it was THE End, as in the Jim Morrison/Apocolypse Now “The End”.
As in “This is the end, of our elaborate plans, the End!” Maybe somewhere, someone was playing that album at such a high frequency that only a select, lucky few got to hear it and understand what was going on.
They knew that as the last speaker walked away from the podium, as the last classmate walked out of the auditorium, that this was the end. That their perfect little un-real world of higher education was over. That the days of keg-parties and all-night cram sessions and lectures on the history of medicine in Ancient Egypt and John Hughes movie marathons in the dorm were over. Gone was the time that all of life’s problems could be solved as long as you kept your class schedule straight.
It was the end, and that fact had just slapped them in the face. And maybe they were the lucky ones, who got it dumped on them that afternoon. They grieved, they accepted, they moved on.
And what about you, Emmett? What did you do?
I guess I was like the rest of them. I searched the crowd until I found my parents. My Mom wiping away a tear while my Dad waved like I’d just won the Daytona 500. I waved back, a little more conservatively. As I turned, I noticed that Sarah was talking to Rachelle and so I decided to make my way over to them.
By the time I reached Sarah, Rachelle had left. I felt a pang of disappointment that I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to her, that a member of that study group that evolved in a tight-night group of friends had made her exit without me giving her a formal farewell.
Rachelle was one of the smart ones. College was over and so was your chapter in her life. Once that last exam was done, you were a part of her past that she didn’t want to remember any more, so the less interaction she had with you, the better.
Then explain why she was saying goodbye to Sarah.
Well, see that was because Sarah was in a different category than you were. Rochelle knew Sarah was in a different league as in “Way Outta Yours.” But seriously, Rochelle knew that Sarah was going to accomplish something with her life and figured why not start networking now? As for you, on the other hand, Rochelle sensed, as a great many did, that you weren’t going to be one of those people that she’d really want hanging around on the fringes of her life. She didn’t want you popping up every year or so, talking about “the old days” in college and boring her with your lame-ass whining about working pointless, go-nowhere, minimum wage retail jobs or, worse yet, embarrassing her in front of her new, upperly mobile, six-figure salary-earning friends and associates.
Well, none of that had occurred to me as yet, and so I remember making a mental note to write her a quick letter in a few weeks to ask her how she was doing in post-college life.
Which she never replied to, if I remember correctly. Oh well, you’re letter-to-reply ratio in the post-graduate world was 1 in 100, was it not? Not the best return on all those cards and stamps.
When Sarah saw me, she almost screamed “We made it, Emmett!” as she threw her arms around me. “We graduated!” I hugged her right back, hoping that maybe my Mom had one last shot in her camera and was using it right then and there. I wanted this moment, this final moment of college, with me and my best friend, embracing, captured forever.
As it turns out, my Mom had lost me in the gradually dispersing crowd and hadn’t thought to keep her camera handy in any case. Still, I have the image burned into my memory. It felt so right, being there, with her in my arms, although I didn’t realize why until much later.
Damn good thing you were able to keep yourself in check. Wouldn’t have been exactly the most appropriate thing to do if you had ended up throwing yourself at her in the middle of a semi-packed auditorium.
How about getting lost, Will? Sex was the last thing on my mind at that point. I have to be honest, it felt really good just being there, holding her as we celebrated our mutual accomplishments.
Well, good thing sex was the LAST thing on your mind (you’re a guy, sex is never the LAST thing on your mind, admit it you wuss!) because wouldn’t it have made quite the send off if you’d gotten a hard-on at that particular moment.
You’re a perv, Will.
No, actually, you’re the perv, Emmett. I’m just taking your inner-most thoughts and letting you know about them.
But there I was, my arms around maybe the best friend I’d ever had. We were both so happy at that one moment. I could hear the voices of other people around us, could feel them walking past, and yet, it was like nothing else existed except this hug I was sharing with Sarah. I never wanted to let her go.
Maybe she didn’t either. When we finally parted, there was a glistening in the corner of her eyes. She tapped a finger against them, wanting to wipe away whatever was there quickly, without too big of a show.
“Damn it!” she said, “I am going to miss this place…and everyone I’ve met here.”
I laughed and replied “Hell, Sarah, college may be over, but the friendships will keep on keeping on.”
“Keep on keeping on?” When did you graduate? 1976?
.
When I said that, Sarah had been looking around the auditorium, as if she wanted to take on last look, to burn the images of this place into her memory. She turned back to look at me and then looked away, like she had something she didn’t want to say, instead just said, “Yeah, I guess.”
Maybe she heard the Doors. Even if she didn’t, she knew it then, too. She knew it was the end.
But it wasn’t.
Oh, wasn’t it? You really mean to sit there and b-s me that your life didn’t change one iota?
Well, of course, it changed. I mean, college was over. Studies were at an end and it was time to venture out into the “real world”.
Ah yes. The “Real World”! Remember, back in the day, when you used to get so pissed off at people referring to that “real world”?
Yeah, like the world I’d been living in for the two years wasn’t “real.” Funny, I REALLY had to get up every morning and REALLY go to class and, if I wanted to get a decent mark at all, I REALLY had to study, write REAL papers, take REAL exams, etc, etc. Are you getting the point there, Will?
Oh, I get your point. The problem was that compared to what was to come, you were living in a fantasy world. Oh sure, you had all these trivial little concerns that you got stressed out over. But as bad as staying up until one o’clock to cram for an exam, it was nothing compared to what was awaiting you once you left your safe little haven of college.
See, the reason why they call it the REAL WORLD is that you REALLY had to face the rest of your life instead of just sitting around your dorm room, fantacizing what it is going to be like. How you’ll get the perfect job the first time out, how you’ll meet the girl of your dreams and a couple of years later you’d be settled in a nice home with a wife and kids and a successful career.
Well, the REAL WORLD wasn’t quite like that, was it Emmett?
Sigh!
CHAPTER THREE
A YEAR AGO
J.Q. Publik’s is one of those noisy upscale establishments that can’t decide if it’s a bar or a restaurant. You know the type, the one with sports memorabilia and canoes and mooseheads on the walls, the radio turned to some local Top 40 station and then cranked full blast. And there’s always that fine line they tread between being serious and becoming a parody of itself.
I hate these places.
I hate the fact that exist for no other reason than to let middle-aged ex-jocks-turned-execs sit around for three-hours that they can write off as a “business lunch” by making one semi-related comment about their job in between talking about yesterday’s hockey game or how they got laid last night.
I hate spending ten bucks on a plate full of burnt nachos that I’ll eat maybe a quarter of and then feel like an idiot as I nibble away on the rest for the duration of the meal.
I hate the fact that I have to listen to whatever over-played Top 40 hit that will be all the rage for all of ten minutes and having to repeat my end of the conversation three times in the hopes that I’ll be heard over the music.
I hate sitting in a booth in jeans and a shirt and looking like I should be coming in the service entrance to collect the garbage next to these high-paid morons in their name-brand suits that probably cost more than I’ll make this decade. Not to mention I hate having to pretend I don’t see the not-overly-subtle glances and the smirks on their faces, and pretend I don’t hear the not-quite whispered comments about the dork sitting by himself.
And yet here I am sitting in this loud, obnoxious over-priced bar/restaurant, waiting for Sarah to show up. She’s always late to these things and I’m always early, like I’m afraid that this will be the one time she’ll be on time and get pissed off and leave if I’m not right there waiting when she shows up.
And so I here I still sit, sipping my Coke and trying not to be too obvious about glancing at the clock on the wall on the off-chance that’s the moment she decides to make her appearance.
You know, Emmett, you need friends…well, you need friends period, but you need friends who know how to damn well tell time.
Good ol’ Will. I can always count on him to keep me company, especially in those lonely, nervous moments before Sarah shows up. Despite that last comment, however, Will’s been mostly quiet for the duration of my wait here at the J.Q.’s so I let the comment pass. Of course, since they’ve been blaring Avril Lavigne and Michelle Branch tunes since I got here, I may just have not heard anything else he’s had to say.
Just as I’m finished my first Coke, Sarah shows.
I’ll give you the reader’s digest of what’s happened to the both of us over the past two years since graduation. Sarah used her college diploma to get a good entry-level job at a marketing company. She got promoted a couple of times and now she’s got some fancy title, a great health care plan, an office she says is too small but beats none at all. Her job consists of creating advertising campaigns for multi-million dollar companies.
As for me, I used my diploma to get a job with one of those million-dollar companies: Video Emporium. I’ve worked there a year and a half and have never been promoted from my job, which has the impressive title of “Customer Service Associate”. I get minimum wage, no health care, no paid vacation, no office and my job consists of getting told by customers that their “****ing video wasn’t late so screw your late charges” before they threaten to call Head Office if I don’t rescind the charges immediately.
And so here we sit. Sarah taking her paid lunch hour to sit in this restaurant with me, who’s killing time before I work the night shift.
“Hey!” I say. “How’s it goin’?”
She smiles as she sits down, but it’s one of those smiles that you can tell has been pasted on. “Oh…you know…It’s going,” she says, nodding
****, I say to myself, or to Will, or to whichever one of us is listening. Something’s wrong and I wonder if I have the guts to ask what.
Nah, you’ll just wimp out and let me spend the duration of this…what is it a date?…
It’s not a date, Will. It’s two friends having a bite to eat and catching up on whatever’s going on in our respective lives.
…letting me fill your heads on how whatever is bothering Sarah is going to end up being your fault.
Or maybe I could just enthrall you with my theory that Sarah would rather be anywhere in the universe, Bosnia, Iraq, El Salvador, than sitting in this restaurant and having to put up with your pitiful attempts at witty banter and long, uncomfortable silences.
For once I’m thankful that the waitress sees Sarah’s arrival and finally decides to come over and take our order. Sure, I’ve been sitting here for about ten minutes having to nurse one glass of Coke and she never came within earshot but now that Sarah’s here, she makes a beeline for me. Whatever. The waitress’s arrival means that I don’t have to pick up any conversation save to order.
Even as Sarah orders, she sounds like she’s distracted, as if she’s making her order from memory, which may well be. She and I have been here enough times and she, like me, usually orders the same thing. Still, Sarah doesn’t look any less troubled than she did when she sat down across from me so I internally sigh and decide that means I have to find out what’s wrong. I decide to pick a safe reason and dig in.
“So, how’s work going?” I ask, hoping that it’s just a rough day at the office.
She shrugs, indifferently. “It’s okay. Busy, busy, busy. You know the way things are.”
Since I work in retail and would kill for an office job that guarantees me minimal human contact and weekends and evenings off, her definition of busy and mine are drastically different. Normally I might have called her on it and launched into the usual “My job sucks more than your job sucks” rants that highlight our conversations over lunch…but not today. There was something else bothering her, I could feel it but just couldn’t identify it.
Instead I just nod.
“How ‘bout yourself…how’s the video store treating you?” she asks, like she’s reading some script. I realize that she really doesn’t give a **** what kind of answer I give her. She isn’t really asking me, just trying to make conversation as if getting me to talk about my situation would somehow throw me off the trail of what was going on with her. Maybe, I ponder for a moment, she just doesn’t’ want to talk and figures letting me ramble on about stupid customers will kill some time until she can get the heck out of Dodge.
Instead, it’s time it’s my turn to shrug.
“Same old, same old,” I reply. Normally, I have a tendency, at least when I’m around Sarah, to babble on about whatever trivial discomfort I’m dealing with at work, but today I want Sarah to tell me what’s on her mind.
Wait a minute, back up a second! “Trivial discomfort”?!?! Oh, come on, man, you can’t go five minutes without adding something else to that grand unwritten list of yours entitled “Eighteen Million Reasons Why I Hate My Job”.
Hey, since you’ve got a captive audience (those readers who haven’t already tossed this book in the trash, muttering “What A Loser!”) why don’t you fill us in on how much that diploma came in handy after graduation?
Later, Will, this isn’t the time nor the place!
Yeah, you’re right. For once I’ll agree with you. I mean, Sarah is probably upset because she got passed over for some promotion. Forget the fact that she’s probably making more on her paid lunch than you will all week running your ass off for people who treat you like crap in return.
I look over at Sarah, watched her run her finger over the lip of her glass over and over again. It’s weird to watch her, watch her struggle with how to say whatever it was she has to say. It’s like seeing the dents in her armour for the first time.
I struggle, as I always do, to find something to say. And, as usual, nothing seems to come to mind. It’s strange, with Sarah as it is with a lot of people, no matter how many topics of conversation I can dream up when I’m walking home after meeting up with them, my mind was blank when it came to the actual conversation.
You know, you really start taking notes. You know, have a little pad in your pocket and every time something noteworthy happens, you write it down.
Thanks, Will. I’ll make a note of that. I don’t know why but the only thing that I could come up was…
“I visited Ryan’s website the other day,” I say. “You should check out some of the artwork he’s been doing. I guess he’s kinda tinkering with doing a graphic novel and he’s got some of the pictures up on the site.”
“Oh yeah,” she replies. “I keep meaning to check that out but I never have a chance. Usually when I’m on the computer, it’s something for work, so there’s always something more pressing.”
It was a bull**** conversation. I hadn’t heard from Ryan in nearly a year. My e-mails to him went unanswered and he never seemed to be home when I called him. Still, something drew me to his website every few days, to check out his blog and whatever else he had posted.
Right now, that website was at least serving as a topic of conversation. Something to keep us talking while I find either a more interesting subject or a way to get Sarah to open up to me about whatever it is that’s bothering her.
“Remind me,” I tell her, “and I’ll send you the URL if you need it.”
She nods, silently agreeing to do just that, I must assume. After that, nothing is said for several long minutes. The silence is uncomfortable and we both feel it. My mind has gone blank again. A few annoyingly stupid little incidents from work pop into mind but they are all “you had to be there” kind of stories. I decide, however, to keep them in reserve, and if we’re still kinda stuck in this silent limbo for another minute or two, I might have to get desperate and use them.
I got nothing.
There seemed to be nothing I can say that might so much as jumpstart the conversation much less take it in some direction where Sarah will feel more at ease, maybe put whatever was bothering behind her. For a moment, I even take note of whatever bubblegum pop song is playing at high decibels in hopes I can use that as a conversation starter, but it’s one of those rare times where they’ve played something either new or at least original and I can’t place the artist.
And even as I’m pondering using my ignorance of said artist, I open my mouth and out comes…
“Are you doing all right?”
YOU STUPID MORON!
The five words are out there before I can stop them. I wonder perhaps if Will had spoken them and for the first time, after all the stuff he had spewed at me were finally being heard by the outside world.
Don’t blame me for this one.
I realize that it had been me who asked the question. And, as Sarah looks up at me, I feel like a complete asshole, like I‘ve gone and hit the gas and sent us down a road neither of us wanted to be on.
You should have just kept your fat trap shut!
I swear to God, I actually find myself nodding at Will’s remark. A brief nod to someone no one else can see but me that I can no more control than the question I have just asked and wish I could take back, like I could lift my magical life remote and rewind and then tape something else over it.
I feel so bad that I’ve allowed this question to escape my lips that I am almost tempted to follow it up with an apology to Sarah.
“My God, Sarah,” I can all but hear myself saying, “I am so, so, so, sorry. I have no right to ask you that question.”
I watch Sarah now, expecting her to scream something at me for daring to ask what was wrong, for forcing her hand, for making her open up her wounds and show the world what has happened.
Instead, her expression changes, like for one brief split second she is actually relieved that I have asked the question. Maybe she really wants an opening, a way to start this topic of conversation. Maybe she DOES want to take this road we were now on, but just didn’t want to be the one to send us in this direction.
“Yeah…yeah, I am actually,” she says, sounding more and more like the Sarah I have come to know and…love?… (wait, LOVE? Where did that come from?) with every passing syllable. “Actually, I’m better than OK, I’m really happy right now…it’s just that…”
For a brief moment, as she begins her response. I’m still trying to figure out why I would refer to “the Sarah I have come to know and love”. Will is equally as flabberghasted as I am.
Love? Where the hell is that coming from? What do you mean, “the Sarah you know and love”? I mean, you’ve known her for four years now so that much I can explain away, but love…I mean… when did you start to…wait a minute…
That’s as far as Will gets because he suddenly realizes where Sarah is going with this conversation of hers. He clues me in right away.
Remember that remote I was talking about a couple of paragraphs ago. Instead of rewinding, it was like Will has fast-forwarded to see how things turned out and then has decided to give me the heads up because as she speaks, I somehow know what is coming. Maybe it’s not so much like fast-forwarding as it was like watching a movie that’s such a cliché that you can see what’s coming.
And I can see what’s coming, as sure as if I had somehow written the screenplay for this movie that’s called “My Life”. I can almost see the next three words come tumbling out of her mouth. It was all I can do, some wild test of will-power not to say them along with her.
“…I’ve met somebody.”
My stomach lurches. For a moment I have this wild paranoid idea that the cooking staff at J.Q.’s had decided to sneak some rat poison or chlorine or whatever into my clubhouse…or that the mayonnaise they used must have an expiry date from back in the Carter Administration.
Or maybe it is something else altogether.
If Sarah is noticing my sudden ill-feeling, that would mean she was paying attention to me. Instead, she’s too busy telling me all about this latest development to notice. The admission that she has “met somebody” is like opening the floodgates and letting the relief wash over her and with it, all the details are rushing out with it.
As I’m busy fighting down the nausea, successfully I can thankfully add, I am watching Sarah from across the table, and I notice that this is a different kind of Sarah than I have ever seen before. She has always been quick to laugh, even at the stupid, moronic jokes that I make at my own expense but suddenly it’s like the roof of this restaurant has been lifted away and the sun is shining down just on her.
“You remember Brad, for the Christmas party?” she asks
I remember “A Brad” from the Christmas party.
Oh yeah…that dickhead!
Brad came off as one of those slick bastards you see on television that manages to charm everyone in the room, but that the viewer at home knows is an evil, conniving son-of-a-bitch that you just want to see get theirs in the end.
Anyways, Sarah knew this Brad from the office and he showed up, only semi-invited from what I could tell, to her Christmas party and proceeded to try and schmooze every higher-up in the place and any of the eligible ladies in attendance, mostly by trying to be the life of the party and making a bunch of office in-jokes that I didn’t find all that funny, but then I didn’t know the circumstances. After a while, he succeeded in doing two things: coming off as the life of the party, just as he had set out to do, and bore the living **** right out of me, which he probably didn’t give a damn about.
Now, I will freely admit that I didn’t follow him around the entire night to hear every conversation he had at the party but whenever he was anywhere near me, out came “Hey, remember that time that” followed by some story that embarrassed the hell out of the subject of whatever usually crude tale that Brad decided to regale us with.
From what I could gather, he managed to entertain about ninety percent of the people at this shin dig at the expence of the other ten percent. The 90 percent seemed to think this guy was the biggest laugh riot they’d ever met, but certainly, this can’t be THE Brad, this white bread obnoxious jerk can’t be THE Someone. Can he?
That dickhead?
Meanwhile, Sarah is still telling me all about the genesis of their relationship.
“I don’t know really how it happened. I mean, he started chatting me up at the office. You know, the water cooler type of conversation and then out of the blue he asked me out to dinner. I was kinda taken aback because it had been awhile since anyone had really asked me out like that.”
Uh hello, McFly? Hasn’t there been a certain someone who’s taken you to lunch at least once a month for the past couple of years? Hello?
Will as Biff from Back to the Future? Actually, the actor who played Biff Tannen would have been great casting for this Brad guy. But then I didn’t know him that well. Other than nodding in my direction when Sarah had made the introductions, he hadn’t really acknowledged my existence. Still, I always got the impression that had if I had worked with the guy, he would have had a field day that night at my expense.
“So, he showed you a good time, did he?” I ask, immediately regretting my choice of words.
Sarah laughs, leaning over to playfully slap my shoulder. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands in mock annoyance. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
I shake my head, suddenly finding myself not wanting to be in the usual joking mood I normally am in when I was around Sarah. “I meant, did he treat you right?” I respond, trying to force some levity into my voice, apparently with some success since Sarah doesn’t seem to notice anything.
Instead she nodded, “Oh yeah. he’s great. He’s funny; he’s smart. He took me to Luigi’s, you know, that little Italian place downtown.”
I had no clue what little Italian place downtown, but then this place was as about as upscale as a place as I ever went to. I might know where the McDonalds downtown was, but that was about it.
“He managed to order the entire dinner, from salad to desert in fluent Italian, but I think he did that just to show off, you know, impress me,” she tells me, as if it was some big secret that she’s doing me a favour by letting me in on. “He was telling me that he learned quite a bit of the language when he visited Italy in between semesters in college. Man, I so envied him for that. I was so tempted to go to Europe after high school. You remember me telling you that, right?”
I nod, as if I might, by chance, have some vague recollection about this bit of conversation she and I had about the subject. In truth, I probably could recite every single word that she had ever uttered about her dream of going to Europe from the night she and I talked about it.
It had been one of those conversations she and I had had during the last week of college, when we knew that everything was coming to an end, that in a matter of a few days, this steady secure routine of ours would suddenly be shaken up like one of those snow globes you get at Christmas time, and so we talked about what we would change if we could go back in time. I said that I would have tried to make more friends in high school, just to see what would have happened. She replied with this dream of going to Europe for a year after high school. I joked that if she had, the two of us never would have met and been able to carry on conversations such as this.
It was her reply to that comment that I will always remember.
“We still would have met. I think Fate would have made sure of that,” she said, her voice taking on the most serious tone that I had ever heard from her, “It might not have been under the same circumstances but somehow we would still have met.”
Sarah had always said that she believed strongly in Fate. She spoke of it philosophically, as if Fate was a brilliant writer that weaved bits and pieces of our lives together to create this magnificent story that kept us guessing but eventually explained everything.
Funny, if she believes that Fate was brilliant, I’m now more inclined to think the guy was a hack who had no clue what he, she or it is doing, because I guess now Fate has ensured that Sarah had met Brad, world traveler and Italian linguist. Brad, who is funny and smart and…
Is he good in bed?
Trust you, Will, to come up with that question. To give me that image, of Sarah and Brad in bed together, to contend with at this juncture.
Hey, screw knowing Italian or any other little tidbit of trivia, I just want to ask the question you’re dying to know the answer to.
And so as Will and I argue over whether Sarah and Brad had slept together on this monumental first date, one half of the subject of our “discussion” went on and on about the rest of the details of this first date, about Brad taking her to some little independent book store to check out first editions and rare books, of going to see the local university’s film festival.
And don’t you wish you could have done exactly the same thing with her? You can see it can’t you? You can see yourself walking with Sarah up and down the aisles of the bookstores, comparing what books you read in high school or as a kid. You can envision what it would have been like, sitting next to Sarah in some cramped, darkened theatre, munching on popcorn, discussing the film in detail like two film students…minus the pretentiousness.
I shrug Will off just in time to catch Sarah’s report on her trip to the film festival.
“I mean, at first, I figured it was going to be two or three hours of brooding film noir in black and white,” Sarah is saying as I turned my attention back from Will to her, “But it was actually pretty good. I mean, there was some crap there that was over-written as **** but a couple of them were pretty good. Actually, there was one or two of them that were so original, good quality film-making that I totally would recommend.”
Is this guy for real? He goes from coming off as the inspiration for the Stiffler character in “American Pie” to taking her to a fancy restaurant, to a rare bookstore, and to a college film festival? Hallmark doesn’t write crap this corny. This sounds like a personal ad.
A few minutes more of her glowing review of Brad and his dating abilities….
What? Does she want YOU to go out with him? She’s selling him like she would a new Rolls Royce.
…and then she glanced at her watch. Without me really paying too much attention, the waitress had long come by and gave us our bill so it was basically just the two of us chatting over what remained of our drinks.
“Oh crap,” she says, the first cloud appearing on her sunny skies since she had started expounding the virtues of this Brad guy. “I gotta get going if I’m going to make it back to the office in time.”
I nod, “I got the cheque. I’ll talk to ya later!”
She says her goodbyes from midway through the door leaving the restaurant. After paying the bill (and again wondering just how many more of these lunches I could afford), I head home. It’s early afternoon as I walk through the quiet side streets that separated J.Q.’s from my apartment, so there’s not much traffic. Most of the people who live in these houses have the same 9-5 Monday to Friday jobs that Sarah has and so are away at the office.
I begin to ponder this feeling, this knot that has formed in the pit of my gut almost from the moment she had said those three words: “I’ve met somebody.”
The knot that hasn’t gone away, but has only increased as the conversation about Brad and their first date had progressed. At first, I had tried to explain it away by figuring that my clubhouse hadn’t been the best one ever but I know that isn’t it. I mean, that clubhouse had sucked but not badly enough to send my guts a-churning.
About a block from my building, I come to the sickening conclusion that I can’t explain it any other way, that I’m kidding myself for not realizing what is going on. I have to face up to the truth of the situation:
I’m in love with my best friend.
YOU IDIOT!
CHAPTER FOUR
WILL
Hey, geekboy, do I get an introduction or are you just going to let the readers, those kind folks who decided to waste…er, I mean, spend their money on this little work of literature rather than getting the latest 8000-page Harry Potter offering, keep scratching their heads at why italic type pops up every few paragraphs (oh, and believe me folks, I just get more and more exposure from here on out!)?
Fine. The oh-so-polite creature that will be, if not sharing the narrating duties with me, at least offering his opinion on what goes on in these pages, is William Tracey, he’s like my devil’s advocate, that voice that all of us have in our head. Mine is simply a bit more…what’s the word I’m looking for?
Sarcastic?
I was thinking more like “vicious”, like my own inner voice is out to get me.
Hey, I resent that. I prefer to think of myself as more the Bobby “the Brain” Heenan to your Gorilla Monsoon.
Yeah, if Heenan used the F-word more times than an episode of “The Osbournes” and basically trashed every thought that came into Monsoon’s head.
So, continue with the F.A.Q. Hey, if that bitch Sarah gets one, I deserve one.
Well, I really didn’t give Sarah much of an F.A.Q. as much as just an intro into how I met her and the circumstances surrounding the early part of our relationship.
Again…you didn’t have a relationship. More like a situation.
No matter how you term it, what I had with Sarah, it was pretty cut and dry. I met her in college, we became friends a few weeks into the first semester and were really confidants for each other.
Good God, tell me you’re not going to call her your soul-mate!
For Will, things are a bit more muddled than that. I’m not sure exactly when I first became aware of his existence. He might have been created, inadvertently, from the abuse I took at the hands of my fellow classmates.
See, the stereotypical dork that you see in the movies and on TV, the one who goes through high school and indeed, life as a whole, seemingly for the sole purpose of allowing other, more socially adept citizens of our fair world, to get themselves over at the dork’s expense, really does exist. I should know, for from the moment I entered high school, I became that guy.
I was the guy whose locker was vandalized, filled with shaving cream or whatever other destructive liquid people could get their hands on. I was the guy who was tripped in the cafeteria as I walked to whatever abandoned section I was allowed to sit at. I was the guy who retreated to the far corners of the library during lunch hour, and had to hope that someone didn’t discover me there.
There was never any reprimands toward the kids who did this to me. After a while, the “dork-hunters”…
Dork-hunter: (noun) Those people whose mission it is to bring grief, discomfort and humiliation to dorks for their own amusement and the amusement of others.
….at my high school got pretty good at pulling **** on me that not only got them over with the rest of their buddies but saw to it that I ended up getting crap over it. If my the lock off my locker was stolen, I had to go to the office to get a new one, which of course meant that Vice Principal Gordon would sit me down and ask me why I kept losing my lock. Gordon was a piece of work. He basically wanted me to rat out whoever I figured was doing this to me (and I wasn’t as naïve as they made me out to be, I knew that pretty much anybody in my class was a prime suspect). He wouldn’t punish them but I think he wanted me to get the **** kicked out of me for ratting someone out.
After a while, I carried all my books, even my winter coat in my gym bag rather than put it in my locker, one that had no lock on it from Christmas my freshman year until the day I graduated.
It’s funny, I’ve read about people who endured such treatment, such torment and became stronger for it. People who retreated into music, acting, writing and turned the negative into a positive, becoming rich, famous and successful. People who were told how stupid and worthless they were and fought back, going out of their way to prove that they were better than what those high school bullies said they were.
Me? I got Will.
And not a bad bargain, really.
I got a tiny voice in my head that agreed with every single thing the people I went to high school with said. I got Will who told me that I was a piece of **** and that’s why I had no friends.
Ah, cry me a river, ya wimp. Don’t try and get me heel heat from these readers. All I was doing was telling you exactly what people thought of you. All I did was remind you what people really though of you. I took what those bastards in high school said and did to you and tried to tell you that everyone you met, in college, in later life, in the “real world” couldn’t see past what you are: a geek.
I don’t know exactly when he first made his appearance. One day he was jus there. I didn’t call him Will at that point. To me, it was just this voice in my head. Over the years, I realized that he wasn’t going anywhere, so I decided to give him a name. I took the name from Sarah’s middle name, Tracey, and the name of one of the guys who picked on me the most in high school, Will Bronson.
Will, the voice, not Bronson, ducked out on me, for the most part at least, during my college years. I guess that after being liberated from the hell that was Glen Lorne High School and becoming friends with Sarah and the rest of them, my self-esteem rose to the point where Will figured he couldn’t compete, and so he took a hike.
Okay, wise guy, as you’ll recall, despite your best intentions to look back at your college days through rose-colored glasses, there were times when I stopped by from my VACATION to remind you that just ‘ cause things were going good at the time, there was always going to be someone out there who’d put you in your place and most importantly that this little interlude from getting non-stop dork-hunted was going to be oh-so-brief.
Well, for a few months there, it was nice not to have your annoying voice reverberating in my head all the damn time.
Oh, and by the way, you can call it whatever you want. “Taking a hike”, “vacation”, I prefer to think of it as taking a breather from your high school days and getting a chance to recharge my batteries before you ventured out into the “real world”. I had me a sneaking suspicion that I’d need every little reserve of strength to keep up with you once Graduation Day came and went.
Yeah, the post-grad life of yours truly, we’re getting to that, Will.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DAY AFTER
And cue the graphic that says “Two Years Later”.
The camera pans across a small, apartment bedroom, filled with all the trappings of a failed quarter of a century life of a modern day dork. It doesn’t look much different from dork’s dorm room, save that what once looked like a quaint and sad attempt to be cool, now looks like a pathetic attempt to remember the time when he thought he might one day be the one thing (of many) that he could never be: cool.
Camera finds said dork lying in bed, his bewildered eyes belying the fact he is living and reliving the events of the previous day over and over again, in the worlds of Steeler’s Wheels “trying to make some sense of it all, but I can see it makes no sense at all.”
Thank you Will! That’ll be enough of your screenwriting efforts.
The viewer, of course, knows what Dork Boy is thinking about: the revelation that Sarah has met someone. SARAH has met someone. Sarah HAS met someone. Sarah has ME…
Yeah. We get it, Will. Sarah has met someone. It’s not like I’ve been able to think about anything else and it’s not like you’d let me. You’ve given me a nice burning lump in my stomach that I’m sure some doctor will diagnose as a bleeding ulcer or some other stomach ailment.
It’s been there since realization had hit me full-force right in the face that I wanted to be more than just friends with Sarah, and since Will’s “shock and awe” campaign on my psyche had kick-started and shifted immediately into overdrive.
Right now it feels like that side of beef that Rocky Balboa takes a round out of during the first movie.
So, you’ve got the hots for Sarah? Well, bully for you, you moron! Way to go, fall in love with someone who’s got a boyfriend. Why not plan to rob a convenience store that’s gone out of business while you’re at it?
As if it isn’t bad enough that I have to get up and get ready to go to work in about ten minutes, but rather than escape reality by being asleep, I get the distinct pleasure, and I use the term as sarcastically as possible, to lie in bed and listen to Will tell me how stupid I am and just how screwed up my life is.
I’m telling you you’re stupid because you’re a moron! Geez, it took you this long to become self-aware enough to realize what those college buddies of yours knew two years ago: that you’re in love with Sarah. And you suddenly decide to grab a clue at the worst possible moment: AFTER Sarah has already “found someone” and thus, is off-limits FOREVER.
Excuse me for falling in love with someone. I didn’t plan on it. It’s not like I thought “Hey, I think I’ll fall in love with Sarah now that she’s got a boyfriend”!
Will’s voice changes now. Now longer is he the screaming maniac that’s spewing out hate-filled obscenities at me. No, now he’s quieter, more condescending. Sometimes I hate him when he gets like this more than any other time, and this is the time that he scares me the most. Because it’s now that he’s not just a bizarre figment of my imagination, it’s now that he says what I don’t want to admit.
You didn’t just fall in love with Sarah now, did you? You’ve had…quote feelings unquote for her since the very beginning! I mean, I’ve been on your ass about you wanting to nail her just to be my usual prick self. But the fact is that you’ve got something for her. Not a lust sleep-with-em-and-leave-‘em thing but something else. You don’t want to just sleep with her, you want…a relationship.
Will says “relationship” like it’s a dirty word.
The problem is that you’ve only now begun to realize it because now she’s taken. You can have all the love and lust and caring for you her that you want, but you can’t do a thing about it. You can’t act on it, you can’t do anything about it. Hell, you can barely even talk about it out loud for fear that it might get back to her!
He’s right…as he always is whenever he stops screaming at me long enough for me to start taking him seriously. But even then he takes it too far, leads me down to dark a path for me to want to listen to him for too long.
What’s it going to be like when you see them together? His arm around her? Them sneaking kisses when they think you’re not looking or just don’t care if you are? What’s it going to be like when she tells you they’re moving in together? What’s it going to be like when you can’t even fool yourself into believing they’re NOT sleeping together? What’s it going to be like when that horrible day comes that you get that lacy white wedding invitation in the mail?
Even as he tells me these things, I can see them happening in my mind. If I listen to Will any longer, I run the risk of getting so depressed that I’ll fall back asleep and end up late for work. I head for the shower, hoping that he’ll take the hint and shut up.
But even as I’m standing underneath that deluge of water, he’s still there, standing right next to me.
In the shower? Ewww!!! Come on. Can’t you just tell them that I’m standing outside…fully clothed…and just yelling this **** loud enough so that you can hear me.
As a matter of fact, no matter where he’s supposed to be, the shower doesn’t drown him out. In fact, I’m now mouthing the words he says, as if they’re my own. I don’t have time to be self-conscious as he’s still taking me down that horrible black road of what’s to come.
If there is anyone know who can show any reason why these two people should not be joined in holy matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.
The Reverend Will Tracy, ladies and gentlemen!
And what are you gonna do, Idiot Boy? You’re just going to sit there in that itchy rented tux and watch as the woman you love gets married to some jerk who can order desert in Italian and not say a God-damned thing. Forever hold your peace? Think about it. Remember what Prince (or the Artist Formerly Known As, or TAFNAP, or that weird symbol) Forever, that’s a mighty long time…, ain’t it, you moron?
I had heard the curses, the insults, even the challenges to do something, for years now. Whenever I put myself out, whenever I got too close to someone, there would be Will. Whenever I would go out with some of my friends…
You have no friends, remember?
…or the people I worked with, there would be Will. Sometimes I would hear him even as the events of the evening progressed, as if he was some loud, drunk patron sitting at the next table.
And no matter how well the evening seemed to turn out, he would show up the next morning, as I lay in bed in that weird status between deep sleep and being full awake. He would go over, in minute detail, every interaction that I had with whomever was accompanying me, looking, in almost detective like fashion, for every would-be slight or fault. I swear, I felt like I was on trial for my actions, for their actions, for everything, only I wasn’t even allowed to defend myself.
Hey, you’d think you were on the job or something, having to sit there and take my crap and not say anything.
He would berate me if I made a stupid joke, criticize my companions if they said anything that wasn’t complementary, and would search for reasons behind any comment or even compliment. His evening wasn’t complete until he was making me feel like a complete idiot for showing up to the event and making me all but promise never to let it happen again.
Yeah, but do you ever take my advice? NO! Instead, you end up putting yourself out for these people and end up giving me all the fodder I need the next morning!
But this is different, Will was down and out angry at me. Why exactly Sarah’s going out with Brad was my fault I could not completely understand?
Because you sat there and did nothing, all those days, weeks, months, and hell even years you sat back and expected everything to fall into place. Like one day Sarah was going to look at you and immediately realize that you were in love with her and that she was in love with you and it was all going to be happy ever after. And what happened? She found somebody else. Somebody, a boring jock-ass though he might be, who got off his most-likely hairy behind, and did what you should have done years ago.
ASKED HER OUT!
By now, I’ve exited the shower, Will in hot pursuit, his breath of hate breathing down my neck as I get dried off and start getting dressed. For a moment, Will has me so riled up and disoriented that I actually stop to decide what I should wear, as if I have a choice in the matter. No, working at Video Emporium takes that decision out of my hands. Instead, I reach for the same beige pants and blue shirt it’s been predetermined that I must wear to work.
Yeah, nice to see that you’re checking out the want ads to see what other opportunities are out there. You know, heaven forbid you should make the effort to get on with your life and into a job where you don’t have to work your ass to the bone so that white trash can tell you what a lazy bastard you are.
For a moment, Will’s deluge of abuse has changed subjects. Instead of screaming obscenities at me over Sarah, he’ll do it about my job. Geez, like I don’t take enough crap from the welfare mothers who are too lazy to return their movies on time and then wonder why they get charged late fees, I have to deal with him.
“Screw you, Will,” I say as I head out the door, “if I want a guilt trip over working a minimum-wage retail job, I’ll just call my mother.”
Just as an FYI, I work a minimum-wage retail job at Video Emporium, just a little peon in the massive, world-wide video chain. What are they up to, 1500 stores in North America and even some in Europe, Japan, etc? And yet, they can’t even afford to be closed one day a year to let their employees spend Christmas with their families. Whatever.
When I graduated from college two years ago, I was sure that I was going to go out, get a great job in my field and live a happy, productive life. Unfortunately, the great bitch known as Fate had other ideas. After six months of sending out resume after resume after resume…
Okay, the reader gets the point, get on with your sorry tale of woe.
Anyways, after I finally figured out…
You mean when it finally sunk in to your thick skull that the diploma you’d worked two years to earn meant less than the paper it was printed on? Is that what you mean?
You know, Will, for someone who wanted me to “get on with it”, you sure keep interrupting. But yeah, once I realized that a job in my field wasn’t going to be presenting itself to me anytime soon, and needed a job, any job, in order to get some kind of income coming in, I decided to drop some resumes off at local retail businesses, you know, just to get a pay cheque coming in.
To be honest, brutally honest…
Just the way I like it.
…I think I must have sent out as many resumes trying to get a retail job as I did trying to get a job in journalism and with just as much success.
And with just as many ridiculously frustrating tales to tell. Go ahead Emmett, tell ‘em about the time you went in for an interview and the interviewer stood you up…in their very own store…Go ahead, tell them.
Will, this is neither time nor the place. Long story short, I did get a callback, an interview and a job at Video Emporium. I figured the job sucked, the money sucked, the hours sucked…but at least it was only temporary right? I mean, this was just until I found another job, one in journalism, right?
Your definition of “temporary” is somewhat warped there, idiot.
Temporary is going on two years now. The job has sucked since Day One. First customer reems me out because I don’t know her by name. She’d been renting there for three years and demanded to know why I didn’t know her. She called the manager the next day, said I’d been rude to her and threatened never to rent there again.
It’s not like it’s been any better since. Having to deal with white trash that figured Joe Dirt was the second coming of Citizen Kane and would scream bloody murder if we dared question their ability to return videos on time. If I had been paid a nickel for every time I had some welfare mother, with screaming kids in tow, tell me in high-pitched condescending tones that “I damn well returned that movie on time!” (and that was the nice, polite version)…well, I would have been making a hell of a lot more than I was at the joint.
However, because I was pretty much the only non-student working at our particular Video Emporium location, I got scheduled during the day and rarely on weekends. Once Friday at 5:00 kicked in, I was outta there.
Yeah, you had a really crappy situation, but one that was as tolerable as it was going to get, and you went and you ****ed that one up.
At the time, it seemed like almost a compliment. Working with a manager named Leo, I had pretty much ended up running the store.
Yeah, cause the ****ing idiot was hanging out in the back making phone calls to his friends, then disappearing in mid-shift, leaving instructions on what to tell the night shift.
Three months ago, when the **** came down on Leo though, they promoted the assistant manager, James, a decent guy to manager and he ended up promoting a couple of people to keyholders, including yours truly.
And you can make that your Number One (with a bullet) on your “All-Time Top 10 Biggest ****ups You Ever Made”, a rather lengthy and prestigious list, I might add, there Emmett.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I figured that if I got some responsibility, maybe the job wouldn’t seem so bad. There was a bit of a pay raise.
Yeah, a whole dime an hour to basically take all the **** that the manager is supposed to take when he or she wasn’t there, have really no one to pass all the raging customers off on, accept responsibility for anything the other employees do or don’t do, worry yourself sick over how short or over the cash float is and give yourself headaches trying to finish the paperwork and ensure the store looks in at least half-decent shape before you leave.
And for that, you got a dime extra an hour.
Yeah, plus gone were my free evenings and weekends. Ever since, I’ve worked every Saturday and Sunday night. Heck, all I ever seem to work is nights. And what few day shifts I have are, like today, coming off a night shift, so I go home 12:30 in the morning (if everything balanced the FIRST time) and am due back in the store at 8:00 the next morning.
Meanwhile, James, the manager who had promoted me, was gone, transferred to another store a month after I was made keyholder.
Dan replaced him. Dan is some hotshot from a store out west who by some wisdom of head office was coming here to increase our sales. Apparently his technique was to make sure none of the employees ever got a huge ego or ever forgot that for every dollar in sales that we made, we were actually supposed to have made two.
What a spot of luck! I just happen to be working with Dan today.
I’m there at my usual 10-minute early arrival time.
Yeah…so you get an extra 10 unpaid minutes of all the Dan goodness you can handle.
Yeah well, at least I won’t give Dan an excuse to make out like I’m “cutting it close, dude!”
Yeah…for all you know, he’ll look at the clock about 15 minutes from now and figure you’ve only been there a couple of minutes and you’ll call you on the carpet to explain yourself. At which time you’ll weakly try to explain you got here 10 minutes early, which he’ll dismiss with a “I think I know how to tell time, Emmett” and write you up for being late and insubordinate…or you’ll apologize saying you must have set your watch wrong and, if you’re lucky he’ll just let you off with a condescending “Well, don’t let it happen again” and feel good about himself, giving the poor ne’er-do-well dork a break…and you’ll feel like ****, knowing you were in the right but are paying for him being a moron.
Sigh…chance I’ll have to take.
One of the good things about being a keyholder…
The ONLY good thing!
…is that it means you have a key to get in.
A fact that Dan has used on many, many occasions as an excuse to show up just about any time he wants (Didn’t he show up about five minutes before his shift ended, ran down a list of things you didn’t get done, then turned around and left?) because he knows you’re a conscientious enough employee to come in early and get to work on what needs to be done.
Agreed.
By the way, that’s one thing they never taught you in English class: The correct definition of “conscientious” is “being a moron who feels duty-bound to work for others, who will then walk all over them.”
But having a key also means no more mornings sitting outside desperately trying to get the attention of the manager inside, like I did with Leo.
As I come in the front door, I notice he has the stereo up full blast, with some hardcore rap CD playing. As I headed to the back to put my stuff away, he came out of the back office.
First thing I notice: he’s decided not to adhere to his strict enforcement to the dress code that he isn’t hesitant about writing the employees up over. Meanwhile, he’s got jeans on and a black t-shirt, probably advertising whatever rapper I was going deaf having to listen to.
“Hey, Emmy!”
Dan is one of these guys that figures that if he’s really loud and obnoxious and treats everyone like they’re members of his hockey team in the locker room, it will somehow compensate for being an asshole to everyone. It doesn’t really work out too well for him.
The whole “Emmy” nickname is supposed to be cool, at least in Dan’s mind. The problem is that I think it’s just his way of not having to pronounce my whole name, like calling me “Emmy” or even worse, the “Em” he uses from time to time. It’s like he’s trying to get the idea of verbal short form over or he’s just too damn lazy to say my full name.
Either way, the way he gives me the greeting, I know that something’s up. It’s not even really a “Hey, Emmett, great to see you”, it’s more of an “Hey, Emmett…I need to tell you something”. And I can tell right off that this “Something” isn’t a good thing.
Hey, do you suppose you’re going to get fired? Maybe ol’ Danny Boy is finally tired of waiting for you to make the big ****-Up that we all know you’re capable of and is just going to make something up to get your ass outta here.
Paranoid Will strikes again. All of a sudden I get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Hey, that’s twice in the space of 24 hours. This is shaping up to be quite a week for you. And hey, don’t think of this as a bad thing. Just think of it as getting a surprise day off and finally a real incentive to get looking for another job.
“Listen, buddy…”
Oh man, it’s the dreaded “B” word. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s someone calling me “buddy”, or “pal” for that matter. Believe it or not, I have never had anyone who I would consider a buddy or pal actually refer to me in that way. As a matter of fact, I can’t even remember anyone who I even liked referring to me in that way. Usually, it’s some dickhead customer who didn’t know my name and couldn’t bother to try and read my name tag.
“I didn’t bring my uniform with me so I can’t be out on the floor today, so you’re gonna have to helm the ship with Jessica until Andrea comes in. Okay? Can I count on ya there, buddy?”
I nod, trying to make myself seem more enthusiastic than I actually feel. I mean, this is only about the third time in the last month or so he’s “forgotten” to bring his uniform to work. Somehow I don’t think I’d have gotten to a third opportunity of forgetting my uniform, but then I’m not store manager.
Oh well, at least you’re not getting fired, right?
How is it that Will now starts looking on the bright side?
And hey, you get to see Jessica! Youzah!
If Sarah was my idea of someone I wanted to make my girlfriend, my soulmate, Jessica was someone I just want to have wild sex with. She wasn’t even someone I overly liked. Our conversations usually consisted of her whining about how much she hated her job (although I guess I could relate) and/or her telling me the latest scuttlebutt on what I had screwed up during my last close. (It was always something!)
She seemed to take great delight in describing, in agonizingly minute detail, what Dan had been complaining about when it came to my shortcomings on the job. I swear, I think, one time she actually rubbed her hands with glee as she told me how Dan had been ranting about me making an addition error on some piece of paperwork. (I think I had written down $12.52 instead of the correct $12.25! Big mistake on my part, eh?)
Actually, now that I think on it, “conversation” was too strong a word to describe what she and I had. It was more just one-sided rants on her part with me either trying to fake the idea that I was listening or just going about my daily routine with her in the background.
If Jessica was a real bitch to me, at least I could take heart in knowing it was nothing personal. Everyone on staff had had at least one run-in with her and were subject to daily, if not hourly, reports on their latest “goof-up”, as she like to call them and Dan’s overblown reaction to them. The customers fared no better. On a good day, Jessica was curt and basically treated every customer as if they were interrupting some extremely important top-secret, life or death project she was embarking on. On a bad day, she would actually berate customers for any slight she imagined they had committed.
I mean, I would have loved to torn into a customer or two when they decided to be assholes about late charges they all but admitted they knew about but didn’t feel like paying. Good sense over not wanting to get fired kept my mouth shut. However, I had seen Jessica reduce at least one customer (a little girl) to tears for not understanding store specials and had lit into at least a few over their choice of videos, no less.
But God, I wanted to **** her! She made have been a total bitch but damn was she hot! On average of about once a week she’d show up to work in tight jeans that showed off her ass and a sweater that revealed a lot of her taut belly and plentiful cleavage.
Another stickler for the rules when it came to the dress code, eh, Emmett?
Whenever she wore that particular ensemble, I almost prayed that she’d be a total bitch to me. Anything that would get my mind off how much I wanted to rip that sweater off and bury my face between her breasts.
I don’t know how many nights that I’d close with her and then go home and not be able to sleep because I’d be fantacizing about the two of us, alone in the store after close, deciding to let bygones be bygones and indulge our mutual passion for each other right on Dan’s desk.
Cause you know she secretly wanted you, right Emmett?
Hey, at 3:00 in the morning after eight hours of running my ass off (usually while Jessica read a magazine, talked on the phone, went out to smoke or whatever she could come up with to NOT do any actual work) my mind isn’t exactly working the way it’s supposed to, okay? Besides, usually by the next shift that I worked with her, she had been such a bitch to me that I usually got over any “mutual passion” I had for her…until the next time she wore something tight and revealing, of course.
Speaking of which…
Her shift had started at 9:00, the same as mine. The only difference was that I had gotten there early and it was now twenty minutes later, and it was only now that she deigned to show up. There was no “Oh my God, the traffic was so horrible!” or “You are not going to believe this, there was a massive power outage in my building and my alarm didn’t go off”. There was no desperate rush to hurry in the door. It was as if she figured that the starting time to her shift was just there as a suggestion. You know, come in at 9:00…or as close to that as you feel like showing up for.
The noise of the front door being unlocked and opened startled me from my task of straightening the store. By the time Jessica made her arrival, I had finished all the morning duties that she and I were supposed to split and was getting bored, yet didn’t feel like just standing around doing nothing. It wasn’t that I was all that dedicated to the craft of video retail at which I toiled, but I knew that if Dan thought for one instant that he could nail me for slacking off, he would.
Anyways, I looked up from the drama section and saw it was Jessica coming in, sauntering in like she was doing the company some huge favour by showing up at all.
“Morning, Jessica. “ I said, just trying to be friendly, keep the workplace atmosphere as tension free as possible. She probably just waved me away, like I was some cretin so far below the range of her radar that even acknowledging my existence was a chore. Certainly she wouldn’t go out of her way to speak with me until she had something to bitch about.
I barely noticed, as I wasn’t really looking at her face (for all I knew, it might not have been Jessica), instead trying desperately not to stare at the rest of her. She was wearing a blue turtleneck sweater that at least made it down to her waist but damn if it didn’t show off her chest. It was like a magnet for the eyes that just drew them to her breasts. It must have ****ed up the mind as well because the store could have been on fire, I could have been on fire, and all I would have been able to think about was groping those same breasts.
Good thing there was no one in the store and you had a shelving unit between Jessica and the bulge in your crotch.
Give me some credit. I manage to control things “down there” at least until I get home.
The best part, however, was when she turned to go into the office. Her jeans were so tight that I could tell what kind of underwear she was wearing and let’s just say I instantly knew that she wasn’t wearing full-backed panties.
I had often wondered how Jessica could get away with some of the things she did. Being rude to the customers, coming in late, doing as little actual work as possible, wearing jeans to work. As I finished straightening drama and headed back up to the front counter, I passed by the office door. As I did so, I heard Jessica giggle. It wasn’t a “that’s the funniest joke I’ve ever heard” kind of giggle. It was more of “I can’t believe we’re having sex in the office” kind of giggle.
Yes, I had often wondered how Jessica got away with some of the stunts she pulled. That was until about six or seven months ago when I first overheard these same sounds and realized that she was ****ing Dan. The shock of said event was soon replaced by a different kind of emotion once I got an earful of Jessica moaning, a sound that would keep repeating itself in my head in the wee hours of the night for weeks and months to come.
This time, however, I didn’t bother listening in. I had heard it all before and my lust for Jessica was such that if I was going to make it through the day without popping a boner in front of a customer, I needed to get my mind on something else. Besides, the two of them ****ing in the backroom meant that I was basically on my own for the next couple of hours. Desire had long since given way to jealousy and annoyance.
Thankfully, for all of Dan’s flaws, he always made sure he left his key out so at least I could open up without disturbing him and Jessica’s morning “business conference”.
Oh, that’s a good one. Why don’t you make witty little sayings for all of your references towards Dan and Jessica’s sex life?
For your information, I would…except that I can’t think of anything else right at the moment.
Dude, that’s what rewrites are for.
Anyways, thankfully, to date Dan HAD remembered to leave me a key. Part of me lived in dread when the day came that he forgot his key until Jessica was already going down on him…or in whatever position she got herself into when they were back there…
Reinventing the wheel? (See, I can drop in the sayings for you!)
Yeah, good luck with that…and part of me was actually hoping that that day would come so that I could go back and bang on the door to tell Dan we had to open up…just to see the look on his face (and that of Jessica’s) when the door opened.
See, now you’re thinking a little more like me. Of course, Dan’d probably write you up for daring to interrupt his seminar on sexual harassment in the workplace (another winner!) with Jessica, but maybe it’d be worth it.
Oh, it’d be worth it. But that day wasn’t today and so I ended up having to run myself ragged getting all the returns checked in and put away, making the “late tape calls” and dealing with customers, a real chore since it was a little busier than normal for a Thursday morning. I swear, customers can smell blood. If they know that a clerk is overwhelmed, more and more show up all the time.
I often wonder if there isn’t an internet site or something. You know: rudecustomer.com.
Thankfully, the two hours between our store opening at ten and the arrival of the noon hour only dragged like four or five instead of six or seven like normal and I got some relief in the form of another employee, Andrea.
“Good morning, Emmett,” Andrea says as she comes in the door. Andrea is one of these people who’s always in a good mood, always perky.
Yeah, it’s always fun to work with people like that in retail. You can start taking bets with yourself over how long before she cracks up and goes psycho.
You’re such a sadistic ****, Will.
Oh, like you aren’t thinking the same thing. Andrea is one of these people who goes into retail as a way to “work her way through college” after being on the cheerleading squad and the prep squad and every other happy-go-lucky squad in high school. She’s lived such a sheltered life that she figures that everyone she meets wants to be her best friend.
“Hey, Andrea.” I reply. She gives me a wave and heads toward the back office, to put her stuff away in her locker. Suddenly I realize that if she goes to the back, she might interrupt Dan and Jessica’s “business meeting”.
“Oh, you might want to knock before you go back there,” I yell. Thankfully, I managed to remember what was going on back there BEFORE Andrea walked in on them.
A few moments, Andrea comes back out on the floor. She kinda smirks at me.
“What is it?” I ask, knowing full well the reason behind the look.
“Looks like Dan and Jessica have had a very productive morning,” she replies. “You been stuck out here all by your lonesome all shift?”
I nod, grateful that I have someone to help me out if and when I need it, plus I finally have someone to talk to.
Hey, dickwad. What do you call me? You know you can always chat me up, anytime day or night.
Okay, let me rephrase that. I finally have someone I can talk to that other people can physically see and won’t want to have me committed for talking to. Besides, no matter how overly upbeat Andrea may be, she remains my favourite co-worker.
“Hey, have you ever been to B.C.’s?” she asks a few moments later.
B.C.’s? B.C.’s? The name sounds familiar. I all but assume that it’s some college bar downtown.
“I don’t think so,” I reply. “Why, is it any good?”
“Yeah, me and a bunch of my friends from school went there the other night,” she informs me. “You should come out with us sometime.”
I shrug, “I don’t know. I’m not really into that whole bar scene. Too many people, too much noise.”
Yeah, you went to HOW many bars with Sarah and the rest of them back in college and yet you’re shrugging off this invite from Andrea?
I’m shrugging off this line of questioning from Will. After all, that was college, it was a long time ago. I guess I’m not into the whole college scene anymore.
A long time ago? Man, this isn’t some flashback from the 60s or something. It was a couple of years ago.
A customer comes up at that point and wants to know if we have any copies of some movie that played on the CBC a couple of years ago. He doesn’t know the title but he tries, haphazardly, to describe it to us until I realize he’s talking about “The Arrow”. After I figure this out, check to see if we have it and all but hold his hand, directing him to the video, I head back to the cash where Andrea is waiting to continue the conversation.
That’s the problem with trying to talk to co-workers while working in a retail setting. You spend a half an hour on a two-minute conversation, and either your boss or the customers themselves always act like anything not directly related to business is off-limits.
“It’s not really that kind of bar, actually,” Andrea says, almost in self-defence. “It’s almost like a coffee bar, where people sit around, talk, listen to some musicians, etc.”
A pretentious college bar where pretentious college students talk about art and politics and philosophy. Yeah, you’d fit in there well…
Holy ****, you’re doing it again?
What?
You’re imagining yourself asking Sarah to this B.C.’s! You’re imagining the two of you, sitting in some secluded dimly-lit corner, smoking cigarettes and drinking what passes for coffee in those big, over-sized cups and talking about life and ****.
So what if I am?
Okay, first of all, in case you’ve forgotten for one iota: Sarah has a BOYFRIEND…
Thanks for bringing that up, just in case I had forgotten for two seconds.
And second of all, this girl, Andrea, is basically inviting you out to hang with her and her friends at this bar.
Okay, a second ago, you were bad-mouthing Andrea as being some ex-high school cheerleader and you were calling this bar and its patrons “pretentious”.
Yeah, well that was before she made the invite. I mean, if you go out to this B.C.’s place with Andrea and her friends, maybe something will develop between you two.
With Andrea? Come on, Will. I mean, for someone who is always lambasting me for wanting to date Sarah, you’re really way off the mark here.
Oh really?
Yeah, I mean Andrea is nice and all but I mean, what do we have in common?
Well, for starters, you work together, there’s at least one topic of conversation to get things rolling.
Oh man, I don’t want to be that guy.
What guy?
The guy that can’t do anything but talk shop with his co-workers outside of work. I mean, I’ve been to these little social gatherings…Christmas parties, the like, and as much as I usually come off as the resident nerd from what Will tells me, at least I can say I’m not the guy that does nothing but prelude all his stories with “Hey, remember the time that…”
As I recall, one of those guys went from “That Guy” to dating Sarah! But getting away from that for a moment, you mean to tell me that you’re going to blow this little offer from Andrea off.
I don’t know, I mean, Andrea is nice and all but when I think about her, there’s nothing there. It’s just…oh, Andrea from work. But when I think about Sarah…something happens, there’s something else going on there. It’s like, nothing else matters when I think about her.
****ing gag me! You need to take the blinders off.
What does that mean?
Never mind. I can see what you’re getting yourself into.
And just what is that supposed to mean?
You don’t want to even explore the possibilities with Andrea on the off-chance that Sarah breaks up with Brad. You know, you don’t want to take yourself off the market on the off-chance that Sarah ends up back ON the market. (Of course, you realize that you’re a completely naïve moron for thinking that Sarah will ever be available?)
For once, I’m glad that a customer comes up to the cash at that exact moment. Even the idiocy of the modern-day video renter seems a more positive alternative than listening to Will simultaneously badger me about my feelings toward Sarah and my lack of feelings towards Andrea.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for a movie, but I’m not sure what the title of it is?” the customer explains.
Well, that’ll be a big help! I’m sure I can track it down from here.
Thanfully, Will is always willing to give me a break when there’s a customer to make snide, yet thankfully unheard, comments about.
“Do you recall who was in it?” I ask, trying to gleam some small pittance of information to help me in my quest.
“Well, no but the trailer for it was on one of the movies that I saw last week at Cinema 8. Don’t you keep track of those things?”
His tone is now very sarcastic, like he’s hinting that by not having accompanied him to the theatre, I haven’t done my job correctly.
“Well, sir,” I reply. “If it was a trailer you saw in a theatre, it probably won’t be out on video for a while yet.”
“Hmmph!” is the reply I get along with “Well, I guess I won’t be renting any movies here today.”
The customer, suitably offended, storms out of the store. I shake my head, wishing I could shake the memory of the entire incident out of my head.
“What?” I hear from a familiar female voice. “Is he blaming you because a movie isn’t out on video yet?”
It’s Andrea. Part of me is ashamed that someone else saw me on the receiving end of such treatment. For some reason it’s always better to suffer in silence. However, another part of me also laughs at such absurdity that’s so apparent to an on-looker. Almost…and I stress the word “ALMOST” makes me realize that that customer was a complete dickhead and I shouldn’t worry over it.
Sure, like **** you won’t worry over it. You’ll replay this incident and every one else like it over and over and over in your head for days on end.
Sadly, Will is right. Tomorrow, likely the first thing I’ll think of is that FN asshole. Meanwhile, I’m still laughing at Andrea’s reaction to it. It’s nice to know that someone else realizes what I go through, mostly because Andrea, I’m sure, has had her share of idiot customers.
“Don’t you love how they always have to get that little rib in about not renting here?” I comment, since that always seems to be the part that stings the most. I can’t magically produce something that doesn’t exist, so I’m at fault for any monetary losses we may suffer because of it.
Andrea laughs and nods. “The Video Emporium corporation is going to fall to pieces because we, the store level employees, won’t rent non-existent videos to our customers,” she replies, in her best newscaster voice. “Better get that resume ready, Emmett. We’re going to be unemployed soon.”
By now, despite of myself, I’m laughing along with Andrea. “God,” I add, “I hope McDonalds is hiring!”
Andrea throws her head back, laughing. She has such a great laugh, like you just want to…Just for a moment, I wonder…
Want to…what? Wonder? About what? Call Sarah up and tell her all about it?
Dan picks this particular moment to come out of his office. He shoots both Andrea and I a look that says that if we’re up at cash cracking each other up, we must not be working hard enough. I manage to adapt a more sober persona. Andrea tries as well but is still smiling about my “McDonalds” comment.
Lemme guess! You’re worried that he heard you wondering aloud if McDonalds was hiring and now you’re scared ****less that he thinks you’re on the verge of quitting (which you should be, mind you!) as will start taking steps to show you the door.
Of course, the paranoia that just such a scenario is on the verge of playing itself out starts to creep in. Still, part of me doesn’t care. I’m more pissed that he, the store manager, who has spent all morning ****ing one of my co-workers, thinks that Andrea and I aren’t working hard enough simply because we crack a joke or two to take the edge off.
For a brief moment, with guts that come out of who knows where, I stare right back at him, before I decide to go check the return box. I do get the satisfaction in knowing that he looked away first, and darted back into the backroom.
Gotta admire his stamina. He’s been…uh…
Serving his sentence?
Not a great one but I’ll take it. Okay, “serving his sentence” for the better part of three hours now and he manages to go back at it after a two or three minute rest period. Jessica’s gonna be walking funny when her shift ends today.
I chuckle at the image that Will plants in my head to go along with his wisecrack. I’m still grinning like an idiot when I come back to see Andrea at the cash.
“What?” she asks, all ready to giggle at whatever I’ve just found so humourous.
I glance meaningfully towards the door to the back office.
“They’ve been at it for three hours now,” I inform her, “Jessica’s gonna be walking funny when she goes home today.”
See, it’s not all mean-spirited putdowns about your shortcomings? Sometimes it’s such comedic gold that you use it to get over.
Andrea bursts out laughing but slaps her hand over her mouth to mute herself somewhat. For a moment, I glance back towards the door, horror-striken at the idea that Dan might come out again and give us both ****. He never appears.
Maybe Jessica’s moaning in orgasmic pleasure is drowning out the noise. Maybe he’s going down on her and she’s got her thighs (and luscious thighs they must be) clamped over his ears.
While the idea of Jessica “moaning in orgasmic pleasure” is something I’ll have to think about later, the idea of Dan sticking his head between her thighs is something I’d rather not have visualized.
Secure in the knowledge that Dan is “occupied” with something else and not about to bawl us out…
Cause he’s too busy balling…
I get the point, Will. Anyways, since he’s staying in the back, I turn my attention back to Andrea, whose face has turned red because she was laughing so hard and is wiping away a tear at this moment.
“Thank God, he didn’t hear me,” she whispers. “Oh my God, Emmett, that was so funny.”
For the moment, the guy who gave me **** because I wouldn’t rent him a video for a movie that hasn’t even played in theatres yet is a million miles away.
And yet, the idea of you and Andrea is a million and one miles away?
Not now, Will, let me just enjoy the moment.
CHAPTER SIX
EVEN HITLER
I decide to walk home after my shift that day, telling my folks that since it was a nice day, I could use the exercise. I try to block out the irate phone call I got from some woman who had come home to find a message regarding a late movie charged to her account. Of course, like clockwork she calls a half hour before I’m set to leave for the day and proceeds to rip into me like I’m the biggest piece of sh*t walking the face of the earth and single-handedly responsible for every ill in her life, simply because I called to say that the copy of “Lilo and Stich” was four days overdue.
Funny how it’s supposed to be your fault that they’re too damn lazy to get their movie back on time.
Just another day at the office…or the video store, rather.
Yeah…an office job would be sweet compared to what you have. Instead of working one or two day shifts a week and getting home at a normal time and spending the rest of the week (and weekends) exhausted because you didn’t get home until one in the morning, you could be getting off this time every day..
And so I figure that if I walk home, it’ll gimme a chance to work off some of the frustration I felt. The problem is that I’m becoming aware of a weird little phenomenom that started almost from the moment that Sarah said she’d “met someone”.
Every time I look around, all I see are people in love. I swear to God, there’s not a woman in my age bracket, or out of my age bracket for that matter, who hasn’t got some guy all but attached to her. And the killer part is that it’s not like they’ve given their hearts (not to mention other, more unmentionable, things) to what might amount to a half-decent stand-up kind of guy. Nah, the best looking women I’m coming across, the real cute ones who look like they might have a brain in their head, they’re all carting around some of the scummiest-looking losers I could ever imagine.
Hey, maybe if you didn’t shower for a week and listened to heavy metal and wore a black rock t-shirt and treated girls like crap, you’d have someone in your life, too!
Seriously, every girl I see who looks even the least bit attractive and interesting has already been snatched up by some greaseball who looks like he got rejected from Metallica’s road crew.
I know that Will would probably has come up with a really great comeback line for that, but our internal conversation is interrupted by some asshole yelling something at me as he drives by. I can’t understand what he said but by the smirk on his face, I can tell it was probably something profound that got him over with his buddy behind the wheel.
Amazing how these guys get courage when they’re flying by at 40-50 miles per hour. Oh well, as long as he gets props from his buddy for doing it, I guess that’s all that matters. Besides, he probably knows that I don’t have to necessarily understand what he’s saying to get the point of his little statement.
I shrug. After the twenty-four hours that I’ve just concluded, it was par for the course that I should get geek-hunted like that. A half-block goes by while I try and translate whatever he said into whatever he meant me to hear.
After a while, I just give up, assume that he called me some variation of “geek” or “nerd” or “fag” or whatever the latest term of disparagement is these days.
Soon, Will is back to talk about my lack of anything even remotely resembling a love life or friendship or relationship.
You wanna know what’s really weird?
I contemplate reliving my phone conversation with that broad at work instead of answering his question, but in the end I reply.
“No, what’s weird?”
Even Hitler had a girlfriend.
What? Eva Braun.
Yeah. I mean she was no Sarah but she fell for Hitler.
So what does this little tidbit of information have to do with anything.
****, do I have to spell it out for you? Here’s Hitler, this psycho madman who plots to do away with the entire Jewish race, starts the most horrific conflict in human history, basically murders anyone he doesn’t like or trust…and yet, this Eva Braun chick becomes his mistress, lover, girlfriend, whatever you want to call it.
Right? And?
AND it meant that Hitler had someone who thought he was boyfriend material. Meanwhile, here you are, little nobody Morrison, who barely has any friends, much less anyone in your life who gives two ****s about you romantically.
Thanks, Will, thanks for bringing that up.
Oh, but it gets better once you start contemplating things. I mean, if a monster like Hitler could get himself a girlfriend and not only do you not have a girlfriend, for chrissakes you don’t even have anyone in your life you could even ask out, can you imagine what that means? I mean, how far down the food chain do you have to be? I mean, if Hitler has more of a love life than you do, you must be pretty much the lowest of the low.
I hurry my steps, hoping I can get home and have some human contact before Will goes any further. As I do in so many endeavours, I fail.
You’re always wondering why customers treat you like such a piece of ****? As ignorant and lazy as they may be, they’re not completely stupid. They can tell that you’re so far beneath them, that they don’t even have to employ common human decency when they interact with you. I mean, maybe you can take some small amount of sick and twisted pride in the fact that you’ve carved out a new plateau in being pathetic.
I’m within sight of my apartment when I pass a young couple, probably not even out of high school. The girl’s nothing special but the guy she’s with looks like he’s stoned. He shoots me a look that says that he could beat the crap out of me just to impress his girl but I’m not worth it.
I look away quickly, stare down at my feet until they’re well out of range.
Surprised he didn’t call you something. You know, at least make the minimum effort to put you in your place and gain some points with his girlfriend. Of course, maybe you’re not even worth that.
Even Hitler had a girlfriend. It sounds ludicrous that I should be upset by so outlandish an idea.
But it stings just the same.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AN INVITATION TO PAIN
It’s been another long, frustrating, and above all pointless day in a long series of them. It’s one of those days in one of those weeks that make up one of those months where you know the days have been going by, but you can’t remember a damn thing that has happened over the course of all those days, like one day blends into the other.
I get up in the morning and surf the Internet for a while, maybe update my computer baseball season (the Jays were trailing the Red Sox by a half-game in the wild card race, ironically closer in my imaginary, computerized world to the playoffs than they’d been since 1993, have lunch and then go back to sleep, so I can get up around 4:00 to get ready to go to work until midnight, at which time I come home and try and sleep for a few hours before I repeat my routine, verbatim, again.
It’s just after 1:00 in the morning when I unlock the door to our apartment. I’m still wired and frazzled by another shift where nothing went right.
“Emmett?” I hear my Mom call out, the sleepiness evident in her voice.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I whisper as if that’s going to magically not disturb their sleep.
As I pass by their bedroom door, I can see my Mom in her nightgown in the doorway.
“How was your night?” she asks.
I give a tired sigh. “It’s over.” I reply.
My Mom laughs at that. She’s had days like that and given the same reply, so I figure it’s okay to borrow it. I tell her I’ll see her in the morning and she goes back to bed.
I head into my room and decide to check my e-mail as I get undressed. I’m too jacked up on adrenaline so I know I won’t be able to sleep for at least another hour.
For all the great rave about the advent of e-mail being a great way to keep in touch with people, that seems to have passed me by. Nine-tenths of the e-mail I receive is stuff that, in printed form, would have been tossed in the nearest trash bin when they received it in their mailbox. All I ever seem to get was junk-mail, ads, newsletters that I had signed up for but never actually read and the off e-mail from Pete, which is mostly just jokes he’s found on the Internet.
But this night is different. When I check my e-mail, I notice, among the myriad of trash, one from “SarahR” entitled “Invite”. If Will was a physical being instead of just a figment of my imagination, I would hi-five him, that’s how jacked I am.
It has been a while since I have heard from Sarah…
Geez, I wonder what she’s been up to.
That’s the best snide remark you could come up with, Will? Geez, I would have figured you would have gone with “I wonder what she’s been doing…or rather who’s she’s been doing?”
Hey, it’s been a long day, even us devil’s advocates get tired sometimes, you know. Besides I kinda figure that we already know the answer to that question.
The e-mail itself pretty much sums that up.
And before you get too excited there, Emmett, the e-mail wasn’t written specifically to you. It’s not like Sarah took time out of her busy schedule doing whatever and whoever she’s been doing lately to update you specifically on what’s going on in her life. Instead, it’s simply a mass e-mail that you probably got included only because you’re in her address book.
It reads:
Hey there,
Brad and I are having a get-together, an “End of Summer” party if you will. The date is August 25th, the time is 7:00 until however late you want to make it. It’s B.Y.O.B. plus some snacks would be good.
For those not familiar with the location, it’s 29 Briarhill Street.
Cheers,
Sarah
I have mixed feelings after reading that e-mail. Part of me is kind of excited about getting an invite as it would be great to see Sarah, plus (I must assume) some of the old gang from college. On the same token, if she and Brad are now throwing parties together, it must mean that they’re getting pretty serious.
Yeah, I mean if they’re doing the social scene as a couple, it ain’t a whole lot of steps until they move in together and the next thing you know… Dum-dum-da-dum …Here comes the Bride!
Thanks, Will, as if my life doesn’t have enough suckiness in it, be sure to start that train of thought about Sarah getting married to this idiot for good measure.
So, the question is: do you go to this? I mean, you could say that there’s some deal at work you can’t get out of.
Ah, come on, Will. This party of Sarah and Brad’s is a good two weeks away. Dan is such a slacker when it comes to doing the schedule that he probably won’t have the schedule for the 25th done for at least another week yet. That gives me plenty of time to book the night of the party off.
Yeah, you know that, I know that, Dan and the rest of the staff at the store know that, but Sarah doesn’t know that.
Or does she? I mean, I’m sure I’ve bitched about not knowing my schedule to her at least a few times in the past.
Ah, she’s not going to remember. Besides, as much as getting bitched at by some white trash bitch about her late charges may suck, it can’t really be any worse for your fragile psyche than watching Brad suck face with Sarah for the entire night while everyone around you laughs and tells them what a cute couple they make.
I’m sure they’re not quite that much of an exhibitionist couple, Will. If in fact they are sleeping together…
IF? You are either so ****ing naïve you need to go back to kindergarten, or you are just in total denial.
…I’m sure they won’t be making out in the middle of the party.
Even if all they do is give each other a little peck on the cheek, it’s gonna rip your ****ing heart out, so they might as well showcase their 69-ing ability for all their friends to see. Same difference.
Deep down, I know that Will is right, but on the same token, I figure that maybe seeing them Sarah and Brad together, as a couple, is just what I need to get over this silly crush I have on her. I mean, maybe this is like the acid test for me. I’ll go to this party, see Sarah with Brad, and as much as it might be weird, maybe this will erase all the feelings I have for her.
I don’t hear anything from Will in response to that, which kind of startles me because I would have figured that he’d have been all over that idea. I don’t know if perhaps he’s just loading up to deliver his criticism in berserker mode.
Oh yee of little faith! Actually, for once you might just have something there. Personally I don’t think this has a hope in hell of actually working, but it at least sounds good in theory.
Will’s agreement stuns me, and at the same time fills me with some confidence that I haven’t had for a while. Of course, I know this is too good to last.
Actually, knowing your thought process as well as I do, what’s more likely to happen is you’ll show up at this deal, see Sarah and Brad together and instead of dismissing any thoughts that she’ll end up with you one day, instead you’ll desire her more because you know it’s something you can’t have. I mean, everybody wants what they can’t have. Meanwhile, the thought of the two of you NOT being together will break your heart and push you closer to that brink of insanity we both know you’re headed for. My advice: tell her you can’t make it.
Maybe I should listen to Will. Maybe I should just leave well enough alone, save for an e-mail apologizing for not being able to make it. Instead, I go in the next day and book the weekend of the 25th off.
Of course, Dan has to know, in great detail, what I’m up to. I try to downplay it by saying that a friend of mine was having a get-together which is, after all, what Sarah’s e-mail had called it.
“Oh, Emm’s going partying, are ya?” Dan instantly says, and while I’m sure he is going for “cool frat boy” he still manages to end up doing the “condescending asshole” gimmick.
I so do not want to have this conversation and yet here I am, just kinda hanging around the back office on my lunch break and while I’m sure I could go and sit outside for the remainder of my break (it is a pretty nice day out), it’d probably seem pretty rude and Dan’d more than likely would hassle me for ducking out on his conversation.
And so, I just sit there and have to take it, smiling and nodding and hoping that it will be over soon. I would add that I hope to escape with at least some of my dignity intact but, as I was only too aware, that isn’t the way things went in these situations.
“So, you gonna get all liquored up?” Dan continues. Same attempt at being the college frat brother, same result as being the asshole.
I just shrug, then add, “Nah, I’m not really into the whole ‘getting drunk’ scene.”
Yeah, dickhead, unlike some people who probably get plastered back here in the office after doing one of the staff members.
Dan is aghast at my reply. “You’re not?” It’s all I can do not to laugh when I see the exaggerated expression on his fat kisser. It’s as if his whole world has been shattered. I guess he can’t possibly comprehend that there is someone out there who doesn’t figure that getting sloshed with their buddies is the best way to spend a night out.
Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe he figured I was going to admit that yes, indeed this was THAT kind of party and so he could hold that over my head for the rest of the time that I knew him. I can see him envisioning himself bringing my getting drunk up at every possible opportunity.
“Hey, you’re renting ‘A Guy Thing’. That’s where that guy gets drunk. Emmett over there, he went to a party and got drunk one time. Yeah, he’s the store lush…heheheheheh!”
Instead, Dan seems rather crushed that he is losing the opportunity to get something on me. For a moment, he almost looks like a kid finding out there is no Santa Claus. It was all I can do not to hug him and tell him that everything would be all right.
Rather than get mushy, I just reply that I had never liked the taste of alcohol in my limited experience with the stuff, which is true, but I say it more to fill the rather awkward silence that has filled the room than as any kind of revelation. I don’t know why I care whether or not there was any discomfort between us. Truth be known, there are about a dozen things I can think of off the top of my head over which I should pop him in the mouth. I guess it’s just a case where I figure that this workplace is so full of tension and stress to begin with, I want to do my best to minimize it.
I guess I needn’t worry Even as I question why I am even TRYING to get over with this guy, Dan is already listing about a dozen or so drinks I should try since they minimalize the taste of the alcohol content.
Okay, that guy knows way too much about alcohol for someone who works in the video retail industry.
Tell me about it. Of course, I have to wonder why all the alcoholics you see in these anti-drinking ads are all 40-something office workers. I’d be willing to bet that the average retail worker has more reason to go on a raging drinking spree than any office worker could on their worst day.
Meanwhile, dear reader, Dan is one of the few things that Will and I totally agree on.
Ah, but I also think you’re a lazy coward for not trying harder to get the hell out of this job so that you won’t have to deal with him any more. But no, as horrible as this place is, it’s safe, isn’t it. It’s better to stay in a job that you hate and that you’re so damned over-qualified for, it’s sad, than to strike out and actually get the very type of job that you keep dreaming you’ll find.
Before we get into all that, let me nip it right in the bud. It’s nothing that Will hasn’t brought up before and probably won’t bring up again. The truth is that for every hour I spend actually checking the classifieds and the various job boards on the Internet, I spend 10 hours dreaming about a better job and another 10 being pissed off at customers’ stupid complaints. The ratio between time spent looking for another job and time spent wishing I had another job wasn’t even close.
By this time, Dan has meandered his way back to the back office. Jessica wasn’t in today so he was either going back to jerk off or just catch up on his phone calls to his buddies.
Or both? I mean, he is supposed to be management and probably knows how to…uh…multi-task.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NOT QUITE THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
As I guess I had decided right from the moment I got her e-mail, I ended up going to Sarah’s party. Of course, Will was fighting it from the word “GO”, listing off every reason he could think of, from the legitimate to the just plain paranoid.
Hey, I still think that my idea that your invite was just so that the rest of the guests had someone to pick on was a distinct possibility. Remember the movie “Dogfight” with River Pheonix? Maybe Sarah was tossing a party where all the legitimate guests had to invite a real loser and the person who roped in the biggest loser won and with you, she figured she was a shoe-in!
I swear to God, sometimes I think that Will moonlights as the voice inside Oliver Stone’s mind as well as mine.
Hey, don’t even get me started on my whole “Oswald survived and was killed in Vietnam” theory?
Even when I was working my wonderful 12-7 shift that Dan somehow scheduled me for, I kept debating whether or not I should go. Will kept telling me that Dan had just put me on for such a strange shift (9-5 and 5-midnight were the norm for me) just to screw up my plans. I couldn’t really disagree there. However, Will took it a step further and came up with the idea that this was a sign, a sign that fate didn’t want me going to Sarah’s party, a sign that I should just go home, pop in a DVD and stew in my own loneliness and anti-social-ness.
Everything that shift became a game between Will and I. If the next customer was rude, that was fate telling me to stay home. If Dan ended up actually staying out on the floor (rather than hiding in the back) for more than a half hour straight after I got back from break, that was a sign that I should go. In the end, I’d like to think that the “Go to Sarah’s” count was more than the “Stay home” count but in all truthfulness, I had lost track by about 3:30.
Oh come on, more bad things ALWAYS happened to you at work than good things. You just lost track of the rude, condescending customers, Dan’s stupidity and Jessica’s slackness.
Maybe I did. Maybe it was just a case where I was so burnt out from work that I wanted to go out and do something out of the ordinary. Rather than spending another wasted evening in front of my computer waiting for e-mails that never came or chat buddies that were always too busy having a life, I wanted to hang out with Sarah.
The next thing I knew, it was 8:00 and I was knocking on the door to Sarah’s place. When the door opened, instead of Sarah, like I expected, it was some guy I had never seen before. He was wearing a green sweater vest and was clutching a beer.
“Help you, buddy?” he said.
Yeah, dude! I’m here for the kegger!
“Hi. I’m a friend of Sarah’s.” was the only thing I could think of to say. For a moment, I wondered if I should have printed out the e-mail that she had sent me and brought it along, sort of proof that I was invited.
Oh yeah. That wouldn’t have looked too dorky.
“You from the office?” he asked, in a tone that said “Dude, you ain’t from the office!” One of those questions where the person asking it already knows the answer but they ask just to confirm the information they already know.
I shook my head. “Nah, I went to college with Sarah.”
The guy just kinda looked me over.
Hmm…I wonder what word went through his head. I’ll bet it started with “G” and rhymed with meek.
Well, be that as it may. It was only a few seconds…rather long seconds, mind you…then he moved aside and waved me in.
“Sarah’s around here somewhere,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, as I moved past him, not an easy job since he had moved aside about an inch or two, little more.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be at the bar.
Who was he fooling? Will’d be tagging along right next to me for the duration of the night and if he wasn’t dissecting every bit of conversation directed towards me (whether to my face or overheard) and letting me know just exactly how little people in the room thought of me, he’d be taking notes for a full discertation first thing in the morning.
Hey, you think working at Video Emporium is tough, trying being an inner voice. It’s go, go, go. 24-7.
God, next thing he’ll be likening himself to the Post Office. You know, rain, sleet, snow.
Well, we’re both the bearer of bad news that people don’t want to have to deal with.
And you’re about to drive me postal. One thing I had to give Will, he had the ability to make sure his comments and observations were known to me no matter how loud the music was. And believe me, whoever had cranked the stereo must have owned stock in hearing aides. A few hours of this and I’d be Pete Townshend-like.
Do you mean you’d be looking up kiddy porn on the Net or destroying hotel rooms?
I mean, I’d be deaf, cause see Pete Townshend is…
I got the joke, ya retard!
I walk around the house, trying to see if I can find Sarah. I’m also secretly hoping that maybe she invited some of the people we went to college with. When I was getting ready, a vision of a joyous, maybe even tearful reunion might be in the cards.
And hey, maybe you’d decide to all quit your jobs, re-enroll in McCallum College and hang out in the dorm…just like old times.
But by ten minutes in, I realize that’s not going to be something that would pan out.
Geez, what a surprise!
As I continue to scout around for Sarah, who looks to be the only person I’d recognize, all I’m seeing are young professional types, the species formerly known as yuppies. They’re drinking beers and wine coolers in jeans that look like they’d cost more than my bi-weekly pay cheque. Here and there is some guy who has the jock-ass gone corporate look to them. You know, the football star who twisted his ankle in the last game of senior year and got their old man to give them a desk job managing the family business is some big corporation that deals in medical supplies or software. The guy at the door fits that description.
Man, I’ll bet ninety-five percent of these people just got off the golf course or out of the spa an hour before they showed up here. I wonder if any one of them has ever had to work past their safe little 9-5 schedule. They push pieces of paper around to the different departments all day and figure they have to go out and get a buzz on to “blow off some steam”.
Whenever a song starts to fade out, I catch bits and pieces of the conversation. It’s all about their retirement packages and renting a cottage out by some lake and how the company is ****ing them around with their benefits packages. A few of them are still talking shop, throwing out catchphrases and buzzwords and talking in lingo that I could be standing on a step ladder and still have them talking over my head.
After about ten minutes that felt like an hour wandering around the crowded house, breathing in more cigarette smoke than was probably healthy and seeing a bunch of corporate suits-at-play that I had never seen before, Will was starting to make noise.
How can she stand you up in her own house, dude? I mean, shouldn’t the little hostess-with-the-mostest be around somewhere? Maybe she knew she had to go out of town and figured that since Brad was throwing a party for his buddies, she’d invite you so he and his cronies would have someone to make fun of and this bit with you wandering aimlesslyais part of the joke. Man, I give it five more minutes and then we bolt. I mean, if we leave now, you can go home, have a shower, watch “6 Feet Under” and go to bed.
That’s Will for you. He’s always thinking about what we have time to do if we get out of an uncomfortable situation that very instance. Normally, I’d disregard his plan of action and hang around and see what happens. Right then and there, I was beginning to think that heading home might not be such a bad idea.
Hey, are you sure THIS is her place? I mean, she’s never really invited you over? Maybe there’s another party going on down the block and THAT’S where you’re supposed to be.
It was maybe a minute or two later, even as Will was all but making me promise to make one more circuit of the living room and then heading out…
Yeah, I’m sure the guy working the door won’t be so hesitant about letting you LEAVE.
…when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Will got to my brain first and had to sneak in the idea that it was some idiot who decided to finally start the public ridicule that was coming at my expense. He’d been expecting it, I’d been expecting it and perhaps now it was starting.
Instead it was Brad. Will still thought that maybe it was going to be him who would start the festivities. And despite the fact that he was dating…living with…and, no doubt, ****ing Sarah, a small part of me was still relieved to see a friendly face.
“Emmett, right?” he said. I nodded, probably too vigerously for him to not think I was a total moron.
Which would go so well with the total geek vibe that he must have already been going with.
“I’m Brad. Sarah was wondering if you were going to be showing up.” he informed me. “She’s in the kitchen, talking to Samantha, her sister. You should go say ‘hi!’.”
At that, Brad headed off to what I had to assume was the kitchen. I decided to tag along, figuring I could use Brad as a buffer to clear a path to Sarah.
You’re going to look awfully stupid if he’s headed to the bathroom.
It turns out, he was headed to the kitchen, and there, finally was Sarah, standing next to another tall blonde girl who was, indeed her sister Samantha. I seemed to recall meeting her once back in college. Other than that, I knew her better from seeing her in pictures that Sarah showed me in a photo album.
Sarah didn’t exactly do cartwheels when I came into the kitchen. She barely even paused in her conversation with Samantha to wave at me. The kitchen was quieter in terms of exposure to the music playing. I still noticed that Green Day had stopped and R.E.M. had begun but I was more interested in listening to Samantha talk to Sarah about her and her boyfriend (? husband? special acquaintance? who knew? who cared?) Rick’s trip up north a few weeks prior.
“You wanna beer there, Emmett?” I heard Brad ask. I was still concentrating on Sarah and Sam. It took me a second before I turned away, luckily quick enough that Brad didn’t have to ask the question a second time.
“Actually, I could go for just a Coke, Pepsi…whatever.” I replied.
Brad wasn’t quite as tragically disappointed as Dan had been when he found out I wasn’t into drinking, but he seemed to take it as kinda…queer, perhaps was the word he groped for momentarily, before handing me a Diet Coke.
“All we got is Diet, man,” he said, more matter of factly than apologetically. I should have known. All these pencil-thin anorexic secretaries and office managers drank Diet Cola. I shrugged and started in on it, trying to hide my disgust as best I could. There was a reason I never drank Diet Cola products.
Could it be that they all taste like crap?
Hit the nail right on the head, Will. Oh well, maybe I could gag it down and get a glass of water to get the taste out of my mouth later. Worse case scenario: I go to the bathroom and dump it down the toilet.
Yeah, going to the bathroom with a can of pop in your hand. Won’t look too stupid.
I tried to ignore the crap I was having to drink. I walked over to where Sarah and Samantha were standing. If Samantha recognized me, she didn’t show it. She glanced over to me while she and Sarah talked. The conversation had switched from her trip to all the hassles she had at work.
“So, it’s like my first day back and Heather, the snitty little bitch in Marvin’s office is ****ing reaming me out because, God forbid, someone phoned her up asking her a question about the new marketing plan and so she now figures that she was doing my job while I was on vacation,” Samantha was saying. “****ing little whorebag answers one ****ing phone call and suddenly it’s like it’s the end of the world.”
…as we know it and I feel fine!
Damn it. Every once in a while Will comes out with something so outrageous and yet hilarious that I almost lose it. Thankfully this time I held it together long enough to cover it with a cough. An added bonus was that it stopped Samantha in her tracks long enough for Sarah to finally…
Acknowledge your existence.
Change the subject towards my direction.
“Oh hey, Emmett,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it. Listen, got some bad news. Rachel called me. She and Michael got invited to her parents’ for dinner so they don’t think they can make it.”
Well, considering that I hadn’t seen Rachel and Michael in about six months
“Oh, I was just checking out the party. You know…mingling.” I say, trying to sound smooth,
Yeah, smooth as a 12-year-old.
Sarah laughs at my attempt, but not in a nasty way, so I figure that didn’t go over as badly as Will is trying to make out.
“Have you met my sister, Samantha?” she asks.
Wow! I’d never seen the look someone would give another person when they realize they’re being set up with you but this is ABOUT as close as we’ll ever get. She all but whispered “But I have a boyfriend and even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t go out with this geek.”
I try to put Will out of my head. I find engaging in conversation while battling Will is never a good idea. I end up losing my train of thought and looking like a retard. DON’T SAY IT, WILL!
“Yeah, I think we met one time, back when Sarah and I were in college.” I reply.
Maybe we even did, I can’t be sure at this point. I have this vague recollection of this Samantha coming up over Thanksgiving weekend during our Senior Year to visit Sarah.
Yeah, and I think her reaction to meeting you then was the same as it is now.
Probably. We basically made idle chitchat for about thirty seconds before we both realized we had nothing more than knowing Sarah in common. To be honest, I think we might have even tried discussing the weather. I can’t say for sure, I mean, I didn’t really think I’d be quizzed on it later.
Samantha nods, trying to feign a recognition she obviously doesn’t have. She obviously can’t remember our one five minute meeting four years ago and isn’t even going to make the effort to try.
“Oh yeah,” is all she can actually summon up the decency to say to me before turning back to Sarah. “Listen, Sarah, I’m just gonna grab a beer and go…uh…mingle.”
Told you that “mingle” **** was just that, ****! I mean, when some chick who can barely say two words to you is using throwing it back in your face, you know you look like a goof saying it.
Wouldn’t be the first time. Anyways, Sam gets her beer and goes on her merry way, which is fine by me since I’m here with Sarah.
Oh yeah, I’ll bet this was exactly the reason she threw this party in the first place. Just so she could stand around the kitchen with you.
For a moment, we don’t say anything.
And it only becomes uncomfortable after Sarah realizes that she can’t pretend that she’s watching Samantha leave anymore and you realize that she’s looking for an excuse to go…mingle.
Once Will alerts me to the fact that I’m just standing there, looking more like an idiot (for lack of a more derogatory term that I’m sure Will would be happy to come up with and probably is at this very moment) by the second, I decide that I have to say something, anything, so as to jumpstart the conversation.
Oh boy, this is going to end badly.
Of course, other than “Hey, was it cold out there today or what?” which even sounds bad in my head, so I can imagine what it would sound like out loud, I can’t think of a darn thing to say. I try to remember something funny that happened at work, but of course, it goes without saying that all I’m going to come up with is some stupid thing a customer did, and I’ll sound like I’m whining rather than recounting an “amusing anecdote”.
A moment later, I realize why Sarah is such a wonderful person. She actually comes to my rescue, saving me from myself, so to speak.
“So, you enjoying the party?” she says.
Good God! She’s become the babysitter. She’s become THAT person.
That person?
Yeah, the person that has to go around to all the anti-social geeks and make sure they feel like somebody actually wants them there, even though no one does. It’s a bit of a “Good Samaritan” act. Sad part is that it just highlights how much of a fish out of water the poor dork is. Oh, and in case you missed it, in this case, that poor dork is you.
Actually, now that you mention it, I think at every one of the four or five parties I’ve ever been to, about an hour into it someone has always come up to me, asked me if I was having a good time. Depending on how many geekhunters had gotten to me, they might even ask why I was so quiet, which really compounded the problem, because then I had to go out and make stupid jokes to get people thinking I was enjoying myself, when I really wasn’t.
Don’t you hate that? Makes you feel ten times stupider.
Yeah. However, in this case, Sarah was actually caring about how I was doing, and was really only asking to make conversation.
Sure she was.
She was!
“Yeah, you throw a good party. Thanks for inviting me.”
She shrugs. DAMN, is she cute when she shrugs and kinda smiles, like it’s no biggy when really it meant so much to me that I probably couldn’t have put it into words if I tried.
“No problem. Figured you could come out, meet some of the people I work with.”
See,Will? She must think pretty highly of me if she’s willing to invite me out to meet some of her other friends.
Whatever. More likely no one at her office met the prerquisite geek status so she figured that by inviting you along, the geekhunters could get their jollies and those disenchanted by their jobs could feel better about them as compared to a moron like you stuck in retail.
“So, all these people work in your office?” I ask, knowing full well that they probably all do, but figuring this is as good a way as any to continue our conversation.
Sarah nods. “Yeah, most of them. I mean, a few of them are the ‘significant others’ of the people I work with, and Brad invited a couple of his buddies over.”
I wonder if the guy manning the door was one of Brad’s buddies. For a moment, I wonder if I detect some exasperation in Sarah’s voice when she talks about Brad’s buddies. Maybe Brad didn’t exactly clear it with Sarah before handing out the invites. Maybe Sarah doesn’t exactly take to these friends of his. Maybe they’re crude and obnoxious and it reflects badly on Brad.
And maybe she’s about ready to dump him and through herself into the waiting arms of her only true love. You!
When Will says it, it sounds stupid. Before my conversation with either Sarah or Will can go any further, who should make an appearance but the man himself, Brad.
“Hey, the hostesss isn’t supposed to stay in the kitchen all night,” he laughs, grabbing her around the waist from behind and pulling her against him. He looks over at me and nods.
“Hey!” he says. I echo the sentiment.
Ooh…can I get a ringside seat for this one.
My stomach drops a foot or so as Sarah deftly spins around in his arms and kisses him. Just a quick little kiss, but enough.
What? No tongue. What a gyp. I mean, if she’s gonna break your heart, she could at least have given you something to work with. A little tongue, some moaning, a little bit of nipple hardening.
Glad I can always count on Will to say the absolute most disgusting thing at a time when I really could use a little silence. Sarah breaks away from Brad’s embrace after a moment and kinda motions towards the living room.
“Yeah, I better go be the ‘hostess with the mostest’. Come on, Emmett, you should go introduce yourself around.”
Sure thing, Sarah. He’ll be along in a minute, he just has to pick up what’s left of his heart. Hope you had fun doing a little barnyard stomp on it.
I just kinda nod, not really trusting my voice to actually speak. I trail Sarah and Brad out into the living room.
Just as we leave the kitchen, Sarah turns to Brad and asks “Hey, have you seen my watch? The one my grandmother gave me? I keep meaning to show it off to Louise.”
Brad replies “I think I saw it on the night table on your side of the bed.”
As Brad and Sarah enter the living room, everyone is happy to see the two of them. I don’t think anyone in the room actually notices me at all, bringing up the rear.
They do seem to at least acknowledge your existence once in a while, though. Rather than simply walk right into you, they usually give you a rather abrupt “excuse me” which is party-language for “get outta my way, geek!”
Now that we’re back among the main throng of party-goers, I feel out of place again.
Like you felt “in-place” when you were hiding out in the kitchen? Leeching off Sarah and acting like the little lost geek that you are, every moment that passed with you not wanting to leave her side, like she’s your Mom at your first day of kindergarten…
Oh man, now there’s an analogy I could have done without making, likening Sarah, the girl you have this desperate desire to see naked to your mother.
Anyways, the longer you’re hiding behind her skirt-tails, so to speak, the more everyone within sight realizes that you have the social skills of a three-year-old too timid to actually interact with the outside world, and having to stick with what you know, pathetically so.
It’s not just the fact that I know, and in case I forget, I have Will here to remind me, that every person in the room, excluding Sarah…
You hope!
…I hope, takes one look at me and their Geek-dar goes on-line. It’s the fact that they’re all from a different world than I am. They all have careers, not just jobs. They’re still talking about their weekends at some cottage up north. After a while, though, I wonder if they’re just talking to make themselves out to be better off than they are. If one of them talks about trying to beat the traffic on a Friday night up to cottage country, the other half of the conversation has to chime in about knowing exactly how much of a bitch it is and how they have a fool-proof plan to get around it by taking Highway 2 and bypassing the 401.
What a ****ing bunch of posers! Each trying to outdo the other on one level or the other so they can say that their lives, their knowledge or their possessions impressed someone. Meanwhile, that someone is thinking “What a ****ing loser asshole!”
About ten minutes after I leave the kitchen…
And after ten minutes of feeling like you’ve been tossed into shark-infested waters to try and learn how to swim…
…some guy, who looks like he’s only about half a step up the social ladder from me walks by me on the way to the kitchen. He taps me on the forearm to get my attention.
Maybe he was leaning against that same doorway and now he wants it back and is prepared to make a big stink about it. Maybe he figures crowning you the biggest geek at the party (a title you should hold undisputedly already) in front of everyone will score a few pointers for himself.
As it turns out, WILL, he simply wanted to know if I had a smoke he could bum from me. I shook my head.
“Sorry,” I say, as apologetically as I can, “I don’t smoke.”
“Damn,” he replies.
Then he adds, “Maybe this is a sign I should quit. I mean, if I can’t even keep myself supplied, what good am I?”
I laugh slightly, not wanting to come off as a prude, but not wanting him to think I find great mirth in some poor bugger’s plight.
A moment later, he extends his hand.
Oh ****! Now you’ve done it. You’ve gone and run into some guy who wants to be friends. An hour from now he’ll have told you his entire life story and a week from now you’ll be contemplating having your phone number changed to get this guy out of your life.
“My name’s Walter. What’s your name?”
Make up a name. John…George…Paul…Ringo…anything. Tell him you’re name’s Pete Best, James Best…see if he gets the reference.
Against Will’s better judgment, I shake Walter’s hand and reply, “Emmett.”
Walter nods. Ever notice these kind of guys nod like your reply is really profound?
“How do you know Brad?” he asks.
Oh, first it’s your life story…then the stalking becomes easier.
I shake my head. “I don’t actually. I’ve only met him a couple of times. I’m a friend of Sarah’s.”
Again with the nodding.
“Yeah, Sarah’s great. Really brings out the best in ol’ Brad. He’s a whip, that one.”
A whip? A ****ing whip? Who is this guy, Oliver Twist’s great-great-grandson or something?
Just then, a guy with a cigarette in his hand walks by. That catches the attention of my new friend, Walter, who decides that a cigarette is more important than getting to know me.
He claps me on the shoulder. “Emmett, it’s good meeting you. Have fun and don’t get into trouble.”
And with that, Walter is gone. I manage to refrain from laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all. I glance after Walter as he begins to hound the passer-by for a smoke, then I look back out into the party.
I watch as Brad…the whip…makes his rounds, making sure that all his buddies are taken care of, like he’s a maitre’de or whatever. I watch him as he hobnobs, laughs too loudly at jokes I can’t hear but obviously can’t be that funny and knocks glasses in pseudo-toasts.
Don’t ****ing stare, you homo, or he’ll think you’re hot for him, not Sarah.
He strikes me as the kind of guy who would have driven a muscle car in the 70s like the one in the opening shot of “Dazed and Confused”. Problem is that in 20 years, he’ll be the kind of guy who still drove the same muscle car, loud pain job and flames on the side and all in the 90s, with a beer gut and a bad toupee. The kind of guy who stands shirtless in his backyard, bar-b-quing and bitching to his buddies about the government, with a beer surgically attached to his hand, taking time out to yell at his kids to go inside or at his dog to quit barking.
And where will you be in 20 years, Emmett?
By the time I can check out a clock again, it’s 11:00 which means if I leave now, I’ll be home just in time to get undressed, go to sleep and be totally exhausted in the morning. Of course, by this time, I’ve managed to walk around Sarah’s place a total of a dozen times, drank three cokes, managed to stand against every wall in the place so as to keep out of the way, gone to the bathroom four times and have already had one guy glare at me for ten solid minutes from across the room before turning to his friend, making what obviously must be some crude remark directed at me, over which both laughed.
Yeah, it’s late, everyone’s tired and drunk and their tolerance level for the likes of you is hitting rock bottom. You stick around much longer and you’ll get geek-hunted good and proper.
I shrug. Not really caring if anyone notices or not. Will is right and for once listening to him actually sounds like something that will save me a lot of grief and embarrassment later on…or not that much later on. I look around to see if I can find Sarah. She’s not in the living room nor, upon a quick recon, is she in the kitchen again.
She’s probably gone to **** this Brad guy…or one of his buddies…or both.
I find the more tired I am, the more alert (and yet insensitive) that Will becomes.
Hey, listen you can either walk around here until you get in someones’ way who isn’t going to just let you slide OR you can get the **** outta Dodge and tell Sarah that you were looking for her but had to go.
I do one more lap of the party and then I decide to do the latter.
No matter how tired I feel whenever I get home from one of these deals, I never seem to be able to fall asleep right away. Instead I end up right back at the heart of whatever party, group outing, etc, that I’ve just returned from. Only this time I’m the centre of attention, saying all the right things and making jokes and recounting stories from my past that, for some reason, seem to fit right in with whatever topics of discussion I overheard and yet never took part in that night.
Funny how you always seem to think you know the right thing to say an hour or so AFTER, huh?
Funny, Will’s not usually here at this point. Normally, he’s content to just let me roll these events over and over in my mind. It’s usually about the only time he lets me ego get the better of me.
All the better to make you look like all the bigger idiot the next morning. Actually, I wasn’t going to say anything at all but I didn’t want the readers to think that I’d disappeared for good. Interest in your story might fall away to nothing, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?
Of course not. Of course, Will is soon gone again and I’m back at Sarah’s party. Only this time, I’m not skulking around the kitchen, I’m out in the living room, joining in on the conversation about conditions at work. I’m telling all these office workers that they haven’t got a clue what a b-s job is until they’ve done their time in the retail world.
Of course, rather than sound like some whining wimp…
The way it would have in real life!
…I have everyone in the room hanging on my every word. By this time, I beginning to fall asleep and in this almost dream-like state, I feel less like just some guy talking about his experiences working in some video store and more like some kind of war veteran just in from the jungle to tell everyone back in “the World” what it’s really like on the front lines.
And this from a guy who turned down what amounted to a first date with a co-worker because he didn’t want to have to talk shop as an opening.
That was different. Talking retail to another retail worker looks dorky. Here I could use it to my advantage. I can see that Samantha and Sarah are looking on from one corner of the room and that Sarah is totally ignoring Brad, who looks on as if he’d give anything to be me right at this particular moment.
Why? He woke up with Sarah this morning and you’re waking up with me!
Jeez, the next thing I know, it’s the morning after and there’s Will, not even waiting until I get my eyes open before he starts in on me.
Hey, why should I have to wait around until you drag your lazy carcass out of bed to make with the “I was right! I was right! Nyah-Nyah-Nyah!” already?
One thing I have to say about Will. He’s a sore winner.
Before this whole evening rolled into effect, did I or did I not tell you that going to this party and seeing Brad and Sarah together was going to be the worst thing you could do? No offence but it didn’t really seem to me like those two were one wrong move away from breaking up. Maybe you saw something I didn’t but from what I saw, Sarah seemed pretty content to keep Brad in her life for the foreseeable future.
Well, since you see and hear everything I see (although you tend to twist much of that to suit your own sadistic needs), I can safely say that I didn’t see anything that you didn’t see and…(sigh) yes, it looks as if Brad is making Sarah pretty happy. They make a pretty good couple.
So what, you had nothing better to do last night that have that thrown in your face? You had to book time off work just to go out and get proof that the girl of your dreams is pretty much taken by someone else?
Hey it was a chance to get out of the house. Meet some new people. Get my mind off work for a while.
And just what the **** did you end up doing? You ended up wandering around this Brad’s place, trying to keep out of everyone’s way and the one person you did meet, other than Brad and Sarah themselves was her sister, Samantha, and let’s just say she didn’t look like she was about to give you her number.
Okay, fine, Will. But jeez, if I don’t take a chance once in a while how am I ever supposed to have a social life?
You and a social life? You tried that in college, remember? You went out to bars with Sarah and the rest of them. You “mingled”. You went to the college’s pub nights a few times. Every once in a blue moon you ventured out of your dorm room and tried to socialize whenever your fellow Rez-ers decided they could find an excuse to party (which was every ten minutes or so). And what ended up happening? Those who didn’t tell you to “**** off and die, geek” right off the bad forgot you existed five minutes after they got their diploma.
CHAPTER NINE
HER SIDE OF THE BED?
I wake up the next morning. Late. As I had kinda expected I would be, I’m massively tired.
As YOU expected you would be? Uh, excuse me, asshole. I’m the one who was telling you to get your ass home and asleep as soon as possible. You had visions of staying out ‘til one or two o’clock and then jumping out of bed by eight, with enough energy to take on the world.
In retrospect, I suppose it didn’t really matter when I left the party. The post-party analyst and my own speculation about what might have been if I had just said something different or tried to become the life of the party had kept me up well past the point where I should have turned my brain off and called it a night if I expected to get up at any decent hour that morning.
Long after I had woken out of the deep sleep that had kept me in bed as long as I had, I remained in this weird not-quite-asleep-yet-not-quite-awake status and this was where Will decided to put his two cents in about the events of the previous night. Every slight, every misconstrued word, the uncomfortable conversation with Sarah’s sister. The two idiots who were quite obvious about having made some joke at my expense. Everything that Will could put into a negative light and then turn into a reason to make me feel stupid for showing up to that party, he tossed out at me.
Some of my best work. Easy, too. Oh, hey, Emmett, I got a little something that you should take a look at. I think you might find it just a little bit interesting.
And then, suddenly, before I knew what was happening, he hit the “play” button on his home movie of the party and showed me a little clip that, when it happened, I hadn’t really been paying attention.
As Sarah and Brad had walked out of the kitchen, me in tow, Sarah had turned to Brad and asked him if he knew where her watch was. Brad’s reply had been that he had last seen it on the nightstand on her side of the bed.
Wait! Wait! What was that last part again something about…
Her side of the bed.
Hmm…Hey, Emmett, maybe I’m just clueless but what do you think that means…her side of the bed?
My guts tighten as realization sets in. I decide not to even dignify Will with a response.
Okay, fair enough, but let me do the math for you. This is, you ****ing niave little piece of ****, undeniable proof that your beloved Sarah and her beloved Brad are SLEEPING TOGETHER.
Wait, once more with feeling.
BRAD. AND. SARAH. ARE. SLEEPING. TOGETHER.
It had been something I guess I had known ever since she told me that the two of them were dating. I mean, in this day and age, if you’re in a romantic relationship, it naturally stands to reason that you’re sleeping together, right?
And you’re acting like you’re talking from experience, why?
My ****ING point is that Brad and Sarah sleeping together was not something I should be surprised at. I should have been able to accept it a long time ago. I mean, I shouldn’t be upset by this, it was something that I should have accepted as fact instead.
Oh, but there was always that little ray of hope in your mind. That this relationship with Brad was something that was just temporary in Sarah’s life. You know, Brad was just a passing fancy that she went out to dinner or a movie with, and that eventually she’d see what a complete clod that he was and she’d dump him and everything would be back to normal, only this time you’d realize how much she meant to you and you could make her your girlfriend.
I’m still so damned tired from last night that I don’t even bother trying to deny it. Will had been there, had seen what now seemed like insane fantasies where I’d see her in a book store years from now and it’d be a joyous reunion and she’d tell me she and Brad had broken up. I’d be there to comfort her in her loss and then ask her if she wanted to get together for coffee or something, and our relationship would just bloom from there.
Yeah, well, that was a nice dream but the knowledge that Brad has ****ed her is just more proof in the pudding that that little fantasy has about much chance of happening as I do of becoming the next Pope.
I start clutching at straws. I tell Will that not every couple that’s had sex ends up getting married and spending the rest of their lives together.
Fine. Live in denial. I mean, statistically you are right, but the fact is that in addition to sleeping together, they are living together. Doesn’t that tell you something? They are experimenting with living together as a couple in preparation for becoming man and wife! And here’s a quick update: from the looks of things last night, they look pretty comfortable living under the same roof.
Before Will can say anything more, the phone rings. By this time, I’m fully awake and am pretty sure I know exactly who’s phoning me.
Hey, maybe it’s Sarah phoning to tell you that despite what you might have been led to believe last night, all is not well in their little love nest. Perhaps she will tearfully tell you that she’s through with Brad and realizes that you are the man who will make her life complete.
I try to shush Will as I answer the phone. As I expected, instead of the soft, sweet voice of Sarah, I get the annoying harshness of Dan.
“Hey, Emm…listen I need a favour. Brian called in sick and you gotta cover his five to close shift.”
Why do I bother to pick up the phone?
Why DO you bother to pick up the phone? There’s something called an answering machine, dickhead. Use it to screen calls like this.
An hour later, I’m at work. I forego all the mindless chitchat regarding the weather, customer complaints, etc, and just dive right into whatever task that’s put in front of me. Once I complete one job, I jump into the next one, and then the one after that.
I’m like a machine. I get more work done in the first three hours than I have in some shifts prior to this. They say that when you’re busy, the time goes by quicker, but you can sell that **** to the tourists cause I ain’t buying it. Time drags as slow as it ever did, but that’s fine. I’m cool with it. Ain’t like I got anything to do afterwards.
In a way, I’m almost…almost, mind you, happy that Brian called in sick and I got enlisted to cover for him. I figure what else am I going to do but sit at home and aimless surf the Internet, maybe listen to some sappy love songs that’ll just serve as a reminder how Sarah’s found love and I haven’t. Lay in bed dwelling on how happy she seemed in his arms and how she undoubtedly woke up this morning on HER SIDE OF THE BED?
Dan eventually wakes up from the little nap he’s most likely been taking in the office and wanders into the section I’m alphabetizing.
“Holy ****,” he says, not bothering to keep his voice down. “You got both the Comedy and Drama sections done?”
“Yep,” I say, nodding.
“You’re the man when it comes to straightening, aren’t ya?”
Holy ****! Was that a legitimate compliment out of the bastard? Pardon me while I go into cardiac arrest!
I don’t know how to answer him. I don’t dare brag about my accomplishments. It just isn’t done. Part of me just doesn’t give a **** anyways, like my straightening skills mean so much in the grand scheme of things. In the end, I just shrug.
Dan starts to say something else but then stops. For a moment, I’m horrified to realize that he might have somehow been offended by my less-than-enthusiastic reaction.
So what? What’s the worst he could do? Fire your sorry ass?
Will then proceeds to show me this little vision he has of Dan taking me to task for not showing him the proper respect and for being sullen. In this vision, I then turn around and go ballistic on his sorry, fat ass, finally just throwing the closest video I could find at him and storming out, telling him to take his job and go **** himself with it.
Oh man, you can take the greatest orgasm of your…well, someone’s life, and it still wouldn’t top that feeling.
For a brief moment, I actually relish the idea, even hope that Dan will give me just enough rope to hang him with. In the end, he disappoints me.
Turns out, he was simply clearing his throat.
Something Jessica is probably doing in the bathroom right about now.
“ ‘Scuze me. Hey, Emmett, you should probably go on break soon,” he tells me.
For once, I’m actually hesitant to take him up on his offer. Normally, I’m almost willing the clock to speed up until I get a chance to take ten minutes and sit down in the back. Not this time. It’s not so much that I’m on such a roll that I want to finish alphabetizing this section. Sad but true, dedication to my craft, such as it is, figured little into my reluctance.
It was that I knew if I sat down and let the world catch up to me, I’d be drawn back to Will’s little Powerpoint presentation on Sarah and Brad’s relationship…not to mention their sleeping arrangements. I kidded myself into thinking that if I kept working, I’d keep enough things on my brain to block out the things I didn’t want to think about.
Oh bull****! You’ve been reliving that moment the entire time, analyzing it, trying to reason it out to make yourself believe that this can’t possibly mean what I’m telling you it means.
The shift plodded on, every customer merging into another until they become little more than a name on a computer screen, a voice that answers my questions. Every task becomes the same, just something I do with my hands so I can keep busy and more importantly look busy.
All the whole, Will keeps rewinding the conversation Brad and Sarah had about “her side of the bed” on an endless loop, breaking in only to remind me about how this is “undeniable proof” that the two of them are sleeping together.
Yeah, hot shot, while you were busy laying in bed fantasizing about being Mr. ****ing Cool, Brad was screwing your dream girl. How’s that for diversity in fortune?
“You’re awfully quiet today?” Andrea informs me, matter-of-factly, just as I step away from the cash desk to put some returns away.
“Oh…am I?” I reply.
Great! Now I feel uncomfortable and obligated to make some lame-ass joke at my own expense in order to alleviate Andrea’s fears that there’s something wrong with me. I stand at the edge of the counter, trying to figure out what to say that will get me off the hook without getting me heat from Andrea.
Why don’t you just tell Andrea the truth? Say something along the lines of “Well, Andrea, maybe when you come to realize that the person you’d give anything to be ‘more than friends’ with is never going to think of you as anything more than that, you’ll get a little quiet and introspective, too?”
Or how about “Yeah, I found out that my best friend is ****ing some dickhead last night so I’m not really in the mood for chit chat, bitch”?
Neither one of those options is really what I’m looking for, so I finally just shrug. “I guess I tend to be quieter when I get busy.”
Oh yeah, that’s WAY better than what I would have come up with.
Thankfully, this seems to satisfy Andrea’s quest for knowledge. She nods, although she does so in a way that seems a little sad, as if she’s a little…I don’t know…put off or disappointed that I’m not talking more.
Immediately, Will packs my bags and sends me on an all-expense paid guilt trip over my rather curt explanation of my own silence towards Andrea.
Hey, it’s not Andrea’s fault that Sarah’s screwing Brad instead of even giving you the time of day. Hell, she just wants to be your friend, carry on a conversation with ya, and you’re giving her the cold shoulder like she set Sarah up with this asswipe.
Thankfully, Andrea remains just hovering around the section I’m in for a while, giving me a chance to make things right.
“You know me,” I say, “I get bored, I tend to blab, so if I don’t shut up, I’d never get anything done around here.”
Andrea laughs at that, and I’m glad I made the effort. “Oh yeah, you’re such the blabbermouth.”
I smile as I watch her head back up to the front. “Well, don’t work too hard. I’m getting lonely up there,” she says as she departs. As I get back to work, almost forgetting that I’m due for a break, as per Dan’s instruction, I suddenly start to brainstorm reasons to head up to cash to visit with Andrea.
A couple of minutes later, I come across “Say Anything” with John Cusack and Ione Skye. I had watched it a few weeks before and so I figured it was as good a topic as any to talk to Andrea about.
She’s processing returns as I pop the case on the counter before her.
“Ever seen this movie?” I ask, pretty sure that she would have seen it at some point in time. She doesn’t disappoint me.
Nodding, she replies, “Say Anything? Yeah, that’s a great movie. I think the last time I saw it was on TV or something about a year or two. I so have to watch that again sometime.”
“I have the DVD for it and I watched it about a month or so ago. The commentary is pretty good. Cameron Crowe, the director, plus Ione Skye and John Cusack are all on sitting around, talking about the movie.”
“Ah, you and your championing of audio commentary again,” she replies. I realize that we had had this particular line of conversation before, but I figure it was one we both enjoyed discussing.
“Hey, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. Audio commentary on a disc is worth the price of the disc. It’s like rewatching the movie without just rehashing the same plot and dialogue.”
Andrea holds up her hands in mock surrender. “I have never and will never argue with you on that point. Actually, what movie did I watch the other day?”
I wait patiently and expectantly as Andrea tries to remember the movie in question. A moment later, it comes to her, as if on a lightning bolt.
“Ironically enough, it was another Cameron Crowe movie, Almost Famous,” she informs me.
“Did you get the special ‘Bootleg’ edition where it’s him and his Mom and some production guy?” I ask. I barely have the question out of my mouth when she answers that it was.
We chat like that for a while. The store is pretty dead so eventually we carry on the conversation as I go back to straightening the section and Andrea resumes checking in movies. For a while, we totally forget, or just stop caring that Dan is in the back and we hold the conversation across rows of video store shelves.
The next few hours seem to get as close to flying by as it ever gets working retail, especially in the video store. The conversation between Andrea and I works its way from “Almost Famous” to other Cameron Crowe movies to movies in general. A part of me…
My part!
Yes, Will’s part of me keeps expecting the phone to ring with some irate customer, demanding to know why he or she is being stuck with late charges, or some idiot to return a movie (most likely late) and demand a full refund because the movie was “defective” or they hadn’t REALLY meant to rent it in the first place.
But it never happens. The remainder of the shift is very quiet and hassle-free. I think I straighten the whole store, everything from comedy to drama to horror to sci-fi to special interest. When the end of my shift finally rolls around and I’m heading out the door, I make a mental checklist of everything I figure that Dan would want me to have completed. The way I figure it, straightening the entire store over the course of one shift is a pretty fine accomplishment, if I do say so myself.
Dan, of course, gives me no acknowledgement but then considering that he was in the back office all day (having conveniently forgot his uniform AGAIN) he probably has no clue that I was doing anything more than just standing up at cash goofing off or something.
No worries, Emmett. The only thing you’re going to hear about when you show up for your next shift is that teeny, tiny bit of the store that some asswipe disturbed just to be a dick about it after you were all finished. You know, there will be one video box that will be slightly off-kilter and THAT will be the one thing that Dan remembers about your efforts. Knowing that asshole, he’ll walk around the store endlessly searching to find something to nail you about.
I nod, hoping that no one sees me showing my agreement with the voice in my head. Might be kind of hard to explain. Meanwhile, I notice that Andrea is just up ahead, waiting for the bus. I quicken my pace so as to catch up to her.
“Well, another long day shot all to hell?” she asks, jokingly.
I nod again, this time to a voice others can actually hear. “Getting up for 9:00 is a hassle at times, but at least we get to go home at 5:00.”
“9-5 shifts rock, lemme tell ya,” Andrea replies.
I stand there, with only a sliver of myself actually wanting to keep on walking home. The rest of me, surprisingly, actually doesn’t mind standing there talking to her, at least for the few minutes before her bus arrives.
“You know, I think this afternoon might have been as close to having fun as I’ve had at this job,” I inform Andrea.
She shushes me then begins to laugh. “Not so loud. Otherwise tomorrow will really suck.”
I laugh at that. “I hadn’t thought of that. I probably just jinxed myself. You working tomorrow?”
She sighs and nods. “Same shift as today. 9-5. You?”
I shake my head. “Nah, I gotta come in for 5 to midnight.”
“Eww…” she replies, as if she just stepped in something a dog left over, “ I have those shifts.”
I shrug my shoulders. “Me, too…but at least I’m off on Wednesday so it’s not so bad.”
I’m disappointed when Andrea’s bus arrives. We say our goodbyes and she gets on the bus as I resume my trek home. Over the next few blocks, I find that I’m reliving bits and pieces of our extended conversation over the course of the afternoon and am coming up with topics that I should have touched on and know that I’ll forget before the next time I can really chat with her again.
Hey, Emmett…speaking of topics, do you know what topic that your little interaction with Andrea has managed to push aside for the last few hours?
I know full well that Will is going to tell me no matter whether I feebly attempt a guess or not so I decide to say “**** it” and just have him tell me, rather than wrack my brain over what mental abuse he’s going to toss my way.
No clue, Will. Lay it on me?
Well, while you were discussing movies and basically increasing your over status with Andrea, you kinda forgot, at least until I bring it up just now, that you were obsessed with the fact that you know have undeniable proof that Sarah, the so-called only girl for you, your soul-mate, the ying to your yan, blah, blah, blah, is sleeping with Brad, this moronic jerk that she barely (at least in your eyes) knows.
And just like that, my stomach drops. Thanks a bunch, Will.
Now, I have to point out that there is some method to my madness, I would just like to point out my reasoning behind my bringing that particular phenomenon up. First of all, I did it just cause that’s just the kind of rat bastard that I am.
Yeah, I kinda figured as much.
Thanks. (Nice to know I don’t disappoint!) And second of all, I would just like to point out that while every interaction you have with Sarah from now until the end of time is going to be one where you get your heart stomped on because you will be constantly reminded of her relationship, which as you know now is way past the going out to dinner and a movie and a little peck on the cheek to end the evening stage, with Brad, it seems as if this Andrea is able to make you forget all your troubles, as the old song goes, and make even a horrible job like the one you have at Video Emporium at least semi-tolerable.
So, what are you trying to get at, Will?
You know what, dumb-ass? The situation that I am trying to present to you is so crystal clear that even a retarded three-year old could understand what I’m trying to get across to you, so guess where that puts you on the ol’ mentality scale. If you’re so blinded by this misguided love for some chick that is already taken and probably wouldn’t be interested in you even if she was single that you’re not willing to even entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe there is someone already in your life who might offer the possibility of something special if you’d just get your head out of your ass and put your efforts in the right direction.
The conversation between Will and I has become so heated that I don’t want to arrive home in this mood. Plus I have a feeling that there’s more we both need to get off our collective chests…or is it chest? For the moment, the pluralization matter seems trivial.
I remind Will that we covered this very topic, the possibility of something occurring between Andrea and I, in an earlier chapter. The same held true even after this afternoon’s conversation. I like Andrea, she’s a good person, she’s funny and smart and I consider her a close friend, but there isn’t that…certain something that I feel when I think of Sarah.
Besides Will, aren’t you the one who told me that I must be the biggest prick in the world to not have someone special in my life…that I was lower than Hitler? Aren’t you the same guy who’s been reminding me all these years what a complete loser I am? That no one in their right mind would want to be friends with me, much less anything more than that? That anyone with any thought at all with regards to their social status wouldn’t be caught dead talking to me, save to reinforce just what a moron I was and to kick my ego (what shreds of it still exist after all these years) down a notch or five?
Therefore, from what I can deduce from what you’ve had the courtesy to remind me about over the years, I have no better a shot at Andrea than I do with Sarah, right? I mean, since I’m such a loser, and Andrea’s got a pretty good head on her shoulders, it’s not like she’s be all that inclined to date a zero like me.
And I mean, since according to you and the world in general, I have no shot at ever finding anyone to share my life with, shouldn’t I engage in ultimately fruitless and pointless fantacizing about the person I am hopelessly in love with? You know, if I’m going to be a pathetic loser, I might as well at least set my naïve sights high, right? It’s not like I’m going to be any less pathetic if I start mooning over someone I like but am not in love with. Right?
Okay, you know what, the fact that you’re turning my own tirades back against me should be enough to make me want to go medieval on your ass. But you know what? I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m just gonna ease off on the whole Andrea subject.
By now I’m about a block from my apartment building and I can’t believe what I am hearing from Will. He’s cutting me a break?
Oh yeah, buddy-boy. I’m not going to bring up the idea that maybe, with a little effort on your part, you just might have a shot with Andrea, certainly more than you’ll ever have with Sarah. At least not until that day comes…and if will, dickhead…when you look back and realize that Andrea is probably the person you WERE meant to be with but, like Sarah, she’s another one that got away. Only, unlike Sarah, you might have actually been able to prevent Andrea from being another one that got away.
CHAPTER TEN
A NIGHT OUT WITH THE BOYS
Sometimes I will lie in bed, just coming off a night’s sleep and not ready to start the day just yet, and I would allow myself to imagine what it might be like if, by some miracle, Sarah and Brad were no longer together.
These dreams…
Sad, pathetic dreams!
…would of course be accompanied by Will’s pleas for me to stop them before I got carried away, before I got caught up in what even I knew, deep down, could never be. And yet, I couldn’t shake the desire to create this fantasy world, to create this detailed, well-thought out and intricate scenario.
I imagine the tearful phone-call that I would receive from Sarah, all but begging me to come over to her place, that she needed someone to talk to. I would drop everything and rush over to be with her. I would hold her as she cries and tell me what an asshole she finally saw Brad to be, about the fights and the hurtful things he said and did to her.
“It’s just that…I feel so bad about myself. I mean, if Brad couldn’t love me…”, she’d say.
“Sarah,” I’d reply, looking into her eyes. “You are a beautiful person, don’t ever let anyone tell you different.”
It’d be those first few words that would open up the floodgates. From there, I’d be able to tell her everything I ever thought about her, about what a wonderful person she was and how I’d always harboured these feelings for her. I’d tell her that Brad was wrong, that he was an idiot for not seeing how special she was, that it was his loss.
That’d be my opening. My foot in the door, if you will. I’d tell her that no matter what Brad made her believe, there was at least one person in the world who would love her, that person being me. That I loved everything about her, and always had, since the moment I met her.
You know, I don’t which is more pathetic. Your idea that Sarah is going to break up with Brad, or what a loser you sound like when you have your little fantasy about them breaking up. What did you do, knock over some hack romance novelist and steal every cliché in his book?
That night, while I’m at work, I get a call from Pete Henry. He’s this guy I’ve known since high school. Somewhere along the lines we were friends, but life has kinda put some distance between us and so now we’re just two people who’ve known each other for years and still get together to hang out when neither of us have anything better to do.
Or rather, when he has nothing better to do.
“Hey, Emmett, whatchya up to?” he asks.
“Working ‘til 7…after that, not too much,” I reply. Dan has this idea where he needed me to work every Monday from 11:00 until 7:00 “because of all the freight we get”. The thing was that if I bagged my ass, I had all the receiving done and the stock put away by 4:00 which was, ironically, about the same time he took off (despite being “on the clock until 5:00), but instead of being able to take off at 4 or even 5:00, I have to stick around and be on cash for the next three hours. Actually, I think he figures by giving me such a weird shift, it will totally screw up my day.
Which it does. Perceptive guy, that Dan.
“Cool,” he says. I don’t know how cool it was but if that was Pete’s take on it, who was I to argue? “You feel like doing something afterwards?”
Actually, when Pete calls, I do have plans for the evening: sit in my room listening to the most depressing songs I could think of and brood on how much I want Sarah to break up with Brad and give me a shot at dating her. I think about it for a moment and, I figure I could still hang out with Pete for a while and then still have enough time to brood over Sarah.
What the hell, I tell myself. “What do you have in mind?” is what I ask Pete.
“I don’t know,” he replies, much to my non-surprise. “I thought we could maybe go for coffee or something.”
I shrug, wondering just how much more depressing it would actually be to be staying home tonight. At least I wouldn’t be as bored.
Andrea comes in at five to start her shift, so thankfully, I can at least chat with her and the last two hours only seem like four instead of eight or nine. We’re joined by Rick, who comes sauntering in just at the buzzer at five o’clock. Not like Andrea or I could really do anything about it.
“Hey.” Rick says as he walks past us en route to the backroom to drop off his gear. I made a quick estimate and figured he might be making a return appearance around 5:30.
Rick has been working at the Video Emporium for about five or six months and I still have never bothered to learn his last name. Of course, I only see him about once a week since he never really gets a lot of shifts out of Dan, although I think Dan liked Rick better than he did me, at least as a potential buddy that he could shoot the **** with and down a few brews outside work.
“You’re closing with Rick?” I asked Andrea. The two of us had come to the unspoken agreement that if Dan was skipping out early, the two of us could slack off. It was so unlike us but it just seemed like the right thing to do.
Yeah, Emmett…you’re a real rebel! Meanwhile, you’re ****ting bricks that Dan will come in tomorrow and review the security camera tapes and see the two of you just standing around doing nothing.
Andrea nods, rolling her eyes. See, Will, she doesn’t really believe we’ll get caught so why should I give a **** either.
“Oh yeah. It’ll be a productive night, lemme tell ya that,” she replies. “I’d ask if you wanted to stay but I’m not sure whether I’d have you fill in for me or for Rick. If you filled in for me, I could go home. If you filled in for Rick, I’d have someone I could chat with and make my night go faster.”
I’m actually kinda touched by this. After working with Dan, Jessica, and even Rick, all of whom treated me like I was the last person they wanted to spend seven or eight hours of their lives with, it was nice to hear confirmation that Andrea enjoyed at least working with me, and being in my prescence for an extended period of time.
“Thank you,” I reply, honestly, “It’s nice to hear.”
“No prob,” she tells me, “Of course, compared to Rick, that may not seem as big a compliment as I mean it to be.”
I laugh. Rick is one of those guys that people will use as a stereotype for those of us stuck in retail. He basically leaves his personality at the doorway and just kinda vegs the shift away.
Not that I mind that trait in him sometimes. If I leave him up at cash, it means I can do other stuff around the store and not have to worry about having to keep an eye on things up there.
Of course, there are times that I have to keep an eye on Rick to make sure he hasn’t just decided to take off for a smoke or coffee or to call his girlfriend or any of the other myriad of excuses he has for taking off for “a couple of minutes” which can be anywhere from five minutes to twenty minutes.
Yeah, I wonder if YOU’RE the only one he figures is enough of a wimp that he can get away with that stuff with.
The next couple of hours kinda creep by. After Rick drops his stuff off in the backroom, changes his clothes and probably makes at least a phone call or several, he saunters out, arriving at the cash desk promptly at 5:20.
“Hey,” he says, showing off the magnificent range of his vocabulary.
“Hey,” I reply. “How’s it going?”
Rick shrugs. “It’s going. All three of us closing tonight?”
“Nope,” I tell him, “I’m gone at 7:00.”
“It’s you and me there, kiddo,” Andrea informs him. “Sorry about your luck.”
Rick laughs at that. “Cool” is his response. No one hates closing with Andrea. I think even Jessica likes Andrea. No matter what happens over the course of a shift, Andrea can always make sure you can laugh about something at some point. To be honest, I think if Andrea and I worked together during every shift, I think I could almost come to not completely loath this job.
“Not completely loath”? Really sterling silver seal of approval there, Emmett.
Hey, it’s retail. What do you expect?
True enough!
Even with Andrea’s help and no hinderance from Rick, it’s another long hour and a half before I can head out. It’s a Monday night so most people are just wanting to relax after the first day back to work after the weekend and so aren’t venturing out, even to rent movies. The returns are heavy, but once the supper hour is over, most people have even got that out of their system. When he’s not stepping out, “just for a quick butt” (which turns out to be a ten minute smoke break and then going for coffee and making yet another phone call), Rick is joining Andrea in flipping through the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.
By 7:00 it’s the three of us just standing around at cash, chatting about what we did on the weekend, what movies we’ve seen recently and if we really get bored, what gossip is going ‘round the store.
As luck would have it, when the clock strikes seven, with Rick on his third or fourth break of the night (I’ve lost track!), and Andrea putting away the two or three returns that have come in, I’m reading one of the endless amount of pointless memos that we receive from our head office. This one is about some charity event that is taking place in Toronto. I guess we’re supposed to book time off work and drive three hours to run 50 laps in some park, with all the money going to some charity, most likely the Regional Manager’s retirement fund.
Suddenly, I hear someone rap their knuckles on the counter a few inches away from me. My head shoots up, expecting to see some customer, irate that I didn’t give him my full attention from the moment his car entered the parking lot.
Instead, I see the stupid grin on the face of my friend, Pete.
“****ing asshole,” I mutter. “You scared the **** out of me.”
“Figured as much,” he replies. “So, how ya been?”
“Pretty ****ty, actually.” I reply to his reply. “Same as usual.”
Pete laughs like this is the wittiest thing ever. “So, you almost outta here?”
I am about to reply that I’m gone just as soon as I can get my coat when Andrea returns to the cash desk.
“Hey, don’t be hogging all the customers, Emmett,” she mockingly warns.
I wave her off. “This is no customer, this is just a troublemaker.”
Pete is about to feign indignancy when I make the proper introductions. I’m a little intrigued when I see a hint of recognition cross Andrea’s face.
“Hey, do you ever go to a bar called Raunchy Susan’s, over on Kipps Lane?” she asks.
Pete nods. “Quite a bit, yeah. A friend of mine plays in a band there…uh…Matters Not, I think.”
“Really? A friend of mine used to date the bass player,” Andrea relates.
“No way…I’m a friend of Keith’s, the drummer,” Pete informs her.
I decide that since I know none of the particulars, I should head to the back.
“I’m gonna go get my coat,” I say over my shoulder.
Will still manages to get in the questions “Will either of them even notice?” before Andrea asks if this means I’m deserting her.
I laugh and reply that I am.
I’m just in the back for a moment, but apparently that’s long enough for Andrea and Pete to strike up a conversation that makes them seem like they’re long-time friends. I’m jealous of this, and I don’t know why. It’s as if I don’t want Andrea treating anyone else as nice as she treats me, because somehow it lessens the effect. As if knowing that she treats everyone that well, it means I’m just another person to her, rather than someone special to her.
But what does it matter if your “special” to her? Yyou have Sarah who will, at any moment, dump this Brad guy, realize her love for you and the two of you can live happily ever after and, short of convincing her to engage in a threesome, you won’t care if this Andrea can shack up with any other guy that strikes her fancy.
I try to ignore Will and, in the most direct way possible without being physical, pull Pete away from Andrea and out the door of the store. Andrea laughs at my attempts and tells me to have a good night. I wish her a good close and tell her I’ll see her whenever our shifts coincide again.
I’m barely out into the fine mist of drizzle that’s settling over the parking lot when Pete tells me he has to drop something off at Lorraine’s. Lorraine is the latest in a series of girlfriends Tim has had over the past few years.
“Sure,” I tell him, “That’s cool.”
You should have added “I’ll wait in the car” otherwise he’s going to drag you in for an introduction and, after seven hours of dealing people you don’t know and having to be pleasant, you’re now going to have to make polite small talk to this chick.
For all the grief I give him over all the grief he gives me, Will does have some useful advice. Of course, it might be more useful if he dispensed this advice a little earlier.
By this time we’re out of the parking lot and headed, I must only assume, towards this Lorraine’s house/apartment, and the moment has passed.
“Good shift?” Pete asks.
I make that “kinda” face until I realize that, in the dark, Pete can’t actually see my expression.
“Not bad,” I tell him adding that “pretty much every shift there sucks, so tonight just sucked in moderation.
As it is whenever I try and tell Pete how horrible things are in my life without coming out and saying it, he manages to think it’s funny and laughs in that high-pitched girlish glee laugh of his.
Thankful for the darkness, I roll my eyes at his response. We’ve barely gone a couple of blocks and I’m already wishing I’d gone home instead.
“Where’s Lorraine live, anyways?” I ask, in the way of polite conversation. Figuring I might as well brush up on my skills in that department if I’m going to meet this person.
Good idea.
Thanks, I reply. Meanwhile, I’ve come to the realization that Lorraine and Tim have been dating for a couple of months if I’m remembering the references right and I don’t know a damn thing about her. He’s never introduced me to her which I guess doesn’t come as any major surprise.
Yeah, meeting some geeky friend who works in a video store and has no social life doesn’t exactly look good on you to a perspective girlfriend. He must be pretty confident in this relationship if he’s bringing you over.
As Will and I have been talking, I’ve totally missed what Pete has said with regards to where Lorraine lives. Not that it really matters, I suppose I’ll find out when I get there.
And so, a few minutes later, here I am, riding around the city streets in Pete’s car. Pete and I very rarely ever go anywhere when we get together, which is almost as rare an occassion. Oh sure, we’d make the prerequisite stops at a McDonald’s or the equivalent fast food stops to grab a burger or whathaveyou but for the most part, we’d just drive around, talking about the same inconsequential pop culture trivia of our lives that you probably talk about with your friends in place of anything substantial.
As the clock strikes 7:23 p.m, I’m half-ass listening to Pete talk about this band that he’s in and the latest goings on with the group. The band is called “Jenn Gives Up” which is strange because it’s three guys, none of whom are called Jenn.
None of that seems to matter to Pete since, as he is quick to point out, “Lorraine likes the name. Makes people think.”
The “Lorraine” in question is the latest in a string of girls that Pete has somehow met and dated in the years I’ve known him. If anything, the only thing I’m thinking about is how Pete, who’s social skills, personality and general looks are only minisculy better than my own, always seems to have someone in his life to go out with.
“So, how did you meet Lorraine again?” I ask.
Pete replies, “She was a friend of Lisa’s. You know, Jeff’s girlfriend.”
I not only don’t know Lisa but I don’t know Jeff, something I subtly point out to Pete.
“You know, Jeff, our drummer.” Pete replies, his tone indicating that I should have had that information already memorized. “Anyways, Lisa brought Lorraine to one of our practice sessions and afterwards, we got to talking about this documentary that both she and I watched about Stephen Hawking and I told her that I think that Hawking should record a spoken word album, and Lorraine said that sounded like an awesome idea only I’m still not sure if she was serious or not.”
Wow! There’s a story to tell the grandkids. Meanwhile, I’ll bet you’re wishing you were back in your room brooding.
****ing right I am!
By this time, Pete has continued on with his story about his burgeoning relationship with Lorraine. By the time I get back to concentrating on his narrative, he’s up to “hung out at ‘Ruptured Discs’ for about three hours the other night, looking for old LPs. Lorraine figures she has over 400 vinyls in her collection.”
He’s already slept with her. You know that, right? He’s trying to cover that fact up with this story about doing the whole boyfriend/girlfriend relationship thing about going to record stores and indulging their common interests. The fact remains however is that he’s slept with her.
I’m not sure why Will has to bring that up, other than to rub it in that not only is Pete, who should be on about the same level as I am, socially, seeing someone, but he’s seeing that someone naked.
I stare out the window, watching block after city block of stores and houses go by, listening to Will’s declaration of his discovery regarding Pete’s sex life against the backdrop of the pretentious college radio station that’s playing in the car. I maybe catch one out of every four words that Pete is actually saying. Whether he can tell that I’m not listening or not, he continues on with his story about Lorraine and how she plays the bass guitar and has sat in on some of their practices and who her influences are. He recites some names of what I must assume are bass players from various goth rock metal bands but they mean nothing to me. I know Noel Redding and John Entwhistle and that’s about it.
It’s killing you, isn’t it? Pete there has himself someone. This Lorraine may be gone, off to find another band to groupify herself for, within a week, but for right now, she’s with Pete. They go to record stores, they talk about music, they sleep together. They’re a couple. Pete has someone he can call when he wants to go do something. He has someone who will call him when she wants to do something.
And who do you have?
**** you, Will.
“We should go visit Tim,” I suggest, as much a way to shut Pete up as to shut Will up.
Tim MacPherson, Pete and I had all gone to high school together. Somehow, despite not having a whole lot in common, we’d become…well, I guess “friends” is the easiest term to slap on what there was between us, although it was more a case that we just hung around together in the cafeteria together, mostly because we had no place else to sit, as far as social groups go. We’d talk, basically about the same things we do now: music, TV shows, stuff that had happened to us since we last talked. Back then, it was stuff like classes and home life, now it was our jobs.
The first time you met Tim, you knew. Back in high school, without anyone ever really saying it, at least not to his face, you knew. Tim was one of these guys you knew wasn’t going to accomplish much.
Yeah, like you’re one to talk.
But see, unlike myself, Tim knew it too so he never really put much effort into it. He kinda slacked through high school, earning D’s only because he didn’t want to retake anything. He never even tried to go to college, instead getting a job at a local supermarket. To hear him tell it, he pretty much ran the place now, knowing “more about the day-to-day operations than the suits upstairs”. Pete and I figured that he probably did just enough so that management couldn’t fire him, then lorded his seniority over the other employees.
Pete had never really liked Tim, tolerating him was about the most he could do. Pete hated it when I suggested we go visit Tim and to be honest, I always left wondering just what had possessed me to show up in the first place. He always ended up telling me what a loser I was for not being out on his own and independent like he was, criticizing me for “still living at home with Mommy and Daddy”. I happened to know that he was basically living in this slum almost rent-free, since his own parents had set him up and agreed to pay his rent if he would just get out of their place.
But of course, you never threw that in his face the way he did your living arrangements, did you?
I never wanted to get into it with him. I figured it was better to just shut up and keep the subject on safer topics. I guess the reason I still hung out with Tim was that he, like me, had a tendency to want to live in the past at times and on a couple of occasions, he and I (with Pete sitting in but never saying much) would sit and reminisce about our high school days until the wee hours of the night. The problem was that such things only occurred about once every year or so but I enjoyed them so much and they served as such a distraction to anything I was going through at work that I guess I was willing to endure the nights where all Tim did was talk about the latest NCAA football game or bug me or Pete for money in the hopes that, instead, the topic might turn to reminiscing about high school. I guess I had gotten to a point in my life where talking about the past was better than concentrating on the present or worrying about the future.
“Why the heck would you want to do that?” Pete replies, as I figured he might. I mean, when the idea lept through Will’s sarcastic banter and into the forefront of my brain, it wasn’t exactly followed by a mental video of Pete being overjoyed at the prospect.
I shrug, not really sure why I suggested it either. “Gives us something to do.”
“I can think of about a million other things I’d rather do,” Pete replies. Oh sure, now that I’ve suggested something, he can suddenly “think of about a million things”. At the beginning of the evening, he couldn’t have come up with a worthwhile idea to save his life.
“Name one,” I challenge him.
Pete thinks on it a moment. “Go hand-gliding.”
See, this is Pete’s standard response. Any time we get together the only suggestions he can come up with to pass the time is some outlandish idea that we could never do and would never do in a million years. However, he manages to shoot down any idea I come up with so we end up either sitting around my room shooting the breeze or driving around town.
“Really,” I say, “Where are you gonna find a hand-gliding place at this time of night?”
Before Pete can come up with some cockamamie smart-ass comeback, I continue on.
“Come on, we haven’t seen Tim in a while and it might be fun to go hang out at his place for a while, see what he’s got to say for himself these days,” I explain, not sure even I’m buying this.
I get no response from Pete, so I add “Come on, we’ll stay for about a half hour and if he isn’t enthralling us with his company, we’ll bolt.”
“Half hour?”
“Half hour.”
About ten minutes later, Pete and I are sitting in his parked car, in the parking lot before the apartment building that Tim lives in. Pete makes no quick move to exit the car and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s worried that his car’s going to be broken into the second we enter the building or if he’s hoping that we’ll just sit in the parking lot and jokingly do a mental run-through of our visit with Tim and then leave in search of better things to do. (Wouldn’t be the first time!)
Eventually, I manage to convince him to head up to Tim’s place.
“I could just wait in the car, you know.” Pete suggests, “You could pretend that you walked over.”
“Whatever,” I reply, reflecting on the fact that Tim’s apartment building is in fact within walking distance (for me, anyways) from my place and I have done exactly that a few times over the years.
Of course, it goes without saying that Tim has never returned the favour. Always been too busy or too lazy to do so,
Pete is still with me when I knock on Tim’s door. I can tell that Tim’s home, since I can hear KISS blasting on the stereo. Somehow Tim manages to hear me through the racket.
“Enter,” comes the bellow from the other side.
I open the door about half-way, just enough to stick my head through. I notice that Pete is sprawled across his couch, not even looking up from the television to see who’s entering his apartment. I don’t know if he’s not frightened of burglars or has managed to win over every person in the building to the point where they just come on in whenever they want to chat.
“Hey, Tim!” I say, catching a glimpse of someone else in the apartment with him. My heart sinks as I fear that he’s got one of his myriad of ne’er-do-well buddies hanging around. While I can take Tim in small doses, most of his other friends are another story. All of them look like they’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel in terms of brains, personality and hygiene, yet still make themselves out to be too cool for school, or for me for that matter.
While there’s only a slim possibility that Tim, Pete and I will end up talking about high school if there’s just the three of us, if one of Tim’s buddies is in attendance, that possibility is zero in favour of which of the four of us has the most indepth knowledge of Star Trek and where you might find the rarest Dungeons and Dragons memorabilia.
“Hey Emmett!” Tim replies, his voice rounding up on the last syllable as it always does whenever I drop in unannounced, as though he still, after all these years. “What brings you to my humble abode?”
By this time, I’m about half-way through the door, but still have to check that Pete hasn’t ducked out on me. So far, so good. Meanwhile, there’s a scramble by Tim to pause the video game he’s playing and turn the stereo down to at least a level where neither of us are going to have to spend the entire conversation repeating each other twenty times because the other one can’t hear.
“Just in the neighbourhood, thought we’d stop by.” I explain, nonchalantly, as though I haven’t had to all but twist Pete’s arm to show up.
“We?” Tim inquires. “Who’s the we?”
Pete has followed me in. He gives a half-ass wave in Tim’s general direction. “Hey, Tim!” he says, as though it’s a chore to say that much.
“Petey!” Tim calls out, his tone much more enthusiastic that Pete’s. I glance back at Pete, not in time to see the wince I know crossed his face. Pete hates Tim calling him Petey as much as I had Dan calling me “Emm”.
“Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age,” Tim goes on to note. Thankfully, Pete is too diplomatic to reply “Well, if it was up to me, you wouldn’t be seeing me for another dog’s age.”
“Hey, Emmett. Hey Pete,” comes a female voice, which solves the mystery of who I caught a glimpse of as I came in. It turns out that it was Mary Pilcher, a girl we all went to high school with and who remains friends with Tim (and us to a lesser degree).
Mary was all right, looks-wise. She had a nice personality and, if I weren’t hung up on Sarah, I might be interested.
Oh come on, you still want to **** her. Partly because, like Sarah, you know that you’ll never have a chance to.
This is one of those times where Will has totally lost me…or rather I know where he figures he’s headed but I have no clue why he is going there. As I said, I might be interested if I wasn’t already interested in Sarah. I mean, I have no shot at Mary (I mean, she likes me as a friend but that’s it), would never want to date her because of what she means to Tim (more on that in a minute) and besides, one unrequited love at a time.
You seem to forget that I have access to the deeper recesses of your mind here, the part that stores all those thoughts and feelings and, dare I say it, even fantasies, that you would never admit to having, even to yourself.
Your point being?
You are a heterosexual male. Therefore, you would, under the right conditions, want to have sex with any girl you met that didn’t repulse you physically. If you were to come into a situation where the two of you were alone and she made any kind of advance towards you, you’d be all but ripping her clothes off.
I decide to zone out Will before he fills my head with images of Mary and I having sex.
Hey, they’re already there. I’m just pointing out that they’re there.
What Pete and I could never figure out, and we had spent many an hour contemplating this question, was why she hung out with Tim. In the end, I guess I really didn’t care. I knew there was nothing going on between the two of them, despite Tim’s obvious desire to turn their friendship into something a little more substantial. In that way, I guess I could relate to Tim and his situation made me realize that I wasn’t the only guy out there who fell in love with someone, but was afraid to take the next step and let that person know what was going on inside their head and their heart.
You really take solace in the fact that, socially, you’re on the same level as Tim? Man, you are one totally ****ed up individual.
By the time that Pete and I were inside the apartment and had said our “hello’s”, Tim was turned back towards his television set, becoming more and more fixated with his Playstation by the second.
“Hey, I’ll be with you guys in a second,” Tim told us as we came in the door, “I’m in the fourth quarter and Mary’s Penn State boys is up by 2. I gotta get my passing game going if I’m gonna regain any respectability here.”
And so Pete and I took a seat on his dilapidated couch and sat in bored silence as Tim sent his team in against the rival Penn State. Knowing little about college football, I caught the gist of little of what Tim was saying in terms of a running commentary. From the way he swore at the game before he switched it off, I got the impression that he had lost. Tim’s cursing coincided with Mary’s whoops of victory.
I had to laugh at the circumstances that Tim found himself in, but Pete seemed bored out of his skull. As far as the social agenda of the evening went, however, Pete and I were pretty much on the same page, trying to think of a polite way of leaving without actually having engaged in one iota of conversation. However, once Tim had finished his game, he seemed to realize that he actually had guests. He headed towards the corner of the apartment that passed as his kitchen to grab himself a drink.
“Since I guess I have to play host, anybody want anything while I’m up?” he asked, almost annoyed at the idea that he might have to put out for refreshments. Pete, Mary and I all indicated that we were okay.
He headed back from the kitchen a moment later, with a can of Pepsi in his hand. He took up his spot in his easy chair and opened the can but didn’t start drinking right away.
“So, what have you boys been up to?” he asked. He always called me and Pete “boys” whenever we say him. We were never quite sure what that meant, although we suspected it was his way of referring to us as inferiors to him in terms of status in life.
Pete just kinda shrugged, not wanting to make any more conversation than he had to. Fortunately for Pete, he’d never really conversed much with Tim so it wasn’t expected. Whether Tim knew that Pete didn’t like him and accepted it, or was of the naïve notion that Pete was just shy and quiet, he never really seemed to force the issue.
I would have been another story. I’d never had the courage to just clam up around Tim, so of course my answer had to be a bit more copious.
“Not much,” I told him. “Been working a lot at the store.”
“Oh, you and me both there, buddy,” Tim broke in.
Can you ever complete a sentence without him having to add his two cents worth?
“I must have impressed somebody, cause I’m working fifteen hours this next week, including two back-to-back five hour runs,” Tim told me, almost boasting.
Oooohhhh…working two days in a row! Man, someone call the Labour Board on that hardship case. Meanwhile, aren’t you starting a string of eight straight night shifts tomorrow?
“Man, you better stock up on coffee and energy bars if you’re going to make it through the week there, Tim,” Mary added, adding just a smidgeon of sarcasm into the mix.
I smiled at that remark. If Pete or I had said the same thing, Tim probably would have gotten all indignant, like we were putting down his manly pride or some such nonsense. Mary was able to get away with zinging Tim time and again. It was as if she could see him getting too big for his britches, so to speak and had to cut him down to size.
“Yeah, whatever,” was the best comeback Tim could pull out of his bag of tricks at that moment. But there was no annoyance in his voice, almost as if he realized that maybe he was making himself out to be more of a would-be martyr than he actually had any right to be.
He was still smart enough to quickly change the subject. “So, you still going to be coming over tomorrow night to watch ‘the Hitcher’?”
“That depends,” Mary replied, “Did you remember to tape it off TBS?”
“Hey,” Tim retorts in mock exasperation, “I may not be the brightest guy walking the face of the earth but there are just some things too important to forget.”
As Mary got up to leave, she playfully socked him in the shoulder, “Sure, laundry you leave in the dryer overnight, but some movie has top priority on your ‘Must Remember’ list. Anyways, I should probably get going. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good seeing you guys again.”
As Tim sold the punch to the shoulder, Pete and I said our goodbyes. After Mary had left, I asked Tim, “So, how are things going between you and her?”
This time it was Tim’s turn to shrug. “Not bad, and get your mind out of the gutter, Emmett, we’re just friends. Not unlike you and this Sarah you keep talking about.”
I don’t know why, but the relationship, such as it was, between Mary and Tim was the one thing I could get away with razzing him about. I guess it was because he was basically in the same type of relationship that I was in with Sarah. He was in love with her, painfully so, but they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. They hung out, watched movies, went out for burgers together, that sort of thing.
“Speaking of which, is this Sarah of yours still seeing that guy Brad?” he asked me. I guess he figured if I could turn the screw to him over Mary, he could return the favour with me and Sarah.
“Oh yeah,” I replied, a note of dejection a little more evident than I would have liked, “I guess it’s getting pretty serious. They’re living together from what I can tell.”
I half-expected Tim to come back with some observation that he’d think was witty and insightful but would turn out inane and stupid. Instead, he was silent for a moment. I think he finally figured out that Sarah wasn’t the best subject to be on with my right now.
A moment later, he sighed, wistfully. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” he asked, “Both of us are in love with women we can never have.”
He had shocked me with that little bit of musing, so much so that I chuckled in spite of myself.
“That we are, Tim,” I said, “that we are.”
“Either of you guys seen ‘the Hitcher’?” Tim asks, and for once I’m grateful for his usually annoying habit of just randomly changing the subject to a topic totally different from the one we’ve just been discussing.
Pete shrugs. I’m not sure if that’s a “I don’t think so” kind of shrug or an “I can’t be bothered to answer” kind of shrug. Actually, I think it’s probably 75% of the former and 25% of the latter.
“C. Thomas Howell movie, right?” I reply, knowing full well that I’m thinking of the exact same movie that Tim has decided to discuss.
“Yeah, it was on TBS the other night and I taped it so Mary’s coming over to watch it tomorrow night. You guys interested in stopping by?” Tim asks. The information was redundant since he’d just been talking about that very event not two minutes ago, before Mary left. Still, I wondered just how much Tim would actually want the two of us stopping by to interfere with his night alone with Mary.
It’d be like you and Sarah, right? I mean, if she called you up and invited you over to watch a movie with her and Brad or something of that nature, you’d be hoping that at the last moment that Brad had to work or had some dire emergency that he had to attend to that night, so it’d just be you and Sarah…alone. Same with Tim and Mary. Tim is probably desperately hoping that you’ll both decline. That way, he comes out looking like a nice guy for inviting you along BUT still ends up being alone with Mary.
Of course, if the situation between Tim and Mary works out the same way that a similar one would between you and Sarah, Tim will probably spend the entire night tongue-tied, pining away for Mary and end up spending the entire rest of the night trying to script how he wishes things HAD turned out.
“Actually, I’m probably busy tomorrow night there, Tim,” Pete replies, almost the moment that Tim makes the offer. Those eight words that all but leap out of Tim’s mouth probably double the number of words he’s said since we walked in the door. I doubt that Pete’s reasoning behind his backing out of the invite is because he doesn’t want to interfere with any chance that Tim has of furthering his relationship with Mary.
This time it’s my turn to shrug, only mine is more of a “sorry, life sucks, but what can you do”-type of shrug. “Yeah, I gotta work tomorrow night,” I inform Tim.
Truth be told, what I know of the Hitcher doesn’t exactly make the flick appeal to me. Secondly, I don’t want to be the kind of guy who shows up and puts the damper on another guy’s shot (feeble shot though it might be) at getting the girl and three, I actually do have to work tomorrow night.
“Too bad, man. It’s supposed to be a heck of a flick,” Tim replies. I almost smile at Tim’s obvious feigned disappointment. Okay, maybe not completely obvious. I will admit, the guy does put in a good acting job on that particular work.
The next ten minutes or so are spent just making small talk, uncomfortable small talk at that. I try wracking my brain, to no avail, in a vain attempt to find some subject that might relate back to our high school days. In the end, I look over to Pete for support and, as per usual, he’s no help. He just sits on his end of the couch and watches, a look that combines boredom, frustration and impatience all into one.
I glance towards the door, my signal for “Shall we get moving?” Pete manages to restrain himself and give me just the slightest subtle nod. I sigh and make to get up.
“Well, I guess we better get moving,” I tell Tim. Pete, for his part, manages to not trample me in his rush to get to the door but I somehow can tell that if I don’t keep moving, he might change his mind.
Tim never really seems surprised when we make our exits. “Oh..well, all righty,” he says as he shows us to the door. “You two boys stay out of trouble.”
I laugh and tell him to do the same. “You know it,” he replies as we exit the apartment.
Pete can’t seem to leave the apartment, the building or the parking lot fast enough. As we leave the parking lot of Tim’s building, Pete undergoes a strange metamorphisis. It’s like he has suddenly remembered that he’s not a mute and has the ability to talk.
“Well that was exciting!” he says, his sarcastic four word summation of the evening.
I chuckle, then catch myself. As much as I’m sure that Pete is just being sarcastic, I’m not certain that he’s not also more than a little pissed off at me for convincing him to spend the better part of an evening sitting on Tim’s couch, with the only real forms of entertainment consisting of watching Tim play some video game or listening to Tim and I chat about nothing in particular.
I decide to keep quiet as we commence to drive around the city. It appears that Pete, if he is in fact peeved, apparently isn’t so upset that he wants to dump me off at my place and get on with my life.
And **** him if he is! I mean, he’s the one who couldn’t come up with anything else to do tonight, save for doing exactly what you two are doing right now, just driving aimlessly. If he wanted to have some exciting evening on the town, he damn well coulda suggested something.
“So, you gonna go hang out with Tim and watch ‘the Hitcher’?” Pete asks me, saying “the Hitcher” in the deep, monotone voice that we both have come to use whenever we talk about Tim.
I laugh, more in relief that Pete’s obviously not all that pissed off at me, as it turns out. “I told you, man, I gotta work tomorrow night!” I reply, still laughing.
“Aw come on, Emmett,” Pete chides, “I’m sure that whatshisname … Dan… would let you have the night off work if he knew it was to go hang out with Tim McPherson to see “the Hitcher”!”
I shake my head at the absurdity of the idea. “Dude, that asshole wouldn’t give me time off if I’d gotten shot by a customer and had a sucking chest wound,” I explain, “Of course, he might write me up for having a dirty uniform.”
We both share a laugh at that idea.
“Hey, that girl you were working with tonight. What’s her name?” Pete asks.
“Who? Andrea?” I reply. “What about her?”
I look over at Tim and see him nodding his head. “Yeah, her. What’s she like?”
I shrug.
Okay, quick show of hands, who can’t see where this is going?
Despite the uneasy feeling that Will is laying on me, I reply. “She’s okay. Cool to work with. We get along pretty well.”
“You like her?” Pete asks me. Thankfully, even if he was being sarcastic about the question or using it to set me up for something sarcastic a sentence or two later, it doesn’t seem like it. Good for him, since at least I don’t go into this portion of the conversation on the defensive.
“She’s all right,” I reply, nodding. “She’s fun to work with, more so than most of the other dregs of society that make up the crew there..”
“Yeah, but do you LIKE her?”
“Ooh…” I say, acting as if the light has just been turned on in the cartoon bubble above my head, “You mean, do I “LIKE her” like her?”
Pete feigns exasperation. “Yeah…do you LIKE her, emphasis on ‘like’?
I think on this a minute. I mean, Will has always seemed to think that I should switch my attention from Sarah to Andrea but this is the first time that someone outside my brain has ever tossed the idea out there for me to consider.
“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I mean, I guess she’s okay but I guess I can’t really picture her and I ending up together. You know, I guess I just don’t think of her in THAT way. She’s a good person, a great co-worker, she’s funny and makes me laugh and laughs at pretty much every work-related joke I make.”
“So, where’s the problem?”
HEY! Where have you heard that logic before? Who was it who questioned you as to why you didn’t take your shot with Andrea in the first place? Who was that masked man? Why, I think it might have been…uh…ME!
If Pete knew who Will was, I might kid him about sounding like him. However, since I’m not really sure how the introduction of the voice in my head who tells me what a piece of crap I am might go, I’ve never said anything. Instead I just shrug as I begin to answer this loaded question.
“I don’t know…I guess that, other than work, we really don’t have that much in common,” I attempt to explain, “It’s like at the Christmas party last year. There were about ten of us there, plus assorted dates, wives, etc, and one of the boyfriends kinda decreed that we couldn’t talk shop.”
“Right, so?” Pete says.
“Well, ten minutes later, the conversation level was pretty much dead,” I continue. “Other than work, none of us really had much to talk about. We all just sat around kinda staring at each other, trying to figure out what to talk about. I mean, a few of the college kids talked about their courses but it got boring real quick.”
“So, you’re saying that this thing between Andrea and yourself, that’s just a ‘fun time at work but nothing more’ kinda thing?” Pete wants to know.
I shrug. “I guess you could say that.”
Pete doesn’t say anything more for a few minutes. By now, it’s creeping ever closer to the middle of the night so it’s hard to get a read on what he’s thinking because I can barely see his face amid the darkness. For some reason, I get this overwhelming urge to know what’s going on in that head of his. Why is he interested in Andrea all of a sudden?
Finally, I decide to break the silence. “Sooo,” I say, as if I don’t give a **** about the question I’m wanting to ask, “why do you want to know about Andrea, anyhow?”
I look over and Pete shrugs. “I don’t know, she seemed kinda nice. Anyone who hangs out at ‘Raunchy Susan’s’ and knows about Matters Not can’t be all bad.”
“I thought you had this Lorraine you were involved with,” I remind him.
“So?” Pete says, as if I’m loonier than a bed bug to be bothered by the fact that he’s expressing interest in one girl while dating another.
A pause, then he adds, “Just because I’m with Lorraine doesn’t mean I have to cut off all ties with members of the opposite sex.”
I don’t know why, but I’m pissed off about this. It’s one of those moments where emotion defies logic. I mean, I shouldn’t be pissed off that Pete has designs on someone else besides Lorraine.
Yes you should.
Excuse me. Is this the great Will Tracey who would tell me I was an idiot if I said the sky was blue just to call me an idiot now turning around and telling me that I am right in being pissed off?
Hey, it’s one of those once-a-millenium happenings. Don’t get used to it.
Believe me, I won’t, but are you saying that it’s okay that I’m pissed off at Pete?
Damn right! Think about it. Pete is involved with Lorraine. She obviously cares enough about the guy to overlook his geeky exterior and get to know the real him (something no woman on the face of the earth has ever done for you) and fallen in love with him…at least to the point where she lets him sleep with her. And rather than be satisfied with finding someone like that, and loving her back, he’s already on the hunt for another warm body. And a warm body that, if you ever got your head out of your ass and put even 1/10th of the effort you put into mooning over Sarah towards a more achievable goal, you might end up dating.
I want to shake my head and to a degree I do. Maybe Pete sees me and gets pissed off that I’m questioning his choices in terms of relationships. Or maybe he just decides to be a prick.
It starts subtly, like he’s not even talking about me.
“What the **** is up with Tim and Mary?” he asks, almost as if he’s talking to himself.
“What do you mean?” I ask him, instead of an answer.
This time it’s Pete’s turn to shrug. “I mean, why the hell doesn’t Tim just sit Mary down and tell her how he feels?”
For the same reason, Emmett, that you don’t do the exact same thing to Sarah. ‘Cause you’re a chicken****.
“Maybe he’s just shy,” I explain, “I mean, he comes off as so over-confident, he’s practically a braggart but maybe beneath the exterior, he’s scared she’ll just do the ‘want to be friends’ deal and things will be weird between them.”
By the end of the explanation, I actually think that maybe I’ve figured out why I haven’t told Sarah how I feel about her.
Well, that, and you’re chicken****, ya wimp!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MY SUPPER WITH SARAH…AND BRAD
And just when you thought life couldn’t suck any more, fate managed to throw you another curveball.
It was about a month after that party at Brad and Sarah’s. Most of my e-mails and phone calls to Sarah, inviting her out for one of our usual lunches, had gone unreturned during that time. It was no biggy. I mean, I figured that she had this new man in her life and so he was commanding most of her time. Some part of me, that part named Will, was also telling me that a girl with a boyfriend probably isn’t going to get together with any of her other male friends too often.
And for once, I didn’t sound all paranoid, did I?
For once.
Still, I missed having her in my life. I missed talking to her, hanging out with her, just being with her. The thought of having any romantic possibilities with her were out the window, courtesy of her relationship with Brad, but I still wanted to remain friends with her. After a while, I was beginning to think that she had gone the way of most of the rest of the people I had known in college, that she had moved on with her life and that move hadn’t included me.
And then, one day, just as I was coming in the door from doing some DVD shopping at the mall, my phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered, all but assuming it was Dan wanting to call me in again to cover someone.
Most likely he doesn’t want to be there anymore and since he gets paid no matter how many hours he works, figures you can cover for him while he ****s off with his buddies.
Instead, it was a female voice.
“Emmett?” she said, cautiously. It took me a split second to recognize the voice. It had been a long time since she’d called me.
“Sarah?” I hesitantly queried, once I had formed some semblance of a clue of who the voice on the other end of the line might belong to.
“Yeah, it’s me,” she laughed. “What are you doing tonight around supper time?”
I shrugged, despite knowing full well she couldn’t see the gesture. I did a quick mental scan of my internal day planner, knowing full well there was nothing pressing.
“Not much. Why?” I replied.
“We were thinking of going out to get something to eat and I figured it had been a while since you and I had gotten together at J.Q.’s so we thought we’d invite you along.”
Hmm…awful lot of we’s there. Are WE to assume that it won’t be just Sarah who shows up to this deal?
For a brief moment, I consider backing out.
Right! Only seconds after telling her that you had a whole lotta “Not Much” planned for this evening! Good plan, real subtle. I’m sure Sarah won’t catch on.
Instead, I tell her that I’m certainly up for getting together. She tells me that they’ll meet me at J.Q.’s around 6:30.
“They”? Another plural pronoun?
Sure enough, when I get to J.Q.’s, there’s Sarah…with Brad sitting right next to her.
Well, at least he’s done something for her punctuality.
I feel kinda stupid for not being there before them.
Great, you haven’t even sat down and already you’re embarrassed. Things are shaping up already.
“Hey, guys,” I say as a way of greeting as I sit down on the opposite side of the booth from them.
Sarah says “Hello”. Brad just kinda raises his hand as his way of returning my greeting.
“Sorry, I’m late,” I apologize.
“That’s cool,” Brad says, to which Sarah adds “We’ve only been here a couple of minutes.”
“So, how have you been?” Sarah asks. Brad obviously doesn’t care about my response as he is pouring over the menu.
I shrug. “Not too bad. Working a lot, as per usual. Same ol’ story as always.”
Sarah laughs. Brad nods although I have to wonder if he’s really listening or just figures that by nodding his head every time I stop speaking it’ll appear as though he’s listening.
Well, give the bastard credit for at least putting in the minimum effort required to keep up the “I wanna be your best buddy” act. Notice that I said “minimum effort”. Not that he really went out of his way to give it the ol’ college try at that party.
See what’s happening here, Emmett?
Thankfully, Sarah has decided that now would be a good time to check out the menu herself so I can concentrate on whatever Will is going to unleash upon me.
Okay, wise guy, listen up. You see, Brad is secure in the knowledge that he and Sarah are at that point in their relationship where he has worked his magic on her and has her totally wrapped around his finger. He has charmed the pants off her…quite literally, I might add, and he can do no wrong. Remember that song “When A Man Loves A Woman”? Well, reverse it and you see where Sarah and Brad are.
Now that they’ve moved past the whole “courting” (for lack of a less corny term) stage, he knows he can revert back to his real personality. He doesn’t have to work for it anymore. All he has to do is not be a complete jerk (only a partial one will do) and he’ll have Sarah forever and a day.
“Oh, hey, Emmett, guess who I saw the other day when Brad and I went into Toronto?” Sarah asks, looking up from her menu. “Bill Sherman!”
Nice of her to give you a chance to guess…oh and by the way, who the **** is Bill Sherman?
Your guess is as good as mine and apparently the confusion showed on my face since Sarah picked up on it.
“Remember Bill Sherman?” she asks. “He lived upstairs in Residence. Political Science major?”
Still doesn’t ring any bells.
Sarah decides to continue on with her story, giving me that “Oh my God, how dense are you?” wave that I think I’ve gotten from just about everyone in my life, from customers to family to friends. Will takes note and so I’m sure I’ll relive this moment over and over again in the next day or so.
Nice to see that Sarah can find you just as much of a moron as the rest of us. Stings even more when she does it than when some idiot at the video store does, don’t it?
Chagrined, I have to agree with Will, but I push him aside for the moment, preferring to concentrate on what Sarah has to say about this Bill Sherman guy, whatever role he might have played in my past life. Before I can give my full attention, however, Will has to give me the required twice over viewing off Sarah’s wave.
“…and there he was, right in the heart of Yonge Street, waiting for a bus outside the Eaton’s Centre,” Sarah is telling me, “I guess he works downtown in some office because he was in a suit and tie.”
“Did you talk to him?” I ask, figuring this was the best way to keep the conversation going without having to acknowledge the fact that I had no idea who this guy was.
She shakes her head.
“Nah, he was about a block away when I saw him. I called out to him but you know, I only had to talk over about a thousand people or so, so odds are pretty good he didn’t hear me.”
So I sit there and kind of nod my head, not unlike the nod that Brad was giving me earlier. I take solace in the fact that I do care about what Sarah is having to say, it’s just a matter of me not really getting the reference.
By the time she’s finished her story about catching a glimpse of someone she remembers from college but I don’t, all three of us are pretty much done our meals. It isn’t exactly the greatest meal I’ve ever had but for some reason, I think the atmosphere may have put a damper on my appetite.
I mean, here I am, sitting across the table with someone I am madly in love with…
Or at least mad (in which mad is used as a synonym for “insane” to be in love with.
…and her boyfriend who is sending out all kinds of “get the **** outta here, geek” types of vibes my way.
I try to concentrate on Sarah who spends the balance of the meal talking about some memory she had (which, again, I have no recollection of) involving this Bill Sherman guy. Thankfully, there are enough plot points in her story (the food in the cafeteria, the big thunderstorm that everyone got drenched in) that I can at least plug a couple of my own two-cents into. Brad, meanwhile, seems content to sit off to one side and kind of oversee the conversation and our dinner, while laughing at the parts of this story that Sarah wants him to find funny and otherwise just nod that he’s following along.
Finally, with her meal done, and Brad and I just kind of picking at our leftovers, she announces that she has to “go to the ‘little girls’ room’.”
As she makes that announcement, her voice trails off. She looks embarrassed for a moment, putting her hand over her eyes as she giggles. “Oh my God, that’s so corny. I can’t believe I just said that.”
I laugh good-naturedly. Brad chuckles under his breath. “Back in a second,” Sarah informs us as she gets up and heads to the nearest washroom.
Both Brad and I watch Sarah as she leaves the table.
I hate to see her leave but I love to watch her go.
I’m not sure what Brad’s train of thought is but “Great”, I think to myself, (and I’m sure I can hear Will repeating the sentiment), “now I’m stuck here with a guy I don’t particularly like and who I have absolutely nothing in common with, expected to make idle chitchat for the several awkward minutes until Sarah returns.” I’d be willing to bet that Brad’s thoughts were along the same line.
Even as I’m trying to rack my brain to think of some kind of topic that he and I might possibly have in common, Brad shocks the **** out of me by beating me to the punch, and the topic he picks is enough to shock me even more.
“So, Emmett, you’re in love with my girlfriend, are ya?” Brad says.
For a moment, I try to comprehend whether I’ve heard him right. However, nothing even remotely reasonable rhymes with “So you’re in love with my girlfriend”.
What about “So tour in dove with my hurl bend?” Nah, that doesn’t work, does it?
“Excuse me,” is the only thing I can think of to say in reply.
Brad laughs, that condescending “I can’t believe I’m dealing with such a moron” laugh that the customers give me at the store all the time. “Come on,” he says, “I’ve seen the way you look at her. I know you’ve been friends for years. She told me about all the late nights you stayed up talking, all the stuff you told each other. I mean, eventually, you must have developed some kind of romantic or even just romanticized feelings for her.”
At this point, I’m still not comprehending that Brad is actually saying this to me. Will is no help since all he can say is…
Holy ****!
Although come to think of it, that’s all I can think of to say as well. I mean, what does Brad expect me to say. Is he trying to build some kind of friendship with me by getting all honest and truthful here? Is he setting me up, or what?
I shrug. I figure it’s at least enough of an answer, without being too definite. Besides, at this very moment in my life, I have no clue what else to do or say. I mean, everything he says is true but is he, her boyfriend and, as Will would be so quick to point out, lover, the one I should be confiding this to?
Again, Brad laughs, a little louder and harder this time.
“Figured as much. It’s only natural.”
Brad glances over towards the ladies’ room but when he turned his attention back, his expression was much more serious.
“Listen, geek,” he says, his tone as serious, if not more so, than his expression, “I don’t know what stupid little fantasy you got cooked up inside that brain of yours, but Sarah’s with me now and figures to be for quite a while.”
Will’s “Holy ****!” changes to “Oh ****!” He isn’t being real helpful, so I’m left on my own to try and figure out how far Brad intends to carry these intimidation tactics of his. I can tell that he isn’t quite satisfied just to be rubbing it in that Sarah was with him and not me.
“I hate to be the bad guy in this whole thing but I’m gonna tell you this now before things go any further,” he warns me. “I mean, I know you consider Sarah one of your best friends so this is going to be hard for you but you know what, I don’t give a ****. I don’t want you hanging around Sarah any more. No more calling her up for coffee. If she invites you to hang out with her, no matter what the social setting, you find yourself a more pressing engagement. Comprende? Otherwise…well, I think you can fill in the blanks for yourself.”
Holy ****! The bastard figures he’s being charitable by telling you to stop hanging out with Sarah BEFORE he goes ahead and just beats the crap out of you. Like he’s doing you some sort of public service.
At this point, Sarah makes her way back from the washroom. She gives Brad, who is back to his formerly charming self, a loving peck on the cheek.
Nice of her to add that last little tap of the hammer onto the stake through the heart.
And nice of you, Will, to finally add your two cents worth there.
Hey, don’t give me any crap here. I’m kinda overwhelmed with just where to start on this whole thing. Expect me to hit you with both guns blazing about an hour or two after this dinner from hell comes to its unpleasant end.
Wouldn’t expect it to be any other way. Hell, I’m just thankful that I had eaten most of my meal prior to Brad’s little pep talk. My appetite has pretty much gone the way of any chance of friendship between the asshole and I.
The question is: now that you’ve got it down, will it stay down?
Debatable.
The dinner starts to come to a close. Brad and Sarah continue to flirt with each other, in between Sarah trying to tell me about some of the things going on in her life, work, movies, etc. I only half-ass listen since Will has apparently decided to roll the videotape already.
And I can tell from the looks Brad keeps surreptitiously shooting across the table from me that he knows that I’m mentally reliving each and every moment of his brief soliloquy, and he’s enjoying that knowledge.
Sarah gives me a bit of an inquiring look. “You all right, Emmett?” she asks, “You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden.”
You’re ****ing transparent! You’ve never quite mastered the fine art of hiding your feelings when you’re upset or depressed or worried about something. Considering how many times over the years that someone has gone out of their way to make your experience such feelings, you’d think you’d invest a little time in that.
I look over at Brad. I can see he’s managed, but just barely, to master the fine art of masking his Chesire cat grin. He needn’t have worried. Sarah is so oblivious to the possibility that her boyfriend might have caused me any mental discomfort that, for a brief moment, she’s not even paying attention to him.
Rather than have this already uncomfortable situation become even that much more uncomfortable…
Is that even possible?
…I throw my best “I’m not upset, I’m just tired” look. Despite what Will would have you believe, it is something I have honed.
Sure you have.
“Oh yeah, I’m cool,” I explain, as nonchalantly as possible. “I’m just tired, actually. I worked until close last night and got up this morning pretty early to get some stuff done.”
Which is, ironically, true, so the lie comes easy.
Oh yeah. You could have totally talked the Watergate burglars out of that whole mess.
“Geez..uh, Emmett,” Brad jokes. “We aren’t keeping you up, are we?”
****ing asshole can’t even remember your name and yet he still manages to make you out to look like a moron. Ever notice Emmett that just about every one in your life wants to treat you like you’re about five years old. A retarded five year old at that.
I laugh, even though I’d like to reach across and slam his face against the table.
Hey, now you’re talking. See, I’m rubbing off on you. Of course, you thinking about it and actually doing it are probably two different things.
Several torturous minutes later, we’re parting company in the parking lot.
“Sure we can’t give you a ride home, Emmett?” the bastard…er I mean, Brad asks me. Sure, be a ****ing dickhead to me and then play the good Samaritan in front of your girlfriend.
“Nah, I’m good,” I reply. “It’s a nice night, and I can use some fresh air.”
Yeah, just try not to run over me as you’re driving home, dickhead!
Brad shrugs, trying to feign being good natured about the whole deal.
By this time, Sarah’s around to her side of the car and has her door open. She pauses just long enough to look over at me, standing there a few feet away.
“See ya later, Emmett,” she says, waving goodbye. “You get yourself some sleep now.”
I nod, trying to chuckle, as I wave goodbye. It occurs to me that save for an unlikely invite to her wedding, this could be the last time I see Sarah. It saddens me, and the grief I feel over losing Sarah, even as a friend, has managed to outweigh the level of being pissed off that I feel at Brad at this very moment, and the shame at letting him intimidate me the way he has.
I half-expect him to try and shoot me some kind of “You’ve been warned” kinda look as I leave, but I turn away and don’t notice, so I guess I should consider that some kind of moral victory.
Oh yeah. It’s a regular Gettysburg there, Emmett.
Will is back, and ready to somehow twist this whole scenario into a great big attack on me. How typical.
I start heading home. Thankfully, Brad refrains from trying to run me down with his car. I wonder, momentarily, if it wouldn’t have been better if he had.
I keep waiting for Will to start his running commentary on the endless loop that’s running in my head. Of course, it’s not running in sequence, instead jumping around from soundbite to soundbite.
“Sarah’s with me now and figures to be for quite a while.”
“I don’t want you hanging around Sarah any more.”
“Otherwise…well, I think you can fill in the blanks for yourself.”
“Sarah’s with me now.”
“I don’t want you hanging around Sarah any more.”
“Otherwise…”
Well, I have to hand it to the guy. He didn’t beat around the bush. He told you straight out how he wanted things to go down. No subtlety wasted. No misinterpretations. Just one direct order: Stop seeing Sarah. Only thing I might have done differently in his shoes was to be a little clearer on the consequences, although even that we could figure out, just like he said.
I take a few side streets on my way home on this night. Walk through a few crescents that lead me right back to the street I had been on before. I need to be alone right now for as long as I can be, just so I can sort out a few things in my head.
Again, as mad as I am at Brad for being a dickhead and as mad as I am at myself for letting him be said dickhead to me, I’m equally filled with a sense of loss, like I have lost someone close to me. In a way I have. Sarah, thankfully, hasn’t passed away, but her friendship, which had meant so much, is gone, taken from me by this ****ing asshole.
I mean, what does he think this is, high school? No offence there, Emmett, but this sounds like a scene from some 50s film, with some greaser in a leather jacket roughing up some nerd (that’d be you) over taking his girl to the sock hop.
Great, now I have to soundtrack to Grease playing over and over in my head. It somehow adds an element of the absurd to an already absurd situation. And in the end, it does nothing to detract from the sick feeling I have in the pit of my stomach as I walk aimlessly through these deserted side streets.
I shake my head in disbelief. I mean, I knew when I first realized my feelings for Sarah that there was little I could do about it. Just my luck to fall in love with someone just as they’ve met the love of their life. Any shot I had with Sarah was over before it even started. I mean, it sounds like a bad country song.
Merle Haggard, eat your heart out!
Still, I figured that at least Sarah and I could still remain friends. You know, get together for coffee, that sort of thing. I mean, I guess on some level, I knew that things would never be the same between us, and that Brad, just like any other guy in his position, might feel…I don’t know…threatened by the idea that his girlfriend was with another guy.
Threatened? By you? Yeah, now I know Brad needs to seek psychiatric help. He’s definitely got some self-image issues if he’s threatened by the likes of you.
Maybe if I was in the same position as him, and I was with someone as special as Sarah, I’d want to put the warning out to any guy who was getting too close for comfort with her.
Before that thought can go any further, a car passes me, slowing down as it does so.
“Oh crap,” I think to myself, “Sarah and Brad have somehow found me and are wondering just what the hell I’m doing wandering around the backstreets of the city at this hour of the night.”
Instead, it’s just some nosy suburbanite who’s apparently got nothing better to do than play Neighbourhood Watch. He gives me a dirty look, one that says “What the hell are you doing around here?”
Yeah, he’ll ignore the crack dealer son of his upper class neighbour but some nobody geek he’ll decide to play hero over. Probably got in **** at his office job and figures hassling you will make him feel better in his lot in life. Get something to tell the wife and kids and the boys at work tomorrow.
I keep waiting for him to stop the car and make an issue out of things but he passes me by, the car never really picking up speed until it’s down the block a ways. As non-chalantly as possible, I make a bee-line for the nearest major street and head towards home.
Par for the ****ing course. Like I wasn’t kicked down enough, the world had to get that extra little dig in. It was like Brad making that stupid lame-ass joke about him and Sarah keeping me up.
What’s the old saying? Don’t kick a man when he’s down, because he just might get up. Well, I guess Brad knew that once he had you down, you weren’t going to be any threat to get back up and so figured it was free-shot time.
About a half-block from my place, Will and I finally stop going over the incident with the would-be vigilante, and get back to the misery I find myself in over Brad and Sarah.
By this time, Will has managed to exonerate Brad from any part of the blame game, although he hasn’t gone so far as to add him to our Christmas list. He’s also quick to remind me that I had known, in some way, right from the get-go, that my friendship with Sarah was going to change now that she was going out with Brad.
Still, though, I had figured…or at least had hoped, that she and I would still remain friends, even if there was never the possibility of that growing into something more, what with Brad in the picture. Still, if we couldn’t become more than we were, I’d always wanted us to never become less than what we were.
And now, here was Brad, forcing me to severe even that tie with Sarah. Part of me wanted to tell him to go **** himself, that he couldn’t damn well tell me who I could and/or couldn’t be friends with.
And then there was that other part of me, the part of me that knew that if I called him on it, if I confronted him about it in front of Sarah…
Lemme guess. If you confront him in front of Sarah, she’ll immediately see him for the jerk that he is, dump Brad and ride off into the sunset with you. Is that what you’re picturing in that warped little mind of yours?
I sigh. I know damn well, and if I doubt it I can just ask Will, that I’m not the type of person who would ever get up the courage, the testicular fortitude, to confront Brad.
Besides, he’d just act all shocked and hurt and claim that he had no clue what you were talking about. He’d be adamant that he had always been very cool about you and Sarah remaining friends, as long as that was what she wanted. He’d play the caring boyfriend card and say that he only wanted whatever would make Sarah happy. Hell, he might go so far as to say that he thought you were a pretty decent dude and hoped to become friends with you someday as well.
The thing I hated about Will in these situations was that he always managed to create just the right scenario. I hated the fact that he was always right on the money. Everything that played itself out in the little mental picture that he created for me was totally credible.
In the end, I had to admit defeat. I knew that as Sarah had gotten into Brad’s car, that it was most likely to be the last time I’d ever see her. I knew she’d probably wonder, in the weeks and months to come, whatever had happened to me. I could imagine her discussing my strange behavior and all but disappearance with Brad.
In bed?
Maybe. Probably. Who cares?
You do.
Be that as it may. I could almost hear her asking Brad what his opinion was on just what had happened to me. Of course, he’ll try to play the concerned boyfriend and offer up some half-assed explanation which will all boil down to me being a complete asshole and himself being a stand-up guy “that would never turn his back on his friends”. Nothing like bending the truth to get yourself over, eh, Brad?
OR…maybe he’d end up spilling the beans on his theory that you were in love with her, only in this scenario it turns out that its YOU who were the one who got jealous and felt threatened by her relationship with him and YOU were the one who threw a hissy fit and ran away to sulk.
I sigh as I listen to Will complete his conspiracy theory about Brad. Again, nothing like bending the truth the get yourself over. The sad part is that this is one of the few times that I actually find myself agreeing with Will’s warped theory.
Hell, this is one of the rare, extremely rare instances where I actually want Will to go hog wild, hell bent for leather on his theories, the more warped and outrageous the better. My mind is such that I’m willing to listen and give all of them some consideration.
Poor Sarah. She’d never understand. She probably would think it was something personal towards her. She’d probably be hurt and confused. And it wasn’t like I could ever take her aside and explain things.
**** me!
CHAPTER TWELVE
THREE MONTHS LATER
Three months and yet barely a day goes by that I don’t think of her. I am getting better, though. When I first had to pull the plug on our friendship, everything I saw, everything I heard, everything I thought about reminded me of her. I’d hear a song on the radio and think of a time that she and I had been talking and it had been playing then. I’d clean out a drawer in my room and there’d be some little artifact from our past together, a photo or something.
I’d try and drive the image of her, the sound of her voice, the memory of some shared event but Will, the evil bastard that he is, would bring it front and center, forcing me to use all my will power (pardon the pun) to drive the images, the memories from my mind.
I swear, I was like a crack addict. There were times that I knew it was wrong to be thinking about her, but I did anyways. At night, just as I was falling asleep, or first thing in the morning, as I lay there trying to work up the courage to face another day, I would just let all my resistence fall by the wayside and would let the images I had fought so hard to keep away come rushing back.
I would find myself wondering, every time the phone would ring, if that was her, calling to see what was going on, invite me out for coffee or to come over and watch movies. I checked my e-mail ten, twenty times a day waiting for her message that we should get together, talk, etc. I would pace the floor of my room, wondering if I should make the first move, call her and make some outlandish plan about getting together. I would compose e-mails, apologizing for my lack of contact and telling her that we needed to get together and chat, in private.
But in the end, the phone calls were never made, the e-mails never sent. After a while, it got easier. A day would pass and I would realize that I hadn’t thought about her. In time, even the few scant moments where I did think of her wouldn’t cause me as much pain as they once had. I would look at those few photos that hadn’t survived the great purge of the morning after Brad’s warning and I would feel some warm nostalgia rush through me but then nothing, like I was looking at my own baby pictures. A part of me wished that I could go back to that era but sentimentality was soon crushed by the firm knowledge that it could never be, and so I would put the photo away and soon I had forgotten all about the moment that had passed.
Still, there were nights when I would lie in bed, not ready to go to sleep, with my headphones on and some mixed CD I’d made playing in my CD player. I would lose myself in the music and wonder what might happen if, some day, I got a phone call and it was Sarah, crying because the unthinkable had happened, that Brad had shown himself to be the asshole that I knew he was, and that she’d had enough and left him. I kept thinking of worse and worse scenarios for Sarah to find herself in. He’d been a complete dickhead to her, he’d cheated on her, he’d decided that he wanted to move on, hell, depending on what kind of vindictive mood I was in, I might have even imagined that he’d beaten her up.
Hey, Brad more or less hinted that he’d beat you up when he got jealous of your relationship with Sarah. Stands to reason that if he felt threatened that he might turn his rage against her instead.
Still, it wasn’t a situation that I really wanted to imagine Sarah in so I tried to hold off on the whole “domestic violence” scenario until those points where I was really feeling low. For the most part, I stuck with stuff like “Sarah comes home and finds Brad ****ing Samantha”.
You know, as much as Sam came off as a cold-hearted bitch, the thought of her naked and in the throes of passion is kinda thought-provoking, wouldn’t you say?
Can we just stick with the program? Meanwhile, I kept reliving “When Harry Met Sally…” where Billy Crystal is called over to comfort a grieving Meg Ryan…
Is that the part where they end up sleeping together? So, is that what all this is about? All this “I want to be there to comfort Sarah” bull-**** is all an elaborate ruse to get her into bed? Ah ha!
It wasn’t like that at all, Will, but once again you’ve managed to take the reality of the situation and warp it into something sick and demented, taking an innocent scenario and twist that makes me look as bad as possible.
And in what way am I any different from anyone else in your life, or in anyone else that you meet? Besides, wasn’t I there for you during that whole exorcism period you went through?
“There for me”? It was you who suggested it. Only it wasn’t like a real exorcism, involving priests and green pea soup puke.
About a month or so after Brad basically told me to get lost for fear of bodily harm, I closed up shop so to speak on a lot of things. I did some personal house-cleaning. In the course of a day, I went through all my personal belongings and wiped out any trace of Sarah. Everything that I owned that reminded me of her, all the photographs I had taken of her, all the movies I had bought because we had seen them together, everything went.
And then I continued on with everyone else in my life. I deleted e-mails from people, basically stopped checking my Hotmail account, deleted ICQ from my computer (not that there was ever anyone on there anyways), gathered up everything that people had given me, any little reminders of anyone other than my folks.
Of course, I couldn’t bring myself to toss everything away, even though Will wanted me to do everything but have a big bonfire with all this stuff.
“And our love becomes a funeral pyre”! Ah, Jim Morrison’s words would have never been more appropriate.
Instead, I decided to just box everything up and stick it in the back of my closet. And with that, I prepared for my post-Sarah life. Hell, I prepared myself for my post-social life.
Post-social life? Considering your entire social life consisted of getting together with Sarah once every few weeks for lunch and then driving around with Pete at about the same frequency, I don’t really think there was much for you to cut loose.
Point taken. Still, what little that had existed I was determined to do away with. I went to work, tried to keep my interaction with my fellow employees to a minimum…
I’ll bet that was a real chore, considering that you worked with Andrea quite a bit.
Oh yeah. There were times when I almost hated working with her, which might come as a shock considering what a bright, normally upbeat person she is. No matter how much I wanted Will to find me a dark place to try and hide away in, Andrea was always there to crack jokes and make witty commentary on our daily routine. No matter how much I just wanted to indulge myself in self-pity and hating the world, Andrea always seemed to drag me out of that pit, kicking and screaming.
I know…what a bitch! I swear, why can’t people just live and let live? I mean, I don’t know which was worse: her wanting you to explain why you were down in the dumps or you having to make stupid jokes to throw her off the trail.
Oh come on, Will, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, Andrea was just trying to cheer me up, even when I didn’t want to be. And after a while, it kinda took. I started checking my e-mail more often. At first, Will told me I was just doing it to see if Sarah was trying to contact me.
Which is exactly what was going on. Well, that and you somehow had the idea that even though people hadn’t tried to contact you in months, or in some cases, years, they might have decided to do exactly that in the five minutes since you had checked your e-mail last.
Anyways, rather than dreading working with Andrea, I actually looked forward to it. And rather than our entire conversation being about what was bothering me and/or those annoying jokes I was making…
Told you.
Shut up…Andrea and I quickly fell back into our old “Pre-Sarah routine”. We talked about the movies we’d seen, the customers we’d had to deal with when we weren’t working the same shifts. We verbally torched Don and Jessica’s not-so-secret relationship.
And yet it never occurred to you that maybe, since you got along so well, that maybe you should suggest going out for coffee after work? See if you get along as well outside of work as you do while you’re schlocking videos to the morons of the neighbourhood? Maybe…you know…start a relationship with someone you care about?
Thanks to Will, the thought did occur to me, and yet even as he was berating me into feeling ashamed for not having the courage to ask Andrea out for coffee, he was feeding me these doubts.
Didn’t Sarah teach you anything? No one wants to date you.
What if you ask Andrea out and she turns you down? What happens if she says “Yes” and it turns out to be horrible? Won’t that ruin the friendship you have? How uncomfortable will it be to work together after that?
It’s like Will was trying to tell me not to ask her out just so he could make fun of me for not asking her out.
Genius, no?
He reasoned that it was my crush on Sarah, so transparent to Brad, that forced him to take her away from me. As evil a genius as Will might have been, he had a point. And so, Andrea and I remained simply co-workers…and I remained tormented by the loss of my friendship with Sarah.
“How long have you known Pete?” Andrea asks me, clear out of the blue. I’m cleaning the comedy section, a fruitless and pointless “Make Work” task that involves me getting a bucket of water and wiping down each shelf. It accomplishes nothing, results in not one extra dollar in revenue for the company, but keeps the employees busy during the rare down-time we have.
I do a double-take when Andrea asks me this question. For a minute, I’m trying to figure out which Pete she’s talking about.
“Pete Henry?” I ask, since he’s the only Pete I really know all that well.
“Yeah…the guy who came in here to pick you up that night,” she replies.
I shrug and tell Andrea that I’ve known Pete since high school, and that I still hang around with him on occasion.
Andrea looks like she’s digesting this information but in retrospect I think she was just trying to work up the courage to ask me another question about Pete.
“Soo…,” she starts, slyly, like the answer to the question is no big deal. “Is he seeing anyone?”
Despite my insistence that I don’t want to be any more than just friends with Andrea, her question still gives Will free reign to give me a light tap, or maybe something stronger, to the gut.
I shrug, trying to act nonchalant. It actually takes me a minute to try and remember what Pete has said regarding his love life. When I answer, it’s more like I’m just thinking out loud than really answering Andrea’s question.
“I know that he was dating some chi..er, woman named Lauren…Lorraine (?)… something like that, but that was a while ago,” I reply.
I look up and I see Andrea with a bigger hint of a smile than she might have had were she just asking to make conversation.
I wonder why she’s suddenly so interested in Pete’s relationship status? Hmm…I wonder, indeed.
Telling Will to **** off, I decide to take the bull by the horns. Rather than just worry and wonder and try and come up with stupid theories, all of which are sure to be shot down by Will as ridiculously naïve, I decide to take the proverbial bull by the horns.
“So…why the sudden interest in who Pete is or isn’t seeing?” I ask.
Deer in the headlights. Andrea knows she’s been caught being overly interested in something that can only be of interest to her if she’s got one thing on her mind.
This time, it’s her turn to shrug.
“No reason,” she replies unconvincingly. “I just see him in clubs from time to time. I remember seeing him with a girl a while ago but he’s been flying solo for the last while.”
Oooh…nice going, Andrea! That’s a girl. Give old Emmett here some doubt to chew on. Even though you know and I know and, most importantly, he knows that one of his closest friends and favourite co-worker is warm for the form of one of his long-time friends, by being…oh, shall we say, vague, will give him several hours of pondering. Hey, it’s not like he’s going out to clubs or having any kind of social life, take away his precious worry time and he’ll have to find another past time.
In the time it has taken Will to verbally pat Andrea on the back, she’s decided to head back up to the counter to do returns. As I watch her walk away, I realize that even though I never asked her out, a romantic entanglement has come between us. I just hope that things won’t get as weird between she and I once the inevitability of her and Pete “hooking up” comes to pass and Will threatened they might if I had tried to be the one she became romantically interested in.
And just like that, it’s another ****ty day at work.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JUST WHEN YOU THINK ALL IS LOST
I hated watching the news. Hated reading the paper.
Every day, it seemed, there was another story about some guy who had beat up his girlfriend. I knew – and was glad to know – that would never be the ending to Sarah and Brad’s relationship. I mean, I knew the guy was a ****ing dickhead but to everyone else, but he was a perfect catch, a gentleman to everyone he came in contact with…well, save me.
You mean you read more than the comics?
I continue to read about how some guy had, according to the accounts of friends and relatives, been abusive towards his girlfriend for years. These same friends had begged this young woman to dump the jerk and find someone new but she refused. In the end, he got drunk one night, got pissed off about something and beat the crap out of her until she was dead.
You know what I think whenever you read one of these stories there, Emmett?
I shudder to think but go ahead and tell me.
There goes a better man than you. Anytime you read a newspaper article or see a report on the TV news about some ****ing psycho who beats his girlfriend/wife/kids to death, that’s the first thing that pops into your brain.
Think about it, man, just for a moment. In the eyes of God and the world, he is considered a better man than you and so therefore is further up the social food chain that you. To society, it is better to date someone who will habitually beat the **** out of someone that they are supposed to love and who unconditionally love them back than it is to become involved with a geek.
Despite whatever psychological flaws these guys may have, they never seem to be in short supply of people around them who can’t bear to be apart from them. Meanwhile, you’ve got no one significant in your life at all. Never have, never will. How exactly is all this supposed to make sense?
I mean. Think on it a while, if you will. I mean, this guy, and he’s certainly far from the only one out there, gets his jollies from physically and, we must assume, mentally abusing his girlfriend. And hey, how about all those guys out there who have a girlfriend or wife and decide that having someone special in their lives isn’t good enough for them, so they have to go out and find someone else and have an affair?
And you can make all the claims you want about how you’d have the sun rise and set around any girl in your life, that you’d be hopelessly devoted to that one person and would do everything in your power to ensure that she was as happy as she made you.
You know, no offence, but your romantic crap sounds like some really bad love song that should end up on one of those K-Tel Love Ballad compilations.
Be that as it may, the fact is that you’ll never get the chance to prove that theory of yours because apparently, according to modern society, it is better for a woman to find herself attracted to someone who will beat them up and/or cheat on them than someone like you.
Well, Will seems intent on taking a single newspaper article and using it to totally ruin my day. However, just at that moment, my phone rings.
Guess who this will be? Lemme guess, I’ll take 50 clams on Don having to head to hockey practice a little early today and needing you to cover his shift…and when I say “a little early”, I’m thinking of somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven or eight hours early.
Hesitantly, I pick up the phone.
“Hello?” I begin, hoping that I sound like I’m coming down with the flu or something.
“Hey, how’s it going?” comes the voice on the other end. With no small amount of relief, I realize that it’s Pete and not Don who has called me.
I tell him, “Not too bad.” Figure it’s better to just give him the standard response, rather than go into the whole detail about how his phone call may have inadvertently saved me from diving any further into a sea of self-pity thanks to the voice in my head theorizing how, to the world at large, I’m considered a worse catch than a wife-beater.
Really? You think that Pete would consider that weird or something?
You know what, Will? I’m thinking he might, so I’ve decided to stick with a safe, if mediocre, response. Meanwhile, as I’m telling my inner voice about how telling other people about my inner voice might be considered rather mentally unstable, Pete is telling me about how he’s thinking of going to the mall later this afternoon and asks me if I’d like to come along.
Will tries to quickly come up with something more pressing and urgent on my “To Do” list for the day but fails and so I decide to take Pete up on his offer.
“So, you hear much from Sarah any more?” is the question that Pete has decided to drop into the conversation.
It’s about two hours since Pete called me, asking me to come out to the mall and we’re sitting in the food court, on one of the rare days that both he and I both have off. Instead of actually doing anything, mind you, we’re sitting here trying to figure out what to do. We’ve been at it for about three hours. Pete of course can’t or won’t actually think of anything and his entire contribution to the thought process has to shoot down every idea I could come up with and then to make small talk about some South Park episode he’d watched the other night. After about two mind-numbing hours hanging around my place, shooting the **** and me being bored, I suggested we come to the mall, where at least I could check out the latest DVDs at Movie-Plus, the best place I know to buy movies…even if I do feel slightly disloyal to Video Emporium for shopping elsewhere.
Disloyal? Bull-****! If you can save almost 10 bucks on movies by going elsewhere, go for it. What? Do you think Dan will make you employee of the month for wasting your money on the over-priced **** he has in stock?
Well, my DVD browsing only killed about 20 minutes, and so here I sit watching Pete eat Tacos and trying to think of something to say to kill the deafening silence between us. Finally, wonder of wonders, he beat me to it.
His tone says that this particular inquiry is much more than just a harmless way to bridge the gap in the conversation. It’s more like he knows the answer but figures that me having to give said answer and elaborate on it is a way to stick it to me that in fact it’s been about three months since I broke contact with her.
“Nah,” I say, shaking my head and trying to act non-chalantly about the whole thing. “She’s too busy hanging with her boyfriend to have time for the likes of me.”
Good answer. Always go with the truth, no matter how much it hurts. The fact that her boyfriend forced you into breaking it off with her just cut to the chase, rather than delaying the inevitable.
Of course Will has taken the opportunity to show me his home movies of how my relationship with Sarah might have worked out had Brad not decided to deliver his ultimatum. I detect a pattern in his little pet projects. All of them have Sarah drifting further and further away from me. All of them have Sarah becoming more and more devoted to the idea of spending every moment possible with Brad, at the expense of her friendship with me.
Hey, when I see an idea that works, I run with it.
Anyways, the answer I give Pete must have worked since it shuts him up. I mean, anything is better than just sitting there but Sarah is one topic I just don’t need to rehash.
Actually, Pete’s question sparks the first reflection about Sarah that I have had in at least a week or so. As Pete turns his attention towards his unfinished taco, silence returns between us. Unfortunately, I find myself wondering what Sarah and Brad are up to these days, in terms of their relationship. They’ve obviously moved in together. Horrified, I realize that I’m wondering if they’re giving any thought to the next stage of their relationship, with Brad making Sarah an honest woman.
Shaking my head to rid myself of that thought, I decide that if we’re going to talk about romantic relationships, I might as well throw it back to Pete.
Yeah…might as well discuss a relationship that’s actually taking place in the real world.
“Meanwhile, how are things with you and Andrea going?” I ask. I don’t really want to know but I figure it’s better than Pete making some smirking remark about Sarah and her boyfriend….
Fiance?
…as much to say “Yeah, no one expected her to remain friends with you once something better came along. Heck, I’m only slumming it here today because Andrea’s working.”
It’s been about three weeks since Andrea approached me, wanting to know about Pete’s status. To the surprise of no one, least of all, Will, a few days later, Pete e-mailed me to say that he’d bumped into “that Andrea that works at your store” at some club downtown and that she’d asked him if he wanted to buy her a drink. By the weekend, Andrea had only one topic of conversation: how much she was “diggin’” hanging out with Pete.
By the Monday, I was back to dreading working with her. Not because I had to assure her that I was doing okay, (she either didn’t notice or, as Will theorized, couldn’t have cared less) but because I was just getting sick of every sentence out of her mouth containing the phrase “Pete and I”. I had hoped it would get better or at least easier and, in fact, Andrea managed to downshift from talking about her new relationship with Pete from 100% of the conversation to, perhaps 60%.
Pete, meanwhile, barely mentioned her, save that he would e-mail me from time to time to talk about he “and the girlfriend” were doing this or that.
This time out, his only response was to brush it off with “Eh…they’re going. She and I had an American Pie movie marathon at her place the other night.”
I nod, not so much to Pete, but at the memory of Andrea renting the movies the other night at work. I remembered thinking that in pre-Pete days I would probably have kidded her about her choice of movie selections. Instead, all I could do was remark, as casually as I could, about how she was renting all of the American Pie movies, like she couldn’t have figured that out on her own.
At the time, I figured she had just wanted to spend an evening watching the American Pie series…
Which is exactly what she did…you just didn’t realize that she was doing it with Pete.
Yeah, I never clued in that the movies were going to be the centerpiece for her …
DATE! Say it! Date
(Sigh!) Fine, her DATE with Pete. Funny how even something as simple and seemingly innocent as Andrea renting movies turns into something that causes me pain.
So let me ask you something, Emmett? Are you upset because Pete’s dating Andrea and you’re not…or are you upset that they’re just two more people that have found one another while you remain alone?
I really don’t know how to answer Will. The nice thing about Will is that even when I don’t answer him one way or the other, he’ll continue on like I’m not even really part of the conversation.
You know the one positive of Andrea and Pete hooking up…and I do mean hooking up since you know they must be on a regular basis now…is that all these horrible feelings you have about losing Amanda, who by rights, you should be dating instead of Pete are taking away from all the horrible feelings that you were having about losing Sarah to Brad.
I hate to point out the flaw in your logic, Will but technically if I’m feeling crappy about Andrea and Pete dating, how is that any better or worse than feeling crappy about Sarah and Brad dating?
It’s not really any worse or better…it’s just different. You know, it changes things up a bit. In the end, you feel like **** because someone you know you wanted to be with is happy as a pig in **** with someone else, so the end result is maintaining the status quo.
And for the 1000th time probably since our story began, Will’s logic and twisted view of the world astounds me. I decide to chat up Pete, who’s been too busy eating tacos to notice that I’ve been a million miles away from this food court.
“So other than you and Andrea watching American Pie movies, what else have you been up to?”
I expect some reply from Pete about what’s going on at work, or the latest incarnation of the band he’s been working on. Will is chomping at the bit to have me listen to Pete tell me all about his relationship with Andrea.
Every dirty detail.
What suprises me and not in a good way is that Pete sighs. For a moment I wonder if he’s about to reveal to me that he and Andrea have broken up, or are on the verge of doing so. Thankfully I have Will here to remind me of my own logic flaws.
If he and Andrea were about to break up, wouldn’t he have told you five minutes ago when you asked how things were going between them?
I owe Pete a debt of gratitude and then some for interrupting the internal argument that was assuredly about to ensue between Will and myself.
“She seems to be dragging me to a lot of clubs and a lot of concerts these days. We went to see David Bowie when he came, and that new INXS band…and ****in’ Coldplay,” he explains, “I ****in’ hate Coldplay.”
I want to laugh at Pete, not in a humourous kinda way, and not in a “Sucks to Be You” kinda way. More in a “Are you ****in’ listening to yourself, asshole?” kinda way. I realize that I would have loved to have had someone to go see David Bowie or even Coldplay with. Hell, I may not be the world’s biggest INXS fan but if Andrea had asked me to go, I would have been thrilled and, in relating the story,
abruptly get up from the table. Pete looks up, questioning my actions.
“I’m gonna head over to the book store,” I tell him having decided at just this instance that’s where I’m headed. “Meet me in there when you’re finished.”
As I head out of the food court towards the book store, I try to occupy my mind by brainstorming a list of books that I have been wanting to read as of late, and doing a little impromptu window-shopping. Amazingly it works, since by the time I enter the book store, I am almost completely preoccupied with a list of places I want to hit after I leave this store.
A moment later, that mental list goes out the window as I see a familiar looking blonde girl.
SARAH?
Mind’s playing tricks on you again. Didn’t you go through a phase like this for the first several weeks after you and Sarah “broke it off”?
Will’s memory is correct. I went to the mall, this very mall as I recall, a couple of times after the incident between Brad and I, and practically every blonde chick I passed made me have to do a double-take, with me believing that each one was Sarah…at least until I got a good look at them.
But this time, my mind isn’t playing tricks on me. It really is Sarah. Her blonde hair and petite form have me all but convinced, but when she turns slightly, I get a really good look at her face and sure enough it’s her.
I knew that I shouldn’t approach her, knew it was better to just let the past be the past. As if on cue, Will let Brad’s words echo through my brain, somehow making the warning all the more sinister with the passage of time. And yet, the more I watcher her, the more I wanted to talk to her again.
Don’t do it.
She was still as beautiful as I remembered, even more beautiful than my longing for her had elevated her to, her brow furrowed in concentration, her hand deftly pushing a lock of her hair back behind her ear.
Let it go, man. Just walk away.
I could hear Will’s pleas, but was blocking them out. I quickly glanced around the store to see if Brad was browsing elsewhere.
Great. Now store security thinks you’re shoplifting.
Brad was nowhere in sight and so I found myself walking, as nonchalantly as I could over to her.
Will was screaming at me now, telling me to turn back but me feet kept me striding towards her. It got so bad, this eternal, internal struggle that I was horrified to realized that I have no clue what I was going to say as an opening line.
Damn it. Just keep walking, walk right on past. Pretend you never saw her.
But suddenly, there I was, standing not two feet from her. She took no notice of me, and for that I was grateful. Here I was, standing within polite conversational distance of the one person on the face of the earth that I had been dying to see for so long, and I had no clue what to say, to express how much I had wanted to see her, to talk to her, just to be around her.
I realized with a bit of a start that for all the things I had told myself about being okay with not seeing her, I was just working myself.
Jeez, ya think?
The shoot version of it was that there had been a gaping hole where Sarah had been and now here I stood, just a moment away from having her back in my life, if only temporarily, and I hadn’t the slightest clue about how to take the next step.
Geez, ya ****ing geek. Maybe that’s a sign from God or something?
A sign from God. Okay, from someone who constantly criticizes me for having a flare for the melodramatic, this oughta be good.
Yes, this is a sign that God doesn’t want your admittedly less than lacking features totally obliterated by a certain jealous boyfriend.
I quickly remind my sudden Guardian Angel, Will, that I had already scouted the premises and Brad was nowhere in the vicinity. I could talk to Sarah, renew our relationship and bolt before Brad ever knew I was anywhere near his girlfriend.
And for what? A one-minute stand? What are you going to do? Say “Hey Sarah! Long-time, no see! Oh, and by the way, it’ll be a while before you see me again cause your boyfriend threatened me with physical violence.”
I knew I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but to be perfectly honest, I was beyond thinking rationally. I was beyond worrying about what Will would say or what Brad would do. All I could think about was the fact that there was Sarah, standing right in front of me and all I had to do was open my mouth and say something, anything, and she and I would be together, even if only for a little while.
Okay, if you are going to actually go through with this, re-insert yourself into her life and suffer the consequences, and I’m begging you to reconsider, could you please at least beat her to the punch before she notices you just standing there gaping like some slack-jawed yokel moron.
“Sarah?” I say, finally, feeling at once both relief that I found something, albeit a not-very-profound something to say and fear over what might be about to come.
See, I told you. Once you set this thing in motion, you can’t just hit the restart button.
She looks up from the book she’s perusing and sees me standing there before her. She does a double-take…
Probably trying to place you.
And then breaks into that smile that I’ve missed so much.
“Emmett?” she gasps. “Oh my God, how are you?”
I shrug, again as nonchalantly as if I’ve just wandered by and noticed her standing there. “Not too bad. How’s yourself?”
This time, it’s her turn to shrug, but as she does so, she laughs in that self-mocking way that people do when they feel they have the weight of the world on their shoulders and feel that if they don’t laugh, they just might cry.
“I’ve been better,” she said, “but I have definitely been worse.”
I felt my stomach drop as she spoke. I so wanted to have her tell me everything that was going on, everything that was troubling her. I wanted my shoulder to be the one that she cried on.
Man, you still don’t get it, do you? You don’t get to be THAT guy. Brad is THAT guy. He’s the one that she gushes out everything too. When something happens in Sarah’s life, good, bad or indifferent, the first person she wants to talk to is Brad, not you. He’s the one she rushes to so that she can tell him all her news. You’re just the guy who gets the watered-down Reader’s Digest version of what she wants to go public.
I don’t need Will telling me all that. Despite what he might tell you, I am not some naïve **** that figures the world centers around me and who thinks that every one wants me as their best friend and confidant. But, God Damn It, I so longed for Sarah to think of me that way.
“But enough about me,” she exclaimed. “Where have you been hiding? Geez, it’s like you fell off the face of the earth or something!”
And as I stood there, half-listening to Sarah, half-listening to Will analyze every facet of the moment, I realized that Sarah was all but handing Will ammunition.
Yeah, well here’s a little something for you to chew on: she basically told you that there’s something not quite right in her life, but would rather you spill your guts to her than vice-versa. Face it, man! She is declaring her personal life off limits to you. What the **** does that tell you?
I so want to ask Sarah what’s wrong. What had made her declare that she “had been better”? Was she in some kind of trouble? Was she sick? Had her grandmother died? Had she been fired? Did she just come from seeing a sad movie? What? There was a million different answers to the one question I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
The moment had come and gone, by Sarah’s own admission, and to go back and ask her what was wrong would seem…I don’t know…a stupid, moronic thing to do, like I was some nosy gossip wanting to rehash everything.
Hey, maybe you want to keep some kind of conversation going. Otherwise, there’s still a chance she’ll think you’re that yokel we were talking about before.
Thankfully, barely a moment has lapsed in our conversation and I am able to jump right back into the swing of things before Sarah does, in fact, realize anything is up with me (and Will).
“Oh, you know…things have been busy,” I explain, “I’ve been working a lot of hours at the store so that’s been wearing me out. Haven’t been getting out as much as I’d like.”
Sarah nods. I take that as a good indication that she’s fallen for my lie. I feel bad for lying to her but what else am I suppose to say?
Nah, a lie is good. I’m thinking “Well, I’ve been avoiding you so as not to get the crap kicked out of me by that psycho boyfriend of yours” probably wouldn’t go over too well.
While Will is gloating over his latest bit of wit, I decide to dive in under the radar and take the bull by the horns.
“So, how are you and Brad doing?” I ask, and then try to keep my eyes from widening as the shock registers over what I’ve just done.
YOU… ****ING… MORON!!!!
Yeah, I figured Will would react that way but I’m more concerned about how Sarah is going to react.
Her breath catches and she begins to look shaken, uncertain, almost the way she did on that afternoon so long ago now when she first told me about her and Brad.
“Uhm…not so good,” she says and in that instant I am totally ashamed of myself for asking the question, for bringing up the subject.
Well, no ****! I mean, you couldn’t have just left well enough alone on that particular subject. Couldn’t have just stuck to nice safe, melba toast subjects like the job, current events, what book she was browsing? Nope, had to go poking your nose in to where it didn’t belong, her personal life. And now you’ve gone and obviously drudged up something she obviously would have preferred not to think about.
Even as Will berated me for asking the question that I had, there was a part of me who truly hoped that she would tell me more about what was going on between her and Brad. What was “not so good” about the relationship between her and Brad?
Well, tell you what, why don’t you have THAT part of you go ahead and just ask her to explain herself? Hell, why don’t you grill so unmercifully about the status of her relationship that she breaks down and cries right in the middle of this book store? Come on, play good cop, bad cop on her? Grill her like she’s Oswald!
She kinda beat me to the punch, Will. Instead of me having to give so much as an inquiring look in her direction, she told me…almost blurted it out, actually.
“Brad and I…well, we broke up” she said.
Holy ****.
Holy ****!
Almost immediately after she told me, she let out a long breath, the way a smoker might after taking a drag off a cigarette. I could tell that it had just happened recently and I was probably one of the first people she had actually told about it. It was almost as if telling me, or someone, was making it real for her, and she had survived the revealing of this news quite well, and was proud of herself for surviving the ordeal.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure about myself. All of a sudden, it was as if a whole new road had opened up for me. Suddenly, possibilities that I had thought had long since been declared hopelessly out of the question were now a little more promising.
Hey, dickweed. Don’t let me tell you what I think you should do but take this into consideration: maybe you should pretend to be the caring, supportive friend right now rather than some over-zealous horndog who’s too busy trying to figure out how to get Sarah into bed. In other words, rather than exploring the possibilities of what this means, you should be telling this chick that you’re sorry to hear that she and her boyfriend have broken up.
And so, in a flash, I pushed all the thoughts I had regarding new possibilities for me and Sarah out of my head and composed myself.
“Ah, man!” I said, hoping that the words I said didn’t sound as phony out loud to Sarah as Will was making them sound in my head. “God, I’m so sorry, Sarah. How are you holding up?”
She shrugged, grinning that “I have to smile in spite of it all” smile that we all plaster over our features in the aftermath of one personal disaster or another in our lives.
“I’m okay,” she said, not sounding 100 percent sure but willing to try and fake it, “You know, I think it was a case where he and I just moved too fast. I mean, one minute we were dating, the next we were sleeping together, the next we were living together. In the end, I think it all caught up to us. I think we figured this whirlwind romance was something more than it was.”
I nod, commiserating with Sarah over the tragic turn of events that have taken place in her personal life.
Oh, bull****! You’re nodding because deep down inside you’re thinking “Yeah, I coulda told you that months ago, ya dumb bitch!” You’re not commiserating, you’re agreeing in a pompous, “I told you so” kinda way.
She shrugs, “Eh, live and learn, I guess. But hey, it’s great seeing you again.”
As she says this, she puts her hand on my shoulder and my God, it’s the best feeling in the world. I’m so distracted by her brief touch that the rest of her speech, about getting together some time to catch up, barely registers. I nod politely, agreeing with whatever she was saying. Hell, she could have suggested we go on a cross-country killing rampage and I would have totally been up for it.
Actually, as the voice inside your head, I believe it’s my job to suggest that but hey, if Sarah wants to put the plan in motion, more power to her.
And then she was gone.
I stand in the store for a few minutes, not even bothering to go through the motions of pretending to be browsing. I just stand there, trying to comprehend the possible fallout of what I’ve just been told.
Sarah is single.
Brad is out of the picture.
“Can I help you find anything today?”
The posed question snaps me out of my trance. I look up to see one of the store clerks, probably no older than 18, staring at me like I’ve just grown another head…or that I’ve just pocketed half the store. His look tells me that he wouldn’t be all that upset if the latter should happen to be true, just so long as it doesn’t inconvenience him. It’s as if he’s trying to tell me that if I’m planning to shoplift, I should just quietly leave the store and don’t drop any evidence on my way out, less he might have to fill out some paperwork.
I stutter for a minute. I feel my face getting hot and bits of perspiration dripping down from my armpits.
Sure…that kind of behaviour won’t make him even more suspicious. I’ll bet he’s about to break out in tears and choke out an apology.
“I’m just looking, thanks,” I reply.
Even as I stammer out the phony-sounding reply, I come to the horrifying realization that I have no idea what section I’ve been found standing in. Sci-Fi, True Crime, Young Adult…
Or how about that section with the erotic fiction. Yeah…won’t look like a complete pervert then, would ya? Just standing there, staring off into space.
Thankfully, the clerk is satisfied as long as I don’t utter a declaration of guilt. He tells me that if I need anything, just to let him now, and then heads off in search of someone else to help.
I don’t want to arouse suspicion, but I inwardly breath a very deep sigh of relief as he leaves and I find myself in the history section. Nothing too embarrassing about running into a store clerk there.
Save for that whole staring off into space thing.
Just to make sure I don’t look any more suspicious and have to outrun mall security, I spend a few minutes browsing the section, coming across a pretty interesting book on touring Civil War battlefields that I make a mental note to remember when Father’s Day comes along.
After what I feel is a reasonable amount of time, I make my way out of the store, stopping briefly to check out the new releases, and letting Will make me feel as though, the moment I was out of earshot…
Or probably not even that long…
…that the clerk would point me out to his buddies as the weird dork who was acting retarded in the history aisle, with the story getting more disgusting, and yet, to his audience, hilarious with every telling.
I’m about 20 paces out of the store before I realize that Will is screwing with me, and he’s doing it for a reason. Instead of worrying about some kid in a book store…
Who, at 18, is already bored with a job you have in your late 20s?
I should be focusing on the bombshell that just landed on me back in what turned out to be the history section of that books store. My mind begins to reel once again.
Sarah and Brad broke up.
I don’t know how I managed to get out of the store. My meeting up with Pete and the drive back home is all but a blur. Pete knows that something is up because I remember him asking what was up with me. I tell him the truth, that I met up with Sarah, and that she has informed me that she and Brad had broken up.
He smirks at me and doesn’t really give me much of a reply. I know he’s got some snide remark he wants to make but has the good sense not to do so. I really couldn’t care less, as my mind is racing a million miles a minute. Thoughts are flying across the expanse of my consciousness like headlines on CNN.
My friendship with Sarah can continue without worry that some jealous asshole is going to beat the crap out of me.
Maybe…just maybe, mind you, that friendship can develop into something more.
Film at 11.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
J.Q.’s REVISITED
It’s four a.m. and I still haven’t managed to get any sleep. I am totally going to suck at my shift tomorrow, but then what will be different tomorrow for any of the other thousand shifts at Video World?
Well, instead of just the customers and management telling you how much you suck after you’ve worked your ass of for seven or eight hours, you’ll go in knowing that you’re going to be dead-tired and brain-dead and aren’t even going to try and make an attempt to change that branding. And see, here I was blasting you for letting your mind run away with you and stay up ‘til all hours dreaming up bizarre “never-gonna-happen” scenarios.
Will’s summary of the evening’s (and by now, early morning’s) events is on-target. No matter how many times I tell myself that I’m going to try and clear my mind and get some sleep, another image of Sarah jumps into my brain.
I relive those few brief moments in the book store over and over and over again. I still can’t believe that it actually happened. Even before, before her relationship with Brad, before my Brad-imposed eviction from Sarah’s life, I would have been thrilled to have bumped into her at a store. It would have made my entire day.
But to see her now, after so long, and for her to tell me that she and Brad had broke up, it was like…
What? What? A dream come true?
Exactly.
Good God, have you got an appetite for corniness.
Yeah, I know, I know but it’s like something I always wanted to imagine could happen, hell, I went ahead and did imagine it. It was exactly as I had played it out in my head. Well, maybe not exactly, but close enough. But the major elements where there. Sarah and I are together and she tells me that Brad is out of the picture.
Yeah, but she didn’t cry on your shoulder and, in trying to comfort her, you didn’t end up sleeping together.
Details. Details. Don’t sweat the small stuff, Will.
Oh **** me, he’s quoting self-help books. What’s next? Are you going to call up Dr. Phil and get him to tell you how to win Sarah over? How about a copy of “Chicken Soup for the Pathetic Loser’s Soul”?
By now, I’ve exhausted all the “what I could have done differently” possibilities and have moved on to the future echoes. Was that chance meeting the beginning of something? And where might that “something” lead?
Down the long, decrepit path to Nowheresville? Where you can check yourself into the Heartbreak Hotel, only with no Elvis singing show tunes?
As it turns out, Will is wrong, for once. The chance meeting between Sarah and I in that book store does lead to something.
Oh I am, am I?
A couple of days later, I get a call from Sarah. Just to see her phone number on my call display is enough to make me catch my breath. It’s her cell phone number, the one I never quite managed to forget, no matter how hard I tried to put everything about her out of my head.
God, what a ****ing mark you are for this chick? Can you imagine what kind of reaction you’ll have if she ever deigns to sleep with you?
For reasons I’ll go into later there, Will, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t put the thought of Sarah and I sleeping together into my head right at this juncture.
Ah, but it’s already there. Nothing I can do about it.
Thankfully Will at least shuts up (or goes into some rambling solilogue in the background) long enough for me to answer the phone.
“Hello?” I ask as if I’m questioning just who might be on the other end of the telephone line.
“Hey, Emmett, it’s Sarah,” comes the reply. I knew exactly what she would say and exactly how it would sound coming from her and somehow the familiarity and the total expectedness of it just added to the rush of pleasure that washed over me. It was like I didn’t realize that I had been missing her voice on the phone until I heard it again.
“Hey there,” is my reply. It’s funny because that’s the way I would have replied even if we had just talked on the phone yesterday. Instead of having been out of contact for three months, it felt like we’d never been apart.
Uh…exactly when were you two ever…you know…together?
I didn’t mean it as being apart as a couple, I meant it felt like our friendship hadn’t been ripped apart by the jealous actions of her now departed boyfriend. Instead, it instantly felt like we’d always been friends and I had always been able to expect her to call me up on occasion. I realized that from this moment forward, every time the phone rang I would have to stop and find out if this was Sarah calling me.
Okay, stop the ****ing horses! Don’t make yourself out to be more mentally sound than you really are when it comes to this chick! Ever since this whole “love triangle” between you, Sarah and Brad…or more like the love “straight line” between Sarah and Brad… started, you’ve kept jumping for the phone every time it rang hoping and praying that maybe, just maybe this was Sarah calling to tell you that she and Brad were through. Hell, how many hours did you waste fantacizing about how it was all going to play out?
“…so if you’re not doing anything tomorrow, maybe we could get together at J.Q.’s again?” I can hear Sarah asking as I finally tear myself away from this go-nowhere conversation with Will.
All of which is true, I might add.
I manage to ignore Will long enough to answer. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
We agree to meet at J.Q.’s at 11:30. Of course, as is want to happen, Dan calls me at 10:00 that morning to try and get me to come in to cover his shift. He does the worst impression of a guy with a cold on record. Thankfully I’ve grown smart enough to let my folks’ answering machine pick it up. Dutifully I simply ignore it, deciding that if he calls me on it during my next shift, I’ll just use some bull**** story about having left early that morning on some personal business.
Of course, it means that I have to walk a couple of extra blocks so as to make to J.Q.’s without passing in full view of the video store. It sucks but at least now I don’t have to worry that Dan just happened to look outside at the precise moment I came into view (or a certain blonde-haired stoolie) and will ream me over the coals the next time I’m in for a shift.
Unless Dan got someone else to cover his shift and left, driving by J.Q.’s at the precise moment that you walked in.
Great Will. Way to come up with an even more ludicrous scenario so as to get me worried about something that has probably a 1 in 1000 chance of actually happening.
Well, I aim to please. Least now you’ve got something hanging over your head while you’re out enjoying your lunch with Sarah.
My worrying over the possibility that Dan might have actually seen me and that my pitiful attempts at subterfuge might all be for naught lasts only until Sarah shows up.
Fashionably late as always. Nice to see some things never change. Same with the décor and the noise level here at J.Q.’s.
She looks as great as ever. The jeans she’s wearing fit her as snuggly as anything that Jessica shows up in, but without the slutty essence to them. I don’t know why but I can’t stop looking at her jeans as she walks into the restaurant and over to the table where I’m sitting.
Holy ****! I’m checking her out.
It dawns on me, with no little amount of shock, that for the first time since I came to the realization about how I felt about her that Sarah is available. I mean, I guess I knew but I’m just putting two and two together as we speak.
As Sarah comes over, I quickly avert my gaze, pretending to read the menu. Like I actually have to make up my mind what I’m going to order. I say a silent prayer that Sarah didn’t notice that I was staring at her.
“Hey, there!” she says as she slides into the booth across from me.
Just like you’d like to slide those tight jeans down her firm thighs to reveal the lacy lilac panties that…
Oh man! Will you ****ing stop it, Will?
Trying to fight off the images Will is playing in my head, most involving me somehow getting Sarah’s jeans off, I looked up, pretending that I hadn’t noticed her arrival.
“Hey,” I nod in the way of a greeting. “How are things?”
She shrugs…not in the distracted way that she had a few months ago when she met me right in this very restaurant to tell me that she had met someone. Nah, it was more like a “life goes on” kind of way.
“Good,” she replies and there’s no deception in her voice, no trying to hide anything. And with that I realize that the similarities between our lunch together this time and the one we had about a year or so ago are limited.
Sure, same music, same crappy ambience but everything else, everything between Sarah and I is different. I’m looking at her in a different light, and not simply with a want of sexual desire, like Will would have me believe. I see her not as just a friend, not as someone who I went to college with, but as someone I want to be with.
Meanwhile, I still can’t help wondering how she’s doing. I mean, I hated the dumb muther****er but for a while ol’ Brad sure did make Sarah happy. For the last few days, ever since I bumped into her at the mall, I’ve wondered how she was holding up, I wondered how many nights she had cried herself to sleep…and it killed me to think of her in that much pain.
Aw! What? Did you want to hold her and comfort her, maybe tuck her in after a warm glass of milk and some of Mom’s home-made cookies? Face it, ya dumb ****, when her heart was so broken her first instinct wasn’t to call you. She probably called Samantha or any of the other umpteen friends of hers to cry on their shoulder. Hell, if you hadn’t bumped into her at the mall, you’d probably still be wandering around in a heartsick daze about your lost love, never knowing that she was back on the market.
“You sure?” I query, trying to get just the right amount of concerned suspicion into my voice. “I mean, how are you holding up…after…you know?”
Man! I so want her to come back with “No…I don’t know. What the **** are you talking about, Emmett?”
**** you, Will. Sucks to be you, cause you don’t get your wish. Instead she just smiles, a little sad this time and replies “I’m doing okay. I mean, I guess Brad and I just weren’t meant to be ‘Brad and I’…you know?”
Okay, now I so want her to add “But thanks for bringing that particularly sore subject up, you asshole!”
Oooh….sorry, Will…that makes you 0 for 2…although you did succeed in making me feel guilty over the whole situation. I know…I should have just let it lie. Call it a foul tip and we’ll call it even.
Even…hell, on your best day we’re never even. Even if you were to ever find yourself in a great 9-5 Monday to Friday office job, living in your own bachelor pad and screw…er, I mean…ahem “dating” Sarah, I could still come up with enough ammunition to tell you what a piece of crap you are. That’s just the way things are…and believe me, for a geek like you there’d still be someone out there willing to back me up.
It’s a truth that I’ve always feared. That no matter how happy I might consider myself, that there’d be someone there to knock me down a peg or ten. Still, I decide to take that little tidbit of information and store it away for later. Will, no doubt, will be happy to remind me of it at a later date.
OH YEAH!
Meanwhile, Sarah doesn’t seem to be holding any ill will for bringing up the subject. (So there, Will!) In fact, my question about her condition in the aftermath of her breakup with Brad seems to have opened a floodgate for her. I turn my attention back to the conversation as she’s in mid-dissertation.
It’s weird but I actually want to somehow steer the conversation away from Sarah’s current topic. I’m not sure exactly why but I can’t find myself interested in her talking about her ex-boyfriend. Perhaps it’s because I want to somehow insert myself into her life as her next boyfriend.
Still, I sit there in the booth at J.Q.’s and nod politely, and try to seem concerned and understanding. I guess because I’ve never been in a relationship myself and thus have never broken up with anyone, there’s really not a whole lot of real life experience that I can add to the conversation. I guess I can take solace in the fact that at least it’s just me and Sarah there alone and I’m not having my discomfort over lack of relationship experience compounded by having two or three other people, all adding their two cents in.
And yet, as I sit there, watching her and listening to her talk about the demise of her own relationship, I am strangely drawn to her. Perhaps it’s how she looks as she continues her one-sided chat. She looks vulnerable, her heart battered and bruised if not broken by the bastard I always knew that Brad was. And yet, this vulnerability looks good on her.
Speaking of bastards… “this vulnerability looks good on her”?
You know damn well that I didn’t mean it like that, not that I was happy to see her heart-broken or that I figured that she got what was coming to her. I meant, the vulnerability made her all the more appealing. Seeing her in pain made me want to hold her all the more, to take her in my arms and reassure her that everything would be all right, that Brad being out of her life was for the best, that there would be someone else.
And lemme guess who you’d be nominating as a leading candidate to be that “someone else”.
Presently, Sarah had run out of things to say about her and Brad no longer being “her and Brad”. She sighed this great gasp of breath, as if she had just emerged from the water after a long, hard swim. I half-expected her to wipe away a tear or two. I sensed that she had been wanting to talk to someone about this for quite some time and when I gave her the opening, it all came rushing out. Every thought, every feeling, every memory. All of it right there before me…and I had barely heard a word.
I didn’t want to hear any of it. I didn’t want to hear any more about her and Brad. I didn’t care. I hadn’t wanted it to start in the first place and it had cost me, at least temporarily, my best friend. Now that it was all over, I just wanted to put it in the past and move on to what I hoped would be the next step in our relationship.
On this day, however, that wasn’t going to happen.
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed, “I can’t believe how long I’ve been talking about this. You must be bored out of your skull.”
Well, now that you mention it…
I shake my head. “No, it’s okay. I mean, it probably did you a world of good to talk about it. Get it off your chest. Verbalize your feelings, as they say.”
Emmett, you better pray that she never quizzes you on one word of what she said today.
In response, she smiles, almost meekly, like someone who had gorged themselves at some meal and then realizes, embarrassed, that they’ve left nothing for anyone else. Then her expression changes. She still smiling, but this time it is an appreciative smile.
“Thanks, Emmett,” she says, “I really needed that. It’s good that you’re here for me.”
Even as she thanks me for listening…which I really wasn’t…she gets up to leave.
Even before I realize what’s happening, the words come tumbling out of my mouth that would take my relationship with Sarah, hell, my entire life in a new direction.
“Hey, are you doing anything tomorrow night?”
Where the hell did that come from?
Yeah, doofus, where the hell did that come from? I mean, if she answers “No, not really” or some facsimile thereof, what exactly do you plan on saying in response?
Well, I guess, we’ll just have to wait and see. I mean, she’s probably got plans to do something with her sister, Samantha, or any one of a dozen of those friends of hers from work.
Hey, maybe she’s already moved back into the whole dating scene. Wouldn’t that be a kicker? Maybe she’s already moved passed Brad and already has plans to go out for a movie or dinner or just heading straight into some new guy’s bedroom for…
“No, not really,” she says, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders just slightly.
A pause and then she smiles, almost knowlingly at me and asks, “Why? What did you have in mind?”
Okay, now here’s where you stammer and stutter and try and think of something that you two can do that will be fun and yet won’t seem like you’re asking her out because even though you’d give your left nut to do so, now that the opportunity has actually presented itself, you’re reacting more like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
As amazed as I am that I even asked her if she had any plans that night, I am equally amazed at the words that tumble out of my mouth next.
“I don’t know, maybe we could go out to dinner or something. Be good for you to get out.”
Wow! Even Will is impressed.
Indeed I am. I mean, not only did you get out an intelligible sentence but you even made it sound less like you wanted to date her and more like you were playing the sensitive guy card.
Thanks. And if I wasn’t afraid that I was going to faint from the fear of how she might respond, I might be ready to faint from the sheer shock that you actually gave me credit for something.
Of course…
Of course, what? There is no “of course”. I mean, I asked her out without asking her out, that was the whole goal here, right? Right?
Quit interrupting me…as I started to say, before I was ruuuuuudely interrupted…of course, now you come off as less boyfriend material and just friend material.
And what’s wrong with that? Friends is good, right? RIGHT?!?
Well, friends is okay but you’re going to turn into the “cry on your shoulder” type friend where Sarah comes to you and tells you all her future dating problems, rather than the “get into your pants” type of friend where Sarah comes to you every time she wants to get laid.
Okay, I don’t know what deep, dark thought patterns you’ve been reading, Will, but you must have me confused with someone else. I mean, maybe you’re picking up something from someone in the vicinity. Hey, that creepy looking guy over in sci-fi is probably fantasizing about having that kind of relationship with…uh that chick who played Seven of Nine or Zena or Chyna or something. I’m not into Sarah just because I want to sleep with her, I like her because I want to be with her in a relationship kind of way.
And do you mean to tell me that you aren’t hoping that all roads lead to her bedroom?
You know, you’re really putting the cart before the horse because she hasn’t even agreed to go out as friends for din…
Wait, is she nodding? Is she nodding because she is saying yes or there’s someone jumping and down behind me and she wants to read what their shirt says.
Are you even listening to yourself?
Sorry, Will, you’ve got me trained so well that even when I think something good is happening, I’m still looking for any excuse, no matter how ridiculously irrational, for the positive to be negative.
“Actually,” my ears hear her saying but my mind almost refuses to comprehend, “That’d be nice. Nice to just get out of the apartment and forget about…well, let’s just call him what’s-his-head…for a while!”
I’m hoping my eyes don’t widen to the point where my eyeballs pop out, but it’s a tough job reigning the suckers in.
Okay, moron, close your mouth and nod and say something to the affirmative.
“Great, any preference as to time or place?” I reply, dutifully nodding as per Will’s instructions.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE START OF SOMETHING
It’s amazing. When I have to get ready to go in for my shift at the store at 5:00 in the afternoon, there have been times where 4:30 has still found my walking around our apartment in my underwear, checking my e-mail one last time before finally having to will myself to get dressed and head out for another long horrible day at work.
Sarah and I had worked things out so that we would meet at J.Q.’s (again with the J.Q’s) around 6:30. Even though I knew that I could leave the apartment at 6:00 and have plenty of time to make it to the restaurant, I started getting ready around noon that day.
You know, I don’t think Eisenhower took this long to plan the Normandy landings. I mean, how hard can it be, take a shower so you don’t stink, shave, and then just pick out a pair of pants and a shirt and you’re good.
But is it a jean-and-t-shirt kind of affair? Is it THAT casual? Is it better to dress up a bit? But how much is enough? Is it more like jacket and tie? If I show dressed up, will that impress her? Or will it make her think that I’ve got more on my mind that just having dinner with a friend to talk?
Well, considering you do have more on your mind that just having dinner with a friend to talk, maybe that’s what you should take your cue from.
Oh, don’t start this again, Will. I mean, I am just getting together with Sarah so that we can talk, catch up, find out how she’s been…
And hey, if comforting her about her recent break-up means having to sleep with her…well, it’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.
Can we get back to the business at hand? I mean, if we’re just getting together as friends (man, am I starting to hate that word) can I go in just casual wear?
Well, J.Q.’s is a pretty casual place. I mean, you have met her there before in just that, jeans and a t-shirt, maybe you can get away with it again.
But before…before was she and I just getting together as strictly friends, with me having no inclination to take it any further. Now, though…
Ah ha…so you admit that you want this to develop into something more.
The relationship? Yes! I’ve never NOT admitted that, at least since you were kind enough to let me in on the little secret you’d been hiding from me for the past couple of years. But I can’t go rushing into this, it’s not like I can show up at J.Q.’s and lean across the table and French her.
Why not, might make for a good icebreaker? And while you’re doing that, maybe you could stick your hand down her…
Before Will can complete the sordid details of that particular sick fantasy, the phone mercifully rings.
“Are you home?” I can hear my Mom ask.
“No!” I yell back, even as I head towards the living room to see who might be calling us today of all days, as if I have any doubts.
“It’s Video Emporium,” she informs me. “Are you going to pick it up?”
“No ****ing Way,” I reply, hating that I swore in front of my mother but having to use profanity to get my point across as to just how much I am NOT going to be picking up the phone.
Even as I hear Will laughing somewhere in the background, I check the call display just in case Mom somehow misinterpreted the message. But sure enough there it is “VIDEO EMPORIUM” spelled out in bold letters.
Hmm…maybe the world is trying to tell you something. Maybe this thing with Sarah is doomed from Day One by the very Fates that have damned you your entire life.
The phone just keeps ringing and ringing, trying to entice me to pick up, ordering me, taunting me, perhaps even begging me to lift the receiver off its handle and find out just why someone might be calling me.
Hmm…I wonder how many brain cells it would take the average person to figure out just what the nature of this call might be?
You forget, Will, as stupid and naive as you make me out to be, I have been in the retail business long enough to know Don’s not calling to tell me that he’s got a new position for me: Official Movie Reviewer. For five or six times my normal salary, I can stay home and watch the new movies as they arrive at the store so I can advise the Video Emporium HQ staff as to how many copies they should ship to our stores.
Although that does sound like a good job.
But of course, the real truth of the matter is that Don is calling to, in a few sentences, undo what I have been wanting for weeks and months and…yes, years, to take the first baby steps into a relationship with Sarah Ferguson….all so he can go hang out with his buddies.
**** him, I say…out loud I think. The phone still rings but I stare at it, almost willing it to stop. I can hear the whispers Will wants to make me listen to, like maybe if they’re calling and letting it ring this long, that something must be really wrong.
Did those tills balance when you left the other day? Did you forget to lock the safe, the doors, turn the lights off, sweep under the rug…or any other of the umpteen dozen things that Don expects you to be doing at all times? Maybe they got an extra big shipment in and they need all the help they can get?
I don’t give a flying **** if they had ten trucks full of shipment, they can handle it on their own. Besides, it’s probably a case where someone decided that they were too sick to show up…
At the same store where you once went in for a nine hour Saturday night shift two hours after having been draped over a toilet puking your guts out, possibly literally? Man, must be nice not have to live your life by dork rules, huh?
Finally, the phone stops ringing, and I can get back to trying to figure out what I should be wearing. Man, even when I take one tiny step forward, the world tries to pull me back ten steps. Instead of having dinner with Sarah and, if nothing else, welcoming her back into my life, I was supposed to stand behind a cash register and let total strangers tell me what a piece of crap I was because they had returned Most Valueable Primate III a day late. Not really a tough decision!
In the end, my decision as to what to wear wasn’t so hard once I thought about it. I decided to go casual, but wear the best casual I had, jeans and a button down shirt and a vest over it. Not exactly something I could wear to work but the next thing to it.
For once, Sarah is actually at J.Q.’s before me, something that would surprise me if I had time to think about it, what with Will having me checking my watch to make sure I wasn’t hours behind schedule and just not aware of it.
Hey, when something is out of the ordinary, always assume you screwed something up.
As per usual, that first sight of her, as she’s looking at a menu, is enough to take my breath away. No matter how much time I take trying to make myself look something resembling “passable”, she always looks incredible, and it doesn’t look like she’s even had to put much effort into it, like she just snapped her fingers and everything from her wardrobe to her hair just fell into place, and the best place possible.
As I’m about two feet from the table, she looks up…and smiles. Will, maybe you can remind those knees of mine that they can only weaken so much before I collapse on the floor.
Heheh! Actually, that would make for a great “first date” impression. You falling on the floor like you’re having some kind of attack. I wonder if someone would overreact and call the paramedics, taking this totally into “There’s Something About Mary” territory. I’d have to pull up a chair and watch.
First of all, this is not a “first date”, second of all…this is not a “first date”!
“Is this a first?” Sarah asks.
For one brief, horrifying moment, I wonder if Sarah can read my mind.
If so, you might have some explaining to do about that fantasy you had a couple of weeks ago about the two of you doing it in the shower.
But mercifully, she continues.
“Am I actually here BEFORE you?”
I laugh, almost out of relief than the humour of the statement. I nod my head as I sit down.
“Yeah,” I affirm, “You might want to call Ripleys.”
A moment later, I playfully slap my head.
“What?” she says, knowing I’m about to make one of my normal, idiotic “break the ice” jokes.
“I should have said that I had been here for a half an hour but got bored and had to use the washroom, and that’s where I was when you came in,” I reply.
Sarah laughs even harder than before. “Missed your chance,” she says.
After the waitress comes to take our order, Sarah sits back in the booth and sighs.
“God, work sucks!” she exclaims. But before I can rib her about how working in an office sucks less than working in retail and even before Will can compose one of his normal profanity-filled diatribes on the same subject, she continues.
“You have no idea what it is like to work in an office immediately after breaking up with someone who every one in the office knows,” she says.
That’s right, Emmett, since you’ve never been in a relationship, you have no idea what the aftermath of a breakup is like. Thanks Sarah for pointing that out to us.
Will does have a good point. I’m trying to convince myself that Sarah didn’t mean for it to come out that way and do a 90% job of doing it. Instead, I just let it go and continue to the conversation.
“What? The people at work giving you a hard time about it?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, actually, most are being pretty supportive. Therein lies the freaking problem. Every day, it’s ‘How are you doing, Sarah?’ ‘Is everything okay?’ ‘If you ever want to talk, I’m here for you.’ And I mean, they give me all this advice but it’s all just Dr. Phil type bull**** that I swear they’re reading from cue cards. It’ll get easier, you’re better off without him, when one door closes, another opens, blah, blah, blah.”
“Have you ever noticed that people always tell you that if you ever want to talk that you can come to them? And yet, I’ve always wondered what would happen if you took them up on the offer, I mean, I wonder what kind of success rate you’d have,” I ask. It’s a philosophical point I have actually been pondering for quite a while to that point and I figure that it gives me a chance to add to the conversation with something that is actually relevant to the situation.
Sarah nods and replies, “Oh, I know, I hear people say that and yet I wonder if they’re not literally scared to death that I’ll actually come to them and say I need to talk about what I’m going through. It’s like they feel obligated to say ‘Hey, if you need to talk…” but really what they’re thinking is “Oh God, please don’t ever bring up this subject again and expect me to actually talk or care about it.’ It’s so hypocritical.”
“And what pisses me off is these hypocrites make it bad for the people who actually do care about the person and would actually want to listen and help out where they could,” I tell her, “ It’s like you can’t say ‘Hey, if you ever need to talk…’ without feeling that it’s going to sound like a cliché.”
Wow! Way to make a statement about society in general and double-duty it as a way of telling Sarah that you’re a caring individual and that you’re not like all her co-workers in that you do want to hear what she has to say.
Thanks, Will, is that a complim…
Of course, you were so NOT subtle about what you were trying to do that Sarah probably knows exactly what your intentions were.
Shoulda known! Well, if Sarah does believe that I was basically badmouthing the ways of society as a, in Will’s eyes, not-so-subtle way of getting myself over as a caring individual, she shows no hint of it.
“Well, to be perfectly honest, if I never have to talk about Brad and I ever again, I will be very happy,” Sarah explains.
OOOHHHH!!! DENIED! There goes your big chance to go back to her place, have her talk about her heart-wrenching breakup with Brad, have her cry on your shoulder and when you kiss to make it better, one thing leads to another and…
Eventually I just try and shut Will out and listen to Sarah as she talks about how she’s sick and tired of having to explain what happened between she and Brad to her co-workers, to her parents, to her OTHER friends.
Yeah, Bull****! You’re doing your usual ga-ga “Oh look how beautiful she is” schtick and trying not to realize that, while she was more than happy to give everyone else the low-down on the breakup, when it comes to you, she decides to clam up.
Will’s theories aside, the evening progresses pretty well. The food is semi-decent, although I am beginning to agree with Will more and more that the chef decides he can scrimp on the quality when he sees a dork like me come in. With me not seeing her in several months, there’s lots to talk about, mostly work-related exploits and movies we’ve seen and how she got an e-mail from Ryan telling her about his new promotion to sports editor at the Toronto Times.
Hmm…should we focus on the fact that Ryan is actually working in the journalism field and being quite successful at it instead of working part time at a video store like someone else we could mention or should we instead brood over the fact that Ryan keeps in touch with Sarah but not with you?
How ‘bout we put both on the back burner until later…when assuredly you will remind me of both facts in between telling me every thing I did wrong with regards to this dinner with Sarah.
Sure, can I pencil you in for 6:45 a.m. tomorrow morning?
As we’re leaving the restaurant and just before I am hit with the realization that the scene now is vastly different from the LAST time I had dinner with Sarah (and, of course, Brad) here at J.Q.’s, Sarah turns to me and, pretty much out of the blue, hugs me.
Hooo boy, remember my pep talk at gradudation, try not to get too excited. Wouldn’t do to sprout wood at this particular time.
“Thank you,” she whispers. She just feels so right against me and so I hug her back. God, I’m not sure I want to let her go.
When she finally does step back, I notice that she’s wiping her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Did you hug too hard? Step on her toe? Do something else stupid?
She nods, wiping still. “Yeah, it’s just…it’s just so nice to go out and NOT have to explain myself for breaking up with Brad. It’s like tonight was the first night where the whole conversation wasn’t about what had happened, why did I do this, why did he do that, you know that kind of thing. It’s like tonight was the first step towards getting over him.”
She paused, wiped her eyes one last time and then laughed.
“I suppose the fact that I’m talking about getting over him means I’m really not over him yet.”
“One step at a time,” I say, hopefully in my most comforting voice. “Every day it’ll get a little easier.”
Sarah smiles…oh man that smile is going to be the death of me if this doesn’t work out…and nods. “Thanks. It was good to see you.”
“Yeah, it was. We should do this again sometime,” I tell her, the last sentence amounting to what I hope will be an invitation for her to commit to another…
DATE?
Well, let’s just call it a “night out together” or maybe…maybe a date?
Instead she just answers with the vague “Yeah, we should” before adding “Well, we should probably call it a night since I have to work in the morning and I’m pretty sure they can’t run the video store without you, either.”
I laugh, suddenly remembering with dread that I have to work five to midnight the next day. By the time that thought gets processed, I have to remember to wish Sarah a good night and watch her head out into the parking lot to her car.
After a moment I turn and begin the walk back to the apartment. I am almost skipping I am so damned happy when, barely seconds into the trip home, Will pipes up.
Well, that blew!
What do you mean? I just had dinner with someone I really care about and who I’ve been dreaming about seeing for months and it went well. I’m pretty sure I kept up my end of the conversation okay, didn’t make too many stupid jokes, didn’t come off as a moron. In the end she hugged me and yes, she didn’t exactly set anything in stone but she seemed pretty open to getting together again.
You should have gotten a job in Public Relations. (I mean, you have a journalism diploma but not a lick of experience so you can forget about REALLY getting a PR job but go with me on this one.) How you can take the events of this evening and spin doctor them into it being the greatest night of your life is beyond me.
No worse than you taking a perfectly fine evening and “spin doctoring” (as you like to say) them into a horrible night where I end up looking like anything closely resembling my normal dorky self.
What did you accomplish? She still has no better clue that you LIKE her and if anything you actually distanced yourself more from the boyfriend category and further solidified yourself in the FRIEND category.
Hey, Will, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Yeah, Rome probably took years and years to build, and by the time it was finished, most of the original architects and workers probably were dead and never got to see the finished product.
The scary part is never when Will is at his most outrageous, telling me things that couldn’t possibly be true and producing theories that could never come to fruition. The scary part is when he starts making sense.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Another midnight shift, but at least Andrea is working with me. It’s approaching 12:20 and by some luck, I’m actually ahead of schedule for the close.
Of course, you can’t really celebrate until the door is locked, and you’ve gone home and tossed and turned and done your mental checklist of everything that had to be done before you could officially close the doors and go home…and even then I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeves to…
Okay, Will, enough. I’m telling the story here. And your little midnight mindgames have nothing on what happens here over the next few paragraphs.
Wow! Someone’s got guts.
Someone has someone special in his life, for the first time, and I think I’m allowed a little ego here for the moment.
Someone THINKS they have someone special in their life, but no proof to back it up. Just remember, big shot, Sarah has not said anything about developing romantic feelings for you. You’re just some guy she likes to share meals with.
And talk on the phone to, every few days, and go to the mall with and even take on grocery runs and come over and watch movies with…Is any of this making you realize what I am now to her.
Yeah, you’re her gay friend who she feels comfortable and not threatened by.
Anyways, none of Will’s negativity has anything to do with tonight, save to give you, the reader a quick update on what’s going on. Yes, over the last couple of weeks, we have started seeing more of each other. We have gone out for coffee and dinner a couple of times. The dinners have been no biggie…
Not to her, but to you, you practically wet yourself thinking back on it. And let’s just say it was a good thing you didn’t jump up on the table and announce that you, Dork Boy, was here with the best looking woman in the joint and everyone else, all those who sneered at you when you walked in, should bow down to your greatness for landing Sarah…even though only one of you thinks of this as a boyfriend-girlfriend situation.
Anyways, in addition to going out for a bite to eat, we also engaged in these mammoth phone conversations, the kind that would start at 8:00 in the evening and would end, almost hesitantly and begrudgingly, around 11:30 at night.
These phone calls were almost like phone versions of the conversations, the deep and meaningful and long-lasting conversations, we had in college. It wasn’t simply “How was your day?” type fare. It was “what was the most pivotal moment in your life?” stuff. Sometimes it was funny, mostly it was serious. And as well as we knew each other, after all these months and years of being friends, I was learning so much more about her, stuff that she had never told anyone. Not her other friends, not her co-workers, in some cases, barely even her family.
And then about a week ago, she had called me up, asked me if I had the day off and by the grace of God and the will of Don, I had. She told me not to plan anything. She had some shopping to do and she needed some company. And the next thing I knew I was accompanying her around just about every mall within driving distance.
Her father’s birthday was coming up and she wanted to get him something memorable. You know, not the typical tie or coffee table book on cars. Having never met her father, I had no clue what to suggest, and most of what popped up in my head was the same cliché stuff mentioned in the previous sentence. So I just kept quiet for the most part, thrilled just to be tagging along with her.
I think it says something about Sarah that we spent very little time in the big box stores, the lowest common denominator shopping experiences like Walmart and Zellers and Sears and Best Buy and Future Shops. Sarah headed for the smaller chains, the privately owned shops. Even that didn’t show her what she wanted to see.
I’m not sure why but suddenly, I remembered this flea market that was open seven days a week, just on the outskirts of the city. My folks had gone to it a few times. Most of the “dealers” seemed like people who had just gone into the attic and dragged all their garbage down to this flea market to sell. It was either this or organizing a garage sale…or selling it on Ebay. But there was always at least one thing, one old book or piece of memorabilia that I ended up buying. I thought maybe Sarah might have the same experience.
As it turned out, even the biggest loser does something right. What were the odds?
Well, about the same as Sarah finding this Civil War chess set. Turns out her father is a major history buff and had always wanted to send away for just such a set. It was in pretty good condition, which made the buy all the sweeter.
We may have been talking,
I’m so intent on reading the back of the movie box for Speed that I don’t notice Andrea sneaking up behind me, until she playfully poked me in the side. She startles me to the point where I almost drop the box.
During that blink of an eye that it takes me to get a read on what’s going on, a couple of possibilities of who this might be rush through my head. At first, I’m worried that some customer has come up and decided, rather than ask me for help, they’re just going to jab their finger in my side as a way of short-handing “Stop what you’re doing, ya lazy ****, and help me find some brain-numbing sequel that I saw on TV but have no other information about!”
And when I say scared, it’s not a fear of what they’ll do or say, it’s that I’ll finally lose it, this sudden shock will finally rip me off my mental hinges and I’ll lay into this moronic, lazy-ass customer, giving him or her both barrels as to how dare they come up and jab me in the side like a ****in’ piece of meat. The end result of all this would be me getting fired and the customer probably getting a life-time supply of free rentals. Knowing Dan, he’d probably call me up every time the customer came in and say “Yeah, I just had to give away another free rental to that customer. This is totally screwing up my Yearly Rental Income Average and that affects my bonus, you know. Nice going, ya dork!”
Of course, if you got fired and Dan did call you up AFTER you got fired to ream you out, you could probably really lit into him since it wouldn’t be like you could get fired twice!
Hmm…Will does have a point. Anyways the second possibility is that Sarah has come in to say “hi” and figured that she’d have some fun with me.
You know, the ratio between the number of times that you’ve imagined Sarah calling or stopping by on a whim to the number of times she’s actually done so is mind-boggling. As in 99999999 to 0!
And, as it turns out, this time isn’t the first time, as it’s only Andrea.
“Did I scare you?” she laughs. Normally, me thinking it was Sarah and it turning out to be someone else playing a prank on me would piss me off. If it had been Jessica perhaps, since I know she’d be doing it to be mean-spirited, and she probably would follow it up with some smart remark that put me in the worse light possible. Something along the lines of “Ya fallin’ asleep there, Emmett?”
But with Andrea, I can’t get mad at her, because I know that she’s just doing it to be funny, and that there’s no hard edge behind it.
:”Yeah!” I reply, laughing as much as she is. I feign to throw the movie box at her and she recoils in mock horror. I glance around the store. There’s no one in the place and for that I’m glad. Heaven forbid retail workers should have fun at their job or talk amongst themselves. Better to be mute automatons who stand at the cash ready to serve.
After Andrea stops laughing at our impromptu skit (sans laugh track), she says, “While you were over here brushing up on your reading, I was talking to Pete.”
I glance around the store. I don’t remember seeing Pete stop by. Andrea notices this and shakes her head.
“I was talking to him on the phone,” she tells me. I think she hopes this will clear things up but it just adds to my confusion. I didn’t hear the phone ring and if it had, why didn’t he ask to talk to me. If Andrea notices my continued confusion, she pays it no mind.
“There’s a place over on Cheapside called The Styles that we were thinking of checking out tomorrow night. It’s supposed to be a bit calmer than some of the places we’ve been going to lately. You know, decent food, nice atmosphere, no blaring guitars, some place you can kinda sit and talk. Kinda like JQ’s without the price tag.”
Ah, am I the only one who noticed she said “some of the places we’ve been going to lately”?
No…that kinda got red-flagged by me as well. I’ll think on it in a moment, right now I’m trying to pay attention to what Andrea is telling me.
“Anyways, we were wondering if you wanted to come out with us. Maybe bring your friend, Sarah.”
Now, normally I would have been focusing on Andrea’s use of the pronoun “we” especially since she said she’d just been talking to Pete and had to bring that up. But any paranoia and overthinking that might have been creeping in just got obliterated by the vision of Sarah and I, together at this “the Styles” that Andrea has been talking about, especially with Pete and Andrea there as well. Finally, I could show my…dare I say it…girlfriend (?) off to two very good friends of mine. I can see it, the two of them munching on nachos and complimenting Sarah and I on what a cute couple we make.
Uh, pardon the interruption, but I think Andrea needs an answer?
“Sure, that could be cool,” I reply.
Good for you, Emmett.
What’s this, a compliment from Will? Okay, what’s going on? My inner voice is starting to make me paranoid, only this time I’m getting paranoid about my inner voice.
No need to be. This time, it is a legitimate compliment. And the reason is that you are now becoming the typical boyfriend. Make plans and then tell your…ahem…girlfriend about it!
Ah crap. Wait. This is like chess, as long as I don’t take my hand off the piece, it doesn’t count.
Do I really want to know what you’re referring to here?
What I mean is, as long as I’m still in control of the conversation, I can still rectify things. As long as I can get another word in before Andrea replies and keeps the conversation going, I can still make things right.
Better hurry, ya moron. Andrea’s nodding her head. She looks like she’s about to say something.
“Let me just give Sarah a call and make sure she’s free tomorrow night,” I manage to get in before Andrea tells me that she and Pete are going to go around 9:00.
“Think you can hold down the fort?” I ask, knowing the question is a silly one, but I toss it out there anyways, just because that’s the rap Andrea and I have going.
As if on cue, Andrea looks wildly around, as if looking for some horde of customers to magically appear. I laugh because she’s playing her part in this little theatre piece so well. After she sees that the coast is clear, she looks back and me and gives me a mock thumbs up.
“I think I can handle it,” she says, winking at me.
Again I laugh. So much laughter in my life lately, even here at work. As I head off to the back office to call Sarah, I realize that somehow, over the last several weeks, things have changed between Andrea and I, and changed for the better. She’s with Pete and I am in the genesis of a long-desired relationship with my beloved Sarah, and so I can be happy for Andrea, and for Pete, and not see her as having what I wished I could have, a loving romantic relationship. Instead of having to tense up whenever she’s around, and try not to visibly cringe whenever she tells me what she and Pete did over the weekend, I can just be happy for her, and for once, be happy for myself.
Jesus Christ….if you’re happy, this can’t end well. God, turn on CNN, there’s probably another 9/11 about to take place. The world will get hit by a meteor. A plague is about to be unleashed upon the earth…something!
If I didn’t think that Will would unleash a verbal plague of his own upon me, I’d almost kid with him that perhaps there was a little bit of fear in his voice. Perhaps he’s afraid that the forces of good will soon run his bitter ass out of my inner monologue.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting at the back desk, feeling the illicit thrill I always get when I sit on Don’s side of the desk. I always feel like I should put my feet up and lean way back in his comfy easy chair..
Too bad you’re too chicken-**** to do so, for fear that you’ll leave a tell-tale scratch or break the back of the chair and there’ll be hell to pay.
Instead, I’m noticing just how my hands got sweaty and there’s a knot in my stomach as I dial Sarah’s number.
I’m surprised you haven’t pulled one of your infamous brain farts and forgotten Sarah’s number…or name…or how to use the telephone.
The nervousness that Will has inflicted upon me increases tenfold as the phone begins to ring, and he sucker-punches me with a wave of self-doubt.
She’s probably not home. She probably has a life now that she’s single.
She’s probably run into Brad and they’re having a torrid reunion in the backseat of his car.
She probably sees you’re calling from the store and is thinking “Oh God, how do I get rid of this dor…”
“Hello, you.”
It’s Sarah. And not only that but rather than being horrified that I am calling her from work, she sounds like she’s happy about the whole turn of events. I almost want to put her on hold just so I can rub it in with a “So there!” to Will.
Yeah…that’s not weird.
“Hello YOU,” I reply in what I hope is my most charming voice, “I just thought I’d give you a shout because I wanted to ask you something,”
“Ask away, but aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she asks. Hey, she keeps track of my schedule. Another point in my favour.
I chuckle, again hoping it sounds like I’m being suave. “Well, you know. Cat’s away so the mice play.”
I pause just long enough to hear her laugh.
I’m laughing too…Just at you, not your joke. And come to think of it, are you 100% sure that’s not the case with Sarah.
I don’t even dignify Will’s question with a moment’s thought. I love how this conversation is going.
There’s no guarantee that she won’t be busy or just not interested in hanging with you tomorrow night.
One thing I give Will. He is persistent, and not totally ineffective in his methods. I decide to just go for it, rather than give him any more time to get his little claws out and scratch away at this good feeling I have going.
“Anyways, the reason I am calling is to ask you if you had any plans for tomorrow night?” Even as I’m asking, I’m tensing up for what Will will tell you is the inevitable letdown.
Hey, congrats, Emmett. You just asked Sarah out for what she believes is a one-on-one DATE.
And of all the things that Will has ever said to me, every cocakamammy theory that he’s tossed out there, every never-could-happen scenario that he’s given me reason to believe might happen, this is the scariest thing of all. He might as well have reared back and driven a battering ram into my mid-section and then tossed a gallon of ice water on me.
All at once, I realize that, if I’m Sarah, getting a phone call from yours truly asking if I, again as Sarah, have plans for tomorrow night, that’s exactly what it sounds like.
For it now dawns on me that Sarah isn’t privy to the details of my conversation with Andrea. She doesn’t realize that Andrea and Pete will be coming along. She doesn’t realize that it’s just four friends going out to a quiet bar to chat, have a drink or two, and have fun.
Oh dear God, she thinks I’ve put her on the spot and have asked her out.
Suddenly, I’m not trying to sound suave or charming. All I’m trying to do is damage control.
“Yeah,” I add quickly, before she can react one way or the other, “Andrea and Pete are going to The Scene, and they invited me and then she asked if you wanted to come along…so I thought I’d give you a call and so here I am.”
Wow! From deboinair to dorky in five seconds. A new World Record, ladies and gentleman.
Save for Will’s inane commentary on this disappointing turn of events, there’s silence, dead silence for several minutes. Okay, it’s maybe a split second but it’s as if time has suddenly decided to stand still. Will nicely turns on the movie projector and shows me Sarah standing by her phone table, receiver in her hand, mulling the offer over, making an imaginary (or perhaps an actual physical list) of pros and cons to going out with me and my friends.
“That sounds like it’d be cool,” she says. There’s no doubt in her voice, no hesitance, no “Well, I guess there’s nothing better going on tomorrow night so I guess I’ll go.” Suddenly, the uneasiness and fear are washed away, replaced by that good vibe I had going just minutes ago.
She asks for specifics and so I empty my fountain of knowledge on the subject…which consists of the fact that Pete and Andrea are going to be there around 9, that they likened it to J.Q.’s and that it was on Cheapside. Sarah says she’ll stop by my place around quarter to eight. I say that sounds good, and we say our goodbyes.
As soon as I place the phone’s receiver back in its cradle, Will is instantly bowled over by my mind’s version of the Philharmonic Choir belting out a chorus of “Halleluiah!
I take a deep breath of relief and head back out onto the sales floor. As I come out, Andrea is waving goodbye to a customer. I take a quick scan of the store and notice there’s no one else in the place.
“Busy?” I ask.
She nods in the direction of the departing customer. “That was the only person that’s come in since you left. He knew exactly what he wanted and was in and out within a couple of minutes,” she explains with some sense of pride that she can somehow affect good behaviour in customers.
“Why don’t I ever have customers like that when I’m alone on the floor?” I ask. “Any time I have to man the fort, there’s always like a half-dozen people, all of whom can’t seem to remember what they came in for and figure I should somehow know…and then have fifty bucks worth of late fees they refuse to pay.”
Andrea shrugs, and smiles at me. “I rock?” she asks, “ So did you get a hold of Sarah?”
I hope I don’t break my neck as I nod.
“Yeah, I did,” I confirm.
CHAPTER 18
It’s two nights later and the four of us, Andrea, Pete, Sarah and myself are seated around a table in the corner of the Styles, about ten feet away from a writhing, mass of humanity on the dance floor. If I thought the noise levels at J.Q.’s was bad, it would seem like a library compared to the Styles. Some reworked version of a Britney Spears song seems to be in constant rotation. One rendition just seems to begin as the last one ends.
The conversation between the four of us has been limited to a few shouted phrases that had to be repeated at least three times. Andrea and Pete seem to be having a good time, but it looks as if it’s taken a few beers to get them there. As I take another sip of my Coke, I’m beginning to realize that I might just be the oldest paying customer in the place. As I look at Andrea and Pete laugh at something (I’m not sure what since I can’t see where you could actually tell a decent joke in less than a half an hour of “What”s followed by a repeat of the line) I wonder what drives them to come to clubs like this night after night.
I look over at Sarah, who’s sitting next to me. She just smiles, and shakes her head as if to say “What are we doing here?” before taking a sip of her beer. For some reason, and maybe it’s just because I can’t even hear Will over all this, but I’m not really worried that she’s not having a good time, or that she’s suddenly realizing that if she and I continue to date, this might be what she has to look forward to for the rest of our relationship.
Instead, I get a very good sense that she’s just taking this all in stride; that this is something we’ll look back on later and laugh about.
You know what else she’ll probably look back on later and laugh about? Your dancing skills…or rather, lack thereof.
Damn, no matter how loud the music is, Will’s voice of doom always come through clear as a bell. I can’t hear what Sarah is saying and she’s sitting right next to me, but Will I can hear for miles.
Hey, it’s a gift.
Perhaps Peter and Andrea can hear Will as well, because almost as if on cue, they decide to get up and head out into the crowd. Sarah and I watch them for a few minutes. I never picked Pete as much of a dancer but at least Andrea doesn’t laugh in his face and dump him right on the spot. The entire crowd doesn’t stop and begin to turn and point at him, laughing up a storm as they go.
I believe the image that is playing out on the video screen of your mind isn’t of Pete…
It’s of me, I know. Thanks for tonight’s feature, Will. And of course, it’s immediately followed by Will reminding me that I am here with someone, someone who might be wanting to be asked to dance as well.
I decide that as humiliating as it will be to be on the dance floor, it can’t be any worse that feeling like perhaps Sarah might be getting upset with me for not asking her to dance. I turn to her, to see her watching those on the dance floor with little more than a slight interest. I’m wondering if I’m reading too much into things when I decide that she’s looking on with relief that she’s not out there in and amongst the rest of the college-age dancers herself.
She turns to me and before I can motion towards the dance floor, she smiles at me. Her smile is amazing and I have no idea what I was going to ask her, and don’t want to say or do anything that might cause her to lose that smile.
I watch as her eyes drop to the table, searching for a napkin. Snagging one, she takes a pen out of her purse, she writes something down. She doesn’t scribble, she takes her time.
Yeah…that’ll make you hard every time. Excellent penmanship.
As she finishes, Sarah decides to pretend that in the middle of a loud, crowded dance club, we’re back in high school, and she’s passing me a note. Everything about what she does, from the sly smile she gives me, to the looking over my shoulder to make sure she’s not being seen, to the way she folds the note over and slides it across the table to me.
All at once, just as she slides the note to a stop next to my hand, which rests on the table next to my glass, I get a frightening sense of what this note might be about. Perhaps…she wants to take our relationship to the next level. Perhaps…a certain mood has struck her.
Oooh…yeah. Slutty broad that she is, Sarah has written you a note offering to do you right here in the club. Speaking of things that will get everyone on the dance floor to stop, point and laugh at you.
Of course, I realize that Sarah has more style than that…but maybe she’s asking me if I want to go home with her tonight. Maybe tonight is THE night.
Man…how many beers has this girl had? And how desperate is she? I mean, she JUST broke up with Rob a while ago. How horny can she be that she wants to do it with you? No offence, Emmett, but we are in a club filled with good looking, well built college guys who are probably here on an athletic scholarship and have been having sex while you were working at the video store. If she wanted to get laid, she could probably just wait to see something that captures her fancy, and ditch you while you’re sipping your Coke there.
I’m surprised that Will doesn’t come up with some depreciating theory on what Sarah might have written on that note, if it isn’t an invitation to go home with her. And so my hands still shake just a bit as I unfold the note and read it:
Do you want to go outside and talk?
Visions of me ending up sleeping with Sarah vanish in an instance…but part of me is actually relieved.
Yeah, the wuss part…which is quite a bit of you, I might add.
Maybe so…but there’s a part of me that would love to go somewhere a little quieter and talk with Sarah. Rather than keep her in suspense, I quickly nod my head. She smiles at me, but it’s such a wry grin that a part of me and not the wuss part, wonders if tonight might be a very special night in our relationship indeed.
What? Is she going to go down on you in the parking lot?
She and I head towards the nearest exit. I look out on to the dance floor and catch sight of Pete who’s dancing with Amanda. I hold up my hand and flash five fingers at him. Even I’m not sure what it means, since I doubt we’ll only be outside for five minutes but he seems to know what I mean as he gives me a thumbs up and goes back to dancing.
Once outside, both Sarah and I agree that it’s a lot quieter out here than it was inside.
“God, it reminded me of those bars…or clubs as they call them now, we used to go to when we were in college,” Sarah reminisces, “Remember that?”
A part of me can feel the onslaught of the memories that Sarah and I share from those nights when we were dragged out to loud bars by the rest of that circle of friends formed during that first night of our study group. The bars weren’t as loud back then, the music not so pointless and irrelevant…was it?
I can feel that rush of memories much like I would feel the ground shake if a freight train was going by me from only a few feet away. There’s a part of me that wants to grab Sarah’s hand and get caught up in that rush of memories, taking her away to some place quiet and intimate where we could reminisce, telling each other the endless stories that we both already know.
About the time that (INSERT NAME HERE) made a move on (INSERT NAME HERE), trying to plan a drunk and slobbering kiss on her, only for (INSERT NAME HERE) to turn around and slap him. Everyone gathered there that night gasped, fearful that the turn of events might cast a shadow over our collective friendship. The next morning, however, neither of them could remember anything about the indiscretion or its outcome, althought INSERT NAME couldn’t figure out why there was a hand-shaped red mark across his cheek,
Or maybe we would mentally relive the time that INSERT NAME decided that a night out at the bar was just the stress-reliever we all needed, the night before a major exam. Sarah and I were smart, stayed for one drink and then headed back to the dorm for some more studying and a good night’s sleep. INSERT NAME, in
MORE REMINISCING
But then there was that night, that wonderful bittersweet night, the night after classes ended for our senior year, that night we knew everything was ending and as happy as we were over what we had accomplished, we were also sad because we knew things would never be just as perfect as they were in that one moment. For many, for most, we would never see each other again, and it was that unspoken thing that no one wanted to talk about, but we all felt it.
The bar we all went to, having all piled into INSERT NAME’s car and driven the long way, all across the city, from one side to the other, with some mixed tape that somebody had made of all the songs that had meant one thing or another. All of us were singing along at the tops of our lungs, not really caring how badly we sounded.
Although Sarah sounded beautiful, her voice just as strong and proud as the rest of her.
I think you sounded more like a dying cat.
And even if Will tries to make me remember that everyone else in the car was noticeably wincing at just how horrible I sounded, I try to force those images, obviously faked by Will’s editing abilities, out of my mind.
The night was already shaping up to be a great memory, even before we got to the bar, with the singing and the laughing and the memories we tossed out, about teachers and classes and classmates. Because no matter what happened during the trip to the bar, the greatest memories of that night would come once we got inside.
I still swear that every single student of McCallum College showed up to that bar that night. It was packed, and maybe the sheer volume of people and noise had finally been able to force Will into hiding or maybe he’d gotten carded.
Very funny.
Or maybe there were just too many images and I was just going into sensory overload but I don’t remember getting the whole dork-hunting vibe. What I do remember is watching Sara as she sat at the table we considered ourselves lucky to find, sipping her beer and watching the people jammed together on the dance floor. I watched her smile even as her face clouded over.
“Emmett?”
I see Sara looking at me even now, out in the fresh air and away from the loudness and hectic chaos we just left behind inside, and she’s still smiling, but there’s not a cloud in the sky in the smile.
“Where did you go just now?” she asks, laughter in her voice that’s not judgmental or mocking, but the most welcome sound in the world to me right now.
I’m not sure how I should answer that question. I want to tell her that I was remembering one of the most special nights of my life, but I’m still not sure if I should be that open to her. I’m sure she’ll remember what happened that night but she may wonder why I chose to remember it, and why it meant so much to me.
“You were talking about how we used to go out to bars and I was just remembering some of those times, and I guess my train of thought just kinda got away on me,” I explain. I hesitate for just a second, figuring that I could just leave the story as is and that’d be as good as explanation as any.
Stick with that one, Emmett. It’s safe and the odds are in your favour. You went out to bars and clubs hundreds of times. What are the chances that Sarah will be able to zone in on that one particular night.
“I was just remembering that night college ended and we went to that bar…”
You idiot! You couldn’t have just let it go and let Sarah pick up the conversation, and hopefully remember a different night?
Before Will can get too far into his latest rant, Sarah’s smile widens and she shakes her head, laughing softly.
“You know, I was just remembering that night myself,” she says, her mind wandering back to the place mine had just come from. “That seems like so long ago now. There have been times when I wish I could have just stayed there forever.”
I nod my head. “I know what you mean,” I reply.
All at once Sarah gets this look in her eyes, like an image, long-forgotten (by her at least) has just flashed back in her mind. She tries unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh as she playfully swats at my shoulder.
“What?” I ask, as if I don’t know exactly, 100% for sure what she’s about to bring up. For it was the exact same thing that Will had been so fearful about the conversation leading to.
Sarah’s voice has a touch of bittersweet longing to it as she recalls the events of that night. “You remember what we did that night,” she says, mock-accusingly.
Now before any of our readers think we’ve been holding out on them and that Sarah and Emmett had some wild, drunken sexual escapade that she instantly regretted and he relived over and over again for years, let’s just add that Sarah quickly adds…
“That was the night we danced together.”
Perhaps the reason Will was so hoping that Sarah nor I would not go there is because…
Like a lot of other things that most people need to be good at in order to have any kind of social life…
I am not a good dancer. When I got out onto the dance floor that night, I swear that everybody in the bar immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to look, stare, gape at me. There’s a moment in my recollection of it where the music even stopped. However, I’m almost certain (despite Will’s best efforts to reassure me otherwise) that didn’t happen, and that hardly anyone outside of a five-foot radius was even aware I was on the dance floor. Maybe there was some dork-hunter there, there always seems to be one around no matter where I go. And maybe the jerk turned to his date or his buddies or whoever he was trying to impress and make some snide comment about my lack of dancing skills, but if he did, I certainly never heard him.
All I could concentrate on was the fact that Sarah and I were on the dance floor together, and to be honest, there were times when it seemed like we were the only two people there.
Again, Sarah spirits me away from my memories of that night.
“Emmett,” she asks, “Will you dance with me tonight?”
Before I can answer, her arms encircle my waste and she leans her head against my chest. Without really realizing it, I’m holding her against me and we’re swaying back and forth in a rhythm that is about half the speed of whatever thrasher slam dance hit that’s playing inside the bar.
“I don’t think this is that kind of song, Sarah,” I point out.
We both laugh softly and then Sarah says, in a voice so thick with sadness it alarms me, “Just shut up and hold me.”
And so I do.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Something weird happens in the aftermath of Sarah and I dancing together, outside that bar that night. It’s almost as if he becomes two people, or is constantly contradicting himself…or perhaps the entire incident spawned ANOTHER voice in my head, one that is in fact, the yin to Will’s yan.
Hey, don’t start talking about my yan.
Well, no matter how Will or I choose to describe the relationship between the two, it certainly seems as if whomever this new voice is, it’s giving me the opposite advice to that which Will wants to dish out.
This other voice, yet unnamed, appears even as I am still holding Sarah against me, her head settled against my chest, our bodies swaying in time to some unheard melody, the tempo of which is vastly different from that which plays inside the bar we exited shortly before.
At first, everything is fine…more than fine actually, even as a thousand thoughts rush through my head. In spite of the bar noise, the night seems unnaturally quiet. Like there’s only Sarah’s breathing and the wind. My own breathing seems to have come to a complete stop. (Thankfully, as Will reminds me later, I’m still taking deep inhales through my nostrils, and I don’t end up passing out.)
And then, out of nowhere comes this new voice.
“Just kiss her, you idiot!”
At first I think it’s Will, and maybe it is. But it’s so unlike Will, who has spent so many days and weeks and months, since the first moment I realized I had feelings for Sarah, telling me not to get my hopes up, not to let her know those feelings existed…and now he’s changed his tune completely.
All of sudden, Will 2.0, for lack of a better term, is no longer sending me these wild scenarios where I completely fail with Sarah, or that Sarah spurns me to go back to Brad. Instead, I get this compressed 30 second video, which starts with me tilting Sarah’s head up so that I can kiss her and ends with me waking up next to her tomorrow morning.
Suddenly, a scenario that would have been deemed ludicrous and just the wet dream of a horny loser is being championed by the very voice that ridiculed it only a few hours ago.
As I stand there, overwhelmed by both the sensation of Sarah against me, and the temptation to, at the urging of this new voice or at least a new incarnation of the old one, take at least a small step towards turning our friendship into something more, those thousand thoughts are multiplied by another thousand.
And even thought Will 2.0 was kind enough to provide me with the scenario I wish could be certain would play itself out, there must be a little of that old bitter Will still left kicking around my brain, for I still see scenarios where my kissing Sarah actually drives her away, leaving me right back where I was just a few weeks ago, without her in my life. Only this time it wouldn’t be because of Brad, and Sarah wouldn’t be left wondering what was going on. It would be my fault.
I could even envision this scenario where Tom and Andrea came out of the bar looking for us, Tom perhaps joking about “We thought you’d ditched us” to find me standing alone in the night, and me having to explain or, more likely, make up some plausible excuse as to why Sarah had left so abruptly while trying, most likely unsuccessfully trying to convince them that “No, nothing was wrong”.
And so, I didn’t kiss her.
And Will 1.0 thought you were a moron! You had her right there, literally within arm’s reach. All you had to do was suck up a bit of courage and you could have had the very thing that you’ve been mooning over for so long.
And there was every reason to believe that she wanted something to happen just as much as you did. I mean, it wasn’t like she was content to just stand outside and reminisce about your old college days or talk about how work was. No, damn it, she wanted something more, and she wanted it from you.
Come on, Will 2.0 or however I should refer, let’s not get gross here. This is Sarah we are talking about, someone who is very special to me.
Oh, I’m not talking that she was begging for raunchy sex, the likes of which would make Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee blush. I was thinking more along the lines of her just wanting you to be tender to her, to make her feel loved.
Okay, where the hell is this coming from?
For the moment, it really doesn’t matter. Even as Will 2.0 screams at me to kiss her, to hold her tighter even to say something that might jumpstart what he believes Sarah and I are on the threshold of…
Or hey, if you’re too much of a wuss to make the first move, give Sarah an opening. Hell, something as simple as “This is nice!” Come on, it’s three words, and if, in fact, Sarah isn’t interested in anything more than just a dance, it’s still a completely harmless statement.
And then suddenly, Will Version 2.0 decides to up the ante a little bit. Suddenly, even as he/she/it must realize that I’m not going to utter those three simple little words that might someday lead to me uttering three other little words, he decides that in for a penny, in for a pound and before I realize it, he’s got me wanting to do more than just make a simple, seemingly harmless statement about how nice it is to be dancing in the cool night air, to a song that neither of us can hear but instinctively move along to.
Instead, I can suddenly hear this fantastic monologue that he wants me to pour out to Sarah, about how even when we danced that night in that club at the end of college, I realized that my feelings for her extended way beyond friendship, and have only grown since. In a few brief seconds, Will 2.0 composes this brilliant and touching soliloquy about my feelings for Sarah and what I would be willing to do to be her soulmate, her lifemate.
“I want to be there for you on the worst day of your life, to give you a shoulder to cry on, to be that comforting voice that is going to tell you that everything will turn out all right. I want to be the one who wakes you up the next morning and tells you that it’s a new day and help you pick up the pieces.”
But even as I hear those words echo through my head, I know that I won’t be saying them. Not tonight. Tonight I have Sarah here in my arms, her body slowly swaying against mine, and I rationalize my lack of action by telling myself and more importantly, Wills 1.0 and 2.0, that I don’t want anything to spoil it. I don’t want to look back on this night years from now and say that I ruined it by opening my big mouth and spilled my guts to Sarah, only to watch her face melt into a horrified visage and have her run crying into the night.
And so, Sarah and I do nothing more than just dance. I want the night to last forever but eventually she leaves my embrace. She looks up at me not with love or romantic feelings, but simply one of gratitude.
Yeah, like you’re her cousin and just offered her your coat to keep out of the rain.
She pauses for a moment before she says anything, and in the indeterminable amount of time, a thousand thoughts of what she might say race through my mind, aided no doubt by Will 2.0’s brainstorming efforts.
“Well, I should probably get going. Long day at the office tomorrow,” she explains.
I nod, thinking this was probably the blandest outcome that could have happened. Will 2.0 agrees.
“Do you want me to give you a ride home?” she asks. For a moment, I wonder if she means “home” to my place or hers and for another moment, I try to decide if I should take her up on the offer and see where this night might lead.
Before I can answer, though, Sarah continues with “It’s not out of my way or anything.”
The worst thing about having your hopes, wild though they might admittedly be, deflated is trying to put up a front that nothing is wrong because that immediately leads to embarrassing questions. Thankfully, this is one of those rare occasions where I can mask my disappointment pretty well.
I shake my head. “Nah, it’s cool,” I say, even thought it’s the complete opposite of cool. “I should probably go back in before Pete and Andrea start worrying.”
She gives me a weak smile and starts walking to her car. I watch her, agonizing over whether or not to run over, tell her I’ve changed my mind. Even though it’s assured that she won’t invite me back to her place, just spending an extra few minutes with her would be worth it. But instead I just stand there. As she gets into her car, we exchange waves and then she’s in her car and out of the parking lot.
Within seconds of her leaving, a group of guys come out of the back of the bar. Loud, obnoxious and drunk, they brush past me and I’m almost assured that one of them tells me to “get the **** out of the way, dork.” However, they’re drunk and mumbling and slurring their words, laughing and yelling at each other, so I can’t be sure.
Sure, you can’t be sure.
I’m not sure if that’s Will 1.0 or Will 2.0 talking but at this point it doesn’t really matter.
And at this point it doesn’t really matter that they bumped into you, you are the one at fault, right? And what really amazes me is that even in their inebriated conditions, these jerks still have their dork radar going full blast. The sad part is that they probably won’t even remember it tomorrow. A perfectly good dork-hunting expedition completely wasted.
It just seems fitting that as Will 2.0 is kicking me for not accepting that ride from Sarah, some jerk has to put his two cents in. Nothing like kicking a dork when he’s down.
And perhaps the most fitting part of the evening is that I end up just back into the bar for a quick goodbye to Andrea and Pete. Both of them have had a beer or three after they tired of trying to carve out a space amid the mob on the dance floor and so have returned to the table.
It’s weird because Pete seems a bit more of a jerk now that he’s had a couple of beers, while Andrea just seems all that cuter. She’s giggling a little bit, but it’s less that she’d be laughing at someone reading the obituaries and more that her increased alcohol level has just made her already bright and cheery personality a little bit more cheery.
“Dude, where’d you take off to?” Pete asks, “We thought you’d ditched us!” And the way Pete asks, it’s not quite demanding an answer but more like showing whoever might be watching on that he can make fun of the dork as much as the next guy. Like he’s posturing but doesn’t mean anything by it.
For a moment, I contemplate just turning around and walking out, and for that same moment I feel the same helplessness and frustration I feel when I’m confronted with an angry customer who just wants to vent at me. No matter what I do or say, I’m still going to end up looking like some pathetic loser put on this earth just to be a verbal punching bag.
Luckily Andrea, a bit of giggle still in her voice, comes to my rescue.
“Oh come on, Pete, we knew that’s not what happened,” Andrea says. But as she says that, she looks past me for someone who clearly is not there.
With a frown that’s not so much disapproval or disappointment as worry, she asks “Where’d Sarah go?”
Will 1.0 would of course be quick to point out that Andrea is always worried about me. Worried that somewhere in the world there was someone out to do me harm and she instantly, sight unseen, hated that person. I could see it in her eyes. She was afraid that Sarah had in fact ditched, not so much us, but me in particular. And so, even though I don’t feel it completely, I give her my best “Don’t worry” smile.
“She has a busy day tomorrow so she headed home,” I explain, adding that I’m about to head home myself. I get some quick reassurance that both Pete and Andrea will be going home in a cab and then I make my goodbyes.
Andrea nods slowly, but I can see the machinations working behind her eyes. She suspects, incorrectly unfortunately, that I’m BS-ing about Sarah having already left. Andrea’s suspicions have Sarah sitting in her car with the engine running while I make my goodbyes. In this scenario, I’ll go home with Sarah and spend the night with her.
And even as I see this scenario play itself out in Andrea’s mind, I can see her smile fade just a touch. Noticeably perhaps not even to Andrea herself and certainly not to Pete, who’s too busy trying to figure out what smart remark he can spout off to push me a little further down the social ladder and earn himself a few points. As I turn to go, I wonder why Andrea’s smile did falter and fade, even if only for a moment. She’s sitting in this club, with this new guy in her life, assuredly going home to sleep with him tonight, and yet there seems to be some distress that I might be doing the same with Sarah.
Before I can dwell on those questions too long, I notice a couple of the same guys I encountered outside returning to the club and I decide to focus more on just getting out without any further incident or mutterings. In what might be considered a minor miracle, I don’t “accidentally” bump into any of them and if they make any snide remarks, I can’t hear them over some dancer version of a Coldplay hit.
CHAPTER 20
As weird as that period of time between Sarah’s departure from the club and my own was, it gets even weirder the next morning. I finally pry my eyes open at 10:35 a.m., head pounding and a taste in my mouth as if I had gargled cigarettes.
And a certain lack of company in your bed, not from a lack of opportunity if you’d had any guts at all.
Will 2.0 is still there. At first I assumed that he was simply a one-shot deal, something that Will had dreamed up just to screw with my head. And yet, here that same voice is again, the next day, still giving me the gears about having not gone further with Sarah.
The one saving grace about just how rotten I feel is that I have the day off. That doesn’t stop Don from calling my apartment around 10:30 that morning, leaving me a rather condescending message about needing me to come in and cover a shift.
“Mr. M. We need your customer service skills and stat to pull our collective butts out of the fire. Randy called in sick and we’re looking for someone to close. If you’re our man, give me a call, pronto,” he says in his message.
As I’m listening to the message, I have this image of Don, sweat stains and beer gut, sitting in the back at his executive desk, feet up and one hand behind his head, thinking he’s Joe Cool as he tries to butter me up and work so he won’t have to.
And just as that image has settled into my brain, I realize that there must still be a bit of Will 1.0 floating around in my head somewhere because suddenly I see a bit of blonde hair bobbing up and down around Don’s “lower abdominal area”, obviously, Jessica “servicing” her man.
I try not to focus on that particular part of the image any more than I have to. Instead, I rationalize NOT calling Don back and agreeing to work for Randy. My argument is that I’m not working today because why should I have to fill in for someone when they’re not feeling well when I know the favour won’t be returned and besides, I’m not feeling so well myself.
If I can just interject for a moment…while your logic is sound, it does raise the question of just why you don’t just call him back and be done with it?
I ponder that question for a moment. Not because I don’t have an answer for it (I’m a complete wuss who knows he would get talked into going in and covering Randy’s shift if I did so.) but because I’m not sure just which Will might be asking it. Certainly, the question was one asked with the answer already known, but it lacks the overwhelming condescention that Will would normally ask something like that.
The question is asked simply and straight-forwardly. And in fact it’s asked. Will Version 1 would have said words to the effect of “You’re such a ****ing wuss. Now you have to hide out because Don might see you on the street somehow and force you to go in and work, alone if need be. Actually you’d probably agree to work even if you were being hospitalized for pneumonia.”
And the sad part is that’s probably true. But it still doesn’t answer the question of just what is going on up there in my head.
Has there been a coup?
And for that matter, is there a Will Version 3.0, a kindler, gentler Will who gives me an idea. It’s a Saturday, a rare Saturday off for me. A Saturday that, if I hadn’t been trained to NOT pick up the phone and let it go to voice mail when I’m at home, I might have gotten sucked into work. A Saturday after a Friday night where I danced outside a club with a girl I’ve had a crush on for years.
No matter who or what possesses me to do so, I soon find myself dialing Sarah’s number.
“Hello,” she says, sounding about as bad a I did when I first got up. A part of me wonders if I woke her up.
And another part of you wonders who she woke up with.
Okay, if this is Will 2.0 speaking, there are obviously some similarities between this updated version and the original. Or perhaps Will 1.0 is still kicking around somewhere.
“Hey, Sarah, it’s me, Emmett.” Good start, I suppose.
“Oh..hey,” she says. One of the Wills starts in on just what a lackluster response that is, and it’s a point I’ll grant them, but then again, she probably just woke up and is feeling like crap, so I try not to take it personally.
“Hey,” I reply. Okay, so not exactly Shakespeare but I’m trying to keep it loose and casual. “I just wanted to thank you for coming out with me last night. It was fun.”
Sarah laughs at that, for reasons I’m not too clear on. “Yeah…it was fun,” she admits, “although it kinda served to tell me I’m not a kid anymore. Can’t do the all-night bar scene. Hell, can’t even do the partial-night bar scene anymore.”
I can already feel Will (1.0, I must assume) storing this conversation away. I expect he’ll bring it up later, and kinda twist my guts a little bit, making me assume that Sarah made that comment to send me on some kind of guilt trip about how I had dragged her out and ended up making her feel old.
“Tell me about it,” I reply, hoping that I sound like I’m commiserating with her.
Okay, I tell myself and who knows how many of the voices that are in my head at this point, things aren’t off to a great start. She’s tired, I’m tired, and I should probably just tell her that I called to thank her for a great evening, say my goodbyes, hang up the phone and hit the sack.
And all three (or four or twenty-five of us) are in agreement. Which is why we’re all kinda stunned when we hear someone who sounds suspiciously like me ask
“Are you doing anything today? Do you want to go out and grab something to eat?”
What the ****?
What the ****?
That’s what I said. (Not out loud, thankfully!) Every part of my body cringes. My hair, my toes and all points in between.
There’s a pause. A long pause. A long horrible seemingly never-ending pause where I keep expecting her to being with “I’d love to but…” and end with “But maybe some other time.” After which Will 1.0 and 2.0 will recombine their collective powers towards berating me about being such an idiot to not just let sleeping Sarahs lie.
And when she finally does respond, she initially gives me the impression that this is exactly what is going to happen, even if in not those exact words.
“Actually, Emmett, I have to go to the mall and pick up a couple of things. A friend of mine from work is having a birthday and I need to get her a card and a gift.”
And so at this point, one of the Wills is telling me that this is Sarah giving me the brush off. But then, in what has to be a complete reversal of our expectations of the situation, she continues
“But if you want to meet me there, and we could grab something at the food court afterwards.”
And then there’s another long pause. Even as I dialed the number, Will was disabling that part of my psyche that gave me a reason to hope that maybe, just maybe, Sarah might say “Yes” to this request to get together with me today. And in doing so, he never really prepared me on how to respond. He was too busy filling my head with any number of reasons why she might say “No”.
Let’s see, there was the vague and generic“She has other plans”, “She’s not feeling well”, ”She’s too tired after being out too late last night”, “She’s going to hang out with her other, less dorky friends”, “Your pathetic attempt at dancing scarred her for life and she never wants to see you again”.
Oh, and don’t forget the “She met some random stranger on the way home and decided he, or for that matter, she was better to sleep with than you and so she hooked up with him (or her) and is just taking a break before giving herself to him/her again.”
Yeah, Will has all that time to dream up these wild…
And yet, and the same time, perfectly feasible…
…scenarios, and yet he can’t scrape up enough of that over-active imagination of his, to give me one decent response line should the unimaginable happen and Sarah actually want to see me today.
Hey, I didn’t totally leave you high and dry. I was helping a brother out at one point.
Yeah, sure, Will. You sure helped me out…by making damn sure you had that pathetic “Oh well. No problem…I understand…Maybe some other time” line all set up for me.
Suddenly, Will makes sure to punch me in the gut by making me realize that between me realizing I wasn’t sure how to react when Sarah didn’t blow me off for one of the reasons Will suggested, and then me arguing with him over the lack of a prepared response, I still haven’t responded to Sarah yet. He helpfully provides me with an image of her standing by the phone with this “Uh…hello…is anyone there?” look on her face.
“That sounds great,” I reply, much too rushed I know, like those three words have suddenly become one. I remember all those lessons I had thrown at me when I tried to give speeches in English class back in high school.
“Slow down, Emmett, you won’t be marked for how fast you say your speech,” I used to be told, amid the laughter of everyone in class. Sometimes the teachers could just be as big a dorkhunter as the kids.
“Do you want me to meet you at the mall?” I ask, slowing down so I don’t look like a complete spaz.
There’s another pause but thankfully, I realize it’s just Sarah contemplating timing and scheduling. A moment or two later, she replies.
“Let’s say, an hour, in the food court, by the Chicken and Ribs Deluxe.”
I tell her that sounds good and we hang up. Much like Sarah did moments before, I start contemplating the schedule. If I don’t bother breathing, I can get cleaned up and shaved, changed and to the mall with about 30 seconds to spare.
Of course, that doesn’t leave me a lot of time to decide what to wear. It has to be cool enough to impress her but casual enough so that I don’t scare her off by making her think I’m trying to impress her. Basically my aim is to have Sarah think that I just tossed together an outfit but it just works for me.
You know, if you spent less time worrying about what everyone else but you knows is a lost cause (the possibility of you looking cool) and more time worrying about ensuring that you don’t look like an idiot by showing up 20 minutes late, you might have better luck.
Sorry, I’m trying my best to designate how much time can be spent on what. I’m still new at this whole dating thing.
Uhm…excuse me? Dating thing? What makes you think this is a date? This is her going to the mall and you tagging along to help carry her bags. Odds are that she’ll be scoping out the next Brad even as you’re trying to be deep and chat about the meaning of life.
It’s a date because I called her up, asked if she wanted to get together and she accepted. Granted this isn’t dinner at a fancy restaurant and going to the opera, but it’s the best I can do under the circumstances. The way I look at it is, the best thing I can do right now is just give it my best shot. Try and win her over during whatever time we have together. And it doesn’t matter if that’s going out for a night on the town together and then back to her place, or just an afternoon at the mall, the best thing I can do is just see what openings life gives me and go from there.
Actually, the best thing you can do right now is to stop with waxing philosophy about how you’re going to take lemons that aren’t really lemons and make lemonade and actually get ready to go out on this non-date.
Oh geez.
Will’s condescension prompts me to look at the clock and sure enough I am behind schedule, and as per usual when you’re late, everything starts going wrong. No matter what I choose, the shirt never seems to look right with the pants, every pair of socks I pull out has at least one of them. I can’t find my wallet or my cell phone, and I’m tempted to leave the latter behind. Nobody at work (save Andrea) knows my cell phone number, but still, I’m paranoid that if I take it, Don might somehow track me down and call me in the middle of an important moment with Sarah and completely ruin the mood.
Even as I debate whether or not to take the cell, I lose valuable minutes. In the end, I decide to take it (on the off-chance my folks have an emergency and need to get ahold of me) and so I jam it into my coat pocket as I rush out the door. I’m practically running most of the way to the mall, slowing down just a block or two once I know that I’ll make it on time and so I’m not out of breath and one false heartbeat away from a heart attack.
I’m in the food court right on the hour.
And where is Sarah? Nowhere to be seen. You either ran all the way for nothing or she got her, waited until one minute to the hour, got impatient and left in a huff, pissed off at you beyond belief that you stood her up and ruined her whole day.
Okay, Will…sometimes you’re not even trying to make sense. But before Will can offer some even more ridiculous rebuttal, Sarah arrives. It never ceases to amaze me how she can look so amazing in little more than what I’m wearing, just jeans and a blue t-shirt with an unbuttoned blouse.
“Hey,” I say, waving her over to the table where I collapsed, still a bit out of breath from the run.
She waves as she walks over to the table. She kinda regards me just sitting at the table.
“So are you going to want to have lunch first or do you want to hit a couple of stores first?” she asks. Immediately I can tell which option she’d prefer I choose.
“Let’s hit the stores,” I say, getting to my feet. I realize that my legs really hurt from running but I assure myself that once I get walking, they’ll get better. After a few minutes, even Will has to agree that I’m right on this one…well, to a point.
Sarah leads me into the Sears that anchors this mall and for a few minutes we just kinda wander aimlessly up and down the aisles, looking at whatever items the aisle we’re in happens to be showcasing.
“Let me guess, you’ll know what you’re after when you see it,” I joke.
Sarah kinda frowns and nods. “Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” she admits. “I mean, I’ve worked with Crystal for about three years now…Well, she works in the same department as I do, but really, I barely know her.”
So why does she feel duty-bound to get her a gift?
For once, Will’s sarcasm comes in handy. It’s a fair question that I pose it in a far better tone than he does.
Sarah shrugs. “It’s her birthday and the head of the department thought it’d be a real team-building thing if everyone drew a name at random and that’s who’s birthday you were in charge of.”
We’re walking on the fringe of the Kids Department now and I have to dodge a couple of racing, screaming kids who didn’t seem to see me or just figured out, even at that young age, that if a dork gets in your way, he’s the one who has to make sure there’s no collision. I expect that if any one of those screaming kids had banged into me, their seemingly-absent parents would suddenly appear and start screaming at me about how I had assaulted their little darlings.
Instead, there’s no collision, but one of the parents does materialize but the only one he yells at is whatever little hellion belongs to them. Apparently, she’s now concerned that Billy is going to break something. I want to laugh, because I’ve seen enough kids break things, only to have the parents claim that it was broken already or the display was improperly set up.
Instead of focusing on the kids and parents for too long, I turn back to Sarah. “So, it’s kinda like Secret Santa, only all year long,” I suggest. It’s only a single sentence, barely a complete thought, but the way Sarah’s eyes widen and light up make it all worthwhile.
She nods thoughtfully. “Exactly,” she agrees, adding that “sometimes you know just how to put things, Emmett.”
And suddenly even though we are indoors, in the middle of a store with at least one more floor above us, in the middle of a multiple story mall, it’s as if the roof has opened up and the sun is shining down right on me.
Good Lord, and you say I’m getting ridiculous. Imagine if she ever told you she was crazy in love with you, your head would probably explode.
No matter what Will says, there’s a spring in my step that isn’t hindered at all by how tired and sore my legs were just a few moments ago. I don’t care if Sarah notices, I don’t care if the whole world notices.
“So, what do you know about Crystal,” I ask, deciding that I am going to help Sarah get the perfect gift, just so I can chase this feeling for as far as it will let me.
Sarah shakes her head. “Not a whole heck of a lot,” she admits, “She has the kids/husband thing happening. She’s like me, always on the go doing something, actually even more so since she’s higher up the food chain than me.”
If Will was too busy thinking up reasons why the worse-case scenario would be the most probable scenario when it came to Sarah agreeing to go out with me today to provide me with a comeback line if she did accept, he kinda makes up for it here, or maybe this is Will 2.0 or maybe this is just Emmett Morrison 1.0 who finally comes up with a brain storm because I suddenly come upon an idea.
“Would you saw she’s stressed out a lot? In need of some rest and relaxation, a battery recharging?” I ask.
Sarah thinks on that a moment. “Yeee-ahhh!” she says, obviously wondering where I’m going with this line of questioning. “But if you end up taking me to the automotive department, I’m leaving.”
We both laugh, and it’s the laugh we share that I plan to use against Will if he continues to bombard me with the “You’re fooling yourself if you think this is a date” attitude. The way Sarah looks at me, I can sense that there’s something happening between us here as we wonder through the mall, and I’m almost positive that Sarah feels it too.
I shake my head at her suggestion that I’m going to get her something from the automotive department. Instead I decide that I better double-check a couple of things before I spring this idea on her and end up looking like an idiot on a technicality.
Hmm…I have to admit, that’s not the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.
I pause for a second while I take in what Will has just said to me. Thankfully I recover quickly enough that Sarah doesn’t seem to notice. Was that a compliment, Will?
Pphht! Hardly. I simply stated that it wasn’t stupidest idea you’ve ever had. I mean, when it comes to stupid ideas, you’ve had some real doozies over the years and there are probably 50-100 ideas that would rank higher than this. Hell, just this morning, you call Sarah…and then you got the idea that helping her shop for one of her fellow office jockeys was a date. There’s two ideas more worthy of the crown right there.
I choose to ignore Will and instead turn my attention back to Sarah.
“How much are you thinking of spending on this gift?” I ask.
And there’s another contender for that “Stupidest Idea” title. You never bring up anything of a financial nature with a woman you want to keep fantacizing that you’re on a date with. Here’s what’s about to happen, Emmett. Sarah is about to get indignant about you asking that question, bluntly tell you that it’s none of your business and this “mood” you seem to think you’re both caught up in will immediately be spoiled.
But Will is wrong again, as Sarah just kinda shrugs and says “Oh…I don’t know…maybe about a hundred or so.”
In all the years I’ve had Will lurking around in my head, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him cough…until today.
“A Hundred or So?” She’s blowing a hundred bucks on some chick she barely knows? What the….
I have to admit. Knowing that Sarah is in that income bracket that can spend a hundred bucks on a gift for a co-worker comes as a bit of a shock. Rather than react with that same bit of shock, I just kinda (hopefully) casually nod, trying to give the impression that I’m just mulling my options over.
Instead of thinking, “Holy F*ck, how loaded is this chick?”
I decide that since being impetuous got me here on this date in the first place, continuing on that path might lead to something more. I take Sarah by the hand and lead her towards what I hope could be the right destination for us in this mall.
“And where do you think you might be taking me?” she asks, playfully and all at once I realize that I must be hearing her bedroom voice.
We could always ask Brad, right?
And once again I’m thankful for Will’s sarcasm because hearing Sarah’s voice is, I’m ashamed to admit, getting me a little excited. Not throbbing erection excited but a little stiff nonetheless. I sneak a glance “down there” and don’t think it’s noticeable. Nevertheless I try to keep myself in front of Sarah and don’t meet the eyes of any of the store patron’s eyes until I’ve got things under control again.
I lead Sarah out of Sears and towards Relaxation Spa and Boutique. As we get closer to the store she realizes that this is the idea I had.
“A Day at the Spa, right?” she says, taking a guess that just happens to be right. I nod, and then she does. I nod because she’s right and she nods because she likes the idea.
“Think that’d make an okay gift for Crystal?” I ask, adding that “I know it’s a bit cliché, a day at a spa for the stressed out businesswoman, but…”
Before I can finish, Sarah is laughingly swatting at me to stop. “Not at all,” she says, “It’s perfect. Hell, I’m jealous that it’s her and not me.”
Will tries to get me excited again with a vision of Sarah, naked, lying on a massage table, getting oiled up and rubbed down by an equally beautiful, equally naked female attendant but before Will can break out the inevitable lesbian encounter, I tune him out and refocus on Sarah, who seemingly couldn’t be happier at the suggestion I’ve made.
“Wait right here,” she says as she takes off into the boutique. I grab a bench and watch her through the window as she takes care of things. I watch her listen intently as the saleswoman explains things. She laughs at something and then smiles. For a few moments, I’m no longer that dork that Will leads the world in putting down at every given opportunity, justified or not. Instead, just for those few moments before Sarah returned, I could imagine that I was her husband, and I was watching my wife pick up something for one of our couple friends, and soon we would be heading back to our townhouse to get ready for dinner.
I knew that wasn’t what was happening. I wasn’t the successful author married to my best friend. Even Will didn’t need to remind me that I was just a lowly retail employee, who may or may not be out on an afternoon date with a girl who’s probably way out of my league.
But for that moment, I could imagine.
As Sarah comes out of the store, she throws her arms wide as if to say “Hey, how easy was that?”
“Good thing I have you along. That was easy.” she says as she comes to stand by the bench I’ve been sitting. She nods towards the food court. “You up for getting something to eat.”
I feign thinking about it. “I suppose I could be persuaded to accompany you,” I joke, with Will cutting me off from adding what would assuredly been the too corny “M’lady!”
I get to my feet and we’re back at the food court, sitting ironically at the same table that Pete and I were sitting at when I decided to go to the book store and bumped into Sarah so many weeks ago.
As I’m finishing up my second taco I contemplate telling her that story. Thankfully, about a bite or two later I dismiss the idea. After all, she might bring up the fact that we hadn’t seen each other in a while and if she’s in a reflective mood, she might ask me just what happened to cause that disappearing act on my part.
So…go ahead and tell her. Tell her that her ex-boyfriend was a complete jerk who turned from moron party boy to jealous psychopath and threatened you with bodily harm if you didn’t stay away from her.
But as I look across at Sarah, as she takes a sip from her 7-Up, I can see that she’s happy, not just about life in general but being here with me in particular…and much like Will warned me about spoiling the mood by talking about money, I decide I don’t want to spoil the mood by starting a conversation that might end with me spoiling the mood by spilling the beans about her ex-boyfriend.
“I’m so glad you called me today, Emmett,” Sarah announces, and she doesn’t seem to realize that those eight words just made my heart leap into my throat.
This is it, I think. Sarah’s about to tell me what a good time she’s had today and how much she cares about me. I’ll reply that I feel exactly the same way and she’ll invite me back to her place and…
“It’s funny,” she says, and I wait with baited breath to hear what she says next, “but when I got up this morning, I felt really tired after being out late last night. I was going to put off this shopping expedition until tomorrow, but when you called I figured it was a sign that I should get out and get this taken care of today, rather than putting it off.”
Sarah continues to explain. “Then when we got here, I figured we’d be wandering around the mall for hours. Instead, you get this great idea and all my problems are solved.”
Wow! Not really the whole “Emmett, being with you today has made me realize that I’ve always been in love with you. Come back to my apartment and make sweet love to me, my darling.”
Admittedly, no, but what is that buzz word that people are always tossing around: “Baby steps!”
I guess the fact that Will has been wrong on more than one occasion today and I’ve been able to call him on it. Not to mention that I’ve been on top of my game, so maybe I’m feeling a little cocky. Later, Will will say that I should have quit while I was ahead.
“So, what’s the rest of the afternoon hold?” I ask, hoping, almost expect her to instantly brainstorm an activity or two for us to partake in. Instead, she suddenly looks like she’s about to fall asleep.
She shrugs lazily. “I don’t know…I’m tempted to go home and take a nap. Maybe read for a while. I picked up the new John Grisham the other day. Been kinda wanting to crack that open.”
I nod, as if I completely understand and am totally cool with it. But it’s not all that deep down inside that I’m kinda disappointed that this is where our day together ends.
Your DAY together? Not even an afternoon together. Try an hour or so together? And you know what sucks? If you had just kept your bright ideas to yourself, you ****ing idiot, you might have had that day together. I mean, as bright as Sarah is, she was kinda shooting blanks in terms of ideas. The two of you might have ended up wandering around the mall for those same hours that she was expecting to.
Wow! After a slow start, Will sure made the comeback today. He’s exactly right.
“But this was fun,” Sarah says. After we’re finished eating, we walk to parking lot where she’s parked.
“Do you want a ride home?” she asks. I contemplate it, but suddenly decide that I’d rather hang out at the mall for a bit, maybe catch a movie. We say our goodbyes and then I watch as she drives away.
As she does so, she smiles and waves at me, and the feeling that something more than just two people going shopping has transpired returns. Maybe I’m imagining things, but I want to believe I see something in those eyes of hers as she looks at me before driving away.
And in those eyes I see something else, I see a possibility. Baby Steps, I tell myself and any Wills that might be listening, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Maybe today was just a few hours, but maybe the next time she needs someone, she’ll be calling me instead of the other way around, and maybe “next time” will last all day…and into the night.
Even as I make my way through the mall, I’m declaring this a successful first date. I head towards the theatre complex in the mall, for you see, the idea of me hitting a movie wasn’t B-S, a ruse to get Sarah to avoid feeling sorry for leaving me at the mall. There have been a couple of movies that came out recently that I’ve been wanting to see, and I decide that today is the perfect opportunity to catch at least one of them.
However, I figure that if I’m going to see a movie, I should probably give my folks a heads-up. I fish the phone out of my jacket pocket but before I can even start to dail, the phone rings. It kinda startles me but thankfully, I don’t send the phone crashing to the floor of the mall.
I check the number and realize it’s my folks. I wonder what they could be calling for.
“Hello?” I answer, probably a little more worried-sounding than I should be.
“Hello, Emmett, it’s Mom. Listen, I just got a call,” my Mom starts. My shoulders drop. I’m assuming that Don has called again, and this time Mom has picked up, which lead to Don more or less guilt-tripping her into calling me about coming in to cover Randy’s shift. I decide that if he’s even so much as raised his voice to her, I’m going to walk right into the store and tell him off, and if I get fired, so be it. It’s not like I can’t find another pointless, minimum wage, dead-end job within a day or so. Hell, I can see two Help Wanted signs right here in the mall from where I’m standing.
Instead, Mom continues with “It was Tim. He said for you to call him. He sounded kind of upset.”
Part of me is concerned and part of me thinks that some Star Trek marathon has been cancelled. Either way I figure I should probably call him. If nothing else, maybe I can impress him with the fact that I was just on a date. I promise Mom that I will and let her know that I might be sticking around for a movie.
I toy with the idea of not calling Tim right away. I’m still not sure when the movies start and I don’t really feel like missing out on one because I’m too polite to interrupt Tim’s long-winded diatribe about some call during the 1967 Stanley Cup Finals. Still, if Tim sounds upset, there might be a legitimate reason behind it and I know that Will wouldn’t let me forget that I was so callous at a time when my friend needed me.
I don’t know why but I can never forget Tim’s phone number. It’s one of those numbers you can kinda sing as you’re dialing “555-4657”.
Can’t you do that with any number?
Will!
As soon as Tim answers the phone, I know something horrible has happened. Tim’s voice sounds like either he’s just woken up, he’s got a horrible cold or somebody’s died. It’s late afternoon and not cold and flu season. That leaves just one more option.
Tim sounds terrible. Worse than I’ve ever heard him before. I have to actually physically ask if I have the right number.
“Tim?”
“Emmett…” Tim begins. I can hear his voice breaking and it takes a moment before he can get everything out. “Emmett…Mary…she’s dead…She was killed in a car accident last night.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND OF A FRIEND
Back when my grandmother died, one of those old men who’s always wandering around town three sheets to the wind had corned me and said that he was sorry to hear about my grandmother but that he didn’t attend people’s funerals because they wouldn’t come to him. He thought that was probably the funniest thing he had ever heard because he let out one of those half-coughing spells, half-laughs that everyone within a quarter mile could probably have heard.
At the time, I kinda chuckled at the joke, more out of politeness than anything. However, on the morning of Mary’s funeral, as I sat on the couch, waiting for Pete to show up and trying not to itch myself to death, I wondered if I shouldn’t adhere to that rule. It would have gotten me out of having to go to this deal.
To be honest, if Tim hadn’t had been such a close friend to her, I probably could have gotten away with sitting this one out. I mean, I had known Mary from the few times that she’d tagged along with Tim when we’d go hang out for burgers or to watch movies but other than that, we hadn’t really had much interaction with her that didn’t involve him.
Of course, I knew that Tim had had a lifelong, unspoken infatuation with Mary, so I figured that this must be just killing him. No matter how much of a moron the guy might be, he was going through something that Pete and I could only have nightmares about. I figured I owed it to him to be there for him.
Think if the situation was reversed, he’d be there for you?
You know what, Will, he probably would be.
Actually, you’re probably right. I just hope we can get this over with and get home in time to do something with the rest of our day.
Before I could take Will to task for his misguided sense of priorities, the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, there was Pete, looking as uncomfortable in his “Sunday best” as I was in mind.
“Hey Emmett,” he said, “You ready?”
I nodded and we headed out.
“So, I guess Tim’s gonna be taking this hard, eh?” Pete asked as we drove over, listening to some Howard Jones cassette that I think had been in Pete’s car since he bought it in 1987.
“Yeah,” I sighed in reply. “I guess he got the news first thing yesterday morning. Musta just knocked the wind right out of him.”
Pete shook his head. He had never really liked Tim, was always quick to make fun of the guy, but today he seemed to be willing to let bygones be bygones, at least for today.
When we got into the chapel, we noticed that Mary’s family had filled up most of the front pews, with her closer friends filling in behind. I motioned Pete towards an empty bench near the back of the room, just far enough away from everyone else.
It was probably a wise move since Pete decided to do a running commentary on everyone in attendance for the first few minutes after we sat down.
“Hey, there’s Susan Eckersley!” Pete whispers to me. I hope that his voice isn’t carrying over the dismal keyboard arrangement they always play before the commencement of these services. Of course, just in case it isn’t totally obvious, he points over at her.
“Yeah, I see her, “ I reply, a little more tersely than I’d like.
“She was totally hot back in high school, eh? But man, looks like she’s put on about ten pounds.”
I shrug, not because I don’t agree…
Yeah, gotta give it to Pete, the cow has ballooned up.
…but because I want Pete to drop the subject.
I had always wondered what going to a high school reunion might be like. I never figured that it would come here at a funeral. Half of me just wants to lend support to Tim til this thing is over and then get the hell out of Dodge. The other half is expecting “Heard It Through The Grapevine” to start playing, with the rest of the Big Chill soundtrack soon to follow.
Every once in a while, someone from the old Glen Lorne High School crowd will look back, and eventually kinda gives me and Pete a look like “what the hell are YOU doing here?” Like I said, I’m just here to give Tim some support.
“Wait here a sec,” I tell Pete, like he’s going anywhere. “I’m gonna go talk to Tim.”
Pete nods a more solemn look on his face. Maybe I’m being too hard on the guy, maybe he just needs something to take his mind off why we’re here. If Susan Eckersley’s weight helps him get through a difficult time, who am I to judge?
Tim is sitting in the second row back, on the opposite side from the rest of the high school crowd. Part of me wants to ****in’ lay into the pricks from high school for treating the guy like an outcast at his best friend’s funeral, like it would have killed him to put aside the ****ing class divisions for a couple of hours.
I get a couple of more looks like the ones me and Pete got earlier. Will has me glare back at them just enough to make them look elsewhere. Tim looks up. He looks every bit the professional mourner, with the sunglasses and business casual attire. I shrug it off. He’s dealing with something I can’t hope to understand. Like Pete, if this is what helps get him through this, I got no place to judge.
As soon as he sees me, Tim takes off the sunglasses and gets to his feet. He tosses his arms around me and gives me a hug that’s way over-done. I don’t know what to do but stand there and hug him back, albeit more subtly.
“Glad you made it, man!” I hear Tim say, although his voice is muffled by the fact that his head is buried in my shoulder. “Thanks for coming.”
A moment later he lets me go.
“Just wanted to be here for ya,” I reply.
He nods like this is the single greatest act of human compassion ever committed on God’s green earth.
“Thanks, man!” he says.
Oh man! I can see the thought forming in your brain. Stifle it, Emmett.
Despite Will’s warnings, I take hold of the very idea he’s been warning me against.
“Hey, Tim,” I say, “After all this is over, you uh…
I’m begging you, for the love of God, to finish with anything other than the words “wanna go out for coffee!”
“…wanna go out for coffee.”
AUGH!
I know that Will is dead-set against me hanging out with Tim, but it just seemed like the decent thing to do.
Even as I comfort myself with the knowledge that I’m making a good, kind gesture here, I see that Tim is nodding. He’s good to go, I guess.
“Cool,” I reply. “Just meet me and Pete out in the parking lot after the service.”
“Sure,” he says. I start to head back to the pew where Pete and I are sitting. I haven’t taken a complete step when I hear Tim call after me. “Hey man, mind if we go somewhere more substantial than just a coffee place. I’m gonna be famished by the time we get through her.”
Un-****ING-be-****ING-lievable!
Every time Pete and I get together with Tim which Pete always tried to keep to a minimum, Tim would always talk us into going out to get something to eat, and then immediately beg poverty on us and we’d end up having to pick up the tab.
For the first few minutes during the service, Will had me all but envisioning Tim taking us to the most expensive restaurant in town and ordering everything on the menu, with us paying for the whole deal.
Finally, I had shut him up long enough to get into what the minister was saying. I had been to a couple of funerals in my time to know what the minister was going to say. With Mary only being in her early 20s, there was the pre-requisite “gone before her time” speech along with the minister, who probably had never even met Mary in her lifetime, talking about how she was such a special person with a loving family and friends.
A couple of the girls who had been close friends with Mary in high school and college got up and spoke about their memories and how much joy Mary had brought to their lives.
I half-expected to see Tim get up and start speaking. Actually, the phrase I should use is I was “afraid” that Tim would get up and start speaking. No offence to the guy but I knew if he did, he’d end up going overboard, flowering his speech with too many over-the-top sentiments and he’d end up making a fool of himself. In the end, Tim seemed content to let the others speak their peace. Maybe he finally realized that he didn’t know the words to say and so by saying nothing, he was better off.
Hey, Emmett?
With the fear of Tim’s possible attempt at public speaking over with, I was able to relax, which meant that Will was able to come back to the forefront of my psyche.
What is it, Will?
Do you think Tim ever did it with Mary?
It’s all I can do not to scream obscenities to this little, irritating, evil voice inside my head.
Flattery will get you nowhere, bud. Come on, man. I’m just asking the question that all those bitches and assholes sitting up in the front few rows are wanting to ask. I mean, they all knew that Mary was close friends with Tim, and that Tim had the hots for her. So, I’m sure that one of the hot topics of conversation between them will be whether or not Tim and Mary ever become more than “friends”?
The difference between them and me is that I am asking just as a general question. Personally, I kinda hope that you discover that somewhere along the line Tim and Mary took their relationship beyond just friendship, even if just for one night. It was what Tim always wanted…actually I suppose he wanted such a relationship to be more than a one-night stand but still even the memories of that one night would be of great comfort to him now.
Meanwhile, those muther-****ers up there are probably aghast at the idea that someone like Mary would lower herself to even be friends with a guy like Tim, much less sleep with him. I’m sure that even the possibility of a sexual or romantic relationship between the two have been, will continue to be and perhaps even at this very moment are the subject of a lot of mean-spirited jokes among the former social elite of Glen Lorne High School.
Man, it gets scary when I start agreeing with the stuff that Will comes up with.
Actually, considering that I’m a manifest of your psyche, on some level you agree with everything I say.
As scary as that thought is, I’m going to ignore the implications and cut straight to the answer to your original, if vulgarly phrased answer: No, from what I could figure out from Tim, unless something had changed just in the weeks leading up to her death, Tim and her were never more than just friends. As we’ve both pointed out, I think it was his fondest hope that some day the two of them would have more than just a friendship between them, but it never happened, at least to my knowledge.
So, basically you’re saying that Tim and Mary were in the exact same situation as you and Sarah….
YOU AND SARAH!
For a moment, I black out…well, almost. I can’t hear the music or the minister. I’m not aware of Pete talking next to me. All I can hear is Will’s disembodied voice echoing inside my head. I shake the feeling that’s rushed over me away and concentrate on what the minister is saying as he concludes the service.
It’s supposed to be a beautiful ceremony, with the minister saying all the right things and “capturing Mary’s spirit to a T’. I nod whenever anyone comments about the service, since I hardly heard a word he said. Hell, someone could have come up to me and started in about how the minister kept flipping off the crowd and making liberal use of the F-word and I probably would have nodded. How was I to know the difference? Weird how one malicious thought…
I think you’re over-dramatizing this. It was a boring service, you nodded off. Get over it.
As I started to say, weird how one malicious thought can just take over your mind and block out everything else.
By the time I’m in the parking lot waiting for Tim, I’m trying to get Pete to talk about something, anything, just to keep Will’s voice out of my head.
“What did you think of the service?” I ask him, not really wanting to start this conversation but thinking of nothing else even remotely appropriate to be talking about in the parking lot after the funeral service for a close friend.
Pete just shrugs. “All right, I guess,” he says, then lapses back into silence.
Great, lot of help he is. I can’t tell if he’s upset at Mary’s death, somber just for the sake of being somber, or if he’s pissed off that I somehow invited Tim out after the service. I think Pete hoped we could show up, sit through the service, give our condolences and get the hell out of Dodge with little or no interaction with Tim at all.
I don’t know why I did it. Maybe I felt like the guy shouldn’t be alone, having just walked out of a funeral where he had to say goodbye to his best friend. Maybe I would have wanted someone to have done the same for me if I was in the same boat.
Maybe I figured that if Pete wasn’t going to help me out, I knew that Tim could, at the very least, be counted on to talk so much that he might just drown Will’s voice out of my head.
A half an hour later, I’m sitting in a booth at Burger Hutt, having barely heard a peep out of Will. I’ve loved the Hutt’s “Massive Burger Attack” since I was a kid and right now I could almost try to repeat Tim’s historic “Three Attacks At One Sitting” feat that he accomplished in our senior year in high school. (He was trying to impress Mary, of course!)
Instead, I opt for one “Massive Burger Attack” as I listen to Tim reminisce about those same high school days. Pete has gone back into his silent sideline mode. For some reason he fails to mention how much weight Susan Eckersley had gained since high school, instead being content to sit next to me, pick at his fries and listen to Tim and I talk about the past.
“So, of course, I’m totally late for school cause of this and so I literally had to run out of my room with my pants hanging around my ankles, scrambling for the door,” Tim remembers. I suppress laughing my ass off at the mental picture I’m getting of Tim with his pants around his ankles. I look over at Pete, and even he’s doing his darnedest not to laugh.
“Thankfully, I managed to make it to school fully-dressed, in one piece and, amazing off all, pretty much on time,” Tim continues, laughing at the memory. That works for both Pete and I since it allows us to laugh as well.
“I’ll tell ya something, guys,” Tim reflects, “I may not have had the best marks or the best attendance, but those days at Glen Lorne High were some of the best days of my life.”
I want to laugh again, only this time not WITH Tim but AT him. I look over at Pete and he’s not really laughing with or at Tim, and instead is just rolling his eyes at me. With good reason, I guess. None of us ever considered our days at Glen Lorne High the best of our lives, least of all Tim.
He had spent four years bemoaning and bitching about how much he had hated high school, how he hated the clique-system that ran rampant on the social scene at Glen Lorne High, how everyone save for Mary, Pete and myself were either jocks or preppies, how all the teachers were out to get him, how he couldn’t wait to get out of high school and on to some better life.
And now suddenly here he was telling Pete and I that he found those days to be the best of his life? Part of me wanted to just shake my head in astonishment at his sudden change of heart. I knew that’s all that Pete saw. Just Tim telling another one of his wild, bull-**** tales of yesteryear.
But as I sat there, I came to realize what Pete could see, on today of all days. Back in high school, Tim was able to come to school every day and see a friendly face, Mary’s mostly. For every idiot who took a cheapshot at him, for every snide remark he overheard in the hallway, for every bad grade he received, at least he had Mary there to make him smile. Once we all got in our caps and gowns for graduation, that was the end of it. Mary left for university, just like Pete and I left for college and for Tim, that was the end of his “safety net”.
As I said before, he knew early on that he wasn’t going to amount to much more than a lifer at some dead-end job, so he never worried too much about his effort in class nor did he ever try to get into a college. More than his lack of stellar grades, I think Tim was just scared that he’d never find that small cluster of people who gave a **** what he did the way that Mary and I did.
“The way Mary and I did”?
Okay the way Mary did and the way he thought I…and Pete, to a lesser degree did. He just figured if he was going to lose that “safety net” and become an outcast again, he might as well find a job that paid him rather than just sit in a classroom and have a repeat of high school.
As we left Burger Hutt, Tim kinda hung back as we walked through the parking lot towards Pete’s car. Pete seemed oblivious to it all, obviously simply wanting to get us home but I could sense that Tim had something he wanted to say. As I reached the car, I turned back and there was Tim, the same sad somber expression that he’d been wearing all day, kinda shuffling his feet, his hands in his pockets, looking down at the brown loafers he’d worn to the funeral.
“You guys wouldn’t want to take a walk, would ya,” he said finally.
I looked across the roof of the car to where Pete was standing, frozen in his tracks as he opened the car door. He sighed in exasperation, looking over at me as if to say “I am so outta here!”
A moment passed and I realized that Pete was looking to me to come up with some miraculous excuse that would get both of us out of spending any more time with Tim than we already had. He shook his head slightly, his way of telling me that he was NOT going to make this evening into any more of a charity case than he already had. Finally, sensing that I wasn’t going to say anything of the kind, Pete decided to work his own way out of the situation.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “I gotta get up at an ungodly hour tomorrow, so I gotta head out.”
And so here I was, stuck in the middle of not wanting to be the heavy and force Pete to stick around and not wanting to desert Tim at a moment where it seemed like he didn’t want to be alone.
Hey, you did your friendship duty. You went to the funeral; you let the guy mooch a meal off of you. Now get the heck outta Dodge.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind some fresh air,” I heard myself say. “Why don’t we hoof it home, Tim?”
I had never really been afraid of a good walk. Will would tell you that I was going to end up a good mile out of my way just to play the face to Tim but some other part of me…
The part of you that I wish I could beat the crap out of.
…told me that a half hour of walking would do my soul some good if it meant that I could be there for a friend.
The night was cold, unseasonably so and so I shivered as we walked, jamming my hands as far into the pockets of my suit jacket as I could. I could hear Will mumbling questions about why we were even out here.
Damn it, you moron, if you’d gotten a ride home with Pete, we’d be home by now and warm.
I ignored them as best I could.
The streets were ours on this night. Everyone had deserted the outside for the warmth and comfort of their suburban living rooms and dens. The only sound, save for the odd passing car, were our two sets of feet on the pavement of the sidewalk.
Tim was quiet, unusually quiet for a guy that Pete and I had once agreed was in love with the sound of his own voice. Pete and I had had the misfortune of walking home with Tim on countless occasions during high school. We never waited around for him after the final bell but by after walking a half-block he would come rushing after us, this stupid “Ha! Ha! I caught you!” look on his face. Tim and I would groan as he would throw his meaty paws around our shoulders and cry out “hey buddies!” loud enough so that anyone within shouting distance would turn and give us a strange look.
And then, for the rest of the walk home, Tim would do everything short of making our eardrums bleed with whatever was on his mind, from something that had happened in science class to a recap of last night’s football game to what must have been a lifted-from-TV-Guide preview of what he would be watching on TV that evening…and that was when his conversation was actually even somewhat relevant to current events.
Tim hadn’t changed much over the years. Any time that he and I got together, he would just strip the emergency breaks off his tongue, set it into high gear and start talking.
But not tonight. Tonight there was nothing but silence. As we continued to walk towards his apartment building, I wondered if he wanted to talk but just didn’t know what to say and was looking towards me to make the opening salvo of this conversation, or if he just wanted to be alone with his thoughts but needed someone around to ensure he didn’t go too far off the deep end.
Finally, he spoke.
“You ever wished you could go back and live your live over again? Maybe not your whole life, or even a year, but even say five or ten minutes?”
He had said it in such a way that I wondered if he had meant to say that out loud. It was as if he had been carrying on some conversation with himself in his head, with his own version of Will Tracey, and then had just begun to utter some of the passages from that internal conversation.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I should answer him or not. Before I could make a decision on that question, he looked over at me, gave me a half-smile and continued.
“This whole weekend, I keep wishing I had that ability. Just five minutes to do over. I wouldn’t even have to go back all that far. About a week or so,” Tim says.
For all the years I’ve known Tim, I’ve known him to go off on some tangent, usually about sports or some movie that he’d just watched, and of which I maybe understood a tenth of what he was talking about. But on this night, as we continued to walk along the quiet, cold streets of our home town, I got what he was talking about. Even though to any passer-by, it would have sounded like some sci-fi geek spouting gibberish, I knew it was more than that…and I knew what was coming next.
“You know, Emmett,” he told me, “As sure as we’re walking here, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give up, not material possessions, nothing, for five minutes with Mary…just to tell her how I felt about her.”
“You never told her?” I asked, even though I knew that he never had. We’d joked around, commiserated with each other too many times for me to have any doubt that Tim had left things unspoken between Mary and himself.
I looked over and saw him as he shook his head.
“Nah,” he said, “I mean, I always wanted to…but was afraid of what might happen if she didn’t feel the same way. I mean, I loved her so much as my friend that I didn’t want to jeopardize what I had with her.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if he wanted me to jump in and say the right thing, or if I should just be quiet and let him talk. The realization hit me that even if I were to say something, I didn’t know what the hell to say. Tim’s ability to keep talking, a trait that had annoyed me so much over the years, came to my rescue on this particular occasion.
“I mean, maybe I was always kidding myself. Maybe in retrospect, I realized that there was no way she and I would have ever been…you know…she could never have thought of me as anything more than just some guy she hung out with.”
This time, I had to jump in and say something.
“Don’t beat yourself, Tim. Mary thought the world of you,” I told him.
“I know, Emmett, part of me knows that. But part of me remembers the crowd that Mary hung with in high school when she wasn’t with me,” Tim confided to me, “It’s that part of me that keeps telling the rest of me that Mary was too much a part of the ‘in crowd’ to have to settle for the likes of me. I mean, she could have had the pick of any guy in town.”
I shrugged, “Maybe she could have, but I think when it all came down to it, she knew you had more to offer than any of the others.”
Geez, are you stealing lines from some Kleenex Movie of the Week?
I didn’t know what to say and what I had said sounded forced and phony. I could tell Tim wasn’t buying it and I didn’t blame him. I wish I had kept my mouth shut.
“Maybe you’re right, Maybe you’re wrong,” Tim replied, his voice filled with melancholy. “The bitch of it is, I ain’t never gonna know, and that’s the part that’s killing me.”
By this time, we had reached the corner of Victoria and Durand. If I kept going straight on Victoria, I’d be back home after a couple of blocks. Durand was a short side street that led to Tim’s apartment complex. Neither of us were ready to call it a night, so we just stood there, trying to remain oblivious to the cold.
“I always figured I’d tell her someday,” Tim said, “I used to fantacize about it, picture it in my head. The time’d be right, the right song would be playing somewhere, and I’d just tell her. Never really knew how she’d react, never really planned it that far. I guess I figured it’d be a victory for me if I just had told her.”
For a moment, a smile passed his lips, and I wasn’t sure if he was enjoying the memory or if he was laughing sarcastically at his naivete.
“Someday…Someday,” he repeated. “I never figured I’d run out of somedays. I mean, Jesus Christ, we’re in our mid-20s. People our age aren’t supposed to die, just like that. This is the time we’re supposed to be able to fool ourselves into believing we’ll conquer the world, live forever, all that bull****”
I nodded. I guess I’d thought that way too. Tim had started to walk down Durand Street towards his place when he turned around and called back to me.
“Hey, Emmett,” he said, “You still got the hots for that Sarah chick?”
How do I reply to that? I shrugged, “Yeah…I guess so…Yeah!”
Tim looked at me, and for a moment, I didn’t see the pudgy, loud-mouth obnoxious jerk. Instead, I saw a sad, lonely man who wanted to be as good a friend to me as he could.
“Take it from me, buddy. If you’ve got feelings for Sarah, tell her. Cause you don’t want to wake up one morning and realize that you’ve got to spend the rest of your life wondering ‘what if?’ Cause take it from me, the rest of your life can suddenly be a very long time.”
And with that, he was gone.
I lay in bed, the clock on my night stand reading “2:35 AM” and I couldn’t stop thinking about what Tim had said to me. I never figured I’d get wisdom from such an unlikely source as that, but here I was, contemplating the idea that perhaps I could learn from the tragedy that he had suffered.
In my head, in a somber, grief-filled voice that managed, at least sporadically, to drown out Will, I kept hearing him tell me that “the rest of your life can suddenly be a very long time.”
And somewhere, in that stage just this side of sleep, I realized that, but for the grace of God, it could have been me who got that call. It could have been me who stood there, receiver in hand, the sick realization setting in that the love of my life was gone, and I was never gonna know for sure how she felt about me.
And I’d have to spend the rest of my life with the same questions that Tim was having to wrestle with, and would have to wrestle with for years to come.
I wasn’t sure when I fell asleep that night, but when I woke up the next morning, the same thoughts were on my mind. This time, however, Will was there to chime in with his own opinion.
Listen, man. I mean, yeah what happened with Mary was a ****in’ tragedy. No two ways about it, and as big a dickhead as Tim is, no one deserves to go through what he’s going through but don’t let this make you go something stupid, like what you’re contemplating.
And just what am I contemplating, Will?
Oh, don’t ****ing play that game with me. You think I don’t know? Hey, moron! Here’s an update! I live in your brain. I know what you’re thinking before you’re even aware that you’re thinking it. I know where you wanna go with this, and I’m here to tell you: Don’t ****ING do it!
Well, Will, why don’t you spell it out for the good folks at home?
Ah geez! You’re gonna do it, aren’t ya? You’re gonna use Mary’s death and Tim’s tragedy as an excuse to finally tell Sarah how you feel about her. You figure that you gotta spill your guts just so you can say that you did it.
Hey, sorry, man but this deal with Tim has sparked something in me. I mean, I was always afraid (thanks to you) of what might happen if I told Sarah about my feelings towards her. But now, I think I’m more afraid of what might happen if I don’t tell her.
This is your problem, you dumb ****! You seem to think this is some kind of TV show, where the character does something and no matter what the outcome, they just hit the reset button for next week’s episode and it’s like nothing ever happened. Well, here’s a free clue for you: When you tell Sarah about this and she reveals that she wants to be just “friends”, you’ll end up being anything but. It will be the end of everything you two ever had.
I didn’t say anything for a moment. No comeback or retort. I just lay there, absorbing what Will had told me. I knew he was right. That this gamble was an all-or-nothing deal. If I told Sarah and she told me that the feelings were mutual, it would be the start of the best thing I’d ever experienced in my life. The problem was that if the reverse was true, if Sarah didn’t think of me that way, well then…I didn’t know what I’d do, but I knew that, just as Will had so callously pointed out, it would mean the end of our friendship.
Suddenly I became aware of this large knot of fear that had formed in my stomach. Will was responsible, I was sure, sending it there as a firm reminder of his feelings on the situation. I was sure that he was relishing in watching the knot as it grew. Silently, I damned him for it.
“**** it.” I said aloud as I got out of bed. As far as I was concerned, fate had sent me a message in the tragedy of Mary’s death. This was a wake-up call. I didn’t want to go through life the way that Tim would have to, constantly wondering “What if” when it came to expressing my feelings to the woman I loved and who I thought maybe, just maybe, might love me back.
By the time I set off to walk to work that morning, I was sure of one thing. I had talked myself into it and damn it, Will’s objections aside, I was going to do it.
I was going to tell Sarah that I was in love with her.
****ing Moron! You’re going to regret this.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I’M INTO SOMETHING GOOD
Only I didn’t exactly drop everything, rush to be with Sarah and tell her everything. I mean, it was late and I was just coming home from a funeral and I was sure that she was probably in bed after a hard day at the office and I didn’t want to wreck everything right off the bat by getting her pissed at me for calling so late and…
Keep brainstorming, Morrison, I’m sure you can come up with a few more reasons.
Will, it’s 11 friggin’ o’clock, what am I supposed to do? Call her up right this instance and say “Sarah, by the way, I love you”? She’ll probably assume she’s in the middle of some dream…
Or nightmare, depending on how she takes it.
…and say “That’s nice, Emmett” then hang up and turn over and go back to sleep. Let’s just say that I’d prefer that she was awake and in total control of her sensibilities before I lay this on her.
And let me guess? You can’t do it tomorrow because you have work and she has work and you’ll both be worn out and not in the mood. And you don’t want to call and set up anything until you have a couple of days in a row off just so you can have that buffer to get over the massive bout of depression you’ll dive right into if she doesn’t respond the way you want to and..
And you say I ramble?
Okay, I’ll nip this in the bud and get to the point. You are going to keep making excuses as to why this isn’t a good time to sit Sarah down and have it out with her. Meanwhile, she’s going to meet someone else, maybe even better for her and worse for you than Brad and then where will you be.
It’s beginning to sound like a broken record but once again, Will is right. I can procrastinate about getting my resume out and looking for another job, I can procrastinate about working on my sure-to-be-a-bestseller manuscript. I can procrastinate about watching all those videos I bought through Columbia House…but I can’t procrastinate about this.
As I’m walking in the door to our apartment, I make my decision. I will call Sarah tomorrow after work about getting together for coffee.
Are you sure you want to specify coffee?
Sure, why not?
Well, are you sure you want Sarah to have something hot in her hands in case she’s really offended by what are sure to be your repertoire of corny come-ons?
**** you, Will.
The next day drags like every other day at the store, only a bit more so. It’s not really any day that’s any different from any other day. Don’s a dickhead to me, telling me that I should be pushing the pre-sale of some movie more than I am. I try and do just what he asks as a way to keep him happy and three customers start bitching at me that I’m just a brainless corporate sheep trying to pressure them into buying something I don’t need, to say nothing of the endless variations of “I shouldn’t have to pay late charges” that go anywhere from “because you told me the wrong date” to “you shouldn’t charge late fees because that’s bad business practices.”
After that last one storms out, swearing she’ll never rent here again, I turn to Andrea, who smiles and says “I got $5 and a free rental coupon that says she’ll be back in her this weekend and will still return her movies late.”
I shake my head. “No way am I taking that bet!” I check the clock above the “Coming Soon” board and groan. It’s just barely 2:00.
“What’s the matter, Emmett?” Andrea asks, “you got big plans for this evening?”
She’s joking about my lack of a social life but it’s Andrea so I don’t take it personally. In fact, I toss it back to her. “As a matter of fact I just might,” I reply.
This causes Andrea to regard me with one eyebrow raised. “Oh really?” she asks, “Do tell.”
I shrug. “I’m not sure what to tell you,” I reply, truthfully. “I’m gonna give Sarah a call and see what she’s up to tonight.”
Andrea nods approvingly. “Cool,” she says. She stacks some movies before continuing. “She seemed nice when we met her at that club. So is it serious between you guys?”
Will pipes up with the thought that I should continue to be truthful with Andrea and tell her that any “relationship” we might have is still in its infancy stage and exists more in my fantasy world than the real one.
“We’re kinda taking it slow,” I explain.
And the prize for “Lamest Explanation of a Non-Existant Relationship” goes to…Emmett Morrison! Congratulations Emmett, you’ve just won a Chrysler Cordova and you can pick it up at Morty’s Office.
Deciding I don’t want to have to lie to Andrea any more than I have to, even if for no other reason than to keep Will from his little outbursts, I decide to change the subject, sort of.
“So, how are things going between you and Pete?” I ask.
I’ve always known Andrea was kind of on the shy side. In fact, before Pete came along, I was probably the person who saw Andrea out of her shell the most. But she’s gone a bit shy on me now in response to this question.
She shrugs just as I did a moment ago, but it’s a different kind of shrug. My shrug was “there’s not much to tell” whereas Andrea’s shrug is “there’s lots to tell but I’m not sure I can tell you everything”. Normally when someone lets me know they’re keeping something from me, it upsets me. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into a room and someone will stop in mid-conversation, even mid-sentence and say words to the effect “Oh, I’ll talk to you later”. Geez,ever heard of subtlety.
I’ve even had people start in on a conversation while I’m there, and talk around any “sensitive subjects” by repeatedly telling the other person that they’ll discuss that part “later”. There have been times when it’s all I could do to shout “Jeez, if you don’t consider me a close enough friend to talk about this in front of me, don’t start the conversation.”
But I don’t get that this is the case with Andrea. Maybe I’m misreading things but I almost get the idea that Andrea would love to sit down and tell me all about what’s happening with that particular relationship, but just not here in the store where a nosy customer (or an noise AND obnoxious manager) might step into hearing distance at any moment.
Eventually, however, she decides she has to say something, and so with a shy smile, she says “it’s going good. I’m really having a good time with Pete. He’s a really great guy.”
All of a sudden, she take a quick glance around the store, takes a couple of steps closer to me and in hushed tones, reveals that “I’ve never really been at this stage of a relationship with anyone before, so it’s all new and so I’m kinda nervous…but it’s good, you know.”
And on that note, Andrea has just revealed that she’s lost her virginity to Pete.
I blink a couple of times and am not sure how to react. Will is ready with a myriad of “I told you so’s”, misreading my feelings of shock that Andrea would reveal something like that to me as feelings of disappointment that her first time was with Pete and not with me.
But really, Will’s theories aside, I’m really happy that one of my closest friends, Andrea, is in a good place in her relationship with one of my oldest friends, Pete. I really just want her to be happy and I can see that she is.
“Well, it sounds like things are going well between you two,” I note, adding that I’m happy for Andrea.
Liar! Just like you did when you found out Sarah was dating Brad, you’re finally admitting to yourself that you have a thing for Andrea, only once again it’s too late because she’s sleeping with Pete and are on a good course in their relationship.
You know, if Will was a real person, he’d probably be dating Andrea, Pete be damned, because he’s been carrying a torch for her for so long. If I am in fact a tad jealous because Andrea is with Pete instead of me, well, isn’t that even more of a reason to tell Sarah, the woman I really love, just what my feelings are so that I don’t miss out on another opportunity to be with someone I care about.
It’s just too bad that the person you’re planning to spill your guts out may not really care about you back. I mean, Andrea has just opened up to you about one of the most important events in her life, her first time, and yet you’ve got your sites set on someone who barely confides in you at all.
But you’re forgotten one major point. Andrea is dating and yes, as you’re so quick to point out, sleeping with someone. Sarah is available.
Sarah is available, true, but not interested in you.
Are you forgetting what happened the other day at the mall? The way she looked at me when I was helping her get that gift for her co-worker?
Yeah, and that got you a total of about an hour hanging out in a purely platonic situation. Odds are that Sarah has probably done that with at least one or two of her girlfriends, and that doesn’t make her a lesbian.
I suddenly get the point of all this. Will is trying to distract me from what I should be concentrating on: getting ready to see Sarah and not let anything else happen between us before I tell her how I feel. Will may be concentrating on who Andrea is sleeping with but the most important thing to me is who I’ll soon be sleeping with.
Things aren’t exactly weird between Andrea and I for the rest of the shift, but the topic of conversation tends to be less about personal stuff, like our relationships and more about general, safe topics. In a way, it’s like we’ve suddenly leaped back in time a few months. We go back to talking about movies, making whispered jokes about Don, observations about customers.
It feels a lot more comfortable, I realize, than it has been in quite a while. It’s “old school” Andrea and Emmett and the rest of the day passes quickly, and we both are smiling and laughing as we leave the store at the end of our shift.
We’re almost to the bus stop when I notice that Andrea has gotten quiet. “Have fun tonight, Emmett,” she says, a cloud passing over her face. I nod, and say “I will”, then ask “have you got big plans with Pete tonight?”
She pauses for a second and I’m not sure why. It’s like she’s thinking about something, remembering something, contemplating something. After a moment, she replies “Yeah, I kinda do.”
I nod and reply “Well, you have fun, too, then. See you tomorrow.”
Andrea gives me this wry smile and says “Yeah, see you tomorrow” before stepping on to the bus.
I watch the bus as it pulls away. Andrea is seating next to the window on my side of the bus. She waves but I see the look on her face, as if she’s never going to see me again. As I start walking towards home, the memory of that look bothers me for a block or so. Eventually I decide I’m just imagining things and just push it out of my head and try to focus on tonight.
I silently damn Will for putting everything from Andrea’s sleeping with Pete to that weird look on her face to worrying about customers and Don instead of trying to prepare something to say to Sarah. I mean, I can’t just blurt out “I love you Sarah” when I get to her place, can I?
I try to brainstorm just how to phrase things but nothing seems to be working. After a long and more stressful than normal day at work, my brain is fried. I doubt I could remember a single sentence about the weather, much less several paragraphs on my feelings toward Sarah and how I want to act on them.
And if I thought picking out clothes for going to the mall to meet with Sarah was an important but difficult decision. Tonight I have so much more to think about. I don’t want to just look cool, I need to look boyfriend material. I need Sarah to take one look once I tell her how I feel and realize that she’s felt the same way all along.
And holy crap! What do I do about underwear?
Okay, let me interject here… “What do I do about underwear?” Where in the blue hell did that come from?
Come on, Will. What if I tell Sarah my feelings for her and she kisses me and those kisses lead to…well, us getting naked together. In order to be naked, I’ll have to strip down to my underwear and the last thing I need is for the mood to be spoiled because she’s laughing at my boxer shorts.
You are clearly overthinking this. Just be yourself. Odds are that if, by some miracle, she doesn’t laugh at you, not at your choice of underwear, but at your cornball “I love you” speech, and you do become a couple, she’s going to end up seeing you in your ratty old jeans and your best suit jacket at some point. Let’s face it, if you show up in a tux and tails but wearing a G-string underneath, you’ll probably have her freaked out because you overdid it.
Finally, I decide to wear a buttoned down shirt that I once wore to a job interview (although I didn’t get the job, I always thought I looked good in the shirt and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the shirt that lost me the job) and a pair of black jeans.
Uh, don’t you think you should have called Sarah first to make sure she’s even home (or for that matter home alone) before you put all this time and effort into picking out your outfit (and shaving, and putting odd a ton of aftershave and body deodorant and washing your hair and every other part of your body).
Crap! I was going to call her around 6:30 to see about me coming over, but as Will points out, I did get rather caught up in making sure I looked as presentable as possible. (And in my defense, seeing as how I’ll probably be sweating buckets once I’m there telling Sarah what I plan to tell her.) It’s now about 7:30, I notice, as I check the clock in my bedroom.
Will may make a big deal out of it, but I shrug it off. It’s not like it’s 9:00 and she’ll be settled in for the night, right? Still, better not to wait too long, in case a friend calls or she notices a good movie on. It takes me a good five minutes to find my phone but when I do finally locate it (stuffed into the pocket of my work pants) and call Sarah, the call goes to voice mail.
“Hey Sarah, it’s Emmett. Just wanted to know if you were up to doing anything. Maybe we could get together and watch a movie or something. Give me a call when you get this.”
I wait for about an hour, until 8:30, with each passing minute making me more and more anxious, not that I’m necessarily worried about Sarah. It’s just that if this doesn’t happen tonight, Will may ground this “cursed missed opportunity” as Coldplay used to sing, so far down into my soul that I may never have the courage to do this again.
Then, at 8:30, I decide to go for a walk. A nice long walk. One that will just happen to take me past Sarah’s apartment building. It’s a nice night and so I figure that even if nothing else, I’ll get some exercise.
When I get to Sarah’s building, I notice that the light is on in her apartment. Will tells me that means that she’s doing something too important to deal with the likes of me. I wonder if maybe it just means she went out and left a light on for security reasons. Will is telling me to turn around and walk home and call it a lost cause for tonight. I’m inclined to agree…but then somehow I find myself knocking on Sarah’s door.
Even if Sarah and Andrea had answered the door, announcing that they had gotten along so famously the other night at the club that they decided to become lesbian lovers, I don’t think my blood would have so quickly than from the site that greeted me when Sarah opened the door.
CHAPTER
I had never seen Sarah cry before. She always seemed so strong, so in control of her emotions. And yet here she was, tears streaming down her cheeks, her lip quivering, her shoulders shaking.
“Emm…Emmett,” she begins, barely able to breath, much less form words. She has to take a deep breath to even talk to me. “What are you doing here,” she finally asks.
“I was just in the neighbourhood,” I begin, before realizing that my state of affairs isn’t important in the least. “What’s wrong? What happened?” I try not to demand the answers from her but part of me just wants to know what has transpired to leave her in this emotional wreckage. Has one of her parents died? Did I miss the second coming of 9/11 on the way over? What?
Instead of being able to tell me, she just leans back against the door and starts to laugh one of the half-laughs/half-cries. Some part of me actually does the right thing for once and leads Sarah back into her apartment, shutting the door behind us. No reason for the neighbours to have a good view of whatever is going on.
After we’re both inside, I lead Sarah over to the couch. She’s leaning heavily on me but I don’t care. I can handle this. I would do whatever it takes just to get her through the after effects of whatever has happened.
Meanwhile, she’s still alternating between laughing and crying.
“God, I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I’m reacting like this,” she says, almost to herself as much as to me. After a moment, the laughter stops and she’s simply crying, a heart-breaking collection of deep sobs where, at times, I wonder if she can even breath.
I’m not sure what she’s talking about so I’m not sure how to react. I figure the best course of action is just to keep quiet and be there for her. For once, even Will thinks I’m doing the right thing.
After a few moments, Sarah stops crying and starts trying to get her breath back. I put my arm around her and rub her back. I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to do, but it seems like it.
She’s quiet for a bit. Not crying, not talking, just breathing. Finally, she takes a deep breath and starts explaining what’s happened.
“I got an e-mail from Brad today,” she explains. The mere mention of her ex-lover’s name sparks some kind of reaction from Will but I don’t really hear what it is. Better to focus on Sarah and worry about Will later.
“He seemed to be alternating between begging me to come back to him and telling me that I needed to be with him. And then the next minute he was promising to do whatever it took to be with me, like going to councelling or whatever. He wasn’t making any sense and I think he was probably drunk when he wrote it and sent it,” Sarah tells me.
“And I know that I’m better off without him, but yet when I saw his name in my In Box, I just felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. It was like every feeling I’d ever felt for him came rushing back to me…and as much as there were a lot of bad feelings there, I remembered what it was like to be with him during the good times.”
“And that’s what scared me. I just had this vision of me opening my door one morning and him standing there with this lost puppy dog look on his face, wanting me to take him back…and me just saying ‘Yep, we can work this out’ and I’m right back to where I was six months ago, stuck in a bad relationship with a person I can’t trust not to just snap back into the jerk he was.”
She slowly shakes her head. She’s crying a bit more.
“I always thought I was this strong person who could take control of her own life, no matter what it threw at her, and yet here I am seemingly forever emotionally bound to this guy who made me happy for a few weeks and miserable for so many months,” she cries.
At this, something prompts me to speak up.
“Sarah, you are a strong person. You’re probably the strongest person I’ve ever met. More than anyone else that came out of our graduating class, you made something of your life,” I tell her. I want to tell her so much more but I realize that this isn’t the time.
“But Emmett, just because I’ve got a good job doesn’t mean my life is perfect. I’m just so afraid…I’m just so afraid that Brad was the one, and that no one will ever fall in love with me and I’ll end up alone,” Sarah reveals.
And suddenly Will 2.0 is back.
This is it, this is your once-in-a-lifetime opening. She’s afraid no one else will fall in love with her. Tell her you’ve already fallen in love with her years ago.
No! I decide. I want to, and yes the opening is there. But I couldn’t live with myself if I used her grief over a failed relationship to start one of my own with her.
But I know I have to say something and so I just start.
“That’s silly, Sarah,” I tell her, “There’s someone else out there for you. You’re smart and you’re funny and you’re so strong, moreso than you give yourself credit for. You are exactly what any guy in their right mind is looking for in someone to love.”
She’s crying again and I’m holding her close as she cries. I can feel her body shake and am ashamed to admit that it’s a great feeling. Not erotic, not arousing, just nice to be able to hold her and comfort her. God, I realize, I want to do this forever. Just be there for her when she needs someone in a situation like this.
She breaks away from me, just a bit and I’m afraid that the moment is over. That she’ll compose herself, apologize for dumping this all on me and that will be it. I can envision the whole scene and I’m again, ashamed to admit that I’m disappointed that the moment has passed.
She looks at me, sniffling and trying to smile. She doesn’t quite make it but I manage to fall even more in love with her as she makes the attempt.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“It’s okay”, I say, nodding just slightly.
With that, her hand reaches up and strokes my cheek. Then she leans forward, almost hesitantly…and kisses me.
Her lips are pressed against mine and I realize that after nearly three years of wanting this, the moment is finally at hand. Sarah Reynolds is kissing me and more importantly, I’m kissing Sarah.
I want this moment to last a lifetime and it did, or at least it seems to. I keep expecting her to break away, a shocked look on her face. But when she finally does, the tears were gone, and a full smile has spread across her mouth, the same mouth that had just been pressed against mine.
“Wow!” she jokes, “How did that happen?”
I shake my head. I suddenly don’t care how it had happened or even, at this point, why it happened. All I care about was whether or not it will happen again. I look into Sarah’s eyes and maybe I see something that isn’t there but I believe with all my heart that I see a sign that says she wants it to happen again, too.
With an instance of bravery and daring I have never known before nor since, I take her face in my hands, and bring her lips to mine once again. The kiss is deeper kiss this time. I keep expecting her to offer some sort of reluctance, to break away, but she doesn’t.
Suddenly things begin happening so fast, I barely have time to realize what’s happening. The kisses become more passionate. I hear her moan and I can feel her tongue in my mouth.
That’s when I realize that tonight I will sleep with Sarah. I almost gasp aloud but it comes out a moan and so Sarah must assume that I am reacting to the physical activity, the same way she is.
Or maybe she’s just as shocked, but not in a good way as you are, and she’s reacting the same way you are, instead of the other way around.
It starts with one button, the top button on Sarah’s blouse. She unbuttons it, and then another and another and before I know it, I am staring, unable to look away if I tried, at Sarah’s firm, full and very naked breasts.
In all the years I’ve known Sarah, I’ve never really had a good long, lustful look at her breasts. I mean, I knew she had them and on some level I was interested in seeing them. I could even recall, on more than one occasion, she’d worn clothing (dresses, T-shirts, blouses) that would have called attention to them. Sometimes she’d wear a tight sweater that accentuate the fullness of them. Every once in a while, she’d wear something with a neckline that hinted a bit of cleavage. But I’d never indulged myself.
Oh yeah, what about how you stared at that one photo of her taken of the six of you about a week before graduation. The one where she was wearing that very tight McCallum College T-shirt, the one that clung to everything, if you know what I mean. Didn’t you once…or more than once…fantacize about stripping her off that T-shirt and burying your head in her breasts?
Suddenly I’m so hard it almost hurts. She has to know, she has to see the bulge in my jeans. I keep expecting her to notice and begin laughing at me, as if I’m some high school kid who can’t control himself. Or worse, I keep expecting to blow my wad, to cream my pants and have her throw me out of her apartment, screaming at me like I’m some sex maniac.
Things go by in a blur and we start clothes off, sometimes our own and sometimes each others. We continue to kiss and caress each other. Sarah continues to moan and it only makes me harder. By the time we’re down to our underwear, I’m fully erect.
Is she going to be disappointed? I mean, certainly when Brad was in this position, he must have had a hell of a lot more offer in terms of pecs and muscles than you do. Maybe this is the moment that she decides that she’s made a huge mistake and will call this off.
Instead of making the paranoid scenario that Will dreams up a reality, Sarah instead gets to her feet and offers me her hand. I’m almost light-headed and Wills offers up the idea that I’ll pass out and totally ruin the mood. But the next time I know, I’m in Sarah’s bedroom and then, I’m in Sarah’s bed and then, all at once, I’m in Sarah.
I’m bombarded with all these sensations. Hearing her moan. Caressing her body. Her hands on me. Kissing her breasts…and the feeling of being naked and being inside her.
My mind thinks back to all those romance novels I used to read late at night. At the time it was just a horny guy trying to get stiff in the horniest way possible, but now it seems more like research….Yeah, research, that’s it.
For a moment, I expect Will to make some condescending remark about that, but I suddenly can’t hear him.
I try to think back to what the heroes in those novels did. What moves did they use? Where did they kiss their lover? Where did their hands roam? But it’s a lost cause. I can’t think about words on a page. A real live girl, not some character in a novel, is lying beneath me, allowing me to have sex with her, and so that’s all I can concentrate on.
I remember enough to keep thrusting myself into her and before I know it, I’ve climaxed. I hear her groan and her whole body goes limp against the mattress.
And just like that, the euphoria of what has happened wears off and even without Will, the questions start bombarding me.
Was that too short? Did I come too quickly? Was I any good? Did I satisfy her?
Was I any good?
I’m quickly obsessed with getting an answer to that question. I’m lying beside her now, watching her breasts heave and hoping that’s not enough to make me hard again.
(One thing I learn in that instant: The idea of getting a boner in front of a woman is just as emotionally scarring even after you’ve just had sex with her.)
Was I any good?
It’s all I can do not to just blurt out the question.
Yeah, not like that will spoil the mood or anything. So even if Sarah isn’t totally offended by the question, what happens if she gets all condescending on you and gives you the whole “Well, it was your first time…you’re not supposed to be good?” I mean, there have been a lot of people who have talked to you like a retarded two-year-old but how disillusioning would it be for one of them to be your first lover.
I mean, you’d probably be so emotionally messed up that you’d never want to have sex again.
I’m not sure that lying in bed next to Sarah just moments after we’ve had sex is the right time to be having a debate with Will, but I will say that if the first time you have sex is the worst, then no matter what Sarah says to me, odds are that I’ll still want to have sex again.
Sarah rolls over towards me I feel myself stiffen a bit…okay, more than a bit because my first thought is that she’s about to roll on top of me, which will of course lead to more sex.
And even as I prepare myself for that, I still want to ask her if I was any good.
She kisses me, on the mouth. I can feel myself reaching for her, not sure what the boundaries are now. I mean, we’ve had sex but can I put my hand on her breast before I’m 100% sure that we’re about to repeat the performance.
Before anything more happens, she breaks away, smiling down at me as she raises herself up off of me.
“That was nice,” she says.
“Nice.” I decide that I can live with nice. I mean, that means I was okay, right? I mean, “nice” may not mean “the best sex of her life” but it means it was… “nice”.
There’s a part of me that wants to pull her to me, wants to unleash the floodgates of how I feel about her, about how special she is, about how long I’ve wanted her, about how much I love her.
But before I can say any of that, she rolls off me and out of bed. I watch as she walks, naked, into her bathroom, returning a few minutes later in a white cotton robe.
She looks at me and smiles. It’s not the same smile she did just a moment before. Now it’s more like the one she’d give a two-year-old who doesn’t know any better.
Oh God! Here it comes! Here comes the part where the “nice” feeling has worn off and she’s going to critique my performance. That has to be it. I mean, what else could it be?
She nods her head towards her kitchen and asks “Do you want some coffee or something to eat before you head out?”
And suddenly, it all makes sense. She’s just wanting me to vacate so she can turn in for the night and this is her subtle and gentle way of doing so. I decline the offer and start looking for my clothes.
A few minutes later, I’m standing at her apartment door. Two hours have passed since I first showed up there and found her in tears, and in those two hours, everything has changed. More than I know at this point.
We hug at her doorway, and she kisses me on the cheek. I want to say something, but I’m not sure what. In the end, Sarah says it for me.
“Thank you…for tonight. It meant a lot. I didn’t realize it before but I needed this to happen,” she says.
I nod. “Me too.” It’s not dialogue out of some Hollywood romance but it’s all I can get out. We say our goodbyes and I head home.
CHAPTER
YOU’RE DEAD AND YOU DON”T EVEN KNOW IT
There should be some warning, they way there should be some warning before all such major events in one’s life. Nothing major, mind you, just a little something that says that your ****ty life’s one bright spot, around which all your life revolves, is about to get stomped on. Maybe then, one could be prepared for it.
I don’t know what you’re whining about. Like it’s some great surprise. I told you it wouldn’t last, that it was all some huge elaborate hoax that the world was playing on you.
Damn you, Will, can’t you save the sanctimonious self-righteous babbling for another time.
Oh, don’t worry, I will. Like say, in about six hours from now.
Yeah, come back around mid-afternoon. Because this morning, nothing seems out of place. For one brief, shining moment, as the sun drifts in through my window, and I lay in bed, in that blissful stage between getting my ass out of bed and being completely asleep, I was happy.
And why the hell shouldn’t I be? I was out late with the one person in the entire world that I wanted to be with having the best time of my entire life. I wait for Will to start chiming in with his complete run-down on every mis-step I had made, every stupid, inappropriate remark I had made. But he isn’t there. Could it be that there is nothing for Will to second-guess about? Where’s the criticism, the sarcastic critique, the worries over what I should have done as opposed to what I had done?
Instead all I have is silence, and the memories of what happened the night before. And maybe the memories, those sweet, sweet memories that are just beginning to flood over me as I became fully awake are just too much for Will to handle.
Hey, do you suppose that maybe Sarah is the one doing the “sarcastic critique”? At least in terms of how you compared to Brad is several key categories?
I knew it had been too quiet. Well, screw you, Will, I didn’t exactly hear Sarah complaining last night.
And then like that, Will is gone again, as so many images and sensations hit me all at once. How she felt in my arms, how she had reacted when I began to kiss her, the weight of her body against mine. Almost instantly I’m aroused as I remember her gasping as I had entered her.
I’m playback in my head is from a weird angle. From time to time, it seems that I’m reliving last night from my own point of view but then my memory cuts to a long shot, like one you’d see from a movie. It’s almost as if I was watching someone else has sex with Sarah while I was standing in the doorway to the bedroom.
Like you’re some perverted Peeping Tom?
Do you suppose that’s some Freudian thing? Like maybe I felt like I shouldn’t actually be involved in Sarah’s sex life, even though I was the co-star? Maybe I wanted to sleep with her for so long that when I finally did, it was so incredible that it had actually happened that my mind couldn’t handle it and is forcing me to remember it as if it was just some movie I was watching.
Man, this job gets easier every minute. Now you’re second-guessing yourself for me. Keep this up and I may have to take up a hobby. Maybe I’ll learn a new language.
But I know I was there. Some parts of me (most located on the lower half of my body) remember it quite nicely. And somehow I manage to put those thoughts to the side long enough to get dressed and head out to work at a reasonable time. I mean, as good a mood as I’m in, I’m
As horrible as it would turn out to be, the day starts like any other…
Like any other? Okay, what OTHER day in your life did you wake up knowing that you had slept with the woman you had been in love with for years the night before?
Well, okay, it isn’t like any other day in THAT respect. What I mean to say was that the day looks as though it was going to play itself out in much the same way that most days do…save for yesterday, mind you.
I have another shift at the video store to get through, but somehow…at least for the first couple of hours it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be too bad. A couple of customers that would have, on any other day, might have been just subtly rude enough to bring me down. But not today! Today, even when some customer asks me, with their “You are so below me that it’s funny” tone, why I can’t just suddenly produce something we are out of stock of, I get a flashback of what has transpired the night before. Instead of some fat, ugly white trash welfare mother, I see the beautiful, calm face of Sarah as she led me into her bedroom. Instead of a sarcastic tone, I hear her soft moan as I kissed her.
Yeah, you might want to keep a lid on those those memories, else one of these broads might figure you’ve got the hots for her. I mean, do you really want to end up saddled with two or three brats that are learning how to interact with the world through watching their parents while they berate some clerk over a dollar-fifty late charge on some crappy movie they were too lazy to bring back to the store?
I don’t want any of these people. All I want is Sarah and, God willing, perhaps she’ll invite me over to her place tonight so we can pick up where we left off.
Heheheh. God, I am so giddy today. Hell, I’m so right with the world that I’m even cracking jokes with the customers. Andrea notices right away and seems genuinely happy for whatever the reason is behind my new-found mirth.
“Okay,” she says, smiling almost proudly at me, “You are way too happy for someone working retail. This isn’t because Dan isn’t in today, is it?”
I laugh. I am so happy I’m almost bursting. For a moment I almost consider telling Andrea everything that happened last night. But talking about making love…because that’s what it was, it wasn’t “getting laid” or just having sex. I made love to Sarah, my best friend, my soul mate.
GAG!
And after years of believing that there was no one out there who was interested in me, I realized that I was wrong…that everyone who had ever told me that I didn’t measure up was wrong…that WILL…Will Tracey…was wrong!
Uh, I think Andrea is still waiting for an explanation as to your sickeningly overwhelming cheeriness. (And **** you!)
I shrug, not sure at first what exactly to say since, as much as I like Andrea, I don’t really feel comfortable talking to her about my sex life, especially in the middle of the video store where the white trash of suburbia might overhear. I mean, my self-esteem may have risen a couple of notches over the past couple of days…
Along with other parts of your anatomy.
…but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that the majority of people ever saw me as anything more that a socially retarded dork who deserved their scorn…even if they were wrong and had been proven wrong by the events of the last twenty-four hours.
In the end, I decide to take Andrea’s lead and use her suggestion as my reason.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding, “It’s always a little less stressful when the boss isn’t around. You know what they say, when the cat’s away…”
“The mice will play…yeah, yeah, I gotchya.” Andrea replies, not looking totally convinced that Dan’s absence is the total reason for my good mood. To prevent further prying, I decide to change the subject.
“So, are you and Tim still going to that club you guys always hang out at?” I ask.
Feigning indignance, Andrea replies, “We don’t ALWAYS hang out there…but we’ve been there a few times.”
I notice the look on Andrea’s face as she thinks of her time with Tim. It’s one of contentment, the kind that comes from knowing you’re with someone special and they make you happy. I smile, believing that someday soon, Sarah will have that look on her face when she talks about me.
If you’d played your cards right, Andrea could be looking like that when she talks about you, instead of Tim.
I shrug off Will. I have no beef with Tim and Andrea. They make a nice couple, not as cute as Sarah and I do, but okay. And as much as I like Andrea, Sarah was always the one for me. It took a while for us to get together but here we are now.
The next couple of hours pass slowly, creeping by with time almost coming to a standstill at times. No matter what my shift at Prime Emporium, it always drags. Doesn’t matter if it’s a short shift of four hours or a full eight hour shift. One minute will seem like an hour, an hour like a lifetime…but today seems to be worse. I guess because I know what’s going to be waiting for me at the end of the day, another chance to see Sarah.
By the time I go for lunch, it seems like I should have aged ten years. As I head out the door of the video store and head towards the sub place at the other end of the strip mall, I swear I see Brad’s car, and for a moment, I’m stricken with fear.
Make sure you don’t piss yourself. That would be embarrassing.
I turn my back and keep walking, hoping that I’m wrong. I don’t know the make or model or year. My Dad could probably tell me everything there is to know simply by seeing one of the headlights. All I know that it was blue and in the dim lights of the restaurant, Brad’s car and the one I just caught a glimpse of look remarkably similar.
Ooooh….two blue cars. What are the odds? And for this you almost wet yourself?
As I say, they look similar. And the reason I’m scared is that Will, despite his less-than-playful teasing over me being scared, has managed to concoct a little scenario where Brad finds out I slept with his girlfriend, and has decided to track me down to beat the crap out of me.
I keep walking and since I have yet to feel a beefy hand on my shoulder or a fist between my shoulder blades, I must assume that, much like Will suggested, the car I just saw was NOT Brad’s car. With every unimpeded step I take, I feel a little less anxious and, thanks to Will, a little stupider for believing the scenario he dreamed up.
About five minutes later, I am heading back towards Video Emporium along the same stretch of sidewalk.
As I make my return trip, I ponder how I have been going to the same sub shop just about every day for lunch for the last few years. I always order a six-inch turkey sub. It’s my “usual” which is how the staff at the store derisively term it. I guess they figure if they make fun of me long enough for ordering the same thing, I’ll get sick of it and go someplace else. The joke’s on them because the sub store is the only place within walking distance for me to get lunch…so it’s put up with their asking if I want “the usual” or go hungry.
Not the greatest of options…but that’s par for the course for you isn’t it?
Ah Will, you had better get all your venom out now, because if this shift should, by some wild stretch of the imagination, EVER END, you will be shifted to the back burner as I race into the arms of…my lover?
I have to take a moment, pausing in mid-step, to contemplate the impact of that statement…Sarah is now my lover? I shake my head. Days ago I was convinced I was such a loser that I would never have a girlfriend…and now I have a lover? What is this world coming to?
Dude, you ****ed once! And need I remind you that you are not in the 17th century. You are not some knight, Sir Dork, returning from the Crusades to find Lady Sarah in her castle.
Will’s words, harsh as they always are, break me free of my contemplation on just what terms I can use when thinking about Sarah. I also notice, as I head towards the store, that the blue car, Brad’s or not, is no longer anywhere in sight. I guess it must have been just some moron coming by to drop off a movie.
And probably marking on his calendar a convenient time to come in and complain about it, you, or whatever else is on his mind.
As I come in the door, Andrea is just finishing up with a customer, she waves me over to the counter.
“Oh great,” I think, “she’s got some problem that, through no fault of her own, will take the rest of my break to solve.”
Instead she says, “Your friend, Sarah, was just in.”
Sarah? Here? I kick myself for heading out to lunch at the exact moment that Sarah came in to the store. I must have missed her by just seconds. Damn it!
“She said for me to give you this,” Andrea says, handing me an envelope.
I take the envelope from her and regard it for a moment. I open the envelope and notice there’s a sheet of paper in it and can see it’s a letter in Sarah’s handwriting.
Wow, my first girlfriend has just written me my first love letter.
And immediately we go from the 17th century to the fourth grade. Maybe tomorrow we can become adults in the 21st century.
It has to be in response to making love last night and therefore too steamy and private to be read on the sales floor. I head to the back office. I make sure that the door is closed tight before taking a seat at Dan’s desk. With my fingers shaking, I withdraw the letter from the envelope and begin to read it.
Before I even finish the first sentence, my stomach drops…all the better to make room for the dread that begins to fill it.
Dear Emmett,
This is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Last night, we shared something so beautiful but, alas, Fate has intervened.
About an hour ago, Brad showed up at my door. Not only did he beg forgiveness for how he had treated me but he told me that he still loved me and then asked me to marry him.
I’m sorry to tell you this, Emmett, but I never hesitated. I accepted and by the time you read this letter, I will be on my way to becoming Mrs. Brad))))))))). We are going to get married at City Hall.
This isn’t anything personal, Emmett. It’s just that Brad was all I ever wanted. I love him and he can give me a life that you never could. I want the white picket fence, and the apple pie and the golden retriever lifestyle, the way my folks and Brad’s folks had.
I know that you built me up to be some kind of perfect dream girl for you, the answer to all your problems…but you and I can never be.
I’m sorry,
Love,
Sarah.
My hands were still shaking as I finished the letter, rereading it again as much as to let the pain sink in as to try and find some little spark of hope that I had totally misread Sarah’s letter…but in the end there was nothing.
I put the letter back in the envelope…and then calmly tore it up into as many pieces as I could and threw them in the waste paper basket by the desk. Taking a deep breath, I got up from the chair and walked over into the bathroom. I shut the door behind me, made sure it was locked and turned out the light.
I had barely flipped the switch when the first blow landed.
IDIOT!
Then the next,
MORON!
And another…
Each shot is a good one, hard and from the base of the fist, just above the temple, where my greasy brown hair will cushion the blow just enough to mute any sound and won’t leave any marks that will need to be explained.
****ING DORK! WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?
I have no time for any attempt at an explanation before the next blow comes down.
YOU ****ING DORK! DID YOU REALLY THINK SHE WAS GOING TO STAY WITH YOU?
I did. I really did. Even as Will was telling me there was no way, I still wanted to believe. I wanted to believe, so badly, that I had finally made it. The days of being a hopeless loser, forever alone, were finally over. That maybe I had found a way to fit in with the rest of the human race.
Even as he pounds the hell out of me, Will is laughing at me. A maniacal laugh, the kind I used to hear all the time when I used to make a mistake in class.
YOU NEVER SHOULDA LEFT HIGH SCHOOL! YOU KNEW WHO YOU WERE THERE. IT WAS ****IN’ MCCALLUM THAT SCREWED YOU UP. MADE YOU BELIEVE YOU WERE BETTER THAN YOU WERE!
I suddenly realize that these blows, the laughter, they aren’t coming from Will alone. I can almost see them, all those people who made fun of me, who told me that I was nothing, who made me feel as worthless and pathetic as I thought I could feel.
I’m no longer standing in a darkened bathroom in the backroom at a video store. I’m back out on the playground at my old public school. And all those people, the people I went to high school with, the customers who come into the store, people who yelled at me from passing cars. Everyone. They’re all here, reveling in this, laughing and pointing.
And all the forefront is Will. This is his day. The day he knew was coming, the day he saved everything up for. It’s like he’s taken a deep breath and just fires in on me, the hits coming in quick succession, one after the other.
IDIOT! ****ING IDIOT! SHE DIDN’T WANT YOU! NOBODY WOULD ****ING WANT YOU! SHE NEVER LOVED YOU! IT WAS ALL IN YOUR HEAD!
I wince as each hit rattles my skull, but I don’t want it to stop. I know I deserve it. Will was right all along. They all were.
YOU’RE ****ING PATHETIC!
BAM!
YOU”RE A ****ING LOSER!
BAM!
YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER. YOU WERE NEVER ****ING GOOD ENOUGH!
He’s opened the floodgates and they’re all pouring in. Every demon I ever had. Every doubt, every fear, every second-guess. It’s all here. Even as I wince from Will’s blows, I can see every smirk, hear every taunt.
LOSER! GEEK! IDIOT! NERD! DORK!
Will hits me a few more times, but he’s finished with the ridicule. Now he’s just laughing at me. Laughing at just how pathetic and ridiculous I must have sounded, only a few short moments ago, believing that I had won…that I had found the person who finally looked beyond my shortcomings, who didn’t see just some ugly, stupid dork but saw the person that I always believed myself to be.
That only makes Will hit me a few more times and laugh all the louder.
YOU ****ING IDIOT! All she saw was the big nose and the big ears and the bad teeth. You really thought you could measure up to Brad. All she wanted was someone who could give her the ****in’ white picket fence lifestyle…
I would have broken my back to…
IT DOESN’T ****IN’ MATTER! COME ON….
BAM!
Did you really expect her to go home and and say “Hey Mom and Dad, I broke up with that good-looking guy with the decent job but now I’m gonna date this dork who works at a video store?” DID YOU REALLY??? DID YOU???
Will lands a couple of quick blows, as if he’s expecting me to answer this one. And the sad truth of the matter was that I did. I figured that if she just let me show her how much I loved her…and how much I was willing to sacrifice just to be with her and what I was willing to do to make sure she always knew how much I cared about her.
And now, I’d never get the chance to say or do any of those things. And in a matter of a few paragraphs, my soul had been torn out of me, the most important thing in my life, the centre of my world, was gone.
The demons were quiet now, resting on their laurels. If those people could see me now, they would probably smile and feel better about themselves. After all, that’s all I was good for, an easy target for some self-satisfying abuse. On the same token, none of them seemed to be leaving, they were all waiting to see what happened next.
And in the end, I saw the future through Will’s eyes. The future that he had been warning me about all along, or at least trying to. The future that every ****in’ asshole who knew me in high school could see coming a mile away. I saw the end of the road that I was on, and it was all just a matter of how long it was going to take me to get there.
And at the same time, I saw the other roads that other people would be taking. I saw Andrea and Pete, together, having finally found each other. I saw them at dance clubs, partying the night away, forever young and living for the moment. I saw Dan, growing ever fatter, still screwing Jessica or whatever other blonde fluzzy swung her perfect, tight ass in the door and was willing to go down on him.
And I saw Sarah and Brad. They’d have the proper wedding some months, maybe even years from now, and somehow I’d end up with a photograph of the Happy Couple. And I’d have to look at it and see look beautiful and happy she looked, in the most perfect wedding dress ever created. And he’d be standing next to her, some ****-eating grin on his face, smirking at the camera, all but saying “that’s right, dork. I treated her like **** and I got her! You were willing to change your whole world to be with her and you ended up alone! Deal with it!”
And after the wedding, they’d go back to their two story bungalow in upper middle-class suburbia, car-pooling to work, raising their 2.5 kids and their golden retriever. Bar-b-quing in the backyard on long weekends with the neighbours and the in-laws and the PT-****ing-A!
And then I saw where I’d be. In my mid-30s, still living with my parents, still working at the video store. Hell, by then maybe Dan’d give up his dream of making me quit and promote me to the lofty goal of Assistant Manager, so he could dump all the stuff he was too lazy to do unto me. And I could work twelve hours ….or fourteen or fifteen or twenty-hour days to cover all the people who didn’t feel like showing up for their shifts. And I could see the employees, these eighteen, nineteen year old kids just in from high school for a part-time job over the summers or until college started, could laugh in my face and tell me, maybe even in so many words, to go to hell with even thinking of telling them what to do.
Eventually I’d become a local legend of sorts, an attraction if you will. GO to the video store and see the biggest loser on God’s green earth. Maybe Dan could pick up a few extra bucks, selling tickets, like a ****ing carnival. I’d become a cautionary tale: “Eat your string beans, Bobby, or you’ll end up like that Dork at the Video Store!”
And maybe in time Sarah would contact me, want to put the past behind us, become friends again. And she would call me, send me e-mails about the camping trip that she and Brad went on, she could tell me that she was pregnant, that Brad was off taking little Timmy or Beth to their first day of Kindergarten, or how they went here or there for their anniversary.
Eventually, after enough time had passed and when she figured I was “over all this”, maybe she’d get enough guts up and we’d meet at a restaurant, somewhere safe where she figured I wouldn’t make a scene and we’d talk. You know, she could explain to me why she did what she did. Why she chose him over me.
Yeah, and you know what, no matter what she said, no matter what excuses or reasoning she used, no matter how gently she talked to me, it would still kill me. No matter how long it had been, no matter how much I had attempted to heal my wounds, all this feeling, this sick, gut-wrenching would come flooding back to me. Every phone call, every e-mail would just reopen the wounds.
I’d become pathetic, looking for some hidden meaning to her words. Expecting that every sentence was a secret cry for help. That her talking about some event in her life was code for “he’s gone back to his *ssh*le ways”. I’d be waiting for them to get divorced. I’d waste my life away, living from e-mail to e-mail, waiting for that one call, the one call where she’d be in tears, saying everything had gone wrong and that she wanted to see me, that she wanted to be with me. I’d run to her, drop everything and she’d collapse into my arms, begging for my forgiveness.
And I would, I would forgive her. And until that day came, I would continue to live in hope. That one day, Brad would **** up and she would leave him and we could be t…
STOP!
For a moment, I think that’s Will that has screamed that through my head, interrupting the vision I had of a possible last minute reprieve for me. But it’s not Will, it’s me. It’s about this time that I notice that Will isn’t saying anything. He no longer needs to. At long last, after so many years of listening to him tell me what the score was, and wanting to believe he was wrong, I finally clued in.
For a moment I wonder if the horror of what has transpired over the last few minutes has wiped Will from me forever. Perhaps Will has completed his teachings and has moved on, like some wise guru. Perhaps in losing Sarah, I now have come to understand that Will, and everyone else, was right all along.
But Will is still here and I sense him and I sense he has one more duty to fulfill. And I suddenly realize that Will has known that this day would come since the moment he came to me all those years ago.
Come on, Emmett. We have to take a walk for this one.
For a moment, I’m startled. Will has called me many names over the years: Dork, Geek, Nerd, **** Up and countless others, but never Emmett. This is a first.
Even I know the trek I have to take with him, and after everything, all the years of being told that every word out of my mouth is wrong, every though I have had is wrong, every thing I did was the wrong thing, and after all the strength I put into fighting the way things were, I have no strength left to fight him. Sarah’s letter was the last straw. I realized that I had been fighting a war that I was never supposed to win. I was struggling against a current towards a destination that I would never be allowed to reach.
And suddenly I’m so tired. More tired and exhausted than I ever have been before. And so damned tired that I have no fight left in me. Whatever direction Will wants to lead me, I’ll go. Whatever place these demons want to take me, I’m there.
I leave the washroom. I leave the backroom. As I pass Andrea, she looks at me startled, like she wonders what happened to the happy-go-lucky guy that was just here a few short minutes ago.
“I’m going for a walk,” I tell her and wave to her. I wave goodbye to her.
I don’t look up as I leave the video store. I don’t care what the weather is like, although the day was sunny when I woke up this morning. I’m sure of it. Hell, when I went up to the sub store ten, fifteen minutes ago, it was sunny.
It’s raining now. A cold bitter rain that seems to drench me instantly. My body temprature seems to drop tenfold with every miserable step I take.
I can hear people laughing at me from their warm, dry cars as I walk down the street. I’m not completely sure that they’re laughing because of the pathetic, drenched site I must be.
**** you, ya ****ing moron. They’re laughing at you cause you’re a ****ing pathetic drenched geek who just got his heart broken because you took a stupid, hundred to one shot on a deal you never had a chance at and just ruined your relationship with your best friend!
I knew Will would be here, waiting to swoop in for the kill. I can practically feel the venom he’s spitting at me.
And for once, I know he’s right.
Scratch that…I’ve always known that he’s always been right. All the times he told me, point-blank, how I should forget even attempting to turning my friendship with Sarah into something more, he was right.
I was pathetic. A **** up. A loser. I was everything that everyone had ever said about me. The people I went to high school with. The customers at the video store. Even people who I passed on the street, who took one look at me and decided I was just a ****ing geek. The ones who yelled things at me from car windows as they went by, just to get a laugh from their friends.
Any one of them would have told me I had no shot at winning Sarah over. And they would have been right.
And Will was right.
I stood there, in the pouring rain, scared ****less that Sarah might drive by and see me, take pity on me and offer me a ride home. Thankfully, a minute or two passed by and that one final degredation never came.
And so there I stood, prepping myself for Will’s next onslaught of verbal and mental abuse, almost wincing as I waited for the backlash of what had to be the most disasterous outcome that I could have imagined.
It never came. Instead Will’s voice was soft and calm although still like that of a grade school teacher speaking to a slow student who was upset at his failing grade on a relatively easy test. I guess maybe that’s where I’d heard it before.
You’re doing a pretty good job of beating yourself up. You don’t need my help anymore Hell when it comes right down to it, I’m a pretty lazy mother****er so why expend the energy on something I can let you handle.
And then he added,
Why don’t we go for a walk?
On some level, I guess I had always known, ever since Will had made his prescence known to me, that eventually, he’d lead me on this walk. There had been times, earlier on, when I had actually wondered when he would ask me to go for a walk with him. There were even times when I wanted to do it and it had been Will who had made fun of me for asking, calling me stupid and weak for letting the world get to me. For letting some stupid incident at work or even with my personal life get me all upset.
And so, I had never taken this walk with him. For a moment, I thought of asking him why this was different, why Sarah’s rejection had meant so much. Why her off-hand, even flippant comments about how outlandish any thought of her and I becoming a couple was had shattered me so much.
Because you set this up to mean so much. You built your whole life around this one girl’s opinion of you. You couldn’t see any future that didn’t involve you two being together. No matter what I told you, no matter what proof Sarah provided me with that she wasn’t interested, you just wouldn’t listen, couldn’t see the truth I was putting right before you. Now that you know that the future you had planned out can never be, you’ve become incapable of seeing any future at all.
Will’s voice hadn’t changed from the calmness that it had shown only a moment before. It didn’t take on the screeching, angry tone that I had come to expect. If anything, he sounded sad, frustrated, like that of a teacher who has finally been forced to give up on a slow student who, despite all of the teaching provided, has still failed to improve, has regressed.
For once, after all these years, I think Will had to admit defeat. He had fought a grave battle to keep me from getting hurt by Sarah, by the world as a whole, and was now surrendering.
When Sarah had turned on me in that coffee shop, everything Will had always tried to tell me had finally sunk in. All these years, whenever I had heard his voice in my head, I had just assumed that it was part of my damaged psyche, battered and bruised by years of being told what a piece of crap I was, first by the people I went to high school with and then by countless, endless lines of customers so quick to jump on every little idiosyncracy, no matter how insignificant.
I always told myself that things couldn’t possibly be as bad as Will made them out to be. The things people did or said to me must have been misconstrued by the paranoia that Will tried to inflict upon me, they couldn’t have possibly meant them in the mean and hurtful manner in which Will interpreted them.
And yet now, as I tried to put as much physical distance between myself and the coffee shop as humanly possible, it all made sense. Everything that Will had said about himself was true. He was simply showing me the way the rest of the world say me, and I just didn’t want to admit it. But I realized now that I was not worth anything more than what Will had made me out to be.
Only, I came to realize, it wasn’t Will that had put me into that slot, it was everyone else. Everyone in my life had tossed me aside from the first moment they could. The people in high school, they’d declared me a non-entity almost from the moment I’d walked in the door, the people I knew in college forgot I existed ten minutes after the graduation ceremonies and hell, the customers at the store so didn’t want to know of my existence, they got pissed off when they had to acknowledge me at all.
And then there was Sarah…Try as I might, I couldn’t hate her. To her, I had just been some guy she knew in college and for whom, she didn’t have the heart to tell me to go to hell until I forced her into a corner.
But, like Will had told me and, like so many things, he had been right once again about, she had just been like everyone else. I wanted to kick myself for opening up to her on so many occasions, telling her things that I had never told anyone and that I wish I could still say that I had never told anyone.
The rain refused to let up but I didn’t care. All I could think of was how many times I had put myself out for her, gone the extra mile to remain friends with her…and the entire time she had simply wanted me to leave her alone and let her live her life in peace.
Will had been trying to tell me that the entire time, and so for all the effort I had made, I was
Come on, we haven’t got much time.
Just for a moment, Will became stern once more, like a parent hurrying a child along. And so I began to walk. Off in the distance, I could see the Number 42 Crosstown bus coming along Victoria Street. It had just dropped someone off and was beginning to pick up speed.
Another hundred yards out to do it. Just far enough from the next stop so it doesn’t start to slow down yet.
I broke into a jog, a short sprint, just until I was where Will figured would be a good spot. Then I slowed down, walked a few paces, back and forth along the edge of the roadway.
I couldn’t see Will but it was almost as if I could feel him nodding. Yeah, this should be a good place as any.
Don’t make eye contact. Don’t give the driver any indication you want him to pick you up. As far as he’s concerned, you’re just some guy walking down the street and stopping for a second.
For the second time in an hour, a knot formed in my stomach. My breathing began to speed up, my heart rate: dido. I could feel the sweat pouring down from my armpits.
Just play it cool. It’s not a hard thing to do.
I nodded. If anyone could see me they’d probably have thought I was crazy. A crazy geek. Well, like I gave a **** anymore.
The bus was a half a block away.
Gotta time it just right. Not yet. Give it another couple of seconds.
It was going at a good speed. Probably better for everyone in the long run. This whole thing, right?
Damn right. ****in’ right. I mean, really, who’s gonna care? This ain’t no “It’s A Wonderful Life”. No difference in the world one way or the other. Come on, it’s time.
Yeah, it’s time, and so I just start walking. It’s simple really, just put one foot in front of the other. Look across the street. I catch sight of a tree, a little sapling, really. And I just keep my eye on it as I walk, don’t look at the bus, or the driver or the passengers. Nah, this was no Wonderful Life, Will was right. It was a pretty ****ty life.
One foot in front of the other, just stare at the tree.
Who’s gonna care? I mean, Bob at work might have to scramble around to cover my shift tomorrow. Hell, maybe he’ll have to work a double shift himself. It’d look good on him. The customers? Hell, who will they berate into submission to get out of their late charges.
By now, the driver has to have figured out what I’m up to, right? Maybe he sees I’m just some geek and he figures he’s not hurting nothing by ridding the world of one more loser like me. Maybe he gets a bit of conscious and applies a bit of pressure to the breaks at the last second, so he can look at himself in the mirror tomorrow.
“I tried to stop but it was too late!”
Sarah?
One foot in front of the other. Just stare at the tree.
By now, I can hear the bus’s tires squeal. I guess the driver’s conscience got the better of him. I can feel it’s shadow fall across me. Another split second and I’ll feel the impact. I wonder if Will’s still back on the sidewalk, watching. He must be. I haven’t heard from him in a while.
Unless the voice that’s telling me about one foot in front of the other is his. I keep seeing Sarah, not the Sarah from today, but the Sarah from college. The idea of Sarah that I fell in love with, even without really knowing it. And the voice keeps telling me to keep walking. Like I could stop this from happening now, even if I wanted to.
And I don’t want to…do I?
I wonder if Sarah will grieve when she hears the news. I wonder if she’ll come to the funeral. I wonder if she’ll take a moment and wonder if she had anything to do with this. If she’ll ask herself, in some grief-induced stupor, what might have been if only she had agreed to go out with me. Might I still be alive?
I wonder if word might filter back to those people I knew in college. If they’ll see my obituary in the paper and remember me, or if they’ll pause for a moment, wonder why that name sounds so darned familiar for a second, and then turn the page and check out how the Blue Jays did against the Red Sox, or see if the weather is going to be nice this weekend when they take the kids fishing, or read about how their stocks are doing.
I suppose that one of the diminished few who show up at the funeral will say something along the lines of “they say he never knew what hit him” but they’ll be wrong. I knew damn well what hit me.
I just didn’t care.
THE END
Started – July 1st, 2003
1st draft – finished April 12,EVEN HITLER
HAD A GIRLFRIEND
By John M. Milner
PROLOGUE
THE END…AND THE BEGINNING
I pretend not to hear the horn. After the third one, it gets easy to no-sell. Of course, since I’ve spent a lifetime having morons honk at me as they drive by, I’ve gotten better at it.
Still haven’t gotten used to it.
I guess I can see the point today. Some desk-jockey is driving their SUV home from their house in the suburbs, and they see some four-eyed dork walking through this cold, miserable downpour, what else can they do but honk?
Seeing as how they’ll pull an identical vehicle into an identical driveway in front of an identical three-bedroom, two-bath, and talk about an identical day to the same wife and 2.3 kids and dog as their neighbor and their neighbours neighbor, guess there’s no point to assume they can come up with anything original.
If the situation was different, I might have given myself a pat on the back. The asshole will probably go home feeling better about himself and his situation in life, because at least he’s not that dork in the rain.
But then, the situation’s not different. The situation is the way it is.
A lot of people would find themselves, standing out in the rain on a Wednesday afternoon and ask themselves “How did I get here?”
But you know how you got here. Doesn’t make you any less pathetic.
Wanna get technical? I’m standing on a curb amongst the cul-de-sacs and crescents of inner suburbia, maybe a quarter of a mile away from the little strip mall where I work, and another quarter of a mile from the apartment where I live with my folks.
Lemme guess. Out of the forty-some odd words in the proceeding paragraph, the part you…all of you…immediately concentrated on was how I, in my mid-20s, am still living with my parents.
Go on. Make all the comments and snide remarks you want about how pathetic it is that I still live at home with my parents and work at a minimum wage job at a video store at the age of 24.
You won’t be the first. Hell, everyone I know has made the same exact remarks in the same exact tone at some point. Didn’t matter if it was someone I had just met or had known for years. Some were nice enough to wait until my back was turned and they thought I was out of earshot, some weren’t. Some made out like they cared, some didn’t. A few kind souls even tried to play “Good Samaritan” and give me some long-winded talk about how I’d be so much better off if I got out on my own and became independent. It’s amazing how despite never living a day, an hour, a second of my sad existence, everybody’s an expert on how I should be living my life and where I should be at this point in the story.
But you know what? Who gives a ****?
A year ago, a month ago, hell…a half an hour ago, I might have spent hours worrying about what anyone thought about me. Might even have expended the energy to try and explain why I live the way I do or why circumstances have put me in the spot that I am in. But like I said, who gives a ****?
To be honest, by the time you come to the end of my little tale of woe, you’re going to see that my living arrangements are pretty far down the list of sad and pathetic things about yours truly.
Yes, and that list should probably include your inclination to go off on self-pitying tangents like this one.
Well, Will, since you’re the leader of the band on so many of those particular numbers, I don’t really think you should be the one criticizing me for it.
Hey, ya idiot! That’s my job!
So where was I? Oh yeah, back on the curb.
I’m just standing there, the events of this previous twenty-four hours replaying over and over again in my head, like some video on an endless loop that just keeps playing and playing but that you’re too stunned by the images to go find the remote and turn off. Like a documentary on the devastation of nuclear war or some famine in Africa.
Hell, maybe it’s more apt to say it’s like one of the trailer tapes corporate forces us to play in the store. You know how everybody says “Oh, it must be cool to work in a video store. You can just watch movies all the time.” Yeah…nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, it’s the same two dozen trailers, repeated over and over and over again, for eight hours (or if you’re me, fourteen hours when someone calls in sick and you have to cover for them).
Or maybe it’s more like seeing a car crash, a bad one, off in the distance, and knowing that what you’re going to see will haunt you for the rest of your days, and yet you find yourself strangely drawn to it, like you want to sear the images into your brain, in some weird, perverse way.
When I woke up this morning, I believed that something had changed for me. That I was no longer the person that I had been since public school. I finally had proof that I was different from the way people saw me, and I had finally found the one person in the world who was going to help me show that to the world. Instead, she had simply been leading me back to the edge and pushed me over. I had struggled so hard for so many years not to just fall into the dark void where everyone wanted me to be, and in the end, that’s just where I ended up.
I had “misinterpreted the way things were between us”? I shake my head, so vigorously that the water flies off my hair. I imagine that I must look like one of those English sheepdogs, an unflattering image for sure.
Hey, dummy. You’re standing in the middle of a rainstorm, drenched from head to toe, with a sour look on your face. There is no flattering description that anyone could possibly come up with to describe the way you look right now.
If last night was so wrong, why had she allowed it to happen? If we were never meant to be together, why had she initiated everything? Why did the tone of this letter, which remains crumpled up in my left hand, the rain erasing the hurtful words even as I speak, sound like I was so in the wrong for making more out of last night than she believed it to be?
Am I really that wrong? Can’t she see that we were meant to be together? Can’t she see that both our lives had been leading to the point we reached last night? How can she go back to him? How can she not see that it’s me and not him who she should be spending the rest of her life with? He hurt her so much, why does she want to stay with him? So he can hurt her again? I would have treated her like the most important person in the world, because to me she was. She was everything, she was…
A car rushes past me, the way one has every few seconds or so, the occupants staring at me for the few seconds that I pass through their line of vision, like some abstract work of art that they see, barely acknowledge and then dismiss as nothing they want to bother with.
How many times in my poor excuse for a life has that happened to me? How many times have I been dismissed as some little nothing that no one really needs to pay attention to?
It’s probably a tie between that and the number of times someone has paid attention to you simply so they can go out of their way to put you in your place, sometimes none too subtly, as that insignificant little nothing that you already know you are.
They don’t care why I’m standing there. To them…hell, to everyone I know, I’m just some geek…but to these travelers, I’m a geek that’s too stupid to get out of the rain. I figure…hell, I know that just about every passenger in every car that’s gone by me has turned to the driver and made some wise-ass joke about my situation. Their only regret is that they can’t stop the car, roll down the window and yell something at me…although they probably would if they could.
To the rest of the world, today sucks. I don’t mean in a 9/11 kinda sucks or a “my wife was diagnosed with cancer” kinda sucks. I mean, just weather-wise, although it’s funny how people will look at grey clouds lurking overhead as far as the eye can see and decide that the day sucks just because you have to wear an extra sweater, like that’s some great tragedy, when in reality, that pales in comparison to all the other of life’s tragedies. People don’t realize when they have it good, so they bitch and moan and complain about the little inconveniences of life, like a few clouds in the sky or some crumbs on their blazer or a red light that costs them a whole thirty seconds in traffic.
The weather today doesn’t really bug me that much. Actually, the weather makes for the perfect backdrop. A cold, miserable day, spitting rain which I guess is appropriate since the world always seems to be spitting on me, only this time literally instead of figuratively.
To me, it’s perfect. To the rest of the world, today sucks.
Not for the first time in my life…hell, not for the first time today, I want to cry out “Screw the rest of the world!”
I glance up and there’s some middle-aged yuppie-wannabe driving his sedan back to suburbia. He’s probably got the pre-requisite Grateful Dead CD playing in his Volvo, like he’s still trying to be hip, yet responsible at the same time. He glances back at me, gives me that look which I’m sure is supposed to mean that he’s getting ready to give me the finger or something worse if I don’t look away, which I don’t. At least, not right away. He looks pissed off at the weather, at the world, at his hum-drum life and I guess I’m as good a target for some non-verbal outrage as any.
The sad part is that he’s not the first guy to look to me vent some of his frustration at. Not the first by a long shot. Sorry Pal, I think to myself, I’m pretty sure that the number one spot on that ever-lengthening list belongs to somebody I went to high school with, possibly even public school.
Sometimes I wonder if I wasn’t put on this earth for no other reason than to take **** and abuse. Certainly, the world has never given me one ounce of reason to believe otherwise.
I want to tell this jerk off. To hurl some creative expertise at him about being so quick to treat a total stranger like **** as some sort of outlet over the rage he feels about his own life. Part of me wants to get into a verbal or perhaps, and I’m scared just how much I want this, physical confrontation with this guy. I want him to get out of the car just so I can punch him, kick him, scream at him, get all my frustrations out in one violence-filled exchange.
But then I also want to tell him that if he’s going home from a decent job to a wife and kids who love him or at least give a rat’s ass that he exists, he’s miles ahead of me. But I don’t do any of that and in a moment, he’s gone.
And I remain behind, and, in my mind’s eye, I see myself the way that he, and every other motorist must see me. This sad, pathetic little dork, standing alone in the rain, soaked to the bone, his heart broken, his last remaining hope of finding that special someone dying a few miles away, at city hall, in front of a justice of the peace.
And then it hits me, as hard as the thousand of sloppy rain drops are nailing me on the head. The more I think of it, the more the day seems perfect.
A bitter cold, miserable day. It suits my mood. I’m bitter, cold and miserable. I’d add heartbroken to that list but to say that my heart is broken is putting it too mildly. Is heart-demolished a word? How about heart-destroyed?
The voice in my head, the one who’s guiding me along this little tour into hell, figuratively and perhaps literally, laughs bitterly, reminding me that I’ve got no one to blame but myself. For the tenth time since he went on this little “I told you so” kick and for the millionth time in my stupid little go-nowhere life, I begrudgingly agree with him.
You idiot! A couple of hours ago, your life was one big pile of crap and yet now, it seems like you were living in Shangri-FN-la. You got up, you went to work, you got treated like **** for eight hours for a wage that’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad in comparison to the work you have to do, and then you went home, maybe checked your e-mail a few dozen times in case you finally got that non-existent letter from some old friend who had long forgotten you ever existed. That was it, the end of story. No fuss, no muss.
But hell, even by the time you walked in the front door of that hellhole you call a workplace, things were already in motion. You had no control over it, not that it mattered. Even if you’d been given one ounce of opportunity, you would have just screwed it up anyways.
Silence for just a second, then it starts up again.
See, this is why I was always telling you NOT to get your hopes up. This is why I never wanted you to get excited about the possibility of anything in this life. Because I knew, I always knew that the up was not worth the down. This morning, you believed you were on the verge of a new chapter in your life, you thought that you had finally seen the place where everyone else lives, but that, to date, you had never even been allowed to visit.
And yet here you are, half an hour from thinking you were able to believe in all you’d hoped. And instead of being able to make plans for a future that was never going to exist, here you are.
Here I am, indeed. I’ve been standing in this drizzle for maybe ten minutes now, in short sleeves and slacks. If the situation was different, I might worry about catching pneumonia. You know, the pneumonia your mother and my mother and everyone else’s mother used to warn you that you’d get if you went out in the rain without a jacket.
I don’t really care about pneumonia or a bad cold or even my mother’s warnings at this point. I’m too busy trying to leave the words in her letter from my head by concentrating on the number 4.
As in four times.
Four…and I mean, four tops, is the number of times that I’ve ridden the Number 42 Crosstown bus in my entire, miserable life. If I had had to take a guess, I’d say the last time was maybe about six months ago when I went to see an afternoon matinee at the Metroplex.
Four times in twenty-four years.
So, that should give you the idea that ol’ Number 42 hasn’t really played a key factor in my life up to this point. Still, it’s with no great sense of irony as I see this bus chug on down the street towards me. I can’t tell from this vantage point just how many passengers are on it. It’s heading towards the strip mall and the office buildings that surround it, and with the rain, there are bound to be a lot of people riding that bus today. Some of them have probably even taken note of the sad, pathetic, worthless dork standing before them, maybe a half a block away. And there are probably a good percentage of them who have already thought up some snide remark to either hurl my way as the bus passes me, or just blurt out for the amusement of themselves and the others within earshot.
I’ve decided that it makes no difference how many people are on that bus. In the end, what does it really matter? Six people or sixty? Who really gives a damn?
I notice that despite the sound of its engine -these buses always sound like they’re one pothole away from disintegrating- it’s rapidly picking up speed. No stops for another block or so, and the driver sure as hell won’t stop for me. He’d be hard-pressed to do so even if I was at one of the regular stops. Nope, he’s gonna chug on through, maybe even hope there’s a puddle he can splash me with, again to the delight of his passengers.
No matter, the faster it goes, the better I’ll like it. He can gun it up to 55 for all I care.
Makes things easier. It’ll all be over that much quicker.
Everything’s in place, Morrison. The bus is comin’. You’ve made your decision. The only thing you have left to do is to take that first step. I mean, I know that summoning up the courage to do anything that needed doing has never been your strong suit so I’ll give you a few tips to make it easier. First off, just pick out an object on the other side of the street, keep your eyes glued to that object and just start walking towards it.
This was Will’s idea, so I guess it’s appropriate that he be in charge from beginning to end.
Screw you, ya geek! Don’t blame this **** on me. You got yourself into this, Morrison! I’m just helping ya out. Just trying to help a friend in need.
It occurs to me now, that, in the end, Will really is the only friend I have in the world. I take small solace in the fact that everyone who ever told me how I “have no friends” was wrong.
Well, considering I’m one of those people, maybe you should reconsider just how much solace you should take in that.
Actually, forget that for now. See that tree across the road, keep your eyes glued on it, block everything else out, and just start walking.
I look down the street, at the bus as it looms larger into view. I think about the people on that bus again. I wonder how many of the passengers are headed to the store I work…worked at. I wonder how many will be disappointed when they find out I no longer work there and they won’t have me to treat like ****.
It’s like Nixon said, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around next year!” Only in this case they won’t have Emmett Morrison to kick around next year…or next month… or next week.
Last night…and again this morning, I wanted to believe that I had finally found the reason I was here. That reason is gone. I might as well be, too. If I had more time, I’d contemplate just why the hell God or Buddha or whoever is in charge of this place wasted his time, my time and everyone else’s time putting me here in the first place.
But since I’ve run out of time and reasons to stick around, I decide to take that first step towards putting a stop to all that wasted time.
I sigh.
One foot in front of the other, right?
CHAPTER ONE
THE BEGINNING…SORT OF
Winston Churchill, in one of his post-Battle of Britain speeches, stated that as the threat of Nazi invasion subsided, it was not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it might be the end of the beginning.
As I start this particular chapter, I can safely say this is not the end.
Like they can’t figure this out! Damn…if this was the end, what are all those pages doing after this one? Left blank so people can make little flipbooks?
Nor is it the beginning of the end…hell, this isn’t the end of the beginning. In fact, this is the beginning of the beginning (prologue notwithstanding!) and while the story I am about to embark on telling you has nowhere near the consequence of the Battle of Britain, it is my story…and therefore is of great consequence to me.
Yeah, like anybody really gives a **** about a screwed up one-sided love affair that you didn’t really have. Let’s be honest here, Emmett, it’s just page after page of pointless pining.
Some of this story is made up. Other parts are stuff that I imagined. Still more of it is what I wish I could say was true. It will be up to the reader to figure out, if you have the time and inclination, which part is which.
Or you could just decide that it’s all total bull**** and get on with your lives. I mean, really, do you have nothing better to do? I mean, Jesus, get a ****ing hobby.
I wonder where I should begin this tale. Should I start it when Sarah first told me that she had a boyfriend? Should I start it at that moment that I first realized that I had feelings for her?
Maybe I need to go back farther…and start in the beginning.
In the beginning? Wasn’t that, like, the Bible? I mean, no offence Emmett but you do that you’re going to run into some serious copyright issues. Besides what do the Psalms and Jonah and the Whale and Noah have to do with this story anyways?
I meant, maybe I should start at the beginning of the relationship between Sarah and I.
“Relationship”?!? “Sarah and I”?!? Come on, get your mind out of fantasy land there, dumb ass. There was never any relationship between the two of you.
But we did have a relationship, at one point. I mean, we ended up…well, don’t let me spoil the ending just yet. No matter what else Will says, we did have something, at least for a moment.
Get out the violins. You’re allowing your grandiose delusions get the better of you, again.
How could that ever happen, Will, when I have you right there to tell me what a piece of crap I am?
The “Sarah” to which I refer, in all of this, is Sarah Reynolds.
And as, much as I hate to admit it, I guess, in the end, that’s how I have to think of her. Just as Sarah Reynolds.
Just Sarah.
As in “Sarah did this” …or “Sarah did that”.
But it’s just like Will said, it’s not as in “Sarah and I did this” or “Sarah and I did that”.
In all the time that I’ve known her, I’ve never been able to say “Sarah and I had dinner at her parents” or “Sarah and I drove up to the lake over the weekend”. I never have and never will be able to start any story with the words “Sarah and I”.
Because you see, there never was, is not now, nor will there ever be a “Sarah and I”. Of course, there’s never been anyone with whom I could add an “And I” to. I’ve never been invited to dinner with anyone’s parents, other than my own. I’ve never gone to a lake with anyone over a weekend. There’s never been anyone else to do stuff with or to be with. EVER.
And with that painful admission right out there in the open, let me go back to the beginning. Not the “In the Beginning” in the Biblical sense, but the beginning of the story that I am about to impart upon you.
First day of college. 9:00 a.m. The Tuesday after Labour Day. Four years ago.
Living in the dorm meant I had gotten about two hours sleep the night before, mostly in bits and pieces of five or ten minutes, the result of a party that started about four o’clock the previous afternoon and would continue to rage, pretty much non-stop for the next two years. For all I know it might still be going on even as we speak with many of the original cast members still involved.
Not that I really took part in it. I was too busy hiding out in my dorm room, expecting some wild band of roving Seniors to barge in and toss me into the shower, or just unleash some drunken barrage of obscenity-filled insults about me, my manhood, my intelligence, my looks, my decorating habits, or whatever else they could think of.
But none of that happened, and I just ended up missing out on all the “Let’s Get Acquainted Over Massive Amounts of Booze” festivities. And, despite some idiot three doors down playing Tears for Fears “Shout” non-stop for three solid hours (until another of my dorm-mates, who I shall always be grateful to, smashed his stereo), I still managed, somehow, to get enough sleep so as to be able to, somehow, show up right on time, like the college mark that I was, for my first class.
Introduction to Journalism.
Maybe it was just the beginning of my paranoid, conspiratorial mind but even back then I thought that the faculty at McCallum College must have hated us journalism students, because all our classes were in the very lowest level of the main building. They referred to it as Level 01. We referred to it by what it was. The Basement. Sometimes we ever referred to it as “the Dungeon” but without Stu Hart (the latter bit being a joke that I told a couple of times, only to quit when it became apparent that no one was getting the reference).
In the winter, we would freeze. As in not even wearing sweaters and winter coats kept us from shivering. Of course, on the day I’m talking about, the tail-end of a very hot summer, those of us not so hung over as to still be in bed, were frying, even in short sleeved t-shirts.
Some well-paid but ultimately naïve administrative assistant in the main office of McCallum College would number the freshman Journalism class of which I was a part of at thirty-four but I doubt all thirty-four of us were ever in the same room at the same time. Still, OFFICIALLY, there were thirty-four first-year journalism students that September morning of four years ago.
Over the next few months, that number would get whittled down to barely a dozen. Most would leave at Christmas. A few more would decide not to return the following September to start the second year of the course. From then on, the number of students in our class would remain almost a constant. Every few months, a student would drop out in mid-week and the circumstances surrounding that student’s departure would be the buzz for a few days after, what we didn’t know, we would make up. We were journalism students, after all; we took to gossip like bees to honey, always excited about a fresh supply and hungering for more.
That morning, eight of us showed up to be part of our first class of the semester and of the two-year program. I should point out that those eight were entirely of the student body. Not even the professor, Mr. Rowell, had made an appearance…and at ten minutes past the hour, that had us worried.
I had been there for almost half-an-hour already and so I was bored. And the best way to kill time that I could come up with was to check and to recheck my schedule to make sure that this was, in fact, where I was supposed to be. I wasn’t exactly alone.
“You guys are all in the journalism program, right? I mean, this is ‘Introduction to Journalism,’ right?”
I looked up to see a chubby guy, wearing a Green Day T-shirt, slouched against the wall opposite to where I was sitting. His name was Patrick…or Paul…I forget, something with a “P.” Other than the T-shirt and his voicing the same question we had all been wanting to ask, I don’t recall any more about him. Oh, except that he went home for Christmas that first semester, having flunked two of his exams, and was completely forgotten by the rest of us by the second week of January.
The rest of us nodded, a couple even chuckled. As I said, we had all been wondering the same thing: was this EVEN where we were supposed to be? I felt a little better with the knowledge that I wasn’t the only one who had gathered down here in the basement…but only a little.
Just then, our motley group was distracted from Peter/Paul’s nervous question by the sound of approaching feet. We all looked down the corridor, probably all with the same dumb look of hopeful anticipation. This HAD to be Rowell, right? Fashionably late but arriving just the same to put us out of our misery.
But it wasn’t.
It was Sarah.
I suppose if this was a movie, she would have been moving in slow motion, captured in a soft filter, with a spot of sunlight shining only on her as she deftly tucked her hair back behind her ear, some mellow soft rock song playing in the background.
In reality, she came hurrying across the rest of us, like she figured she was about to get **** for showing up late, then realized that there was no one there to give her ****. We never talked about it when we reminisced about college, but I always figured that she was probably all at once relieved and a little perplexed at this sudden strange turn of events.
Actually, I didn’t take too much notice of her. Being a guy, and a hetero guy at that, I probably gave her the once over, then decided to find something to read, so as to pass the time. Since she clearly wasn’t Rowell, my first reaction to her appearance was one of disappointment.
“Is this supposed to be ‘Introduction to Journalism’?” she asked, setting her bag down in a clear spot against the wall, a couple of bewildered students down from me, both of whom nodded.
“I think this is McCallum College’s way of telling us we really DIDN’T get into college. Break it to us gently by sticking us down here in the basement until we get the message and go home.”
I had to shake my head a tad when I heard that. Mostly because it was me who had said it. I couldn’t believe it. It was thirty-seven well-articulated words, probably thirty more than I had said to my classmates in four years of high school.
The half-dozen or so would-be college students sitting in the basement with me all seemed to think that was funny, including Sarah, and all laughed at that joke. And it was a case of them laughing “with me” rather than “at me” which was the case in high school. It was kinda of a new experience for me and wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
I’d like to recall that Sarah’s laugh was the sweetest, most infectious laugh that I’d ever heard, that our eyes met and we had a “moment”, something that went unshared with the rest of the group gathered in that basement hallway, that we both knew, despite it being unsaid, that our lives would forever be intertwined. I’d like to say that for a brief instance in time, we were the only two people in that hallway.
But to shoot with you, I barely took any more notice of Sarah than any of the rest of my fellow students. I was just so relieved that my first attempt at social interaction had gone over so well that I really didn’t notice anything but the fact that I hadn’t been ostracized immediately upon my arrival at this school. I joined in with the laughter that filled the hallway, chuckling maybe a little louder than I normally did, out of sheer relief that these people hadn’t turned to me and told me to “shut up, ya geek!”
Rowell would eventually show up. Apparently, McCallum College had originally intended for us to have a “Fundamental English” class with a rather crotchety old spinster woman named Miss Garrison that first period, and Mr. Rowell was still operating on the old schedule, not expecting to have to teach until 10:40.
After that rather shaky and delayed start, my first couple of months in college went by pretty fast and, to be honest, rather uneventful. Despite the promising start that my social life seemed to offer, what with me making a joke that didn’t fall flat, I soon found myself only a tiny bit better off than I had been in high school. I wasn’t a constant source of public ridicule, but no one was exactly inviting me over for tea and crumpets either.
When I was in class, there were a couple of people that I talked to, mostly in a “do you understand this any better than I do?” sort of way. I was still the part-time King of Hallway Comedy, tossing off the odd one-liner or two as the situations presented itself while we were waiting around for one teacher or another to show up and usher us into class. It was those few moments when those fellow students conscientious enough to show up early to class found my humour at least bearable, that I began to think that maybe, with some more effort on my part, I might just make some friends around here.
However, by the time they stopped serving supper in the residence cafeteria, I found myself alone in my dorm room, working on whatever assignments needed to be done, or reading. My night-time social life was pretty much status quo from high school, at least.
The situation in Res was pretty similar to that in school itself. I knew a few people there, as well. Most were from class, a few others from hall meetings and just being in the right place at the right time in terms of cafeteria conversations. When I walked down the halls at the Residence, I could always count on at least a few people saying “Hi, Emmett” as I walked past them. If I got lucky, I might even have someone ask what they were serving in the cafeteria, or if it was still raining out. That kind of inconsequential chit-chat that you exchange with people who are just a step or two above total strangers.
I kinda half-ass remember seeing Sarah once or twice in the Residence. Her room was just down the hall from mine but despite this and the fact that we were both in the same course, our social interaction was pretty much limited to saying “Hi” to each other whenever we passed each other in that hall.
As far as I know, the longest conversation we had during those early months was Sarah asking me if there was a quiz in Fundamental English the next day, just as a double-check. I answered that there was. She had made this face that immediately belied the fact that she wasn’t looking forward to it. I laughed, told her that I felt the same way and she went on her way.
And then, the pages on my desk calendar were torn off, one by one, until they came to one particular November night.
You know those moments you have in your life that you always remember because even though it seemed trivial at the time, it turns out to be one of those events that alters your life forever? The moments that you can remember so clearly, down to what song was playing in your head.
It was the night before our “Media Studies” mid-term. I was sitting outside my dorm room, back against the wall, reading all the high-lighted portion of my text book, wondering not for the first time if it would have been easier to highlight the stuff I didn’t think was important, as it would have saved a lot of yellow highlighter ink.
I’m not sure why but I concentrated better sitting out in the hall, the noise of a dozen ghetto-blasters playing the same Guns-N-Roses tune, a hundred bits of conversations and several TVs blaring away all just mixing together to form some kind of weird atmosphere that made me want to study and retain information that the relative silence of sitting at my desk never could.
After a while, I just kinda zoned out all the noise, all the activity around me and kept reading about Neil Postman and his arguments about how television was leading us all to ruin. The frequency with which people walked by me was so great that after a while a herd of buffalo could have stampeded by and I would have not realized it. As they walked by me, some people seemed to have to make some kind of comment about me sitting there in the hallway studying but most just said “hi” and kept on walking. It had been hours since I had paid any attention to anything people were saying. If, somewhere out of the corner of my brain, I managed to hear the voices of those who walked past, I just nodded, recognition enough of whatever they had said to work them into thinking I was listening.
Somehow, though, when the shy, quiet female voice asked “You’re Emmett, right?” Those words, those three small words, managed to break through and caused me to look up.
It was Sarah.
After not taking much notice of her when she showed up for our delayed first class, I can still remember the blue t-shirt she wore, the words “Oakdale High School” emblazoned across the chest, that she wore and the light pink sweatshirt she had tied around her waist.
Maybe I was still wasn’t with it after being awakened from my self-induced studying trance, as it were or maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, something caused me to do a double-take, to pause for what must have been a very long split-second, like some love-struck guy in some cheesy movie who can’t talk when the girl of his dreams speaks to him.
Of course, I didn’t realize she was the girl of my dreams at that point. I wasn’t in love with her at that point. Heck, I was barely even in like with her, since I hardly knew her. I didn’t find myself tongue-tied because I was head over heels in love with her, it was more that I had very little experience in friendly banter and social interaction. Truth be told, I was so overwhelmed that someone had come up and started talking to me, it took me a second to make myself believe it was really happening. Even once things started to register, I didn’t know how to react.
So maybe the first true impression I made on Sarah was that I was a complete dork, unable even to answer the simple question of what my name was. Thankfully, she either didn’t notice or didn’t let on.
She had asked me the question like she knew the answer but just wanted a way to open up this upcoming conversation. I figured the least I could do was, eventually, answer the question.
”Yeah, that’s me!” I replied, hoping that I sounded a lot cooler with that horrendous reply than I probably did. I wasn’t sure what was coming next, but figuring it couldn’t hurt to find out.
She cocked her head down the hall, the way she’d come, I realized. “A bunch of us from class are studying, and basically shooting the bull in my room. You wanna join us? We could use all the help we could get!”
She laughed, just slightly, more like a smile with a soundtrack, then. I’d like to think that I played the whole acceptance of her offer real cool like, disinterested even, like I was doing her a favour by showing up. Some parts of my brain, who you’ll come to know as Will, will tell you that I leaped to my feet and ran off like a starving child offered a piece of chocolate, all but slobbering at the prospect.
In reality, it was probably somewhere in the middle. No matter how it all played out, a moment or so later I found myself in Sarah’s room. There were four other people, three guys and another girl, all of whom I recognized from class and who recognized me just the same.
When I first came in the door and four pairs of eyes swung towards me, following Sarah inside the room, my knees got week for a split second. I quickly scanned the four faces, waiting, almost expecting, for someone, to cast me out, almost Biblically, to reject me for being too much of an outsider.
Maybe it was because it was still early in the first semester and everyone was too scared about their initiation into college and dorm life to toss aside anyone who might become a friend, but I never did find that face of objection to my joining this study group, which in short order became a group of friends, at least for a time.
I said a quick “Hello” which I somehow managed to direct to everyone in the room. My response was a couple of hellos, a nod and a quick wave.
Within about thirty seconds after I showed up, Ryan, one of the four others broke into some long-forgotten explanation of one of Marshall Mcuhen’s theories and just like that, it was like the six of us had been friends or at least classmates, for years.
And much like Sarah had promised, the half-dozen of us split time between studying and talking about non-journalism subjects. It seemed that just about any topic could be broken off into a sort of “introduction” to each other.
It was late when the study group broke up for the evening, the time passing almost in an instant or so it seemed. We had gotten on a roll and it just went from there.
I purposely took my time collecting my things so that I was the last person to leave. As I took my leave, however, I stopped in the doorway and turned back towards Sarah, who was putting one of her textbooks in her backpack, prepping for tomorrow, I assumed.
“Hey, Sarah,” I began, waiting only for her to look up before continuing, “Thanks for inviting me.”
She smiled and shrugged, “No problem. I kinda noticed that you were just sitting there in the hallway studying and, like I said, I figured we could use all the help we could get.”
“You guys do this often?”
“No, this was actually a first,” she replied, “but I kinda get the impression that it may not be the last. Group kinda had a good dynamic about it, don’t you think?”
Nodding, trying to come off as being as introspective as I could, I replied “Yeah.”
“A good dynamic about it.” That sounded about right in describing it.
CHAPTER TWO
FOUR MONTHS LATER
As it turned out, Sarah was right about the good dynamic of the group. That night wasn’t the last time that the six of us got together. At first, it was just the same study group situation as that first night. We got together the night before any major tests to quiz each other and discuss what we thought were the important points going into the test. After a while, somebody suggested getting together on Wednesday nights for a kind of rap session about different topics that we were discussing in class or to exchange ideas for term papers, seminars, etc.
Things stayed like that, status quo, for a couple of months, through the first set of exams and Christmas break. For a few weeks, it was all such a shock to my system. If I included a couple of high school buddies from back home, I actually had more friends than I could count on one hand, a real first for me. The days and weeks seemed to just fly by. My biggest fear was that I would flunk out and have to go home, leaving these new friends behind.
And your second biggest fear was that all of this was going to turn out to be a dream and you’d find yourself back in high school, condemned back to your life of isolation and loneliness.
Christmas came and went and with it came the news that I had passed all my exams….
In some cases, barely.
…and course, and would be welcomed back to McCallum College for the new semester. When I returned to the residence, I noticed more than a few empty rooms. Some people hadn’t been so lucky.
Lugging all the laundry I had taken home for the holidays left me damning my luck for living so far away from the main entrance. No small part of me was relieved to see that Sarah’s dorm room was open, and I could hear music playing from inside. I had always pegged Sarah as THE top student in our course so I hadn’t really expected she would flunk out like so many others. Still…
You figured the Morrison curse might have skipped you and nailed her, like some weird twist of fate might have caused her to screw up royally on the finals?
As stupid as it might sound, it was something like that. It was strange because I would have thought that I would have been content to just spend the few hours I had before turning in for the night in my room getting unpacked and maybe reading or something. Instead, once I knew that Sarah was back in the residence, I just dumped my suitcase in my room, gave the ol’ homestead the once over and headed down the hall to Sarah’s room.
“Emmett!” she exclaimed as soon as she saw me poke my head in her doorway.
“Hey,” I replied, “I just got in and noticed you were already back so I thought I’d stop by and say ‘hello’!”
“It’s good to see you. I got back this afternoon,” she explained.
Now that I knew that Sarah was back, I decided I should probably ask if our group had suffered any casualties. As much as I liked the rest of our group, I found myself being immensely relieved at being reassured that Sarah was still with us, to the point where any other absences wouldn’t really make a difference to me.
Of course, I couldn’t really say that. Part of me really didn’t know how I felt at that point. I mean, I knew I liked Sarah but…
You didn’t know you wanted to see her naked?
I was going to be more diplomatic than that and say I didn’t know I LIKED her.
“Have you seen any of the others?” I asked.
Sarah thought for a moment, mentally running down a checklist of everyone else in the group and their whereabouts.
“Rachelle and Michael came back about an hour or so ago but they went to get groceries. Don e-mailed me at home about a week ago saying he couldn’t get a ride back until tomorrow morning, so we probably won’t see him until after lunch…and Ryan beat us all back. He came in yesterday morning and is camped out in his room watching the new DVD player he got for Christmas. If you’re interested in watching the first two seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, head over to Ryan’s.”
“Hmm…” I replied, making a show of pretending to think it over, “I think I’ll pass.”
Sarah laughed.“I was tempted, but I have stuff here to do,” she informed me. “Still, nice to see that all of us made it through exams.”
At that, she lowered her voice, and so I stepped into her room to hear her better. “There were a lot that didn’t. I heard someone in A Hall claim that about a quarter of the incoming freshmen…that’s in every program, not just journalism, but a quarter of incoming freshmen will NOT be returning.”
The figure, whether it was an estimate, rumour or fact, was pretty staggering. I gave my best “that takes me aback” look and whistled in astonishment.
Meanwhile, you were thinking that it was better them than you!
Damn right!
Sarah motioned towards the room next to hers.
“Remember Mr. Heavy Metal guy who liked everyone to listen to his Metallica albums every night? GONE! I guess he knew it even before exams started and was just killing time until they told him that he wasn’t going to be welcomed back,” she explained. “I just hope whoever gets his room will have better musical taste.”
Just then, Ryan, having torn himself away from Buffy, came sauntering down the hall.
“Emmett, how goes?” he yelled. I turned, realizing that everyone within shouting distance now knew my name if they hadn’t already.
“Ryan, how was the break?” I told him, shaking his offered hand.
“Well, I made it back here in one piece,” he replied, slightly shrugging his shoulders like he was slightly surprised at that fact. “Hey, you guys up for doing a little bar-hopping? One of the guys in my hall says that there’s some band playing at the Golden Spit that’s supposed to be pretty good.”
I was about to beg off when I heard Sarah reply.
“Yeah, I heard something about that. What the hell? When Rachel and Michael get back, I’ll see if they’re up for joining us.”
Then she turned her head just slightly, so that she focused on me instead of Ryan. “What do you think, Emmett, you up for a ‘night on the town’?”
I had never been to a bar before. Never really wanted to go. I barely drank and the image I had of bars was some loud, dark, smoky den of wall-to-wall people where you couldn’t talk or think or move. And I had always had this image that the moment I walked in, everyone would stop and stare at me and I wouldn’t get two feet inside the door before someone called me a dork and demanded to know what I thought I was doing there.
Hey, that imagery was some of my best work. SIGH! I can be so good when I want to be. It’s a gift.
And yet, within an instance of Sarah asking me if I wanted to come along on this “group outing”, I heard myself, as nonchalantly as I could, telling her that sounded like a good idea.
And so I went, and while I’m sure someone probably saw me and called me a dork, the music from the band (I don’t think I ever found out their name and have long forgotten it anyways) drowned them out long before I ever heard them. The bar was loud and smoky and dark, and there were a lot of people there but it wasn’t too bad. And I felt comfortable being around Sarah. She made me feel as if I belonged.
And you figured the more you hung out with her at these bars, the more likely you’d both get drunk and end up in bed together.
WRONG!
RIGHT!
Eventually, the six of us began going out to the clubs on Friday nights together. Rachelle and Michael had been a couple long before we came together, even as a study group, and Ryan and Don both had girlfriends back home (although sometimes the girlfriends came up on weekends and joined us on our treks to bars or wherever). That left Sarah and I kinda lumped in together.
What’s weird is that, at the time, I never really had any kind of inkling of the feelings that I would develop towards her.
Oh, screw that, Emmett, you wanted to nail her from the moment you saw her in that hallway.
I thin you’re over-reacting, Will. I don’t think that I was lusting after Sarah as early as all that. I will admit to giving her a once-over glance and thinking that she was pretty cute. However, that was pretty much the last time I thought of her romantically for the first three years of our relationship.
Lie to the poor slob who’s reading this confessional why don’t you? What about all those times you two ended up talking until two in the morning after you came back from those bars?
Yes, TALKING! That’s what friends do! Sarah and I always came back keyed up from being at those clubs and weren’t ready to call it a night, so we would go back to her room and talk.
Okay, so what about all those times you’d go back to your dorm room and lie awake for two or three hours imagining about what would happen if your relationship ended up in the very place you SO wanted it to go?
Okay, I can admit that. I mean, it was three or four in the morning. My mind took me to weird places that, with the right amount of sleep or at a decent hour, it never would have even approached.
Ah, but it not only approached, it went far and beyond where it was supposed to stop. I mean, come on, remember that night you imagined every single sordid sadistic detail of the two of you fuc…
STOP!
Yes, I remember. It happened one time … ONE TIME … and it’s an image I’d kind of like to forget, to pop into the recycle bin of my brain and hit ‘DELETE”.
I wish the hell you’d stop bringing it up.
Okay, buddy-boy, why don’t we move on to something else?
Thank you.
Anyways, since Will was nice enough to bring it up, I guess it might not be such a bad idea to discuss the many nights that I found myself sitting on the desk in Sarah’s dorm room, as Sarah lay on her bed…fully clothed I must jump in with before Will decides to get in a snide remark…
What snide remark? I’m just here listening to your story.
Anyways, the two of us would hang out in Sarah’s dorm room, talking about anything…movies, classes, life in general. Unspoken, our conversations would follow a loose and general pattern. We’d start out talking about what we might have, had we ever really come out and discussed it, termed “safe topics”. As I said, stuff like whatever movie we’d checked out on the weekend or the Led Zeppelin album I had picked up at the used record store downtown that I had started to frequent or whatever our professors had been trying to teach us in class that day. Basically any topic that, if overheard, wouldn’t lead to bitter embarrassment for either of both of us.
I can’t speak for Sarah but I know there were times when the clock couldn’t move fast enough towards the unofficial cut-off point of 11:30, when most people, at least those who wanted to get a full-night’s sleep and be in somewhat decent shape in the morning, started to head off to bed.
It was a weird phenomenon. At 11:00, the dorm would be pandemonium personified, with stereos blasting, people running up and down the halls screaming, all sorts of strange noises emanating from behind closed dormitory doors, food fights, shaving cream pranks, even the odd physical fist fight…but in twenty minutes to a half-hour later, the place would be quiet. Not the pin drop quiet, I mean, with 300 students living under one roof, there was bound to be noise: the evening news on the television from the common room, someone heading to the bathrooms to relieve themselves before heading to bed, even people just chatting like Sarah and I…but the difference was just incredible.
By 11:30 things had died down enough that Sarah would usually get up and partially close her door, so we could go on talking without disturbing anyone or, more importantly, without anyone disturbing us. Sarah would sit on the edge of her bed. I would take the chair at her desk and we would share cold pizza and our thoughts.
It was that closing of the door that signaled a different chapter in our nightly talks, and the one that I always preferred. Not that chatting with Sarah about the “safe topics” wasn’t fun, but once the midnight hour came and went, we ventured into some uncharted territory at times.
Maybe it was the late hour. Maybe we were tired and not completely in control of our inhibitions, but Sarah and I seemed to talk about things with each other that we might never have said to anyone else at any other time.
“How often do you think about death?” Sarah asked me during one of these midnight rap sessions.
The questions took me aback at first. By this time, our late night chats had become if not quite a routine, then frequent enough that I knew what I might be getting myself into, and yet was something I looked forward to, anticipated. The topics had ranged anywhere from religion to politics to relationships, nothing seemed taboo or out of breadth of possibility.
And yet, a question about how often I thought about death left me speechless, at least for a few moments. At the time, Death wasn’t something I thought about on a regular basis. A fleeting moment here and there, perhaps, when I watched a movie where the main character bought the farm. Certainly not with the rate that I would in later years, when death became almost something to be looked forward to, as a way of escaping the harshness and fruitlessness of reality.
And death didn’t exactly seem to be a topic that I ever figured that Sarah would spend a lot of time contemplating either.
It was one of the few times that I could ever hear Will urging me to do something, say something, rather than sit there gaping like some group-home idiot.
I shrugged, finally. I had no clue how to answer Sarah’s question so I just kinda went with the first thing that jumped into my mind.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
A sure-fire winner of a response if there ever was one. How impressed must Sarah have been to bear witness to your genius?
“I mean, I guess I’m like a lot of people. I know it’s coming, it’s out there. I mean, I’m not naïve to think that I’m immortal or that I’m 100-per cent guaranteed to live to a ripe old age, but so much about life is uncertain and so why should death be any different?”
Eh. Not a half-bad way to try and salvage the horrible start.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, might be the closest to an actual compliment that I’ll ever get from my buddy, Will. However, at that point, my interests lay with what Sarah thought of my answer.
She didn’t say anything at first, which kind of worried me. I wasn’t sure how to take that, whether she was mentally composing her own reply to my reply or whether she was so disgusted by my lack of a thought-out answer that she was gearing up to rake me over the coals for it.
Instead, she waved it all away.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be discussing stuff like this,” she said. “It’s just that…well, remember about three weeks ago when my Great-Aunt Carol died?”
I nodded, indicating that I remembered.
“It’s weird because when I had heard she had died, I wasn’t really broken up over it,” she continued, “I mean, it was sad but the woman was something like 87, 88, something like that. I hadn’t seen her since I was six and she came over for Christmas or something. All I remember is that ‘Viva Las Vegas’ was on and she said she liked Elvis movies. That’s it…that’s my entire memory of her.”
I laughed at the “Viva Las Vegas” reference, which caused Sarah to stop her commentary and laugh as well. At first, I felt bad for laughing at her story about her dead great-aunt but the guilty feeling soon passed.
“I know, it’s silly but that’s the one memory I have of her,” Sarah explained, her laugh continuing for a moment before fading, “So, I’m at the funeral and all my relatives, my parents, all my other aunts and uncles and even some of my cousins not to mention all her old bitty friends, they’re all combining their efforts for this big-ass eulogy. I swear, I’ll bet the funeral lasted for like an hour and a half, all these people talking about all the things my great-aunt Carol did in her life and all the people whose lives she touched and all this…and it got me to thinking. What are people going to say when I die? How many people are going to be moved enough to stand up and talk about my life and what I meant to them…and I realized that death is almost like a deadline. You only have so much time to accomplish things and make your mark because when you die, you’re judged in large part by what other people have to say about you based on your life’s actions.”
She paused for a moment, then laughed off her recent statements. She didn’t, however, proceed to immediately change the conversation, trying to steer it back towards a safer subject.
“I don’t know. I guess, I just started thinking about life and death and how I might be remembered.”
Our conversations never approached that level of depth or the topic of mortality after that night, and yet it is one of the nights that I have thought about the most in the years since graduation. No matter what else we talked about, none of the topics ever did as much to give me the impression that the relationship between Sarah and I was on a much higher plane than friendship, the type that existed between either of us and the rest of the study group that quickly had grown into a tight-knit circle of friends.
Sarah’s discussion of her great-aunt’s funeral and the feelings and thoughts that had arisen in her during and after the event made me believe that she saw something in me and her relationship with me that she didn’t see in her friendships with any of the other.
Soooo…when do you recall the time that you started kissing and the next thing you know, they cut to the two of you waking up in bed together the next morning?
Well, I hate to disappoint you Will, bsut I can’t very well recall something that never happened.
That’s not what the scuttlebutt around the Residence was.
Yeah, I know. Believe me, I had enough people tell me, mostly in jest, that there were rumours circulating that Sarah and I were sleeping together. I never talked to Sarah about those rumours, although she knew, she had to have known. She was more active in the general social scene around the Residence than I ever was, and therefore most certainly had many more conversations with scores more people than I ever did. The topic must have come up at some point. If and when it did, however, she never told me about it, just like I never told her when someone dropped the hint in my direction.
Through it all, no matter how loud the whispers got or how mean-spirited the jokes became, never once did it enter our minds to put an end to these late-night chats. I guess neither of us wanted to bow down to peer pressure.
The fact of the matter was that we never so much as kissed.
It’s an old adage but it fits here: Time flies while you’re having fun. The balance of the two years I spent with Sarah at McCallum College seems like so much of a blur to me now. One moment I looked up and there she was, asking me to join her impromptu study group…the next there she was, walking proudly across the stage at graduation.
Yeah, she was looking hot in that black gown! I wonder if she was wearing any panties. Not that you’d know.
Once again, Will, you manage to take the truth in any situation and warp it so we’re left with something disgusting and putrid. And while Will may have twisted how I was feeling, Sarah was looking so beautiful in her graduation gown. My Mom took pictures of just about every person I knew in college (and a few that I didn’t so I’m not sure if she took pictures of everyone whose name sounded familiar or what) and I have the photo in an album at home.
Sarah had graduated with honors…
And didn’t you have to bust your ass just as hard to graduate bottom of your class and on academic probation?
Thanks for bringing that up, Will. Heaven forbid we should leave out any fact that puts me in a bad light. Hey, at least I graduated.
Yeah, and you should be so proud of how much that your diploma ended up meaning to you in your later years, as we’ll find out in future chapters, I’m sure.
That was the future, Will. All the mediocrity of my adult life was still to come. Nothing had been written in the great book of my personal history. At that point, on that hot June day, with every one of my classmates (those that didn’t drop out along the way, at least) in attendance, everything looked possible. I think that might have been the pinnacle of my life. I had a college diploma in my hand, I had good friends all around me, my parents were looking on, very proud. It was like I had changed so much in the two years since I left high school, it might as well have been in another life.
And I didn’t even hear so much as a peep from you that day, did I, Will? I mean, where were you on that Graduation Day, huh? I mean, you could have swooped in and told me how this chapter of my life was over, how there was this big scary world out there and I had no clue what I was going to do with the rest of my life?
I’d snagged an invite to the bitchin’ party back at the Residence (the one you DIDN’T get invited to) and decided to head over early and scope the place out, see what hot babes were gonna be there, load up on all the free brew.
Okay, I’m kidding. Actually,, I decided to be an asshole and not forewarn you about any of that! Besides, originally I had planned on doing all of that and more but that keynote speaker the college got put me to sleep. I mean, he kept going on and on and on about how we were at the crossroads of our life and we held the future in our hands and today was the first step in a long road of accomplishment and how our education was the key to our success and yada yada yada. I swear to God, if there is a website out there now where you can download generic, run of the mill graduation speeches, his speech is probably there, along with his award for most students lulled into a coma during a single speech.
I can’t argue with you there. All I remember is watching Sarah get her diploma…well that and having to go to the bathroom really bad.
Sorry, bud, I dropped the ball on that one. Had I been awake and not on “vacation”, I would have reminded you not to drink that third glass of water before you left for the ceremony.
Before I knew it, though, it was all over. The ceremony ended. Most of the newly graduated made a bee-line for the nearest exit, ready and willing and able to get the hell out of Dodge and away from McCallum College. I guess they figured they had spent enough time in college, it was time to move on.
Too bad you didn’t follow their lead, moving on from that whole experience would have been the best thing for you in the long run.
The rest of us remained there, mingling with our now former classmates, saying our goodbyes and taking one last look at the old place.
And some of you couldn’t move because your legs had gone to sleep from sitting so long.
And there were some I saw, as I looked around, who just kinda stood there, dazed and confused, like they were waiting for something to happen.. Like they were waiting for that one last thing that their professors to come up and impart one last bit of wisdom before they were sent off to fend for themselves. I even saw one or two students, male and female, standing there, holding onto their caps for dear life, crying. As if they’d just been told a loved one had died.
They knew, Emmett. They knew this was the end.
We all knew it was the end.
No, I mean, they KNEW it was THE End, as in the Jim Morrison/Apocolypse Now “The End”.
As in “This is the end, of our elaborate plans, the End!” Maybe somewhere, someone was playing that album at such a high frequency that only a select, lucky few got to hear it and understand what was going on.
They knew that as the last speaker walked away from the podium, as the last classmate walked out of the auditorium, that this was the end. That their perfect little un-real world of higher education was over. That the days of keg-parties and all-night cram sessions and lectures on the history of medicine in Ancient Egypt and John Hughes movie marathons in the dorm were over. Gone was the time that all of life’s problems could be solved as long as you kept your class schedule straight.
It was the end, and that fact had just slapped them in the face. And maybe they were the lucky ones, who got it dumped on them that afternoon. They grieved, they accepted, they moved on.
And what about you, Emmett? What did you do?
I guess I was like the rest of them. I searched the crowd until I found my parents. My Mom wiping away a tear while my Dad waved like I’d just won the Daytona 500. I waved back, a little more conservatively. As I turned, I noticed that Sarah was talking to Rachelle and so I decided to make my way over to them.
By the time I reached Sarah, Rachelle had left. I felt a pang of disappointment that I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to her, that a member of that study group that evolved in a tight-night group of friends had made her exit without me giving her a formal farewell.
Rachelle was one of the smart ones. College was over and so was your chapter in her life. Once that last exam was done, you were a part of her past that she didn’t want to remember any more, so the less interaction she had with you, the better.
Then explain why she was saying goodbye to Sarah.
Well, see that was because Sarah was in a different category than you were. Rochelle knew Sarah was in a different league as in “Way Outta Yours.” But seriously, Rochelle knew that Sarah was going to accomplish something with her life and figured why not start networking now? As for you, on the other hand, Rochelle sensed, as a great many did, that you weren’t going to be one of those people that she’d really want hanging around on the fringes of her life. She didn’t want you popping up every year or so, talking about “the old days” in college and boring her with your lame-ass whining about working pointless, go-nowhere, minimum wage retail jobs or, worse yet, embarrassing her in front of her new, upperly mobile, six-figure salary-earning friends and associates.
Well, none of that had occurred to me as yet, and so I remember making a mental note to write her a quick letter in a few weeks to ask her how she was doing in post-college life.
Which she never replied to, if I remember correctly. Oh well, you’re letter-to-reply ratio in the post-graduate world was 1 in 100, was it not? Not the best return on all those cards and stamps.
When Sarah saw me, she almost screamed “We made it, Emmett!” as she threw her arms around me. “We graduated!” I hugged her right back, hoping that maybe my Mom had one last shot in her camera and was using it right then and there. I wanted this moment, this final moment of college, with me and my best friend, embracing, captured forever.
As it turns out, my Mom had lost me in the gradually dispersing crowd and hadn’t thought to keep her camera handy in any case. Still, I have the image burned into my memory. It felt so right, being there, with her in my arms, although I didn’t realize why until much later.
Damn good thing you were able to keep yourself in check. Wouldn’t have been exactly the most appropriate thing to do if you had ended up throwing yourself at her in the middle of a semi-packed auditorium.
How about getting lost, Will? Sex was the last thing on my mind at that point. I have to be honest, it felt really good just being there, holding her as we celebrated our mutual accomplishments.
Well, good thing sex was the LAST thing on your mind (you’re a guy, sex is never the LAST thing on your mind, admit it you wuss!) because wouldn’t it have made quite the send off if you’d gotten a hard-on at that particular moment.
You’re a perv, Will.
No, actually, you’re the perv, Emmett. I’m just taking your inner-most thoughts and letting you know about them.
But there I was, my arms around maybe the best friend I’d ever had. We were both so happy at that one moment. I could hear the voices of other people around us, could feel them walking past, and yet, it was like nothing else existed except this hug I was sharing with Sarah. I never wanted to let her go.
Maybe she didn’t either. When we finally parted, there was a glistening in the corner of her eyes. She tapped a finger against them, wanting to wipe away whatever was there quickly, without too big of a show.
“Damn it!” she said, “I am going to miss this place…and everyone I’ve met here.”
I laughed and replied “Hell, Sarah, college may be over, but the friendships will keep on keeping on.”
“Keep on keeping on?” When did you graduate? 1976?
.
When I said that, Sarah had been looking around the auditorium, as if she wanted to take on last look, to burn the images of this place into her memory. She turned back to look at me and then looked away, like she had something she didn’t want to say, instead just said, “Yeah, I guess.”
Maybe she heard the Doors. Even if she didn’t, she knew it then, too. She knew it was the end.
But it wasn’t.
Oh, wasn’t it? You really mean to sit there and b-s me that your life didn’t change one iota?
Well, of course, it changed. I mean, college was over. Studies were at an end and it was time to venture out into the “real world”.
Ah yes. The “Real World”! Remember, back in the day, when you used to get so pissed off at people referring to that “real world”?
Yeah, like the world I’d been living in for the two years wasn’t “real.” Funny, I REALLY had to get up every morning and REALLY go to class and, if I wanted to get a decent mark at all, I REALLY had to study, write REAL papers, take REAL exams, etc, etc. Are you getting the point there, Will?
Oh, I get your point. The problem was that compared to what was to come, you were living in a fantasy world. Oh sure, you had all these trivial little concerns that you got stressed out over. But as bad as staying up until one o’clock to cram for an exam, it was nothing compared to what was awaiting you once you left your safe little haven of college.
See, the reason why they call it the REAL WORLD is that you REALLY had to face the rest of your life instead of just sitting around your dorm room, fantacizing what it is going to be like. How you’ll get the perfect job the first time out, how you’ll meet the girl of your dreams and a couple of years later you’d be settled in a nice home with a wife and kids and a successful career.
Well, the REAL WORLD wasn’t quite like that, was it Emmett?
Sigh!
CHAPTER THREE
A YEAR AGO
J.Q. Publik’s is one of those noisy upscale establishments that can’t decide if it’s a bar or a restaurant. You know the type, the one with sports memorabilia and canoes and mooseheads on the walls, the radio turned to some local Top 40 station and then cranked full blast. And there’s always that fine line they tread between being serious and becoming a parody of itself.
I hate these places.
I hate the fact that exist for no other reason than to let middle-aged ex-jocks-turned-execs sit around for three-hours that they can write off as a “business lunch” by making one semi-related comment about their job in between talking about yesterday’s hockey game or how they got laid last night.
I hate spending ten bucks on a plate full of burnt nachos that I’ll eat maybe a quarter of and then feel like an idiot as I nibble away on the rest for the duration of the meal.
I hate the fact that I have to listen to whatever over-played Top 40 hit that will be all the rage for all of ten minutes and having to repeat my end of the conversation three times in the hopes that I’ll be heard over the music.
I hate sitting in a booth in jeans and a shirt and looking like I should be coming in the service entrance to collect the garbage next to these high-paid morons in their name-brand suits that probably cost more than I’ll make this decade. Not to mention I hate having to pretend I don’t see the not-overly-subtle glances and the smirks on their faces, and pretend I don’t hear the not-quite whispered comments about the dork sitting by himself.
And yet here I am sitting in this loud, obnoxious over-priced bar/restaurant, waiting for Sarah to show up. She’s always late to these things and I’m always early, like I’m afraid that this will be the one time she’ll be on time and get pissed off and leave if I’m not right there waiting when she shows up.
And so I here I still sit, sipping my Coke and trying not to be too obvious about glancing at the clock on the wall on the off-chance that’s the moment she decides to make her appearance.
You know, Emmett, you need friends…well, you need friends period, but you need friends who know how to damn well tell time.
Good ol’ Will. I can always count on him to keep me company, especially in those lonely, nervous moments before Sarah shows up. Despite that last comment, however, Will’s been mostly quiet for the duration of my wait here at the J.Q.’s so I let the comment pass. Of course, since they’ve been blaring Avril Lavigne and Michelle Branch tunes since I got here, I may just have not heard anything else he’s had to say.
Just as I’m finished my first Coke, Sarah shows.
I’ll give you the reader’s digest of what’s happened to the both of us over the past two years since graduation. Sarah used her college diploma to get a good entry-level job at a marketing company. She got promoted a couple of times and now she’s got some fancy title, a great health care plan, an office she says is too small but beats none at all. Her job consists of creating advertising campaigns for multi-million dollar companies.
As for me, I used my diploma to get a job with one of those million-dollar companies: Video Emporium. I’ve worked there a year and a half and have never been promoted from my job, which has the impressive title of “Customer Service Associate”. I get minimum wage, no health care, no paid vacation, no office and my job consists of getting told by customers that their “****ing video wasn’t late so screw your late charges” before they threaten to call Head Office if I don’t rescind the charges immediately.
And so here we sit. Sarah taking her paid lunch hour to sit in this restaurant with me, who’s killing time before I work the night shift.
“Hey!” I say. “How’s it goin’?”
She smiles as she sits down, but it’s one of those smiles that you can tell has been pasted on. “Oh…you know…It’s going,” she says, nodding
****, I say to myself, or to Will, or to whichever one of us is listening. Something’s wrong and I wonder if I have the guts to ask what.
Nah, you’ll just wimp out and let me spend the duration of this…what is it a date?…
It’s not a date, Will. It’s two friends having a bite to eat and catching up on whatever’s going on in our respective lives.
…letting me fill your heads on how whatever is bothering Sarah is going to end up being your fault.
Or maybe I could just enthrall you with my theory that Sarah would rather be anywhere in the universe, Bosnia, Iraq, El Salvador, than sitting in this restaurant and having to put up with your pitiful attempts at witty banter and long, uncomfortable silences.
For once I’m thankful that the waitress sees Sarah’s arrival and finally decides to come over and take our order. Sure, I’ve been sitting here for about ten minutes having to nurse one glass of Coke and she never came within earshot but now that Sarah’s here, she makes a beeline for me. Whatever. The waitress’s arrival means that I don’t have to pick up any conversation save to order.
Even as Sarah orders, she sounds like she’s distracted, as if she’s making her order from memory, which may well be. She and I have been here enough times and she, like me, usually orders the same thing. Still, Sarah doesn’t look any less troubled than she did when she sat down across from me so I internally sigh and decide that means I have to find out what’s wrong. I decide to pick a safe reason and dig in.
“So, how’s work going?” I ask, hoping that it’s just a rough day at the office.
She shrugs, indifferently. “It’s okay. Busy, busy, busy. You know the way things are.”
Since I work in retail and would kill for an office job that guarantees me minimal human contact and weekends and evenings off, her definition of busy and mine are drastically different. Normally I might have called her on it and launched into the usual “My job sucks more than your job sucks” rants that highlight our conversations over lunch…but not today. There was something else bothering her, I could feel it but just couldn’t identify it.
Instead I just nod.
“How ‘bout yourself…how’s the video store treating you?” she asks, like she’s reading some script. I realize that she really doesn’t give a **** what kind of answer I give her. She isn’t really asking me, just trying to make conversation as if getting me to talk about my situation would somehow throw me off the trail of what was going on with her. Maybe, I ponder for a moment, she just doesn’t’ want to talk and figures letting me ramble on about stupid customers will kill some time until she can get the heck out of Dodge.
Instead, it’s time it’s my turn to shrug.
“Same old, same old,” I reply. Normally, I have a tendency, at least when I’m around Sarah, to babble on about whatever trivial discomfort I’m dealing with at work, but today I want Sarah to tell me what’s on her mind.
Wait a minute, back up a second! “Trivial discomfort”?!?! Oh, come on, man, you can’t go five minutes without adding something else to that grand unwritten list of yours entitled “Eighteen Million Reasons Why I Hate My Job”.
Hey, since you’ve got a captive audience (those readers who haven’t already tossed this book in the trash, muttering “What A Loser!”) why don’t you fill us in on how much that diploma came in handy after graduation?
Later, Will, this isn’t the time nor the place!
Yeah, you’re right. For once I’ll agree with you. I mean, Sarah is probably upset because she got passed over for some promotion. Forget the fact that she’s probably making more on her paid lunch than you will all week running your ass off for people who treat you like crap in return.
I look over at Sarah, watched her run her finger over the lip of her glass over and over again. It’s weird to watch her, watch her struggle with how to say whatever it was she has to say. It’s like seeing the dents in her armour for the first time.
I struggle, as I always do, to find something to say. And, as usual, nothing seems to come to mind. It’s strange, with Sarah as it is with a lot of people, no matter how many topics of conversation I can dream up when I’m walking home after meeting up with them, my mind was blank when it came to the actual conversation.
You know, you really start taking notes. You know, have a little pad in your pocket and every time something noteworthy happens, you write it down.
Thanks, Will. I’ll make a note of that. I don’t know why but the only thing that I could come up was…
“I visited Ryan’s website the other day,” I say. “You should check out some of the artwork he’s been doing. I guess he’s kinda tinkering with doing a graphic novel and he’s got some of the pictures up on the site.”
“Oh yeah,” she replies. “I keep meaning to check that out but I never have a chance. Usually when I’m on the computer, it’s something for work, so there’s always something more pressing.”
It was a bull**** conversation. I hadn’t heard from Ryan in nearly a year. My e-mails to him went unanswered and he never seemed to be home when I called him. Still, something drew me to his website every few days, to check out his blog and whatever else he had posted.
Right now, that website was at least serving as a topic of conversation. Something to keep us talking while I find either a more interesting subject or a way to get Sarah to open up to me about whatever it is that’s bothering her.
“Remind me,” I tell her, “and I’ll send you the URL if you need it.”
She nods, silently agreeing to do just that, I must assume. After that, nothing is said for several long minutes. The silence is uncomfortable and we both feel it. My mind has gone blank again. A few annoyingly stupid little incidents from work pop into mind but they are all “you had to be there” kind of stories. I decide, however, to keep them in reserve, and if we’re still kinda stuck in this silent limbo for another minute or two, I might have to get desperate and use them.
I got nothing.
There seemed to be nothing I can say that might so much as jumpstart the conversation much less take it in some direction where Sarah will feel more at ease, maybe put whatever was bothering behind her. For a moment, I even take note of whatever bubblegum pop song is playing at high decibels in hopes I can use that as a conversation starter, but it’s one of those rare times where they’ve played something either new or at least original and I can’t place the artist.
And even as I’m pondering using my ignorance of said artist, I open my mouth and out comes…
“Are you doing all right?”
YOU STUPID MORON!
The five words are out there before I can stop them. I wonder perhaps if Will had spoken them and for the first time, after all the stuff he had spewed at me were finally being heard by the outside world.
Don’t blame me for this one.
I realize that it had been me who asked the question. And, as Sarah looks up at me, I feel like a complete asshole, like I‘ve gone and hit the gas and sent us down a road neither of us wanted to be on.
You should have just kept your fat trap shut!
I swear to God, I actually find myself nodding at Will’s remark. A brief nod to someone no one else can see but me that I can no more control than the question I have just asked and wish I could take back, like I could lift my magical life remote and rewind and then tape something else over it.
I feel so bad that I’ve allowed this question to escape my lips that I am almost tempted to follow it up with an apology to Sarah.
“My God, Sarah,” I can all but hear myself saying, “I am so, so, so, sorry. I have no right to ask you that question.”
I watch Sarah now, expecting her to scream something at me for daring to ask what was wrong, for forcing her hand, for making her open up her wounds and show the world what has happened.
Instead, her expression changes, like for one brief split second she is actually relieved that I have asked the question. Maybe she really wants an opening, a way to start this topic of conversation. Maybe she DOES want to take this road we were now on, but just didn’t want to be the one to send us in this direction.
“Yeah…yeah, I am actually,” she says, sounding more and more like the Sarah I have come to know and…love?… (wait, LOVE? Where did that come from?) with every passing syllable. “Actually, I’m better than OK, I’m really happy right now…it’s just that…”
For a brief moment, as she begins her response. I’m still trying to figure out why I would refer to “the Sarah I have come to know and love”. Will is equally as flabberghasted as I am.
Love? Where the hell is that coming from? What do you mean, “the Sarah you know and love”? I mean, you’ve known her for four years now so that much I can explain away, but love…I mean… when did you start to…wait a minute…
That’s as far as Will gets because he suddenly realizes where Sarah is going with this conversation of hers. He clues me in right away.
Remember that remote I was talking about a couple of paragraphs ago. Instead of rewinding, it was like Will has fast-forwarded to see how things turned out and then has decided to give me the heads up because as she speaks, I somehow know what is coming. Maybe it’s not so much like fast-forwarding as it was like watching a movie that’s such a cliché that you can see what’s coming.
And I can see what’s coming, as sure as if I had somehow written the screenplay for this movie that’s called “My Life”. I can almost see the next three words come tumbling out of her mouth. It was all I can do, some wild test of will-power not to say them along with her.
“…I’ve met somebody.”
My stomach lurches. For a moment I have this wild paranoid idea that the cooking staff at J.Q.’s had decided to sneak some rat poison or chlorine or whatever into my clubhouse…or that the mayonnaise they used must have an expiry date from back in the Carter Administration.
Or maybe it is something else altogether.
If Sarah is noticing my sudden ill-feeling, that would mean she was paying attention to me. Instead, she’s too busy telling me all about this latest development to notice. The admission that she has “met somebody” is like opening the floodgates and letting the relief wash over her and with it, all the details are rushing out with it.
As I’m busy fighting down the nausea, successfully I can thankfully add, I am watching Sarah from across the table, and I notice that this is a different kind of Sarah than I have ever seen before. She has always been quick to laugh, even at the stupid, moronic jokes that I make at my own expense but suddenly it’s like the roof of this restaurant has been lifted away and the sun is shining down just on her.
“You remember Brad, for the Christmas party?” she asks
I remember “A Brad” from the Christmas party.
Oh yeah…that dickhead!
Brad came off as one of those slick bastards you see on television that manages to charm everyone in the room, but that the viewer at home knows is an evil, conniving son-of-a-bitch that you just want to see get theirs in the end.
Anyways, Sarah knew this Brad from the office and he showed up, only semi-invited from what I could tell, to her Christmas party and proceeded to try and schmooze every higher-up in the place and any of the eligible ladies in attendance, mostly by trying to be the life of the party and making a bunch of office in-jokes that I didn’t find all that funny, but then I didn’t know the circumstances. After a while, he succeeded in doing two things: coming off as the life of the party, just as he had set out to do, and bore the living **** right out of me, which he probably didn’t give a damn about.
Now, I will freely admit that I didn’t follow him around the entire night to hear every conversation he had at the party but whenever he was anywhere near me, out came “Hey, remember that time that” followed by some story that embarrassed the hell out of the subject of whatever usually crude tale that Brad decided to regale us with.
From what I could gather, he managed to entertain about ninety percent of the people at this shin dig at the expence of the other ten percent. The 90 percent seemed to think this guy was the biggest laugh riot they’d ever met, but certainly, this can’t be THE Brad, this white bread obnoxious jerk can’t be THE Someone. Can he?
That dickhead?
Meanwhile, Sarah is still telling me all about the genesis of their relationship.
“I don’t know really how it happened. I mean, he started chatting me up at the office. You know, the water cooler type of conversation and then out of the blue he asked me out to dinner. I was kinda taken aback because it had been awhile since anyone had really asked me out like that.”
Uh hello, McFly? Hasn’t there been a certain someone who’s taken you to lunch at least once a month for the past couple of years? Hello?
Will as Biff from Back to the Future? Actually, the actor who played Biff Tannen would have been great casting for this Brad guy. But then I didn’t know him that well. Other than nodding in my direction when Sarah had made the introductions, he hadn’t really acknowledged my existence. Still, I always got the impression that had if I had worked with the guy, he would have had a field day that night at my expense.
“So, he showed you a good time, did he?” I ask, immediately regretting my choice of words.
Sarah laughs, leaning over to playfully slap my shoulder. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands in mock annoyance. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
I shake my head, suddenly finding myself not wanting to be in the usual joking mood I normally am in when I was around Sarah. “I meant, did he treat you right?” I respond, trying to force some levity into my voice, apparently with some success since Sarah doesn’t seem to notice anything.
Instead she nodded, “Oh yeah. he’s great. He’s funny; he’s smart. He took me to Luigi’s, you know, that little Italian place downtown.”
I had no clue what little Italian place downtown, but then this place was as about as upscale as a place as I ever went to. I might know where the McDonalds downtown was, but that was about it.
“He managed to order the entire dinner, from salad to desert in fluent Italian, but I think he did that just to show off, you know, impress me,” she tells me, as if it was some big secret that she’s doing me a favour by letting me in on. “He was telling me that he learned quite a bit of the language when he visited Italy in between semesters in college. Man, I so envied him for that. I was so tempted to go to Europe after high school. You remember me telling you that, right?”
I nod, as if I might, by chance, have some vague recollection about this bit of conversation she and I had about the subject. In truth, I probably could recite every single word that she had ever uttered about her dream of going to Europe from the night she and I talked about it.
It had been one of those conversations she and I had had during the last week of college, when we knew that everything was coming to an end, that in a matter of a few days, this steady secure routine of ours would suddenly be shaken up like one of those snow globes you get at Christmas time, and so we talked about what we would change if we could go back in time. I said that I would have tried to make more friends in high school, just to see what would have happened. She replied with this dream of going to Europe for a year after high school. I joked that if she had, the two of us never would have met and been able to carry on conversations such as this.
It was her reply to that comment that I will always remember.
“We still would have met. I think Fate would have made sure of that,” she said, her voice taking on the most serious tone that I had ever heard from her, “It might not have been under the same circumstances but somehow we would still have met.”
Sarah had always said that she believed strongly in Fate. She spoke of it philosophically, as if Fate was a brilliant writer that weaved bits and pieces of our lives together to create this magnificent story that kept us guessing but eventually explained everything.
Funny, if she believes that Fate was brilliant, I’m now more inclined to think the guy was a hack who had no clue what he, she or it is doing, because I guess now Fate has ensured that Sarah had met Brad, world traveler and Italian linguist. Brad, who is funny and smart and…
Is he good in bed?
Trust you, Will, to come up with that question. To give me that image, of Sarah and Brad in bed together, to contend with at this juncture.
Hey, screw knowing Italian or any other little tidbit of trivia, I just want to ask the question you’re dying to know the answer to.
And so as Will and I argue over whether Sarah and Brad had slept together on this monumental first date, one half of the subject of our “discussion” went on and on about the rest of the details of this first date, about Brad taking her to some little independent book store to check out first editions and rare books, of going to see the local university’s film festival.
And don’t you wish you could have done exactly the same thing with her? You can see it can’t you? You can see yourself walking with Sarah up and down the aisles of the bookstores, comparing what books you read in high school or as a kid. You can envision what it would have been like, sitting next to Sarah in some cramped, darkened theatre, munching on popcorn, discussing the film in detail like two film students…minus the pretentiousness.
I shrug Will off just in time to catch Sarah’s report on her trip to the film festival.
“I mean, at first, I figured it was going to be two or three hours of brooding film noir in black and white,” Sarah is saying as I turned my attention back from Will to her, “But it was actually pretty good. I mean, there was some crap there that was over-written as **** but a couple of them were pretty good. Actually, there was one or two of them that were so original, good quality film-making that I totally would recommend.”
Is this guy for real? He goes from coming off as the inspiration for the Stiffler character in “American Pie” to taking her to a fancy restaurant, to a rare bookstore, and to a college film festival? Hallmark doesn’t write crap this corny. This sounds like a personal ad.
A few minutes more of her glowing review of Brad and his dating abilities….
What? Does she want YOU to go out with him? She’s selling him like she would a new Rolls Royce.
…and then she glanced at her watch. Without me really paying too much attention, the waitress had long come by and gave us our bill so it was basically just the two of us chatting over what remained of our drinks.
“Oh crap,” she says, the first cloud appearing on her sunny skies since she had started expounding the virtues of this Brad guy. “I gotta get going if I’m going to make it back to the office in time.”
I nod, “I got the cheque. I’ll talk to ya later!”
She says her goodbyes from midway through the door leaving the restaurant. After paying the bill (and again wondering just how many more of these lunches I could afford), I head home. It’s early afternoon as I walk through the quiet side streets that separated J.Q.’s from my apartment, so there’s not much traffic. Most of the people who live in these houses have the same 9-5 Monday to Friday jobs that Sarah has and so are away at the office.
I begin to ponder this feeling, this knot that has formed in the pit of my gut almost from the moment she had said those three words: “I’ve met somebody.”
The knot that hasn’t gone away, but has only increased as the conversation about Brad and their first date had progressed. At first, I had tried to explain it away by figuring that my clubhouse hadn’t been the best one ever but I know that isn’t it. I mean, that clubhouse had sucked but not badly enough to send my guts a-churning.
About a block from my building, I come to the sickening conclusion that I can’t explain it any other way, that I’m kidding myself for not realizing what is going on. I have to face up to the truth of the situation:
I’m in love with my best friend.
YOU IDIOT!
CHAPTER FOUR
WILL
Hey, geekboy, do I get an introduction or are you just going to let the readers, those kind folks who decided to waste…er, I mean, spend their money on this little work of literature rather than getting the latest 8000-page Harry Potter offering, keep scratching their heads at why italic type pops up every few paragraphs (oh, and believe me folks, I just get more and more exposure from here on out!)?
Fine. The oh-so-polite creature that will be, if not sharing the narrating duties with me, at least offering his opinion on what goes on in these pages, is William Tracey, he’s like my devil’s advocate, that voice that all of us have in our head. Mine is simply a bit more…what’s the word I’m looking for?
Sarcastic?
I was thinking more like “vicious”, like my own inner voice is out to get me.
Hey, I resent that. I prefer to think of myself as more the Bobby “the Brain” Heenan to your Gorilla Monsoon.
Yeah, if Heenan used the F-word more times than an episode of “The Osbournes” and basically trashed every thought that came into Monsoon’s head.
So, continue with the F.A.Q. Hey, if that bitch Sarah gets one, I deserve one.
Well, I really didn’t give Sarah much of an F.A.Q. as much as just an intro into how I met her and the circumstances surrounding the early part of our relationship.
Again…you didn’t have a relationship. More like a situation.
No matter how you term it, what I had with Sarah, it was pretty cut and dry. I met her in college, we became friends a few weeks into the first semester and were really confidants for each other.
Good God, tell me you’re not going to call her your soul-mate!
For Will, things are a bit more muddled than that. I’m not sure exactly when I first became aware of his existence. He might have been created, inadvertently, from the abuse I took at the hands of my fellow classmates.
See, the stereotypical dork that you see in the movies and on TV, the one who goes through high school and indeed, life as a whole, seemingly for the sole purpose of allowing other, more socially adept citizens of our fair world, to get themselves over at the dork’s expense, really does exist. I should know, for from the moment I entered high school, I became that guy.
I was the guy whose locker was vandalized, filled with shaving cream or whatever other destructive liquid people could get their hands on. I was the guy who was tripped in the cafeteria as I walked to whatever abandoned section I was allowed to sit at. I was the guy who retreated to the far corners of the library during lunch hour, and had to hope that someone didn’t discover me there.
There was never any reprimands toward the kids who did this to me. After a while, the “dork-hunters”…
Dork-hunter: (noun) Those people whose mission it is to bring grief, discomfort and humiliation to dorks for their own amusement and the amusement of others.
….at my high school got pretty good at pulling **** on me that not only got them over with the rest of their buddies but saw to it that I ended up getting crap over it. If my the lock off my locker was stolen, I had to go to the office to get a new one, which of course meant that Vice Principal Gordon would sit me down and ask me why I kept losing my lock. Gordon was a piece of work. He basically wanted me to rat out whoever I figured was doing this to me (and I wasn’t as naïve as they made me out to be, I knew that pretty much anybody in my class was a prime suspect). He wouldn’t punish them but I think he wanted me to get the **** kicked out of me for ratting someone out.
After a while, I carried all my books, even my winter coat in my gym bag rather than put it in my locker, one that had no lock on it from Christmas my freshman year until the day I graduated.
It’s funny, I’ve read about people who endured such treatment, such torment and became stronger for it. People who retreated into music, acting, writing and turned the negative into a positive, becoming rich, famous and successful. People who were told how stupid and worthless they were and fought back, going out of their way to prove that they were better than what those high school bullies said they were.
Me? I got Will.
And not a bad bargain, really.
I got a tiny voice in my head that agreed with every single thing the people I went to high school with said. I got Will who told me that I was a piece of **** and that’s why I had no friends.
Ah, cry me a river, ya wimp. Don’t try and get me heel heat from these readers. All I was doing was telling you exactly what people thought of you. All I did was remind you what people really though of you. I took what those bastards in high school said and did to you and tried to tell you that everyone you met, in college, in later life, in the “real world” couldn’t see past what you are: a geek.
I don’t know exactly when he first made his appearance. One day he was jus there. I didn’t call him Will at that point. To me, it was just this voice in my head. Over the years, I realized that he wasn’t going anywhere, so I decided to give him a name. I took the name from Sarah’s middle name, Tracey, and the name of one of the guys who picked on me the most in high school, Will Bronson.
Will, the voice, not Bronson, ducked out on me, for the most part at least, during my college years. I guess that after being liberated from the hell that was Glen Lorne High School and becoming friends with Sarah and the rest of them, my self-esteem rose to the point where Will figured he couldn’t compete, and so he took a hike.
Okay, wise guy, as you’ll recall, despite your best intentions to look back at your college days through rose-colored glasses, there were times when I stopped by from my VACATION to remind you that just ‘ cause things were going good at the time, there was always going to be someone out there who’d put you in your place and most importantly that this little interlude from getting non-stop dork-hunted was going to be oh-so-brief.
Well, for a few months there, it was nice not to have your annoying voice reverberating in my head all the damn time.
Oh, and by the way, you can call it whatever you want. “Taking a hike”, “vacation”, I prefer to think of it as taking a breather from your high school days and getting a chance to recharge my batteries before you ventured out into the “real world”. I had me a sneaking suspicion that I’d need every little reserve of strength to keep up with you once Graduation Day came and went.
Yeah, the post-grad life of yours truly, we’re getting to that, Will.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DAY AFTER
And cue the graphic that says “Two Years Later”.
The camera pans across a small, apartment bedroom, filled with all the trappings of a failed quarter of a century life of a modern day dork. It doesn’t look much different from dork’s dorm room, save that what once looked like a quaint and sad attempt to be cool, now looks like a pathetic attempt to remember the time when he thought he might one day be the one thing (of many) that he could never be: cool.
Camera finds said dork lying in bed, his bewildered eyes belying the fact he is living and reliving the events of the previous day over and over again, in the worlds of Steeler’s Wheels “trying to make some sense of it all, but I can see it makes no sense at all.”
Thank you Will! That’ll be enough of your screenwriting efforts.
The viewer, of course, knows what Dork Boy is thinking about: the revelation that Sarah has met someone. SARAH has met someone. Sarah HAS met someone. Sarah has ME…
Yeah. We get it, Will. Sarah has met someone. It’s not like I’ve been able to think about anything else and it’s not like you’d let me. You’ve given me a nice burning lump in my stomach that I’m sure some doctor will diagnose as a bleeding ulcer or some other stomach ailment.
It’s been there since realization had hit me full-force right in the face that I wanted to be more than just friends with Sarah, and since Will’s “shock and awe” campaign on my psyche had kick-started and shifted immediately into overdrive.
Right now it feels like that side of beef that Rocky Balboa takes a round out of during the first movie.
So, you’ve got the hots for Sarah? Well, bully for you, you moron! Way to go, fall in love with someone who’s got a boyfriend. Why not plan to rob a convenience store that’s gone out of business while you’re at it?
As if it isn’t bad enough that I have to get up and get ready to go to work in about ten minutes, but rather than escape reality by being asleep, I get the distinct pleasure, and I use the term as sarcastically as possible, to lie in bed and listen to Will tell me how stupid I am and just how screwed up my life is.
I’m telling you you’re stupid because you’re a moron! Geez, it took you this long to become self-aware enough to realize what those college buddies of yours knew two years ago: that you’re in love with Sarah. And you suddenly decide to grab a clue at the worst possible moment: AFTER Sarah has already “found someone” and thus, is off-limits FOREVER.
Excuse me for falling in love with someone. I didn’t plan on it. It’s not like I thought “Hey, I think I’ll fall in love with Sarah now that she’s got a boyfriend”!
Will’s voice changes now. Now longer is he the screaming maniac that’s spewing out hate-filled obscenities at me. No, now he’s quieter, more condescending. Sometimes I hate him when he gets like this more than any other time, and this is the time that he scares me the most. Because it’s now that he’s not just a bizarre figment of my imagination, it’s now that he says what I don’t want to admit.
You didn’t just fall in love with Sarah now, did you? You’ve had…quote feelings unquote for her since the very beginning! I mean, I’ve been on your ass about you wanting to nail her just to be my usual prick self. But the fact is that you’ve got something for her. Not a lust sleep-with-em-and-leave-‘em thing but something else. You don’t want to just sleep with her, you want…a relationship.
Will says “relationship” like it’s a dirty word.
The problem is that you’ve only now begun to realize it because now she’s taken. You can have all the love and lust and caring for you her that you want, but you can’t do a thing about it. You can’t act on it, you can’t do anything about it. Hell, you can barely even talk about it out loud for fear that it might get back to her!
He’s right…as he always is whenever he stops screaming at me long enough for me to start taking him seriously. But even then he takes it too far, leads me down to dark a path for me to want to listen to him for too long.
What’s it going to be like when you see them together? His arm around her? Them sneaking kisses when they think you’re not looking or just don’t care if you are? What’s it going to be like when she tells you they’re moving in together? What’s it going to be like when you can’t even fool yourself into believing they’re NOT sleeping together? What’s it going to be like when that horrible day comes that you get that lacy white wedding invitation in the mail?
Even as he tells me these things, I can see them happening in my mind. If I listen to Will any longer, I run the risk of getting so depressed that I’ll fall back asleep and end up late for work. I head for the shower, hoping that he’ll take the hint and shut up.
But even as I’m standing underneath that deluge of water, he’s still there, standing right next to me.
In the shower? Ewww!!! Come on. Can’t you just tell them that I’m standing outside…fully clothed…and just yelling this **** loud enough so that you can hear me.
As a matter of fact, no matter where he’s supposed to be, the shower doesn’t drown him out. In fact, I’m now mouthing the words he says, as if they’re my own. I don’t have time to be self-conscious as he’s still taking me down that horrible black road of what’s to come.
If there is anyone know who can show any reason why these two people should not be joined in holy matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.
The Reverend Will Tracy, ladies and gentlemen!
And what are you gonna do, Idiot Boy? You’re just going to sit there in that itchy rented tux and watch as the woman you love gets married to some jerk who can order desert in Italian and not say a God-damned thing. Forever hold your peace? Think about it. Remember what Prince (or the Artist Formerly Known As, or TAFNAP, or that weird symbol) Forever, that’s a mighty long time…, ain’t it, you moron?
I had heard the curses, the insults, even the challenges to do something, for years now. Whenever I put myself out, whenever I got too close to someone, there would be Will. Whenever I would go out with some of my friends…
You have no friends, remember?
…or the people I worked with, there would be Will. Sometimes I would hear him even as the events of the evening progressed, as if he was some loud, drunk patron sitting at the next table.
And no matter how well the evening seemed to turn out, he would show up the next morning, as I lay in bed in that weird status between deep sleep and being full awake. He would go over, in minute detail, every interaction that I had with whomever was accompanying me, looking, in almost detective like fashion, for every would-be slight or fault. I swear, I felt like I was on trial for my actions, for their actions, for everything, only I wasn’t even allowed to defend myself.
Hey, you’d think you were on the job or something, having to sit there and take my crap and not say anything.
He would berate me if I made a stupid joke, criticize my companions if they said anything that wasn’t complementary, and would search for reasons behind any comment or even compliment. His evening wasn’t complete until he was making me feel like a complete idiot for showing up to the event and making me all but promise never to let it happen again.
Yeah, but do you ever take my advice? NO! Instead, you end up putting yourself out for these people and end up giving me all the fodder I need the next morning!
But this is different, Will was down and out angry at me. Why exactly Sarah’s going out with Brad was my fault I could not completely understand?
Because you sat there and did nothing, all those days, weeks, months, and hell even years you sat back and expected everything to fall into place. Like one day Sarah was going to look at you and immediately realize that you were in love with her and that she was in love with you and it was all going to be happy ever after. And what happened? She found somebody else. Somebody, a boring jock-ass though he might be, who got off his most-likely hairy behind, and did what you should have done years ago.
ASKED HER OUT!
By now, I’ve exited the shower, Will in hot pursuit, his breath of hate breathing down my neck as I get dried off and start getting dressed. For a moment, Will has me so riled up and disoriented that I actually stop to decide what I should wear, as if I have a choice in the matter. No, working at Video Emporium takes that decision out of my hands. Instead, I reach for the same beige pants and blue shirt it’s been predetermined that I must wear to work.
Yeah, nice to see that you’re checking out the want ads to see what other opportunities are out there. You know, heaven forbid you should make the effort to get on with your life and into a job where you don’t have to work your ass to the bone so that white trash can tell you what a lazy bastard you are.
For a moment, Will’s deluge of abuse has changed subjects. Instead of screaming obscenities at me over Sarah, he’ll do it about my job. Geez, like I don’t take enough crap from the welfare mothers who are too lazy to return their movies on time and then wonder why they get charged late fees, I have to deal with him.
“Screw you, Will,” I say as I head out the door, “if I want a guilt trip over working a minimum-wage retail job, I’ll just call my mother.”
Just as an FYI, I work a minimum-wage retail job at Video Emporium, just a little peon in the massive, world-wide video chain. What are they up to, 1500 stores in North America and even some in Europe, Japan, etc? And yet, they can’t even afford to be closed one day a year to let their employees spend Christmas with their families. Whatever.
When I graduated from college two years ago, I was sure that I was going to go out, get a great job in my field and live a happy, productive life. Unfortunately, the great bitch known as Fate had other ideas. After six months of sending out resume after resume after resume…
Okay, the reader gets the point, get on with your sorry tale of woe.
Anyways, after I finally figured out…
You mean when it finally sunk in to your thick skull that the diploma you’d worked two years to earn meant less than the paper it was printed on? Is that what you mean?
You know, Will, for someone who wanted me to “get on with it”, you sure keep interrupting. But yeah, once I realized that a job in my field wasn’t going to be presenting itself to me anytime soon, and needed a job, any job, in order to get some kind of income coming in, I decided to drop some resumes off at local retail businesses, you know, just to get a pay cheque coming in.
To be honest, brutally honest…
Just the way I like it.
…I think I must have sent out as many resumes trying to get a retail job as I did trying to get a job in journalism and with just as much success.
And with just as many ridiculously frustrating tales to tell. Go ahead Emmett, tell ‘em about the time you went in for an interview and the interviewer stood you up…in their very own store…Go ahead, tell them.
Will, this is neither time nor the place. Long story short, I did get a callback, an interview and a job at Video Emporium. I figured the job sucked, the money sucked, the hours sucked…but at least it was only temporary right? I mean, this was just until I found another job, one in journalism, right?
Your definition of “temporary” is somewhat warped there, idiot.
Temporary is going on two years now. The job has sucked since Day One. First customer reems me out because I don’t know her by name. She’d been renting there for three years and demanded to know why I didn’t know her. She called the manager the next day, said I’d been rude to her and threatened never to rent there again.
It’s not like it’s been any better since. Having to deal with white trash that figured Joe Dirt was the second coming of Citizen Kane and would scream bloody murder if we dared question their ability to return videos on time. If I had been paid a nickel for every time I had some welfare mother, with screaming kids in tow, tell me in high-pitched condescending tones that “I damn well returned that movie on time!” (and that was the nice, polite version)…well, I would have been making a hell of a lot more than I was at the joint.
However, because I was pretty much the only non-student working at our particular Video Emporium location, I got scheduled during the day and rarely on weekends. Once Friday at 5:00 kicked in, I was outta there.
Yeah, you had a really crappy situation, but one that was as tolerable as it was going to get, and you went and you ****ed that one up.
At the time, it seemed like almost a compliment. Working with a manager named Leo, I had pretty much ended up running the store.
Yeah, cause the ****ing idiot was hanging out in the back making phone calls to his friends, then disappearing in mid-shift, leaving instructions on what to tell the night shift.
Three months ago, when the **** came down on Leo though, they promoted the assistant manager, James, a decent guy to manager and he ended up promoting a couple of people to keyholders, including yours truly.
And you can make that your Number One (with a bullet) on your “All-Time Top 10 Biggest ****ups You Ever Made”, a rather lengthy and prestigious list, I might add, there Emmett.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I figured that if I got some responsibility, maybe the job wouldn’t seem so bad. There was a bit of a pay raise.
Yeah, a whole dime an hour to basically take all the **** that the manager is supposed to take when he or she wasn’t there, have really no one to pass all the raging customers off on, accept responsibility for anything the other employees do or don’t do, worry yourself sick over how short or over the cash float is and give yourself headaches trying to finish the paperwork and ensure the store looks in at least half-decent shape before you leave.
And for that, you got a dime extra an hour.
Yeah, plus gone were my free evenings and weekends. Ever since, I’ve worked every Saturday and Sunday night. Heck, all I ever seem to work is nights. And what few day shifts I have are, like today, coming off a night shift, so I go home 12:30 in the morning (if everything balanced the FIRST time) and am due back in the store at 8:00 the next morning.
Meanwhile, James, the manager who had promoted me, was gone, transferred to another store a month after I was made keyholder.
Dan replaced him. Dan is some hotshot from a store out west who by some wisdom of head office was coming here to increase our sales. Apparently his technique was to make sure none of the employees ever got a huge ego or ever forgot that for every dollar in sales that we made, we were actually supposed to have made two.
What a spot of luck! I just happen to be working with Dan today.
I’m there at my usual 10-minute early arrival time.
Yeah…so you get an extra 10 unpaid minutes of all the Dan goodness you can handle.
Yeah well, at least I won’t give Dan an excuse to make out like I’m “cutting it close, dude!”
Yeah…for all you know, he’ll look at the clock about 15 minutes from now and figure you’ve only been there a couple of minutes and you’ll call you on the carpet to explain yourself. At which time you’ll weakly try to explain you got here 10 minutes early, which he’ll dismiss with a “I think I know how to tell time, Emmett” and write you up for being late and insubordinate…or you’ll apologize saying you must have set your watch wrong and, if you’re lucky he’ll just let you off with a condescending “Well, don’t let it happen again” and feel good about himself, giving the poor ne’er-do-well dork a break…and you’ll feel like ****, knowing you were in the right but are paying for him being a moron.
Sigh…chance I’ll have to take.
One of the good things about being a keyholder…
The ONLY good thing!
…is that it means you have a key to get in.
A fact that Dan has used on many, many occasions as an excuse to show up just about any time he wants (Didn’t he show up about five minutes before his shift ended, ran down a list of things you didn’t get done, then turned around and left?) because he knows you’re a conscientious enough employee to come in early and get to work on what needs to be done.
Agreed.
By the way, that’s one thing they never taught you in English class: The correct definition of “conscientious” is “being a moron who feels duty-bound to work for others, who will then walk all over them.”
But having a key also means no more mornings sitting outside desperately trying to get the attention of the manager inside, like I did with Leo.
As I come in the front door, I notice he has the stereo up full blast, with some hardcore rap CD playing. As I headed to the back to put my stuff away, he came out of the back office.
First thing I notice: he’s decided not to adhere to his strict enforcement to the dress code that he isn’t hesitant about writing the employees up over. Meanwhile, he’s got jeans on and a black t-shirt, probably advertising whatever rapper I was going deaf having to listen to.
“Hey, Emmy!”
Dan is one of these guys that figures that if he’s really loud and obnoxious and treats everyone like they’re members of his hockey team in the locker room, it will somehow compensate for being an asshole to everyone. It doesn’t really work out too well for him.
The whole “Emmy” nickname is supposed to be cool, at least in Dan’s mind. The problem is that I think it’s just his way of not having to pronounce my whole name, like calling me “Emmy” or even worse, the “Em” he uses from time to time. It’s like he’s trying to get the idea of verbal short form over or he’s just too damn lazy to say my full name.
Either way, the way he gives me the greeting, I know that something’s up. It’s not even really a “Hey, Emmett, great to see you”, it’s more of an “Hey, Emmett…I need to tell you something”. And I can tell right off that this “Something” isn’t a good thing.
Hey, do you suppose you’re going to get fired? Maybe ol’ Danny Boy is finally tired of waiting for you to make the big ****-Up that we all know you’re capable of and is just going to make something up to get your ass outta here.
Paranoid Will strikes again. All of a sudden I get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Hey, that’s twice in the space of 24 hours. This is shaping up to be quite a week for you. And hey, don’t think of this as a bad thing. Just think of it as getting a surprise day off and finally a real incentive to get looking for another job.
“Listen, buddy…”
Oh man, it’s the dreaded “B” word. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s someone calling me “buddy”, or “pal” for that matter. Believe it or not, I have never had anyone who I would consider a buddy or pal actually refer to me in that way. As a matter of fact, I can’t even remember anyone who I even liked referring to me in that way. Usually, it’s some dickhead customer who didn’t know my name and couldn’t bother to try and read my name tag.
“I didn’t bring my uniform with me so I can’t be out on the floor today, so you’re gonna have to helm the ship with Jessica until Andrea comes in. Okay? Can I count on ya there, buddy?”
I nod, trying to make myself seem more enthusiastic than I actually feel. I mean, this is only about the third time in the last month or so he’s “forgotten” to bring his uniform to work. Somehow I don’t think I’d have gotten to a third opportunity of forgetting my uniform, but then I’m not store manager.
Oh well, at least you’re not getting fired, right?
How is it that Will now starts looking on the bright side?
And hey, you get to see Jessica! Youzah!
If Sarah was my idea of someone I wanted to make my girlfriend, my soulmate, Jessica was someone I just want to have wild sex with. She wasn’t even someone I overly liked. Our conversations usually consisted of her whining about how much she hated her job (although I guess I could relate) and/or her telling me the latest scuttlebutt on what I had screwed up during my last close. (It was always something!)
She seemed to take great delight in describing, in agonizingly minute detail, what Dan had been complaining about when it came to my shortcomings on the job. I swear, I think, one time she actually rubbed her hands with glee as she told me how Dan had been ranting about me making an addition error on some piece of paperwork. (I think I had written down $12.52 instead of the correct $12.25! Big mistake on my part, eh?)
Actually, now that I think on it, “conversation” was too strong a word to describe what she and I had. It was more just one-sided rants on her part with me either trying to fake the idea that I was listening or just going about my daily routine with her in the background.
If Jessica was a real bitch to me, at least I could take heart in knowing it was nothing personal. Everyone on staff had had at least one run-in with her and were subject to daily, if not hourly, reports on their latest “goof-up”, as she like to call them and Dan’s overblown reaction to them. The customers fared no better. On a good day, Jessica was curt and basically treated every customer as if they were interrupting some extremely important top-secret, life or death project she was embarking on. On a bad day, she would actually berate customers for any slight she imagined they had committed.
I mean, I would have loved to torn into a customer or two when they decided to be assholes about late charges they all but admitted they knew about but didn’t feel like paying. Good sense over not wanting to get fired kept my mouth shut. However, I had seen Jessica reduce at least one customer (a little girl) to tears for not understanding store specials and had lit into at least a few over their choice of videos, no less.
But God, I wanted to **** her! She made have been a total bitch but damn was she hot! On average of about once a week she’d show up to work in tight jeans that showed off her ass and a sweater that revealed a lot of her taut belly and plentiful cleavage.
Another stickler for the rules when it came to the dress code, eh, Emmett?
Whenever she wore that particular ensemble, I almost prayed that she’d be a total bitch to me. Anything that would get my mind off how much I wanted to rip that sweater off and bury my face between her breasts.
I don’t know how many nights that I’d close with her and then go home and not be able to sleep because I’d be fantacizing about the two of us, alone in the store after close, deciding to let bygones be bygones and indulge our mutual passion for each other right on Dan’s desk.
Cause you know she secretly wanted you, right Emmett?
Hey, at 3:00 in the morning after eight hours of running my ass off (usually while Jessica read a magazine, talked on the phone, went out to smoke or whatever she could come up with to NOT do any actual work) my mind isn’t exactly working the way it’s supposed to, okay? Besides, usually by the next shift that I worked with her, she had been such a bitch to me that I usually got over any “mutual passion” I had for her…until the next time she wore something tight and revealing, of course.
Speaking of which…
Her shift had started at 9:00, the same as mine. The only difference was that I had gotten there early and it was now twenty minutes later, and it was only now that she deigned to show up. There was no “Oh my God, the traffic was so horrible!” or “You are not going to believe this, there was a massive power outage in my building and my alarm didn’t go off”. There was no desperate rush to hurry in the door. It was as if she figured that the starting time to her shift was just there as a suggestion. You know, come in at 9:00…or as close to that as you feel like showing up for.
The noise of the front door being unlocked and opened startled me from my task of straightening the store. By the time Jessica made her arrival, I had finished all the morning duties that she and I were supposed to split and was getting bored, yet didn’t feel like just standing around doing nothing. It wasn’t that I was all that dedicated to the craft of video retail at which I toiled, but I knew that if Dan thought for one instant that he could nail me for slacking off, he would.
Anyways, I looked up from the drama section and saw it was Jessica coming in, sauntering in like she was doing the company some huge favour by showing up at all.
“Morning, Jessica. “ I said, just trying to be friendly, keep the workplace atmosphere as tension free as possible. She probably just waved me away, like I was some cretin so far below the range of her radar that even acknowledging my existence was a chore. Certainly she wouldn’t go out of her way to speak with me until she had something to bitch about.
I barely noticed, as I wasn’t really looking at her face (for all I knew, it might not have been Jessica), instead trying desperately not to stare at the rest of her. She was wearing a blue turtleneck sweater that at least made it down to her waist but damn if it didn’t show off her chest. It was like a magnet for the eyes that just drew them to her breasts. It must have ****ed up the mind as well because the store could have been on fire, I could have been on fire, and all I would have been able to think about was groping those same breasts.
Good thing there was no one in the store and you had a shelving unit between Jessica and the bulge in your crotch.
Give me some credit. I manage to control things “down there” at least until I get home.
The best part, however, was when she turned to go into the office. Her jeans were so tight that I could tell what kind of underwear she was wearing and let’s just say I instantly knew that she wasn’t wearing full-backed panties.
I had often wondered how Jessica could get away with some of the things she did. Being rude to the customers, coming in late, doing as little actual work as possible, wearing jeans to work. As I finished straightening drama and headed back up to the front counter, I passed by the office door. As I did so, I heard Jessica giggle. It wasn’t a “that’s the funniest joke I’ve ever heard” kind of giggle. It was more of “I can’t believe we’re having sex in the office” kind of giggle.
Yes, I had often wondered how Jessica got away with some of the stunts she pulled. That was until about six or seven months ago when I first overheard these same sounds and realized that she was ****ing Dan. The shock of said event was soon replaced by a different kind of emotion once I got an earful of Jessica moaning, a sound that would keep repeating itself in my head in the wee hours of the night for weeks and months to come.
This time, however, I didn’t bother listening in. I had heard it all before and my lust for Jessica was such that if I was going to make it through the day without popping a boner in front of a customer, I needed to get my mind on something else. Besides, the two of them ****ing in the backroom meant that I was basically on my own for the next couple of hours. Desire had long since given way to jealousy and annoyance.
Thankfully, for all of Dan’s flaws, he always made sure he left his key out so at least I could open up without disturbing him and Jessica’s morning “business conference”.
Oh, that’s a good one. Why don’t you make witty little sayings for all of your references towards Dan and Jessica’s sex life?
For your information, I would…except that I can’t think of anything else right at the moment.
Dude, that’s what rewrites are for.
Anyways, thankfully, to date Dan HAD remembered to leave me a key. Part of me lived in dread when the day came that he forgot his key until Jessica was already going down on him…or in whatever position she got herself into when they were back there…
Reinventing the wheel? (See, I can drop in the sayings for you!)
Yeah, good luck with that…and part of me was actually hoping that that day would come so that I could go back and bang on the door to tell Dan we had to open up…just to see the look on his face (and that of Jessica’s) when the door opened.
See, now you’re thinking a little more like me. Of course, Dan’d probably write you up for daring to interrupt his seminar on sexual harassment in the workplace (another winner!) with Jessica, but maybe it’d be worth it.
Oh, it’d be worth it. But that day wasn’t today and so I ended up having to run myself ragged getting all the returns checked in and put away, making the “late tape calls” and dealing with customers, a real chore since it was a little busier than normal for a Thursday morning. I swear, customers can smell blood. If they know that a clerk is overwhelmed, more and more show up all the time.
I often wonder if there isn’t an internet site or something. You know: rudecustomer.com.
Thankfully, the two hours between our store opening at ten and the arrival of the noon hour only dragged like four or five instead of six or seven like normal and I got some relief in the form of another employee, Andrea.
“Good morning, Emmett,” Andrea says as she comes in the door. Andrea is one of these people who’s always in a good mood, always perky.
Yeah, it’s always fun to work with people like that in retail. You can start taking bets with yourself over how long before she cracks up and goes psycho.
You’re such a sadistic ****, Will.
Oh, like you aren’t thinking the same thing. Andrea is one of these people who goes into retail as a way to “work her way through college” after being on the cheerleading squad and the prep squad and every other happy-go-lucky squad in high school. She’s lived such a sheltered life that she figures that everyone she meets wants to be her best friend.
“Hey, Andrea.” I reply. She gives me a wave and heads toward the back office, to put her stuff away in her locker. Suddenly I realize that if she goes to the back, she might interrupt Dan and Jessica’s “business meeting”.
“Oh, you might want to knock before you go back there,” I yell. Thankfully, I managed to remember what was going on back there BEFORE Andrea walked in on them.
A few moments, Andrea comes back out on the floor. She kinda smirks at me.
“What is it?” I ask, knowing full well the reason behind the look.
“Looks like Dan and Jessica have had a very productive morning,” she replies. “You been stuck out here all by your lonesome all shift?”
I nod, grateful that I have someone to help me out if and when I need it, plus I finally have someone to talk to.
Hey, dickwad. What do you call me? You know you can always chat me up, anytime day or night.
Okay, let me rephrase that. I finally have someone I can talk to that other people can physically see and won’t want to have me committed for talking to. Besides, no matter how overly upbeat Andrea may be, she remains my favourite co-worker.
“Hey, have you ever been to B.C.’s?” she asks a few moments later.
B.C.’s? B.C.’s? The name sounds familiar. I all but assume that it’s some college bar downtown.
“I don’t think so,” I reply. “Why, is it any good?”
“Yeah, me and a bunch of my friends from school went there the other night,” she informs me. “You should come out with us sometime.”
I shrug, “I don’t know. I’m not really into that whole bar scene. Too many people, too much noise.”
Yeah, you went to HOW many bars with Sarah and the rest of them back in college and yet you’re shrugging off this invite from Andrea?
I’m shrugging off this line of questioning from Will. After all, that was college, it was a long time ago. I guess I’m not into the whole college scene anymore.
A long time ago? Man, this isn’t some flashback from the 60s or something. It was a couple of years ago.
A customer comes up at that point and wants to know if we have any copies of some movie that played on the CBC a couple of years ago. He doesn’t know the title but he tries, haphazardly, to describe it to us until I realize he’s talking about “The Arrow”. After I figure this out, check to see if we have it and all but hold his hand, directing him to the video, I head back to the cash where Andrea is waiting to continue the conversation.
That’s the problem with trying to talk to co-workers while working in a retail setting. You spend a half an hour on a two-minute conversation, and either your boss or the customers themselves always act like anything not directly related to business is off-limits.
“It’s not really that kind of bar, actually,” Andrea says, almost in self-defence. “It’s almost like a coffee bar, where people sit around, talk, listen to some musicians, etc.”
A pretentious college bar where pretentious college students talk about art and politics and philosophy. Yeah, you’d fit in there well…
Holy ****, you’re doing it again?
What?
You’re imagining yourself asking Sarah to this B.C.’s! You’re imagining the two of you, sitting in some secluded dimly-lit corner, smoking cigarettes and drinking what passes for coffee in those big, over-sized cups and talking about life and ****.
So what if I am?
Okay, first of all, in case you’ve forgotten for one iota: Sarah has a BOYFRIEND…
Thanks for bringing that up, just in case I had forgotten for two seconds.
And second of all, this girl, Andrea, is basically inviting you out to hang with her and her friends at this bar.
Okay, a second ago, you were bad-mouthing Andrea as being some ex-high school cheerleader and you were calling this bar and its patrons “pretentious”.
Yeah, well that was before she made the invite. I mean, if you go out to this B.C.’s place with Andrea and her friends, maybe something will develop between you two.
With Andrea? Come on, Will. I mean, for someone who is always lambasting me for wanting to date Sarah, you’re really way off the mark here.
Oh really?
Yeah, I mean Andrea is nice and all but I mean, what do we have in common?
Well, for starters, you work together, there’s at least one topic of conversation to get things rolling.
Oh man, I don’t want to be that guy.
What guy?
The guy that can’t do anything but talk shop with his co-workers outside of work. I mean, I’ve been to these little social gatherings…Christmas parties, the like, and as much as I usually come off as the resident nerd from what Will tells me, at least I can say I’m not the guy that does nothing but prelude all his stories with “Hey, remember the time that…”
As I recall, one of those guys went from “That Guy” to dating Sarah! But getting away from that for a moment, you mean to tell me that you’re going to blow this little offer from Andrea off.
I don’t know, I mean, Andrea is nice and all but when I think about her, there’s nothing there. It’s just…oh, Andrea from work. But when I think about Sarah…something happens, there’s something else going on there. It’s like, nothing else matters when I think about her.
****ing gag me! You need to take the blinders off.
What does that mean?
Never mind. I can see what you’re getting yourself into.
And just what is that supposed to mean?
You don’t want to even explore the possibilities with Andrea on the off-chance that Sarah breaks up with Brad. You know, you don’t want to take yourself off the market on the off-chance that Sarah ends up back ON the market. (Of course, you realize that you’re a completely naïve moron for thinking that Sarah will ever be available?)
For once, I’m glad that a customer comes up to the cash at that exact moment. Even the idiocy of the modern-day video renter seems a more positive alternative than listening to Will simultaneously badger me about my feelings toward Sarah and my lack of feelings towards Andrea.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for a movie, but I’m not sure what the title of it is?” the customer explains.
Well, that’ll be a big help! I’m sure I can track it down from here.
Thanfully, Will is always willing to give me a break when there’s a customer to make snide, yet thankfully unheard, comments about.
“Do you recall who was in it?” I ask, trying to gleam some small pittance of information to help me in my quest.
“Well, no but the trailer for it was on one of the movies that I saw last week at Cinema 8. Don’t you keep track of those things?”
His tone is now very sarcastic, like he’s hinting that by not having accompanied him to the theatre, I haven’t done my job correctly.
“Well, sir,” I reply. “If it was a trailer you saw in a theatre, it probably won’t be out on video for a while yet.”
“Hmmph!” is the reply I get along with “Well, I guess I won’t be renting any movies here today.”
The customer, suitably offended, storms out of the store. I shake my head, wishing I could shake the memory of the entire incident out of my head.
“What?” I hear from a familiar female voice. “Is he blaming you because a movie isn’t out on video yet?”
It’s Andrea. Part of me is ashamed that someone else saw me on the receiving end of such treatment. For some reason it’s always better to suffer in silence. However, another part of me also laughs at such absurdity that’s so apparent to an on-looker. Almost…and I stress the word “ALMOST” makes me realize that that customer was a complete dickhead and I shouldn’t worry over it.
Sure, like **** you won’t worry over it. You’ll replay this incident and every one else like it over and over and over in your head for days on end.
Sadly, Will is right. Tomorrow, likely the first thing I’ll think of is that FN asshole. Meanwhile, I’m still laughing at Andrea’s reaction to it. It’s nice to know that someone else realizes what I go through, mostly because Andrea, I’m sure, has had her share of idiot customers.
“Don’t you love how they always have to get that little rib in about not renting here?” I comment, since that always seems to be the part that stings the most. I can’t magically produce something that doesn’t exist, so I’m at fault for any monetary losses we may suffer because of it.
Andrea laughs and nods. “The Video Emporium corporation is going to fall to pieces because we, the store level employees, won’t rent non-existent videos to our customers,” she replies, in her best newscaster voice. “Better get that resume ready, Emmett. We’re going to be unemployed soon.”
By now, despite of myself, I’m laughing along with Andrea. “God,” I add, “I hope McDonalds is hiring!”
Andrea throws her head back, laughing. She has such a great laugh, like you just want to…Just for a moment, I wonder…
Want to…what? Wonder? About what? Call Sarah up and tell her all about it?
Dan picks this particular moment to come out of his office. He shoots both Andrea and I a look that says that if we’re up at cash cracking each other up, we must not be working hard enough. I manage to adapt a more sober persona. Andrea tries as well but is still smiling about my “McDonalds” comment.
Lemme guess! You’re worried that he heard you wondering aloud if McDonalds was hiring and now you’re scared ****less that he thinks you’re on the verge of quitting (which you should be, mind you!) as will start taking steps to show you the door.
Of course, the paranoia that just such a scenario is on the verge of playing itself out starts to creep in. Still, part of me doesn’t care. I’m more pissed that he, the store manager, who has spent all morning ****ing one of my co-workers, thinks that Andrea and I aren’t working hard enough simply because we crack a joke or two to take the edge off.
For a brief moment, with guts that come out of who knows where, I stare right back at him, before I decide to go check the return box. I do get the satisfaction in knowing that he looked away first, and darted back into the backroom.
Gotta admire his stamina. He’s been…uh…
Serving his sentence?
Not a great one but I’ll take it. Okay, “serving his sentence” for the better part of three hours now and he manages to go back at it after a two or three minute rest period. Jessica’s gonna be walking funny when her shift ends today.
I chuckle at the image that Will plants in my head to go along with his wisecrack. I’m still grinning like an idiot when I come back to see Andrea at the cash.
“What?” she asks, all ready to giggle at whatever I’ve just found so humourous.
I glance meaningfully towards the door to the back office.
“They’ve been at it for three hours now,” I inform her, “Jessica’s gonna be walking funny when she goes home today.”
See, it’s not all mean-spirited putdowns about your shortcomings? Sometimes it’s such comedic gold that you use it to get over.
Andrea bursts out laughing but slaps her hand over her mouth to mute herself somewhat. For a moment, I glance back towards the door, horror-striken at the idea that Dan might come out again and give us both ****. He never appears.
Maybe Jessica’s moaning in orgasmic pleasure is drowning out the noise. Maybe he’s going down on her and she’s got her thighs (and luscious thighs they must be) clamped over his ears.
While the idea of Jessica “moaning in orgasmic pleasure” is something I’ll have to think about later, the idea of Dan sticking his head between her thighs is something I’d rather not have visualized.
Secure in the knowledge that Dan is “occupied” with something else and not about to bawl us out…
Cause he’s too busy balling…
I get the point, Will. Anyways, since he’s staying in the back, I turn my attention back to Andrea, whose face has turned red because she was laughing so hard and is wiping away a tear at this moment.
“Thank God, he didn’t hear me,” she whispers. “Oh my God, Emmett, that was so funny.”
For the moment, the guy who gave me **** because I wouldn’t rent him a video for a movie that hasn’t even played in theatres yet is a million miles away.
And yet, the idea of you and Andrea is a million and one miles away?
Not now, Will, let me just enjoy the moment.
CHAPTER SIX
EVEN HITLER
I decide to walk home after my shift that day, telling my folks that since it was a nice day, I could use the exercise. I try to block out the irate phone call I got from some woman who had come home to find a message regarding a late movie charged to her account. Of course, like clockwork she calls a half hour before I’m set to leave for the day and proceeds to rip into me like I’m the biggest piece of sh*t walking the face of the earth and single-handedly responsible for every ill in her life, simply because I called to say that the copy of “Lilo and Stich” was four days overdue.
Funny how it’s supposed to be your fault that they’re too damn lazy to get their movie back on time.
Just another day at the office…or the video store, rather.
Yeah…an office job would be sweet compared to what you have. Instead of working one or two day shifts a week and getting home at a normal time and spending the rest of the week (and weekends) exhausted because you didn’t get home until one in the morning, you could be getting off this time every day..
And so I figure that if I walk home, it’ll gimme a chance to work off some of the frustration I felt. The problem is that I’m becoming aware of a weird little phenomenom that started almost from the moment that Sarah said she’d “met someone”.
Every time I look around, all I see are people in love. I swear to God, there’s not a woman in my age bracket, or out of my age bracket for that matter, who hasn’t got some guy all but attached to her. And the killer part is that it’s not like they’ve given their hearts (not to mention other, more unmentionable, things) to what might amount to a half-decent stand-up kind of guy. Nah, the best looking women I’m coming across, the real cute ones who look like they might have a brain in their head, they’re all carting around some of the scummiest-looking losers I could ever imagine.
Hey, maybe if you didn’t shower for a week and listened to heavy metal and wore a black rock t-shirt and treated girls like crap, you’d have someone in your life, too!
Seriously, every girl I see who looks even the least bit attractive and interesting has already been snatched up by some greaseball who looks like he got rejected from Metallica’s road crew.
I know that Will would probably has come up with a really great comeback line for that, but our internal conversation is interrupted by some asshole yelling something at me as he drives by. I can’t understand what he said but by the smirk on his face, I can tell it was probably something profound that got him over with his buddy behind the wheel.
Amazing how these guys get courage when they’re flying by at 40-50 miles per hour. Oh well, as long as he gets props from his buddy for doing it, I guess that’s all that matters. Besides, he probably knows that I don’t have to necessarily understand what he’s saying to get the point of his little statement.
I shrug. After the twenty-four hours that I’ve just concluded, it was par for the course that I should get geek-hunted like that. A half-block goes by while I try and translate whatever he said into whatever he meant me to hear.
After a while, I just give up, assume that he called me some variation of “geek” or “nerd” or “fag” or whatever the latest term of disparagement is these days.
Soon, Will is back to talk about my lack of anything even remotely resembling a love life or friendship or relationship.
You wanna know what’s really weird?
I contemplate reliving my phone conversation with that broad at work instead of answering his question, but in the end I reply.
“No, what’s weird?”
Even Hitler had a girlfriend.
What? Eva Braun.
Yeah. I mean she was no Sarah but she fell for Hitler.
So what does this little tidbit of information have to do with anything.
****, do I have to spell it out for you? Here’s Hitler, this psycho madman who plots to do away with the entire Jewish race, starts the most horrific conflict in human history, basically murders anyone he doesn’t like or trust…and yet, this Eva Braun chick becomes his mistress, lover, girlfriend, whatever you want to call it.
Right? And?
AND it meant that Hitler had someone who thought he was boyfriend material. Meanwhile, here you are, little nobody Morrison, who barely has any friends, much less anyone in your life who gives two ****s about you romantically.
Thanks, Will, thanks for bringing that up.
Oh, but it gets better once you start contemplating things. I mean, if a monster like Hitler could get himself a girlfriend and not only do you not have a girlfriend, for chrissakes you don’t even have anyone in your life you could even ask out, can you imagine what that means? I mean, how far down the food chain do you have to be? I mean, if Hitler has more of a love life than you do, you must be pretty much the lowest of the low.
I hurry my steps, hoping I can get home and have some human contact before Will goes any further. As I do in so many endeavours, I fail.
You’re always wondering why customers treat you like such a piece of ****? As ignorant and lazy as they may be, they’re not completely stupid. They can tell that you’re so far beneath them, that they don’t even have to employ common human decency when they interact with you. I mean, maybe you can take some small amount of sick and twisted pride in the fact that you’ve carved out a new plateau in being pathetic.
I’m within sight of my apartment when I pass a young couple, probably not even out of high school. The girl’s nothing special but the guy she’s with looks like he’s stoned. He shoots me a look that says that he could beat the crap out of me just to impress his girl but I’m not worth it.
I look away quickly, stare down at my feet until they’re well out of range.
Surprised he didn’t call you something. You know, at least make the minimum effort to put you in your place and gain some points with his girlfriend. Of course, maybe you’re not even worth that.
Even Hitler had a girlfriend. It sounds ludicrous that I should be upset by so outlandish an idea.
But it stings just the same.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AN INVITATION TO PAIN
It’s been another long, frustrating, and above all pointless day in a long series of them. It’s one of those days in one of those weeks that make up one of those months where you know the days have been going by, but you can’t remember a damn thing that has happened over the course of all those days, like one day blends into the other.
I get up in the morning and surf the Internet for a while, maybe update my computer baseball season (the Jays were trailing the Red Sox by a half-game in the wild card race, ironically closer in my imaginary, computerized world to the playoffs than they’d been since 1993, have lunch and then go back to sleep, so I can get up around 4:00 to get ready to go to work until midnight, at which time I come home and try and sleep for a few hours before I repeat my routine, verbatim, again.
It’s just after 1:00 in the morning when I unlock the door to our apartment. I’m still wired and frazzled by another shift where nothing went right.
“Emmett?” I hear my Mom call out, the sleepiness evident in her voice.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I whisper as if that’s going to magically not disturb their sleep.
As I pass by their bedroom door, I can see my Mom in her nightgown in the doorway.
“How was your night?” she asks.
I give a tired sigh. “It’s over.” I reply.
My Mom laughs at that. She’s had days like that and given the same reply, so I figure it’s okay to borrow it. I tell her I’ll see her in the morning and she goes back to bed.
I head into my room and decide to check my e-mail as I get undressed. I’m too jacked up on adrenaline so I know I won’t be able to sleep for at least another hour.
For all the great rave about the advent of e-mail being a great way to keep in touch with people, that seems to have passed me by. Nine-tenths of the e-mail I receive is stuff that, in printed form, would have been tossed in the nearest trash bin when they received it in their mailbox. All I ever seem to get was junk-mail, ads, newsletters that I had signed up for but never actually read and the off e-mail from Pete, which is mostly just jokes he’s found on the Internet.
But this night is different. When I check my e-mail, I notice, among the myriad of trash, one from “SarahR” entitled “Invite”. If Will was a physical being instead of just a figment of my imagination, I would hi-five him, that’s how jacked I am.
It has been a while since I have heard from Sarah…
Geez, I wonder what she’s been up to.
That’s the best snide remark you could come up with, Will? Geez, I would have figured you would have gone with “I wonder what she’s been doing…or rather who’s she’s been doing?”
Hey, it’s been a long day, even us devil’s advocates get tired sometimes, you know. Besides I kinda figure that we already know the answer to that question.
The e-mail itself pretty much sums that up.
And before you get too excited there, Emmett, the e-mail wasn’t written specifically to you. It’s not like Sarah took time out of her busy schedule doing whatever and whoever she’s been doing lately to update you specifically on what’s going on in her life. Instead, it’s simply a mass e-mail that you probably got included only because you’re in her address book.
It reads:
Hey there,
Brad and I are having a get-together, an “End of Summer” party if you will. The date is August 25th, the time is 7:00 until however late you want to make it. It’s B.Y.O.B. plus some snacks would be good.
For those not familiar with the location, it’s 29 Briarhill Street.
Cheers,
Sarah
I have mixed feelings after reading that e-mail. Part of me is kind of excited about getting an invite as it would be great to see Sarah, plus (I must assume) some of the old gang from college. On the same token, if she and Brad are now throwing parties together, it must mean that they’re getting pretty serious.
Yeah, I mean if they’re doing the social scene as a couple, it ain’t a whole lot of steps until they move in together and the next thing you know… Dum-dum-da-dum …Here comes the Bride!
Thanks, Will, as if my life doesn’t have enough suckiness in it, be sure to start that train of thought about Sarah getting married to this idiot for good measure.
So, the question is: do you go to this? I mean, you could say that there’s some deal at work you can’t get out of.
Ah, come on, Will. This party of Sarah and Brad’s is a good two weeks away. Dan is such a slacker when it comes to doing the schedule that he probably won’t have the schedule for the 25th done for at least another week yet. That gives me plenty of time to book the night of the party off.
Yeah, you know that, I know that, Dan and the rest of the staff at the store know that, but Sarah doesn’t know that.
Or does she? I mean, I’m sure I’ve bitched about not knowing my schedule to her at least a few times in the past.
Ah, she’s not going to remember. Besides, as much as getting bitched at by some white trash bitch about her late charges may suck, it can’t really be any worse for your fragile psyche than watching Brad suck face with Sarah for the entire night while everyone around you laughs and tells them what a cute couple they make.
I’m sure they’re not quite that much of an exhibitionist couple, Will. If in fact they are sleeping together…
IF? You are either so ****ing naïve you need to go back to kindergarten, or you are just in total denial.
…I’m sure they won’t be making out in the middle of the party.
Even if all they do is give each other a little peck on the cheek, it’s gonna rip your ****ing heart out, so they might as well showcase their 69-ing ability for all their friends to see. Same difference.
Deep down, I know that Will is right, but on the same token, I figure that maybe seeing them Sarah and Brad together, as a couple, is just what I need to get over this silly crush I have on her. I mean, maybe this is like the acid test for me. I’ll go to this party, see Sarah with Brad, and as much as it might be weird, maybe this will erase all the feelings I have for her.
I don’t hear anything from Will in response to that, which kind of startles me because I would have figured that he’d have been all over that idea. I don’t know if perhaps he’s just loading up to deliver his criticism in berserker mode.
Oh yee of little faith! Actually, for once you might just have something there. Personally I don’t think this has a hope in hell of actually working, but it at least sounds good in theory.
Will’s agreement stuns me, and at the same time fills me with some confidence that I haven’t had for a while. Of course, I know this is too good to last.
Actually, knowing your thought process as well as I do, what’s more likely to happen is you’ll show up at this deal, see Sarah and Brad together and instead of dismissing any thoughts that she’ll end up with you one day, instead you’ll desire her more because you know it’s something you can’t have. I mean, everybody wants what they can’t have. Meanwhile, the thought of the two of you NOT being together will break your heart and push you closer to that brink of insanity we both know you’re headed for. My advice: tell her you can’t make it.
Maybe I should listen to Will. Maybe I should just leave well enough alone, save for an e-mail apologizing for not being able to make it. Instead, I go in the next day and book the weekend of the 25th off.
Of course, Dan has to know, in great detail, what I’m up to. I try to downplay it by saying that a friend of mine was having a get-together which is, after all, what Sarah’s e-mail had called it.
“Oh, Emm’s going partying, are ya?” Dan instantly says, and while I’m sure he is going for “cool frat boy” he still manages to end up doing the “condescending asshole” gimmick.
I so do not want to have this conversation and yet here I am, just kinda hanging around the back office on my lunch break and while I’m sure I could go and sit outside for the remainder of my break (it is a pretty nice day out), it’d probably seem pretty rude and Dan’d more than likely would hassle me for ducking out on his conversation.
And so, I just sit there and have to take it, smiling and nodding and hoping that it will be over soon. I would add that I hope to escape with at least some of my dignity intact but, as I was only too aware, that isn’t the way things went in these situations.
“So, you gonna get all liquored up?” Dan continues. Same attempt at being the college frat brother, same result as being the asshole.
I just shrug, then add, “Nah, I’m not really into the whole ‘getting drunk’ scene.”
Yeah, dickhead, unlike some people who probably get plastered back here in the office after doing one of the staff members.
Dan is aghast at my reply. “You’re not?” It’s all I can do not to laugh when I see the exaggerated expression on his fat kisser. It’s as if his whole world has been shattered. I guess he can’t possibly comprehend that there is someone out there who doesn’t figure that getting sloshed with their buddies is the best way to spend a night out.
Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe he figured I was going to admit that yes, indeed this was THAT kind of party and so he could hold that over my head for the rest of the time that I knew him. I can see him envisioning himself bringing my getting drunk up at every possible opportunity.
“Hey, you’re renting ‘A Guy Thing’. That’s where that guy gets drunk. Emmett over there, he went to a party and got drunk one time. Yeah, he’s the store lush…heheheheheh!”
Instead, Dan seems rather crushed that he is losing the opportunity to get something on me. For a moment, he almost looks like a kid finding out there is no Santa Claus. It was all I can do not to hug him and tell him that everything would be all right.
Rather than get mushy, I just reply that I had never liked the taste of alcohol in my limited experience with the stuff, which is true, but I say it more to fill the rather awkward silence that has filled the room than as any kind of revelation. I don’t know why I care whether or not there was any discomfort between us. Truth be known, there are about a dozen things I can think of off the top of my head over which I should pop him in the mouth. I guess it’s just a case where I figure that this workplace is so full of tension and stress to begin with, I want to do my best to minimize it.
I guess I needn’t worry Even as I question why I am even TRYING to get over with this guy, Dan is already listing about a dozen or so drinks I should try since they minimalize the taste of the alcohol content.
Okay, that guy knows way too much about alcohol for someone who works in the video retail industry.
Tell me about it. Of course, I have to wonder why all the alcoholics you see in these anti-drinking ads are all 40-something office workers. I’d be willing to bet that the average retail worker has more reason to go on a raging drinking spree than any office worker could on their worst day.
Meanwhile, dear reader, Dan is one of the few things that Will and I totally agree on.
Ah, but I also think you’re a lazy coward for not trying harder to get the hell out of this job so that you won’t have to deal with him any more. But no, as horrible as this place is, it’s safe, isn’t it. It’s better to stay in a job that you hate and that you’re so damned over-qualified for, it’s sad, than to strike out and actually get the very type of job that you keep dreaming you’ll find.
Before we get into all that, let me nip it right in the bud. It’s nothing that Will hasn’t brought up before and probably won’t bring up again. The truth is that for every hour I spend actually checking the classifieds and the various job boards on the Internet, I spend 10 hours dreaming about a better job and another 10 being pissed off at customers’ stupid complaints. The ratio between time spent looking for another job and time spent wishing I had another job wasn’t even close.
By this time, Dan has meandered his way back to the back office. Jessica wasn’t in today so he was either going back to jerk off or just catch up on his phone calls to his buddies.
Or both? I mean, he is supposed to be management and probably knows how to…uh…multi-task.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NOT QUITE THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
As I guess I had decided right from the moment I got her e-mail, I ended up going to Sarah’s party. Of course, Will was fighting it from the word “GO”, listing off every reason he could think of, from the legitimate to the just plain paranoid.
Hey, I still think that my idea that your invite was just so that the rest of the guests had someone to pick on was a distinct possibility. Remember the movie “Dogfight” with River Pheonix? Maybe Sarah was tossing a party where all the legitimate guests had to invite a real loser and the person who roped in the biggest loser won and with you, she figured she was a shoe-in!
I swear to God, sometimes I think that Will moonlights as the voice inside Oliver Stone’s mind as well as mine.
Hey, don’t even get me started on my whole “Oswald survived and was killed in Vietnam” theory?
Even when I was working my wonderful 12-7 shift that Dan somehow scheduled me for, I kept debating whether or not I should go. Will kept telling me that Dan had just put me on for such a strange shift (9-5 and 5-midnight were the norm for me) just to screw up my plans. I couldn’t really disagree there. However, Will took it a step further and came up with the idea that this was a sign, a sign that fate didn’t want me going to Sarah’s party, a sign that I should just go home, pop in a DVD and stew in my own loneliness and anti-social-ness.
Everything that shift became a game between Will and I. If the next customer was rude, that was fate telling me to stay home. If Dan ended up actually staying out on the floor (rather than hiding in the back) for more than a half hour straight after I got back from break, that was a sign that I should go. In the end, I’d like to think that the “Go to Sarah’s” count was more than the “Stay home” count but in all truthfulness, I had lost track by about 3:30.
Oh come on, more bad things ALWAYS happened to you at work than good things. You just lost track of the rude, condescending customers, Dan’s stupidity and Jessica’s slackness.
Maybe I did. Maybe it was just a case where I was so burnt out from work that I wanted to go out and do something out of the ordinary. Rather than spending another wasted evening in front of my computer waiting for e-mails that never came or chat buddies that were always too busy having a life, I wanted to hang out with Sarah.
The next thing I knew, it was 8:00 and I was knocking on the door to Sarah’s place. When the door opened, instead of Sarah, like I expected, it was some guy I had never seen before. He was wearing a green sweater vest and was clutching a beer.
“Help you, buddy?” he said.
Yeah, dude! I’m here for the kegger!
“Hi. I’m a friend of Sarah’s.” was the only thing I could think of to say. For a moment, I wondered if I should have printed out the e-mail that she had sent me and brought it along, sort of proof that I was invited.
Oh yeah. That wouldn’t have looked too dorky.
“You from the office?” he asked, in a tone that said “Dude, you ain’t from the office!” One of those questions where the person asking it already knows the answer but they ask just to confirm the information they already know.
I shook my head. “Nah, I went to college with Sarah.”
The guy just kinda looked me over.
Hmm…I wonder what word went through his head. I’ll bet it started with “G” and rhymed with meek.
Well, be that as it may. It was only a few seconds…rather long seconds, mind you…then he moved aside and waved me in.
“Sarah’s around here somewhere,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, as I moved past him, not an easy job since he had moved aside about an inch or two, little more.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be at the bar.
Who was he fooling? Will’d be tagging along right next to me for the duration of the night and if he wasn’t dissecting every bit of conversation directed towards me (whether to my face or overheard) and letting me know just exactly how little people in the room thought of me, he’d be taking notes for a full discertation first thing in the morning.
Hey, you think working at Video Emporium is tough, trying being an inner voice. It’s go, go, go. 24-7.
God, next thing he’ll be likening himself to the Post Office. You know, rain, sleet, snow.
Well, we’re both the bearer of bad news that people don’t want to have to deal with.
And you’re about to drive me postal. One thing I had to give Will, he had the ability to make sure his comments and observations were known to me no matter how loud the music was. And believe me, whoever had cranked the stereo must have owned stock in hearing aides. A few hours of this and I’d be Pete Townshend-like.
Do you mean you’d be looking up kiddy porn on the Net or destroying hotel rooms?
I mean, I’d be deaf, cause see Pete Townshend is…
I got the joke, ya retard!
I walk around the house, trying to see if I can find Sarah. I’m also secretly hoping that maybe she invited some of the people we went to college with. When I was getting ready, a vision of a joyous, maybe even tearful reunion might be in the cards.
And hey, maybe you’d decide to all quit your jobs, re-enroll in McCallum College and hang out in the dorm…just like old times.
But by ten minutes in, I realize that’s not going to be something that would pan out.
Geez, what a surprise!
As I continue to scout around for Sarah, who looks to be the only person I’d recognize, all I’m seeing are young professional types, the species formerly known as yuppies. They’re drinking beers and wine coolers in jeans that look like they’d cost more than my bi-weekly pay cheque. Here and there is some guy who has the jock-ass gone corporate look to them. You know, the football star who twisted his ankle in the last game of senior year and got their old man to give them a desk job managing the family business is some big corporation that deals in medical supplies or software. The guy at the door fits that description.
Man, I’ll bet ninety-five percent of these people just got off the golf course or out of the spa an hour before they showed up here. I wonder if any one of them has ever had to work past their safe little 9-5 schedule. They push pieces of paper around to the different departments all day and figure they have to go out and get a buzz on to “blow off some steam”.
Whenever a song starts to fade out, I catch bits and pieces of the conversation. It’s all about their retirement packages and renting a cottage out by some lake and how the company is ****ing them around with their benefits packages. A few of them are still talking shop, throwing out catchphrases and buzzwords and talking in lingo that I could be standing on a step ladder and still have them talking over my head.
After about ten minutes that felt like an hour wandering around the crowded house, breathing in more cigarette smoke than was probably healthy and seeing a bunch of corporate suits-at-play that I had never seen before, Will was starting to make noise.
How can she stand you up in her own house, dude? I mean, shouldn’t the little hostess-with-the-mostest be around somewhere? Maybe she knew she had to go out of town and figured that since Brad was throwing a party for his buddies, she’d invite you so he and his cronies would have someone to make fun of and this bit with you wandering aimlesslyais part of the joke. Man, I give it five more minutes and then we bolt. I mean, if we leave now, you can go home, have a shower, watch “6 Feet Under” and go to bed.
That’s Will for you. He’s always thinking about what we have time to do if we get out of an uncomfortable situation that very instance. Normally, I’d disregard his plan of action and hang around and see what happens. Right then and there, I was beginning to think that heading home might not be such a bad idea.
Hey, are you sure THIS is her place? I mean, she’s never really invited you over? Maybe there’s another party going on down the block and THAT’S where you’re supposed to be.
It was maybe a minute or two later, even as Will was all but making me promise to make one more circuit of the living room and then heading out…
Yeah, I’m sure the guy working the door won’t be so hesitant about letting you LEAVE.
…when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Will got to my brain first and had to sneak in the idea that it was some idiot who decided to finally start the public ridicule that was coming at my expense. He’d been expecting it, I’d been expecting it and perhaps now it was starting.
Instead it was Brad. Will still thought that maybe it was going to be him who would start the festivities. And despite the fact that he was dating…living with…and, no doubt, ****ing Sarah, a small part of me was still relieved to see a friendly face.
“Emmett, right?” he said. I nodded, probably too vigerously for him to not think I was a total moron.
Which would go so well with the total geek vibe that he must have already been going with.
“I’m Brad. Sarah was wondering if you were going to be showing up.” he informed me. “She’s in the kitchen, talking to Samantha, her sister. You should go say ‘hi!’.”
At that, Brad headed off to what I had to assume was the kitchen. I decided to tag along, figuring I could use Brad as a buffer to clear a path to Sarah.
You’re going to look awfully stupid if he’s headed to the bathroom.
It turns out, he was headed to the kitchen, and there, finally was Sarah, standing next to another tall blonde girl who was, indeed her sister Samantha. I seemed to recall meeting her once back in college. Other than that, I knew her better from seeing her in pictures that Sarah showed me in a photo album.
Sarah didn’t exactly do cartwheels when I came into the kitchen. She barely even paused in her conversation with Samantha to wave at me. The kitchen was quieter in terms of exposure to the music playing. I still noticed that Green Day had stopped and R.E.M. had begun but I was more interested in listening to Samantha talk to Sarah about her and her boyfriend (? husband? special acquaintance? who knew? who cared?) Rick’s trip up north a few weeks prior.
“You wanna beer there, Emmett?” I heard Brad ask. I was still concentrating on Sarah and Sam. It took me a second before I turned away, luckily quick enough that Brad didn’t have to ask the question a second time.
“Actually, I could go for just a Coke, Pepsi…whatever.” I replied.
Brad wasn’t quite as tragically disappointed as Dan had been when he found out I wasn’t into drinking, but he seemed to take it as kinda…queer, perhaps was the word he groped for momentarily, before handing me a Diet Coke.
“All we got is Diet, man,” he said, more matter of factly than apologetically. I should have known. All these pencil-thin anorexic secretaries and office managers drank Diet Cola. I shrugged and started in on it, trying to hide my disgust as best I could. There was a reason I never drank Diet Cola products.
Could it be that they all taste like crap?
Hit the nail right on the head, Will. Oh well, maybe I could gag it down and get a glass of water to get the taste out of my mouth later. Worse case scenario: I go to the bathroom and dump it down the toilet.
Yeah, going to the bathroom with a can of pop in your hand. Won’t look too stupid.
I tried to ignore the crap I was having to drink. I walked over to where Sarah and Samantha were standing. If Samantha recognized me, she didn’t show it. She glanced over to me while she and Sarah talked. The conversation had switched from her trip to all the hassles she had at work.
“So, it’s like my first day back and Heather, the snitty little bitch in Marvin’s office is ****ing reaming me out because, God forbid, someone phoned her up asking her a question about the new marketing plan and so she now figures that she was doing my job while I was on vacation,” Samantha was saying. “****ing little whorebag answers one ****ing phone call and suddenly it’s like it’s the end of the world.”
…as we know it and I feel fine!
Damn it. Every once in a while Will comes out with something so outrageous and yet hilarious that I almost lose it. Thankfully this time I held it together long enough to cover it with a cough. An added bonus was that it stopped Samantha in her tracks long enough for Sarah to finally…
Acknowledge your existence.
Change the subject towards my direction.
“Oh hey, Emmett,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it. Listen, got some bad news. Rachel called me. She and Michael got invited to her parents’ for dinner so they don’t think they can make it.”
Well, considering that I hadn’t seen Rachel and Michael in about six months
“Oh, I was just checking out the party. You know…mingling.” I say, trying to sound smooth,
Yeah, smooth as a 12-year-old.
Sarah laughs at my attempt, but not in a nasty way, so I figure that didn’t go over as badly as Will is trying to make out.
“Have you met my sister, Samantha?” she asks.
Wow! I’d never seen the look someone would give another person when they realize they’re being set up with you but this is ABOUT as close as we’ll ever get. She all but whispered “But I have a boyfriend and even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t go out with this geek.”
I try to put Will out of my head. I find engaging in conversation while battling Will is never a good idea. I end up losing my train of thought and looking like a retard. DON’T SAY IT, WILL!
“Yeah, I think we met one time, back when Sarah and I were in college.” I reply.
Maybe we even did, I can’t be sure at this point. I have this vague recollection of this Samantha coming up over Thanksgiving weekend during our Senior Year to visit Sarah.
Yeah, and I think her reaction to meeting you then was the same as it is now.
Probably. We basically made idle chitchat for about thirty seconds before we both realized we had nothing more than knowing Sarah in common. To be honest, I think we might have even tried discussing the weather. I can’t say for sure, I mean, I didn’t really think I’d be quizzed on it later.
Samantha nods, trying to feign a recognition she obviously doesn’t have. She obviously can’t remember our one five minute meeting four years ago and isn’t even going to make the effort to try.
“Oh yeah,” is all she can actually summon up the decency to say to me before turning back to Sarah. “Listen, Sarah, I’m just gonna grab a beer and go…uh…mingle.”
Told you that “mingle” **** was just that, ****! I mean, when some chick who can barely say two words to you is using throwing it back in your face, you know you look like a goof saying it.
Wouldn’t be the first time. Anyways, Sam gets her beer and goes on her merry way, which is fine by me since I’m here with Sarah.
Oh yeah, I’ll bet this was exactly the reason she threw this party in the first place. Just so she could stand around the kitchen with you.
For a moment, we don’t say anything.
And it only becomes uncomfortable after Sarah realizes that she can’t pretend that she’s watching Samantha leave anymore and you realize that she’s looking for an excuse to go…mingle.
Once Will alerts me to the fact that I’m just standing there, looking more like an idiot (for lack of a more derogatory term that I’m sure Will would be happy to come up with and probably is at this very moment) by the second, I decide that I have to say something, anything, so as to jumpstart the conversation.
Oh boy, this is going to end badly.
Of course, other than “Hey, was it cold out there today or what?” which even sounds bad in my head, so I can imagine what it would sound like out loud, I can’t think of a darn thing to say. I try to remember something funny that happened at work, but of course, it goes without saying that all I’m going to come up with is some stupid thing a customer did, and I’ll sound like I’m whining rather than recounting an “amusing anecdote”.
A moment later, I realize why Sarah is such a wonderful person. She actually comes to my rescue, saving me from myself, so to speak.
“So, you enjoying the party?” she says.
Good God! She’s become the babysitter. She’s become THAT person.
That person?
Yeah, the person that has to go around to all the anti-social geeks and make sure they feel like somebody actually wants them there, even though no one does. It’s a bit of a “Good Samaritan” act. Sad part is that it just highlights how much of a fish out of water the poor dork is. Oh, and in case you missed it, in this case, that poor dork is you.
Actually, now that you mention it, I think at every one of the four or five parties I’ve ever been to, about an hour into it someone has always come up to me, asked me if I was having a good time. Depending on how many geekhunters had gotten to me, they might even ask why I was so quiet, which really compounded the problem, because then I had to go out and make stupid jokes to get people thinking I was enjoying myself, when I really wasn’t.
Don’t you hate that? Makes you feel ten times stupider.
Yeah. However, in this case, Sarah was actually caring about how I was doing, and was really only asking to make conversation.
Sure she was.
She was!
“Yeah, you throw a good party. Thanks for inviting me.”
She shrugs. DAMN, is she cute when she shrugs and kinda smiles, like it’s no biggy when really it meant so much to me that I probably couldn’t have put it into words if I tried.
“No problem. Figured you could come out, meet some of the people I work with.”
See,Will? She must think pretty highly of me if she’s willing to invite me out to meet some of her other friends.
Whatever. More likely no one at her office met the prerquisite geek status so she figured that by inviting you along, the geekhunters could get their jollies and those disenchanted by their jobs could feel better about them as compared to a moron like you stuck in retail.
“So, all these people work in your office?” I ask, knowing full well that they probably all do, but figuring this is as good a way as any to continue our conversation.
Sarah nods. “Yeah, most of them. I mean, a few of them are the ‘significant others’ of the people I work with, and Brad invited a couple of his buddies over.”
I wonder if the guy manning the door was one of Brad’s buddies. For a moment, I wonder if I detect some exasperation in Sarah’s voice when she talks about Brad’s buddies. Maybe Brad didn’t exactly clear it with Sarah before handing out the invites. Maybe Sarah doesn’t exactly take to these friends of his. Maybe they’re crude and obnoxious and it reflects badly on Brad.
And maybe she’s about ready to dump him and through herself into the waiting arms of her only true love. You!
When Will says it, it sounds stupid. Before my conversation with either Sarah or Will can go any further, who should make an appearance but the man himself, Brad.
“Hey, the hostesss isn’t supposed to stay in the kitchen all night,” he laughs, grabbing her around the waist from behind and pulling her against him. He looks over at me and nods.
“Hey!” he says. I echo the sentiment.
Ooh…can I get a ringside seat for this one.
My stomach drops a foot or so as Sarah deftly spins around in his arms and kisses him. Just a quick little kiss, but enough.
What? No tongue. What a gyp. I mean, if she’s gonna break your heart, she could at least have given you something to work with. A little tongue, some moaning, a little bit of nipple hardening.
Glad I can always count on Will to say the absolute most disgusting thing at a time when I really could use a little silence. Sarah breaks away from Brad’s embrace after a moment and kinda motions towards the living room.
“Yeah, I better go be the ‘hostess with the mostest’. Come on, Emmett, you should go introduce yourself around.”
Sure thing, Sarah. He’ll be along in a minute, he just has to pick up what’s left of his heart. Hope you had fun doing a little barnyard stomp on it.
I just kinda nod, not really trusting my voice to actually speak. I trail Sarah and Brad out into the living room.
Just as we leave the kitchen, Sarah turns to Brad and asks “Hey, have you seen my watch? The one my grandmother gave me? I keep meaning to show it off to Louise.”
Brad replies “I think I saw it on the night table on your side of the bed.”
As Brad and Sarah enter the living room, everyone is happy to see the two of them. I don’t think anyone in the room actually notices me at all, bringing up the rear.
They do seem to at least acknowledge your existence once in a while, though. Rather than simply walk right into you, they usually give you a rather abrupt “excuse me” which is party-language for “get outta my way, geek!”
Now that we’re back among the main throng of party-goers, I feel out of place again.
Like you felt “in-place” when you were hiding out in the kitchen? Leeching off Sarah and acting like the little lost geek that you are, every moment that passed with you not wanting to leave her side, like she’s your Mom at your first day of kindergarten…
Oh man, now there’s an analogy I could have done without making, likening Sarah, the girl you have this desperate desire to see naked to your mother.
Anyways, the longer you’re hiding behind her skirt-tails, so to speak, the more everyone within sight realizes that you have the social skills of a three-year-old too timid to actually interact with the outside world, and having to stick with what you know, pathetically so.
It’s not just the fact that I know, and in case I forget, I have Will here to remind me, that every person in the room, excluding Sarah…
You hope!
…I hope, takes one look at me and their Geek-dar goes on-line. It’s the fact that they’re all from a different world than I am. They all have careers, not just jobs. They’re still talking about their weekends at some cottage up north. After a while, though, I wonder if they’re just talking to make themselves out to be better off than they are. If one of them talks about trying to beat the traffic on a Friday night up to cottage country, the other half of the conversation has to chime in about knowing exactly how much of a bitch it is and how they have a fool-proof plan to get around it by taking Highway 2 and bypassing the 401.
What a ****ing bunch of posers! Each trying to outdo the other on one level or the other so they can say that their lives, their knowledge or their possessions impressed someone. Meanwhile, that someone is thinking “What a ****ing loser asshole!”
About ten minutes after I leave the kitchen…
And after ten minutes of feeling like you’ve been tossed into shark-infested waters to try and learn how to swim…
…some guy, who looks like he’s only about half a step up the social ladder from me walks by me on the way to the kitchen. He taps me on the forearm to get my attention.
Maybe he was leaning against that same doorway and now he wants it back and is prepared to make a big stink about it. Maybe he figures crowning you the biggest geek at the party (a title you should hold undisputedly already) in front of everyone will score a few pointers for himself.
As it turns out, WILL, he simply wanted to know if I had a smoke he could bum from me. I shook my head.
“Sorry,” I say, as apologetically as I can, “I don’t smoke.”
“Damn,” he replies.
Then he adds, “Maybe this is a sign I should quit. I mean, if I can’t even keep myself supplied, what good am I?”
I laugh slightly, not wanting to come off as a prude, but not wanting him to think I find great mirth in some poor bugger’s plight.
A moment later, he extends his hand.
Oh ****! Now you’ve done it. You’ve gone and run into some guy who wants to be friends. An hour from now he’ll have told you his entire life story and a week from now you’ll be contemplating having your phone number changed to get this guy out of your life.
“My name’s Walter. What’s your name?”
Make up a name. John…George…Paul…Ringo…anything. Tell him you’re name’s Pete Best, James Best…see if he gets the reference.
Against Will’s better judgment, I shake Walter’s hand and reply, “Emmett.”
Walter nods. Ever notice these kind of guys nod like your reply is really profound?
“How do you know Brad?” he asks.
Oh, first it’s your life story…then the stalking becomes easier.
I shake my head. “I don’t actually. I’ve only met him a couple of times. I’m a friend of Sarah’s.”
Again with the nodding.
“Yeah, Sarah’s great. Really brings out the best in ol’ Brad. He’s a whip, that one.”
A whip? A ****ing whip? Who is this guy, Oliver Twist’s great-great-grandson or something?
Just then, a guy with a cigarette in his hand walks by. That catches the attention of my new friend, Walter, who decides that a cigarette is more important than getting to know me.
He claps me on the shoulder. “Emmett, it’s good meeting you. Have fun and don’t get into trouble.”
And with that, Walter is gone. I manage to refrain from laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all. I glance after Walter as he begins to hound the passer-by for a smoke, then I look back out into the party.
I watch as Brad…the whip…makes his rounds, making sure that all his buddies are taken care of, like he’s a maitre’de or whatever. I watch him as he hobnobs, laughs too loudly at jokes I can’t hear but obviously can’t be that funny and knocks glasses in pseudo-toasts.
Don’t ****ing stare, you homo, or he’ll think you’re hot for him, not Sarah.
He strikes me as the kind of guy who would have driven a muscle car in the 70s like the one in the opening shot of “Dazed and Confused”. Problem is that in 20 years, he’ll be the kind of guy who still drove the same muscle car, loud pain job and flames on the side and all in the 90s, with a beer gut and a bad toupee. The kind of guy who stands shirtless in his backyard, bar-b-quing and bitching to his buddies about the government, with a beer surgically attached to his hand, taking time out to yell at his kids to go inside or at his dog to quit barking.
And where will you be in 20 years, Emmett?
By the time I can check out a clock again, it’s 11:00 which means if I leave now, I’ll be home just in time to get undressed, go to sleep and be totally exhausted in the morning. Of course, by this time, I’ve managed to walk around Sarah’s place a total of a dozen times, drank three cokes, managed to stand against every wall in the place so as to keep out of the way, gone to the bathroom four times and have already had one guy glare at me for ten solid minutes from across the room before turning to his friend, making what obviously must be some crude remark directed at me, over which both laughed.
Yeah, it’s late, everyone’s tired and drunk and their tolerance level for the likes of you is hitting rock bottom. You stick around much longer and you’ll get geek-hunted good and proper.
I shrug. Not really caring if anyone notices or not. Will is right and for once listening to him actually sounds like something that will save me a lot of grief and embarrassment later on…or not that much later on. I look around to see if I can find Sarah. She’s not in the living room nor, upon a quick recon, is she in the kitchen again.
She’s probably gone to **** this Brad guy…or one of his buddies…or both.
I find the more tired I am, the more alert (and yet insensitive) that Will becomes.
Hey, listen you can either walk around here until you get in someones’ way who isn’t going to just let you slide OR you can get the **** outta Dodge and tell Sarah that you were looking for her but had to go.
I do one more lap of the party and then I decide to do the latter.
No matter how tired I feel whenever I get home from one of these deals, I never seem to be able to fall asleep right away. Instead I end up right back at the heart of whatever party, group outing, etc, that I’ve just returned from. Only this time I’m the centre of attention, saying all the right things and making jokes and recounting stories from my past that, for some reason, seem to fit right in with whatever topics of discussion I overheard and yet never took part in that night.
Funny how you always seem to think you know the right thing to say an hour or so AFTER, huh?
Funny, Will’s not usually here at this point. Normally, he’s content to just let me roll these events over and over in my mind. It’s usually about the only time he lets me ego get the better of me.
All the better to make you look like all the bigger idiot the next morning. Actually, I wasn’t going to say anything at all but I didn’t want the readers to think that I’d disappeared for good. Interest in your story might fall away to nothing, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?
Of course not. Of course, Will is soon gone again and I’m back at Sarah’s party. Only this time, I’m not skulking around the kitchen, I’m out in the living room, joining in on the conversation about conditions at work. I’m telling all these office workers that they haven’t got a clue what a b-s job is until they’ve done their time in the retail world.
Of course, rather than sound like some whining wimp…
The way it would have in real life!
…I have everyone in the room hanging on my every word. By this time, I beginning to fall asleep and in this almost dream-like state, I feel less like just some guy talking about his experiences working in some video store and more like some kind of war veteran just in from the jungle to tell everyone back in “the World” what it’s really like on the front lines.
And this from a guy who turned down what amounted to a first date with a co-worker because he didn’t want to have to talk shop as an opening.
That was different. Talking retail to another retail worker looks dorky. Here I could use it to my advantage. I can see that Samantha and Sarah are looking on from one corner of the room and that Sarah is totally ignoring Brad, who looks on as if he’d give anything to be me right at this particular moment.
Why? He woke up with Sarah this morning and you’re waking up with me!
Jeez, the next thing I know, it’s the morning after and there’s Will, not even waiting until I get my eyes open before he starts in on me.
Hey, why should I have to wait around until you drag your lazy carcass out of bed to make with the “I was right! I was right! Nyah-Nyah-Nyah!” already?
One thing I have to say about Will. He’s a sore winner.
Before this whole evening rolled into effect, did I or did I not tell you that going to this party and seeing Brad and Sarah together was going to be the worst thing you could do? No offence but it didn’t really seem to me like those two were one wrong move away from breaking up. Maybe you saw something I didn’t but from what I saw, Sarah seemed pretty content to keep Brad in her life for the foreseeable future.
Well, since you see and hear everything I see (although you tend to twist much of that to suit your own sadistic needs), I can safely say that I didn’t see anything that you didn’t see and…(sigh) yes, it looks as if Brad is making Sarah pretty happy. They make a pretty good couple.
So what, you had nothing better to do last night that have that thrown in your face? You had to book time off work just to go out and get proof that the girl of your dreams is pretty much taken by someone else?
Hey it was a chance to get out of the house. Meet some new people. Get my mind off work for a while.
And just what the **** did you end up doing? You ended up wandering around this Brad’s place, trying to keep out of everyone’s way and the one person you did meet, other than Brad and Sarah themselves was her sister, Samantha, and let’s just say she didn’t look like she was about to give you her number.
Okay, fine, Will. But jeez, if I don’t take a chance once in a while how am I ever supposed to have a social life?
You and a social life? You tried that in college, remember? You went out to bars with Sarah and the rest of them. You “mingled”. You went to the college’s pub nights a few times. Every once in a blue moon you ventured out of your dorm room and tried to socialize whenever your fellow Rez-ers decided they could find an excuse to party (which was every ten minutes or so). And what ended up happening? Those who didn’t tell you to “**** off and die, geek” right off the bad forgot you existed five minutes after they got their diploma.
CHAPTER NINE
HER SIDE OF THE BED?
I wake up the next morning. Late. As I had kinda expected I would be, I’m massively tired.
As YOU expected you would be? Uh, excuse me, asshole. I’m the one who was telling you to get your ass home and asleep as soon as possible. You had visions of staying out ‘til one or two o’clock and then jumping out of bed by eight, with enough energy to take on the world.
In retrospect, I suppose it didn’t really matter when I left the party. The post-party analyst and my own speculation about what might have been if I had just said something different or tried to become the life of the party had kept me up well past the point where I should have turned my brain off and called it a night if I expected to get up at any decent hour that morning.
Long after I had woken out of the deep sleep that had kept me in bed as long as I had, I remained in this weird not-quite-asleep-yet-not-quite-awake status and this was where Will decided to put his two cents in about the events of the previous night. Every slight, every misconstrued word, the uncomfortable conversation with Sarah’s sister. The two idiots who were quite obvious about having made some joke at my expense. Everything that Will could put into a negative light and then turn into a reason to make me feel stupid for showing up to that party, he tossed out at me.
Some of my best work. Easy, too. Oh, hey, Emmett, I got a little something that you should take a look at. I think you might find it just a little bit interesting.
And then, suddenly, before I knew what was happening, he hit the “play” button on his home movie of the party and showed me a little clip that, when it happened, I hadn’t really been paying attention.
As Sarah and Brad had walked out of the kitchen, me in tow, Sarah had turned to Brad and asked him if he knew where her watch was. Brad’s reply had been that he had last seen it on the nightstand on her side of the bed.
Wait! Wait! What was that last part again something about…
Her side of the bed.
Hmm…Hey, Emmett, maybe I’m just clueless but what do you think that means…her side of the bed?
My guts tighten as realization sets in. I decide not to even dignify Will with a response.
Okay, fair enough, but let me do the math for you. This is, you ****ing niave little piece of ****, undeniable proof that your beloved Sarah and her beloved Brad are SLEEPING TOGETHER.
Wait, once more with feeling.
BRAD. AND. SARAH. ARE. SLEEPING. TOGETHER.
It had been something I guess I had known ever since she told me that the two of them were dating. I mean, in this day and age, if you’re in a romantic relationship, it naturally stands to reason that you’re sleeping together, right?
And you’re acting like you’re talking from experience, why?
My ****ING point is that Brad and Sarah sleeping together was not something I should be surprised at. I should have been able to accept it a long time ago. I mean, I shouldn’t be upset by this, it was something that I should have accepted as fact instead.
Oh, but there was always that little ray of hope in your mind. That this relationship with Brad was something that was just temporary in Sarah’s life. You know, Brad was just a passing fancy that she went out to dinner or a movie with, and that eventually she’d see what a complete clod that he was and she’d dump him and everything would be back to normal, only this time you’d realize how much she meant to you and you could make her your girlfriend.
I’m still so damned tired from last night that I don’t even bother trying to deny it. Will had been there, had seen what now seemed like insane fantasies where I’d see her in a book store years from now and it’d be a joyous reunion and she’d tell me she and Brad had broken up. I’d be there to comfort her in her loss and then ask her if she wanted to get together for coffee or something, and our relationship would just bloom from there.
Yeah, well, that was a nice dream but the knowledge that Brad has ****ed her is just more proof in the pudding that that little fantasy has about much chance of happening as I do of becoming the next Pope.
I start clutching at straws. I tell Will that not every couple that’s had sex ends up getting married and spending the rest of their lives together.
Fine. Live in denial. I mean, statistically you are right, but the fact is that in addition to sleeping together, they are living together. Doesn’t that tell you something? They are experimenting with living together as a couple in preparation for becoming man and wife! And here’s a quick update: from the looks of things last night, they look pretty comfortable living under the same roof.
Before Will can say anything more, the phone rings. By this time, I’m fully awake and am pretty sure I know exactly who’s phoning me.
Hey, maybe it’s Sarah phoning to tell you that despite what you might have been led to believe last night, all is not well in their little love nest. Perhaps she will tearfully tell you that she’s through with Brad and realizes that you are the man who will make her life complete.
I try to shush Will as I answer the phone. As I expected, instead of the soft, sweet voice of Sarah, I get the annoying harshness of Dan.
“Hey, Emm…listen I need a favour. Brian called in sick and you gotta cover his five to close shift.”
Why do I bother to pick up the phone?
Why DO you bother to pick up the phone? There’s something called an answering machine, dickhead. Use it to screen calls like this.
An hour later, I’m at work. I forego all the mindless chitchat regarding the weather, customer complaints, etc, and just dive right into whatever task that’s put in front of me. Once I complete one job, I jump into the next one, and then the one after that.
I’m like a machine. I get more work done in the first three hours than I have in some shifts prior to this. They say that when you’re busy, the time goes by quicker, but you can sell that **** to the tourists cause I ain’t buying it. Time drags as slow as it ever did, but that’s fine. I’m cool with it. Ain’t like I got anything to do afterwards.
In a way, I’m almost…almost, mind you, happy that Brian called in sick and I got enlisted to cover for him. I figure what else am I going to do but sit at home and aimless surf the Internet, maybe listen to some sappy love songs that’ll just serve as a reminder how Sarah’s found love and I haven’t. Lay in bed dwelling on how happy she seemed in his arms and how she undoubtedly woke up this morning on HER SIDE OF THE BED?
Dan eventually wakes up from the little nap he’s most likely been taking in the office and wanders into the section I’m alphabetizing.
“Holy ****,” he says, not bothering to keep his voice down. “You got both the Comedy and Drama sections done?”
“Yep,” I say, nodding.
“You’re the man when it comes to straightening, aren’t ya?”
Holy ****! Was that a legitimate compliment out of the bastard? Pardon me while I go into cardiac arrest!
I don’t know how to answer him. I don’t dare brag about my accomplishments. It just isn’t done. Part of me just doesn’t give a **** anyways, like my straightening skills mean so much in the grand scheme of things. In the end, I just shrug.
Dan starts to say something else but then stops. For a moment, I’m horrified to realize that he might have somehow been offended by my less-than-enthusiastic reaction.
So what? What’s the worst he could do? Fire your sorry ass?
Will then proceeds to show me this little vision he has of Dan taking me to task for not showing him the proper respect and for being sullen. In this vision, I then turn around and go ballistic on his sorry, fat ass, finally just throwing the closest video I could find at him and storming out, telling him to take his job and go **** himself with it.
Oh man, you can take the greatest orgasm of your…well, someone’s life, and it still wouldn’t top that feeling.
For a brief moment, I actually relish the idea, even hope that Dan will give me just enough rope to hang him with. In the end, he disappoints me.
Turns out, he was simply clearing his throat.
Something Jessica is probably doing in the bathroom right about now.
“ ‘Scuze me. Hey, Emmett, you should probably go on break soon,” he tells me.
For once, I’m actually hesitant to take him up on his offer. Normally, I’m almost willing the clock to speed up until I get a chance to take ten minutes and sit down in the back. Not this time. It’s not so much that I’m on such a roll that I want to finish alphabetizing this section. Sad but true, dedication to my craft, such as it is, figured little into my reluctance.
It was that I knew if I sat down and let the world catch up to me, I’d be drawn back to Will’s little Powerpoint presentation on Sarah and Brad’s relationship…not to mention their sleeping arrangements. I kidded myself into thinking that if I kept working, I’d keep enough things on my brain to block out the things I didn’t want to think about.
Oh bull****! You’ve been reliving that moment the entire time, analyzing it, trying to reason it out to make yourself believe that this can’t possibly mean what I’m telling you it means.
The shift plodded on, every customer merging into another until they become little more than a name on a computer screen, a voice that answers my questions. Every task becomes the same, just something I do with my hands so I can keep busy and more importantly look busy.
All the whole, Will keeps rewinding the conversation Brad and Sarah had about “her side of the bed” on an endless loop, breaking in only to remind me about how this is “undeniable proof” that the two of them are sleeping together.
Yeah, hot shot, while you were busy laying in bed fantasizing about being Mr. ****ing Cool, Brad was screwing your dream girl. How’s that for diversity in fortune?
“You’re awfully quiet today?” Andrea informs me, matter-of-factly, just as I step away from the cash desk to put some returns away.
“Oh…am I?” I reply.
Great! Now I feel uncomfortable and obligated to make some lame-ass joke at my own expense in order to alleviate Andrea’s fears that there’s something wrong with me. I stand at the edge of the counter, trying to figure out what to say that will get me off the hook without getting me heat from Andrea.
Why don’t you just tell Andrea the truth? Say something along the lines of “Well, Andrea, maybe when you come to realize that the person you’d give anything to be ‘more than friends’ with is never going to think of you as anything more than that, you’ll get a little quiet and introspective, too?”
Or how about “Yeah, I found out that my best friend is ****ing some dickhead last night so I’m not really in the mood for chit chat, bitch”?
Neither one of those options is really what I’m looking for, so I finally just shrug. “I guess I tend to be quieter when I get busy.”
Oh yeah, that’s WAY better than what I would have come up with.
Thankfully, this seems to satisfy Andrea’s quest for knowledge. She nods, although she does so in a way that seems a little sad, as if she’s a little…I don’t know…put off or disappointed that I’m not talking more.
Immediately, Will packs my bags and sends me on an all-expense paid guilt trip over my rather curt explanation of my own silence towards Andrea.
Hey, it’s not Andrea’s fault that Sarah’s screwing Brad instead of even giving you the time of day. Hell, she just wants to be your friend, carry on a conversation with ya, and you’re giving her the cold shoulder like she set Sarah up with this asswipe.
Thankfully, Andrea remains just hovering around the section I’m in for a while, giving me a chance to make things right.
“You know me,” I say, “I get bored, I tend to blab, so if I don’t shut up, I’d never get anything done around here.”
Andrea laughs at that, and I’m glad I made the effort. “Oh yeah, you’re such the blabbermouth.”
I smile as I watch her head back up to the front. “Well, don’t work too hard. I’m getting lonely up there,” she says as she departs. As I get back to work, almost forgetting that I’m due for a break, as per Dan’s instruction, I suddenly start to brainstorm reasons to head up to cash to visit with Andrea.
A couple of minutes later, I come across “Say Anything” with John Cusack and Ione Skye. I had watched it a few weeks before and so I figured it was as good a topic as any to talk to Andrea about.
She’s processing returns as I pop the case on the counter before her.
“Ever seen this movie?” I ask, pretty sure that she would have seen it at some point in time. She doesn’t disappoint me.
Nodding, she replies, “Say Anything? Yeah, that’s a great movie. I think the last time I saw it was on TV or something about a year or two. I so have to watch that again sometime.”
“I have the DVD for it and I watched it about a month or so ago. The commentary is pretty good. Cameron Crowe, the director, plus Ione Skye and John Cusack are all on sitting around, talking about the movie.”
“Ah, you and your championing of audio commentary again,” she replies. I realize that we had had this particular line of conversation before, but I figure it was one we both enjoyed discussing.
“Hey, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. Audio commentary on a disc is worth the price of the disc. It’s like rewatching the movie without just rehashing the same plot and dialogue.”
Andrea holds up her hands in mock surrender. “I have never and will never argue with you on that point. Actually, what movie did I watch the other day?”
I wait patiently and expectantly as Andrea tries to remember the movie in question. A moment later, it comes to her, as if on a lightning bolt.
“Ironically enough, it was another Cameron Crowe movie, Almost Famous,” she informs me.
“Did you get the special ‘Bootleg’ edition where it’s him and his Mom and some production guy?” I ask. I barely have the question out of my mouth when she answers that it was.
We chat like that for a while. The store is pretty dead so eventually we carry on the conversation as I go back to straightening the section and Andrea resumes checking in movies. For a while, we totally forget, or just stop caring that Dan is in the back and we hold the conversation across rows of video store shelves.
The next few hours seem to get as close to flying by as it ever gets working retail, especially in the video store. The conversation between Andrea and I works its way from “Almost Famous” to other Cameron Crowe movies to movies in general. A part of me…
My part!
Yes, Will’s part of me keeps expecting the phone to ring with some irate customer, demanding to know why he or she is being stuck with late charges, or some idiot to return a movie (most likely late) and demand a full refund because the movie was “defective” or they hadn’t REALLY meant to rent it in the first place.
But it never happens. The remainder of the shift is very quiet and hassle-free. I think I straighten the whole store, everything from comedy to drama to horror to sci-fi to special interest. When the end of my shift finally rolls around and I’m heading out the door, I make a mental checklist of everything I figure that Dan would want me to have completed. The way I figure it, straightening the entire store over the course of one shift is a pretty fine accomplishment, if I do say so myself.
Dan, of course, gives me no acknowledgement but then considering that he was in the back office all day (having conveniently forgot his uniform AGAIN) he probably has no clue that I was doing anything more than just standing up at cash goofing off or something.
No worries, Emmett. The only thing you’re going to hear about when you show up for your next shift is that teeny, tiny bit of the store that some asswipe disturbed just to be a dick about it after you were all finished. You know, there will be one video box that will be slightly off-kilter and THAT will be the one thing that Dan remembers about your efforts. Knowing that asshole, he’ll walk around the store endlessly searching to find something to nail you about.
I nod, hoping that no one sees me showing my agreement with the voice in my head. Might be kind of hard to explain. Meanwhile, I notice that Andrea is just up ahead, waiting for the bus. I quicken my pace so as to catch up to her.
“Well, another long day shot all to hell?” she asks, jokingly.
I nod again, this time to a voice others can actually hear. “Getting up for 9:00 is a hassle at times, but at least we get to go home at 5:00.”
“9-5 shifts rock, lemme tell ya,” Andrea replies.
I stand there, with only a sliver of myself actually wanting to keep on walking home. The rest of me, surprisingly, actually doesn’t mind standing there talking to her, at least for the few minutes before her bus arrives.
“You know, I think this afternoon might have been as close to having fun as I’ve had at this job,” I inform Andrea.
She shushes me then begins to laugh. “Not so loud. Otherwise tomorrow will really suck.”
I laugh at that. “I hadn’t thought of that. I probably just jinxed myself. You working tomorrow?”
She sighs and nods. “Same shift as today. 9-5. You?”
I shake my head. “Nah, I gotta come in for 5 to midnight.”
“Eww…” she replies, as if she just stepped in something a dog left over, “ I have those shifts.”
I shrug my shoulders. “Me, too…but at least I’m off on Wednesday so it’s not so bad.”
I’m disappointed when Andrea’s bus arrives. We say our goodbyes and she gets on the bus as I resume my trek home. Over the next few blocks, I find that I’m reliving bits and pieces of our extended conversation over the course of the afternoon and am coming up with topics that I should have touched on and know that I’ll forget before the next time I can really chat with her again.
Hey, Emmett…speaking of topics, do you know what topic that your little interaction with Andrea has managed to push aside for the last few hours?
I know full well that Will is going to tell me no matter whether I feebly attempt a guess or not so I decide to say “**** it” and just have him tell me, rather than wrack my brain over what mental abuse he’s going to toss my way.
No clue, Will. Lay it on me?
Well, while you were discussing movies and basically increasing your over status with Andrea, you kinda forgot, at least until I bring it up just now, that you were obsessed with the fact that you know have undeniable proof that Sarah, the so-called only girl for you, your soul-mate, the ying to your yan, blah, blah, blah, is sleeping with Brad, this moronic jerk that she barely (at least in your eyes) knows.
And just like that, my stomach drops. Thanks a bunch, Will.
Now, I have to point out that there is some method to my madness, I would just like to point out my reasoning behind my bringing that particular phenomenon up. First of all, I did it just cause that’s just the kind of rat bastard that I am.
Yeah, I kinda figured as much.
Thanks. (Nice to know I don’t disappoint!) And second of all, I would just like to point out that while every interaction you have with Sarah from now until the end of time is going to be one where you get your heart stomped on because you will be constantly reminded of her relationship, which as you know now is way past the going out to dinner and a movie and a little peck on the cheek to end the evening stage, with Brad, it seems as if this Andrea is able to make you forget all your troubles, as the old song goes, and make even a horrible job like the one you have at Video Emporium at least semi-tolerable.
So, what are you trying to get at, Will?
You know what, dumb-ass? The situation that I am trying to present to you is so crystal clear that even a retarded three-year old could understand what I’m trying to get across to you, so guess where that puts you on the ol’ mentality scale. If you’re so blinded by this misguided love for some chick that is already taken and probably wouldn’t be interested in you even if she was single that you’re not willing to even entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe there is someone already in your life who might offer the possibility of something special if you’d just get your head out of your ass and put your efforts in the right direction.
The conversation between Will and I has become so heated that I don’t want to arrive home in this mood. Plus I have a feeling that there’s more we both need to get off our collective chests…or is it chest? For the moment, the pluralization matter seems trivial.
I remind Will that we covered this very topic, the possibility of something occurring between Andrea and I, in an earlier chapter. The same held true even after this afternoon’s conversation. I like Andrea, she’s a good person, she’s funny and smart and I consider her a close friend, but there isn’t that…certain something that I feel when I think of Sarah.
Besides Will, aren’t you the one who told me that I must be the biggest prick in the world to not have someone special in my life…that I was lower than Hitler? Aren’t you the same guy who’s been reminding me all these years what a complete loser I am? That no one in their right mind would want to be friends with me, much less anything more than that? That anyone with any thought at all with regards to their social status wouldn’t be caught dead talking to me, save to reinforce just what a moron I was and to kick my ego (what shreds of it still exist after all these years) down a notch or five?
Therefore, from what I can deduce from what you’ve had the courtesy to remind me about over the years, I have no better a shot at Andrea than I do with Sarah, right? I mean, since I’m such a loser, and Andrea’s got a pretty good head on her shoulders, it’s not like she’s be all that inclined to date a zero like me.
And I mean, since according to you and the world in general, I have no shot at ever finding anyone to share my life with, shouldn’t I engage in ultimately fruitless and pointless fantacizing about the person I am hopelessly in love with? You know, if I’m going to be a pathetic loser, I might as well at least set my naïve sights high, right? It’s not like I’m going to be any less pathetic if I start mooning over someone I like but am not in love with. Right?
Okay, you know what, the fact that you’re turning my own tirades back against me should be enough to make me want to go medieval on your ass. But you know what? I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m just gonna ease off on the whole Andrea subject.
By now I’m about a block from my apartment building and I can’t believe what I am hearing from Will. He’s cutting me a break?
Oh yeah, buddy-boy. I’m not going to bring up the idea that maybe, with a little effort on your part, you just might have a shot with Andrea, certainly more than you’ll ever have with Sarah. At least not until that day comes…and if will, dickhead…when you look back and realize that Andrea is probably the person you WERE meant to be with but, like Sarah, she’s another one that got away. Only, unlike Sarah, you might have actually been able to prevent Andrea from being another one that got away.
CHAPTER TEN
A NIGHT OUT WITH THE BOYS
Sometimes I will lie in bed, just coming off a night’s sleep and not ready to start the day just yet, and I would allow myself to imagine what it might be like if, by some miracle, Sarah and Brad were no longer together.
These dreams…
Sad, pathetic dreams!
…would of course be accompanied by Will’s pleas for me to stop them before I got carried away, before I got caught up in what even I knew, deep down, could never be. And yet, I couldn’t shake the desire to create this fantasy world, to create this detailed, well-thought out and intricate scenario.
I imagine the tearful phone-call that I would receive from Sarah, all but begging me to come over to her place, that she needed someone to talk to. I would drop everything and rush over to be with her. I would hold her as she cries and tell me what an asshole she finally saw Brad to be, about the fights and the hurtful things he said and did to her.
“It’s just that…I feel so bad about myself. I mean, if Brad couldn’t love me…”, she’d say.
“Sarah,” I’d reply, looking into her eyes. “You are a beautiful person, don’t ever let anyone tell you different.”
It’d be those first few words that would open up the floodgates. From there, I’d be able to tell her everything I ever thought about her, about what a wonderful person she was and how I’d always harboured these feelings for her. I’d tell her that Brad was wrong, that he was an idiot for not seeing how special she was, that it was his loss.
That’d be my opening. My foot in the door, if you will. I’d tell her that no matter what Brad made her believe, there was at least one person in the world who would love her, that person being me. That I loved everything about her, and always had, since the moment I met her.
You know, I don’t which is more pathetic. Your idea that Sarah is going to break up with Brad, or what a loser you sound like when you have your little fantasy about them breaking up. What did you do, knock over some hack romance novelist and steal every cliché in his book?
That night, while I’m at work, I get a call from Pete Henry. He’s this guy I’ve known since high school. Somewhere along the lines we were friends, but life has kinda put some distance between us and so now we’re just two people who’ve known each other for years and still get together to hang out when neither of us have anything better to do.
Or rather, when he has nothing better to do.
“Hey, Emmett, whatchya up to?” he asks.
“Working ‘til 7…after that, not too much,” I reply. Dan has this idea where he needed me to work every Monday from 11:00 until 7:00 “because of all the freight we get”. The thing was that if I bagged my ass, I had all the receiving done and the stock put away by 4:00 which was, ironically, about the same time he took off (despite being “on the clock until 5:00), but instead of being able to take off at 4 or even 5:00, I have to stick around and be on cash for the next three hours. Actually, I think he figures by giving me such a weird shift, it will totally screw up my day.
Which it does. Perceptive guy, that Dan.
“Cool,” he says. I don’t know how cool it was but if that was Pete’s take on it, who was I to argue? “You feel like doing something afterwards?”
Actually, when Pete calls, I do have plans for the evening: sit in my room listening to the most depressing songs I could think of and brood on how much I want Sarah to break up with Brad and give me a shot at dating her. I think about it for a moment and, I figure I could still hang out with Pete for a while and then still have enough time to brood over Sarah.
What the hell, I tell myself. “What do you have in mind?” is what I ask Pete.
“I don’t know,” he replies, much to my non-surprise. “I thought we could maybe go for coffee or something.”
I shrug, wondering just how much more depressing it would actually be to be staying home tonight. At least I wouldn’t be as bored.
Andrea comes in at five to start her shift, so thankfully, I can at least chat with her and the last two hours only seem like four instead of eight or nine. We’re joined by Rick, who comes sauntering in just at the buzzer at five o’clock. Not like Andrea or I could really do anything about it.
“Hey.” Rick says as he walks past us en route to the backroom to drop off his gear. I made a quick estimate and figured he might be making a return appearance around 5:30.
Rick has been working at the Video Emporium for about five or six months and I still have never bothered to learn his last name. Of course, I only see him about once a week since he never really gets a lot of shifts out of Dan, although I think Dan liked Rick better than he did me, at least as a potential buddy that he could shoot the **** with and down a few brews outside work.
“You’re closing with Rick?” I asked Andrea. The two of us had come to the unspoken agreement that if Dan was skipping out early, the two of us could slack off. It was so unlike us but it just seemed like the right thing to do.
Yeah, Emmett…you’re a real rebel! Meanwhile, you’re ****ting bricks that Dan will come in tomorrow and review the security camera tapes and see the two of you just standing around doing nothing.
Andrea nods, rolling her eyes. See, Will, she doesn’t really believe we’ll get caught so why should I give a **** either.
“Oh yeah. It’ll be a productive night, lemme tell ya that,” she replies. “I’d ask if you wanted to stay but I’m not sure whether I’d have you fill in for me or for Rick. If you filled in for me, I could go home. If you filled in for Rick, I’d have someone I could chat with and make my night go faster.”
I’m actually kinda touched by this. After working with Dan, Jessica, and even Rick, all of whom treated me like I was the last person they wanted to spend seven or eight hours of their lives with, it was nice to hear confirmation that Andrea enjoyed at least working with me, and being in my prescence for an extended period of time.
“Thank you,” I reply, honestly, “It’s nice to hear.”
“No prob,” she tells me, “Of course, compared to Rick, that may not seem as big a compliment as I mean it to be.”
I laugh. Rick is one of those guys that people will use as a stereotype for those of us stuck in retail. He basically leaves his personality at the doorway and just kinda vegs the shift away.
Not that I mind that trait in him sometimes. If I leave him up at cash, it means I can do other stuff around the store and not have to worry about having to keep an eye on things up there.
Of course, there are times that I have to keep an eye on Rick to make sure he hasn’t just decided to take off for a smoke or coffee or to call his girlfriend or any of the other myriad of excuses he has for taking off for “a couple of minutes” which can be anywhere from five minutes to twenty minutes.
Yeah, I wonder if YOU’RE the only one he figures is enough of a wimp that he can get away with that stuff with.
The next couple of hours kinda creep by. After Rick drops his stuff off in the backroom, changes his clothes and probably makes at least a phone call or several, he saunters out, arriving at the cash desk promptly at 5:20.
“Hey,” he says, showing off the magnificent range of his vocabulary.
“Hey,” I reply. “How’s it going?”
Rick shrugs. “It’s going. All three of us closing tonight?”
“Nope,” I tell him, “I’m gone at 7:00.”
“It’s you and me there, kiddo,” Andrea informs him. “Sorry about your luck.”
Rick laughs at that. “Cool” is his response. No one hates closing with Andrea. I think even Jessica likes Andrea. No matter what happens over the course of a shift, Andrea can always make sure you can laugh about something at some point. To be honest, I think if Andrea and I worked together during every shift, I think I could almost come to not completely loath this job.
“Not completely loath”? Really sterling silver seal of approval there, Emmett.
Hey, it’s retail. What do you expect?
True enough!
Even with Andrea’s help and no hinderance from Rick, it’s another long hour and a half before I can head out. It’s a Monday night so most people are just wanting to relax after the first day back to work after the weekend and so aren’t venturing out, even to rent movies. The returns are heavy, but once the supper hour is over, most people have even got that out of their system. When he’s not stepping out, “just for a quick butt” (which turns out to be a ten minute smoke break and then going for coffee and making yet another phone call), Rick is joining Andrea in flipping through the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.
By 7:00 it’s the three of us just standing around at cash, chatting about what we did on the weekend, what movies we’ve seen recently and if we really get bored, what gossip is going ‘round the store.
As luck would have it, when the clock strikes seven, with Rick on his third or fourth break of the night (I’ve lost track!), and Andrea putting away the two or three returns that have come in, I’m reading one of the endless amount of pointless memos that we receive from our head office. This one is about some charity event that is taking place in Toronto. I guess we’re supposed to book time off work and drive three hours to run 50 laps in some park, with all the money going to some charity, most likely the Regional Manager’s retirement fund.
Suddenly, I hear someone rap their knuckles on the counter a few inches away from me. My head shoots up, expecting to see some customer, irate that I didn’t give him my full attention from the moment his car entered the parking lot.
Instead, I see the stupid grin on the face of my friend, Pete.
“****ing asshole,” I mutter. “You scared the **** out of me.”
“Figured as much,” he replies. “So, how ya been?”
“Pretty ****ty, actually.” I reply to his reply. “Same as usual.”
Pete laughs like this is the wittiest thing ever. “So, you almost outta here?”
I am about to reply that I’m gone just as soon as I can get my coat when Andrea returns to the cash desk.
“Hey, don’t be hogging all the customers, Emmett,” she mockingly warns.
I wave her off. “This is no customer, this is just a troublemaker.”
Pete is about to feign indignancy when I make the proper introductions. I’m a little intrigued when I see a hint of recognition cross Andrea’s face.
“Hey, do you ever go to a bar called Raunchy Susan’s, over on Kipps Lane?” she asks.
Pete nods. “Quite a bit, yeah. A friend of mine plays in a band there…uh…Matters Not, I think.”
“Really? A friend of mine used to date the bass player,” Andrea relates.
“No way…I’m a friend of Keith’s, the drummer,” Pete informs her.
I decide that since I know none of the particulars, I should head to the back.
“I’m gonna go get my coat,” I say over my shoulder.
Will still manages to get in the questions “Will either of them even notice?” before Andrea asks if this means I’m deserting her.
I laugh and reply that I am.
I’m just in the back for a moment, but apparently that’s long enough for Andrea and Pete to strike up a conversation that makes them seem like they’re long-time friends. I’m jealous of this, and I don’t know why. It’s as if I don’t want Andrea treating anyone else as nice as she treats me, because somehow it lessens the effect. As if knowing that she treats everyone that well, it means I’m just another person to her, rather than someone special to her.
But what does it matter if your “special” to her? Yyou have Sarah who will, at any moment, dump this Brad guy, realize her love for you and the two of you can live happily ever after and, short of convincing her to engage in a threesome, you won’t care if this Andrea can shack up with any other guy that strikes her fancy.
I try to ignore Will and, in the most direct way possible without being physical, pull Pete away from Andrea and out the door of the store. Andrea laughs at my attempts and tells me to have a good night. I wish her a good close and tell her I’ll see her whenever our shifts coincide again.
I’m barely out into the fine mist of drizzle that’s settling over the parking lot when Pete tells me he has to drop something off at Lorraine’s. Lorraine is the latest in a series of girlfriends Tim has had over the past few years.
“Sure,” I tell him, “That’s cool.”
You should have added “I’ll wait in the car” otherwise he’s going to drag you in for an introduction and, after seven hours of dealing people you don’t know and having to be pleasant, you’re now going to have to make polite small talk to this chick.
For all the grief I give him over all the grief he gives me, Will does have some useful advice. Of course, it might be more useful if he dispensed this advice a little earlier.
By this time we’re out of the parking lot and headed, I must only assume, towards this Lorraine’s house/apartment, and the moment has passed.
“Good shift?” Pete asks.
I make that “kinda” face until I realize that, in the dark, Pete can’t actually see my expression.
“Not bad,” I tell him adding that “pretty much every shift there sucks, so tonight just sucked in moderation.
As it is whenever I try and tell Pete how horrible things are in my life without coming out and saying it, he manages to think it’s funny and laughs in that high-pitched girlish glee laugh of his.
Thankful for the darkness, I roll my eyes at his response. We’ve barely gone a couple of blocks and I’m already wishing I’d gone home instead.
“Where’s Lorraine live, anyways?” I ask, in the way of polite conversation. Figuring I might as well brush up on my skills in that department if I’m going to meet this person.
Good idea.
Thanks, I reply. Meanwhile, I’ve come to the realization that Lorraine and Tim have been dating for a couple of months if I’m remembering the references right and I don’t know a damn thing about her. He’s never introduced me to her which I guess doesn’t come as any major surprise.
Yeah, meeting some geeky friend who works in a video store and has no social life doesn’t exactly look good on you to a perspective girlfriend. He must be pretty confident in this relationship if he’s bringing you over.
As Will and I have been talking, I’ve totally missed what Pete has said with regards to where Lorraine lives. Not that it really matters, I suppose I’ll find out when I get there.
And so, a few minutes later, here I am, riding around the city streets in Pete’s car. Pete and I very rarely ever go anywhere when we get together, which is almost as rare an occassion. Oh sure, we’d make the prerequisite stops at a McDonald’s or the equivalent fast food stops to grab a burger or whathaveyou but for the most part, we’d just drive around, talking about the same inconsequential pop culture trivia of our lives that you probably talk about with your friends in place of anything substantial.
As the clock strikes 7:23 p.m, I’m half-ass listening to Pete talk about this band that he’s in and the latest goings on with the group. The band is called “Jenn Gives Up” which is strange because it’s three guys, none of whom are called Jenn.
None of that seems to matter to Pete since, as he is quick to point out, “Lorraine likes the name. Makes people think.”
The “Lorraine” in question is the latest in a string of girls that Pete has somehow met and dated in the years I’ve known him. If anything, the only thing I’m thinking about is how Pete, who’s social skills, personality and general looks are only minisculy better than my own, always seems to have someone in his life to go out with.
“So, how did you meet Lorraine again?” I ask.
Pete replies, “She was a friend of Lisa’s. You know, Jeff’s girlfriend.”
I not only don’t know Lisa but I don’t know Jeff, something I subtly point out to Pete.
“You know, Jeff, our drummer.” Pete replies, his tone indicating that I should have had that information already memorized. “Anyways, Lisa brought Lorraine to one of our practice sessions and afterwards, we got to talking about this documentary that both she and I watched about Stephen Hawking and I told her that I think that Hawking should record a spoken word album, and Lorraine said that sounded like an awesome idea only I’m still not sure if she was serious or not.”
Wow! There’s a story to tell the grandkids. Meanwhile, I’ll bet you’re wishing you were back in your room brooding.
****ing right I am!
By this time, Pete has continued on with his story about his burgeoning relationship with Lorraine. By the time I get back to concentrating on his narrative, he’s up to “hung out at ‘Ruptured Discs’ for about three hours the other night, looking for old LPs. Lorraine figures she has over 400 vinyls in her collection.”
He’s already slept with her. You know that, right? He’s trying to cover that fact up with this story about doing the whole boyfriend/girlfriend relationship thing about going to record stores and indulging their common interests. The fact remains however is that he’s slept with her.
I’m not sure why Will has to bring that up, other than to rub it in that not only is Pete, who should be on about the same level as I am, socially, seeing someone, but he’s seeing that someone naked.
I stare out the window, watching block after city block of stores and houses go by, listening to Will’s declaration of his discovery regarding Pete’s sex life against the backdrop of the pretentious college radio station that’s playing in the car. I maybe catch one out of every four words that Pete is actually saying. Whether he can tell that I’m not listening or not, he continues on with his story about Lorraine and how she plays the bass guitar and has sat in on some of their practices and who her influences are. He recites some names of what I must assume are bass players from various goth rock metal bands but they mean nothing to me. I know Noel Redding and John Entwhistle and that’s about it.
It’s killing you, isn’t it? Pete there has himself someone. This Lorraine may be gone, off to find another band to groupify herself for, within a week, but for right now, she’s with Pete. They go to record stores, they talk about music, they sleep together. They’re a couple. Pete has someone he can call when he wants to go do something. He has someone who will call him when she wants to do something.
And who do you have?
**** you, Will.
“We should go visit Tim,” I suggest, as much a way to shut Pete up as to shut Will up.
Tim MacPherson, Pete and I had all gone to high school together. Somehow, despite not having a whole lot in common, we’d become…well, I guess “friends” is the easiest term to slap on what there was between us, although it was more a case that we just hung around together in the cafeteria together, mostly because we had no place else to sit, as far as social groups go. We’d talk, basically about the same things we do now: music, TV shows, stuff that had happened to us since we last talked. Back then, it was stuff like classes and home life, now it was our jobs.
The first time you met Tim, you knew. Back in high school, without anyone ever really saying it, at least not to his face, you knew. Tim was one of these guys you knew wasn’t going to accomplish much.
Yeah, like you’re one to talk.
But see, unlike myself, Tim knew it too so he never really put much effort into it. He kinda slacked through high school, earning D’s only because he didn’t want to retake anything. He never even tried to go to college, instead getting a job at a local supermarket. To hear him tell it, he pretty much ran the place now, knowing “more about the day-to-day operations than the suits upstairs”. Pete and I figured that he probably did just enough so that management couldn’t fire him, then lorded his seniority over the other employees.
Pete had never really liked Tim, tolerating him was about the most he could do. Pete hated it when I suggested we go visit Tim and to be honest, I always left wondering just what had possessed me to show up in the first place. He always ended up telling me what a loser I was for not being out on his own and independent like he was, criticizing me for “still living at home with Mommy and Daddy”. I happened to know that he was basically living in this slum almost rent-free, since his own parents had set him up and agreed to pay his rent if he would just get out of their place.
But of course, you never threw that in his face the way he did your living arrangements, did you?
I never wanted to get into it with him. I figured it was better to just shut up and keep the subject on safer topics. I guess the reason I still hung out with Tim was that he, like me, had a tendency to want to live in the past at times and on a couple of occasions, he and I (with Pete sitting in but never saying much) would sit and reminisce about our high school days until the wee hours of the night. The problem was that such things only occurred about once every year or so but I enjoyed them so much and they served as such a distraction to anything I was going through at work that I guess I was willing to endure the nights where all Tim did was talk about the latest NCAA football game or bug me or Pete for money in the hopes that, instead, the topic might turn to reminiscing about high school. I guess I had gotten to a point in my life where talking about the past was better than concentrating on the present or worrying about the future.
“Why the heck would you want to do that?” Pete replies, as I figured he might. I mean, when the idea lept through Will’s sarcastic banter and into the forefront of my brain, it wasn’t exactly followed by a mental video of Pete being overjoyed at the prospect.
I shrug, not really sure why I suggested it either. “Gives us something to do.”
“I can think of about a million other things I’d rather do,” Pete replies. Oh sure, now that I’ve suggested something, he can suddenly “think of about a million things”. At the beginning of the evening, he couldn’t have come up with a worthwhile idea to save his life.
“Name one,” I challenge him.
Pete thinks on it a moment. “Go hand-gliding.”
See, this is Pete’s standard response. Any time we get together the only suggestions he can come up with to pass the time is some outlandish idea that we could never do and would never do in a million years. However, he manages to shoot down any idea I come up with so we end up either sitting around my room shooting the breeze or driving around town.
“Really,” I say, “Where are you gonna find a hand-gliding place at this time of night?”
Before Pete can come up with some cockamamie smart-ass comeback, I continue on.
“Come on, we haven’t seen Tim in a while and it might be fun to go hang out at his place for a while, see what he’s got to say for himself these days,” I explain, not sure even I’m buying this.
I get no response from Pete, so I add “Come on, we’ll stay for about a half hour and if he isn’t enthralling us with his company, we’ll bolt.”
“Half hour?”
“Half hour.”
About ten minutes later, Pete and I are sitting in his parked car, in the parking lot before the apartment building that Tim lives in. Pete makes no quick move to exit the car and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s worried that his car’s going to be broken into the second we enter the building or if he’s hoping that we’ll just sit in the parking lot and jokingly do a mental run-through of our visit with Tim and then leave in search of better things to do. (Wouldn’t be the first time!)
Eventually, I manage to convince him to head up to Tim’s place.
“I could just wait in the car, you know.” Pete suggests, “You could pretend that you walked over.”
“Whatever,” I reply, reflecting on the fact that Tim’s apartment building is in fact within walking distance (for me, anyways) from my place and I have done exactly that a few times over the years.
Of course, it goes without saying that Tim has never returned the favour. Always been too busy or too lazy to do so,
Pete is still with me when I knock on Tim’s door. I can tell that Tim’s home, since I can hear KISS blasting on the stereo. Somehow Tim manages to hear me through the racket.
“Enter,” comes the bellow from the other side.
I open the door about half-way, just enough to stick my head through. I notice that Pete is sprawled across his couch, not even looking up from the television to see who’s entering his apartment. I don’t know if he’s not frightened of burglars or has managed to win over every person in the building to the point where they just come on in whenever they want to chat.
“Hey, Tim!” I say, catching a glimpse of someone else in the apartment with him. My heart sinks as I fear that he’s got one of his myriad of ne’er-do-well buddies hanging around. While I can take Tim in small doses, most of his other friends are another story. All of them look like they’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel in terms of brains, personality and hygiene, yet still make themselves out to be too cool for school, or for me for that matter.
While there’s only a slim possibility that Tim, Pete and I will end up talking about high school if there’s just the three of us, if one of Tim’s buddies is in attendance, that possibility is zero in favour of which of the four of us has the most indepth knowledge of Star Trek and where you might find the rarest Dungeons and Dragons memorabilia.
“Hey Emmett!” Tim replies, his voice rounding up on the last syllable as it always does whenever I drop in unannounced, as though he still, after all these years. “What brings you to my humble abode?”
By this time, I’m about half-way through the door, but still have to check that Pete hasn’t ducked out on me. So far, so good. Meanwhile, there’s a scramble by Tim to pause the video game he’s playing and turn the stereo down to at least a level where neither of us are going to have to spend the entire conversation repeating each other twenty times because the other one can’t hear.
“Just in the neighbourhood, thought we’d stop by.” I explain, nonchalantly, as though I haven’t had to all but twist Pete’s arm to show up.
“We?” Tim inquires. “Who’s the we?”
Pete has followed me in. He gives a half-ass wave in Tim’s general direction. “Hey, Tim!” he says, as though it’s a chore to say that much.
“Petey!” Tim calls out, his tone much more enthusiastic that Pete’s. I glance back at Pete, not in time to see the wince I know crossed his face. Pete hates Tim calling him Petey as much as I had Dan calling me “Emm”.
“Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age,” Tim goes on to note. Thankfully, Pete is too diplomatic to reply “Well, if it was up to me, you wouldn’t be seeing me for another dog’s age.”
“Hey, Emmett. Hey Pete,” comes a female voice, which solves the mystery of who I caught a glimpse of as I came in. It turns out that it was Mary Pilcher, a girl we all went to high school with and who remains friends with Tim (and us to a lesser degree).
Mary was all right, looks-wise. She had a nice personality and, if I weren’t hung up on Sarah, I might be interested.
Oh come on, you still want to **** her. Partly because, like Sarah, you know that you’ll never have a chance to.
This is one of those times where Will has totally lost me…or rather I know where he figures he’s headed but I have no clue why he is going there. As I said, I might be interested if I wasn’t already interested in Sarah. I mean, I have no shot at Mary (I mean, she likes me as a friend but that’s it), would never want to date her because of what she means to Tim (more on that in a minute) and besides, one unrequited love at a time.
You seem to forget that I have access to the deeper recesses of your mind here, the part that stores all those thoughts and feelings and, dare I say it, even fantasies, that you would never admit to having, even to yourself.
Your point being?
You are a heterosexual male. Therefore, you would, under the right conditions, want to have sex with any girl you met that didn’t repulse you physically. If you were to come into a situation where the two of you were alone and she made any kind of advance towards you, you’d be all but ripping her clothes off.
I decide to zone out Will before he fills my head with images of Mary and I having sex.
Hey, they’re already there. I’m just pointing out that they’re there.
What Pete and I could never figure out, and we had spent many an hour contemplating this question, was why she hung out with Tim. In the end, I guess I really didn’t care. I knew there was nothing going on between the two of them, despite Tim’s obvious desire to turn their friendship into something a little more substantial. In that way, I guess I could relate to Tim and his situation made me realize that I wasn’t the only guy out there who fell in love with someone, but was afraid to take the next step and let that person know what was going on inside their head and their heart.
You really take solace in the fact that, socially, you’re on the same level as Tim? Man, you are one totally ****ed up individual.
By the time that Pete and I were inside the apartment and had said our “hello’s”, Tim was turned back towards his television set, becoming more and more fixated with his Playstation by the second.
“Hey, I’ll be with you guys in a second,” Tim told us as we came in the door, “I’m in the fourth quarter and Mary’s Penn State boys is up by 2. I gotta get my passing game going if I’m gonna regain any respectability here.”
And so Pete and I took a seat on his dilapidated couch and sat in bored silence as Tim sent his team in against the rival Penn State. Knowing little about college football, I caught the gist of little of what Tim was saying in terms of a running commentary. From the way he swore at the game before he switched it off, I got the impression that he had lost. Tim’s cursing coincided with Mary’s whoops of victory.
I had to laugh at the circumstances that Tim found himself in, but Pete seemed bored out of his skull. As far as the social agenda of the evening went, however, Pete and I were pretty much on the same page, trying to think of a polite way of leaving without actually having engaged in one iota of conversation. However, once Tim had finished his game, he seemed to realize that he actually had guests. He headed towards the corner of the apartment that passed as his kitchen to grab himself a drink.
“Since I guess I have to play host, anybody want anything while I’m up?” he asked, almost annoyed at the idea that he might have to put out for refreshments. Pete, Mary and I all indicated that we were okay.
He headed back from the kitchen a moment later, with a can of Pepsi in his hand. He took up his spot in his easy chair and opened the can but didn’t start drinking right away.
“So, what have you boys been up to?” he asked. He always called me and Pete “boys” whenever we say him. We were never quite sure what that meant, although we suspected it was his way of referring to us as inferiors to him in terms of status in life.
Pete just kinda shrugged, not wanting to make any more conversation than he had to. Fortunately for Pete, he’d never really conversed much with Tim so it wasn’t expected. Whether Tim knew that Pete didn’t like him and accepted it, or was of the naïve notion that Pete was just shy and quiet, he never really seemed to force the issue.
I would have been another story. I’d never had the courage to just clam up around Tim, so of course my answer had to be a bit more copious.
“Not much,” I told him. “Been working a lot at the store.”
“Oh, you and me both there, buddy,” Tim broke in.
Can you ever complete a sentence without him having to add his two cents worth?
“I must have impressed somebody, cause I’m working fifteen hours this next week, including two back-to-back five hour runs,” Tim told me, almost boasting.
Oooohhhh…working two days in a row! Man, someone call the Labour Board on that hardship case. Meanwhile, aren’t you starting a string of eight straight night shifts tomorrow?
“Man, you better stock up on coffee and energy bars if you’re going to make it through the week there, Tim,” Mary added, adding just a smidgeon of sarcasm into the mix.
I smiled at that remark. If Pete or I had said the same thing, Tim probably would have gotten all indignant, like we were putting down his manly pride or some such nonsense. Mary was able to get away with zinging Tim time and again. It was as if she could see him getting too big for his britches, so to speak and had to cut him down to size.
“Yeah, whatever,” was the best comeback Tim could pull out of his bag of tricks at that moment. But there was no annoyance in his voice, almost as if he realized that maybe he was making himself out to be more of a would-be martyr than he actually had any right to be.
He was still smart enough to quickly change the subject. “So, you still going to be coming over tomorrow night to watch ‘the Hitcher’?”
“That depends,” Mary replied, “Did you remember to tape it off TBS?”
“Hey,” Tim retorts in mock exasperation, “I may not be the brightest guy walking the face of the earth but there are just some things too important to forget.”
As Mary got up to leave, she playfully socked him in the shoulder, “Sure, laundry you leave in the dryer overnight, but some movie has top priority on your ‘Must Remember’ list. Anyways, I should probably get going. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good seeing you guys again.”
As Tim sold the punch to the shoulder, Pete and I said our goodbyes. After Mary had left, I asked Tim, “So, how are things going between you and her?”
This time it was Tim’s turn to shrug. “Not bad, and get your mind out of the gutter, Emmett, we’re just friends. Not unlike you and this Sarah you keep talking about.”
I don’t know why, but the relationship, such as it was, between Mary and Tim was the one thing I could get away with razzing him about. I guess it was because he was basically in the same type of relationship that I was in with Sarah. He was in love with her, painfully so, but they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. They hung out, watched movies, went out for burgers together, that sort of thing.
“Speaking of which, is this Sarah of yours still seeing that guy Brad?” he asked me. I guess he figured if I could turn the screw to him over Mary, he could return the favour with me and Sarah.
“Oh yeah,” I replied, a note of dejection a little more evident than I would have liked, “I guess it’s getting pretty serious. They’re living together from what I can tell.”
I half-expected Tim to come back with some observation that he’d think was witty and insightful but would turn out inane and stupid. Instead, he was silent for a moment. I think he finally figured out that Sarah wasn’t the best subject to be on with my right now.
A moment later, he sighed, wistfully. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” he asked, “Both of us are in love with women we can never have.”
He had shocked me with that little bit of musing, so much so that I chuckled in spite of myself.
“That we are, Tim,” I said, “that we are.”
“Either of you guys seen ‘the Hitcher’?” Tim asks, and for once I’m grateful for his usually annoying habit of just randomly changing the subject to a topic totally different from the one we’ve just been discussing.
Pete shrugs. I’m not sure if that’s a “I don’t think so” kind of shrug or an “I can’t be bothered to answer” kind of shrug. Actually, I think it’s probably 75% of the former and 25% of the latter.
“C. Thomas Howell movie, right?” I reply, knowing full well that I’m thinking of the exact same movie that Tim has decided to discuss.
“Yeah, it was on TBS the other night and I taped it so Mary’s coming over to watch it tomorrow night. You guys interested in stopping by?” Tim asks. The information was redundant since he’d just been talking about that very event not two minutes ago, before Mary left. Still, I wondered just how much Tim would actually want the two of us stopping by to interfere with his night alone with Mary.
It’d be like you and Sarah, right? I mean, if she called you up and invited you over to watch a movie with her and Brad or something of that nature, you’d be hoping that at the last moment that Brad had to work or had some dire emergency that he had to attend to that night, so it’d just be you and Sarah…alone. Same with Tim and Mary. Tim is probably desperately hoping that you’ll both decline. That way, he comes out looking like a nice guy for inviting you along BUT still ends up being alone with Mary.
Of course, if the situation between Tim and Mary works out the same way that a similar one would between you and Sarah, Tim will probably spend the entire night tongue-tied, pining away for Mary and end up spending the entire rest of the night trying to script how he wishes things HAD turned out.
“Actually, I’m probably busy tomorrow night there, Tim,” Pete replies, almost the moment that Tim makes the offer. Those eight words that all but leap out of Tim’s mouth probably double the number of words he’s said since we walked in the door. I doubt that Pete’s reasoning behind his backing out of the invite is because he doesn’t want to interfere with any chance that Tim has of furthering his relationship with Mary.
This time it’s my turn to shrug, only mine is more of a “sorry, life sucks, but what can you do”-type of shrug. “Yeah, I gotta work tomorrow night,” I inform Tim.
Truth be told, what I know of the Hitcher doesn’t exactly make the flick appeal to me. Secondly, I don’t want to be the kind of guy who shows up and puts the damper on another guy’s shot (feeble shot though it might be) at getting the girl and three, I actually do have to work tomorrow night.
“Too bad, man. It’s supposed to be a heck of a flick,” Tim replies. I almost smile at Tim’s obvious feigned disappointment. Okay, maybe not completely obvious. I will admit, the guy does put in a good acting job on that particular work.
The next ten minutes or so are spent just making small talk, uncomfortable small talk at that. I try wracking my brain, to no avail, in a vain attempt to find some subject that might relate back to our high school days. In the end, I look over to Pete for support and, as per usual, he’s no help. He just sits on his end of the couch and watches, a look that combines boredom, frustration and impatience all into one.
I glance towards the door, my signal for “Shall we get moving?” Pete manages to restrain himself and give me just the slightest subtle nod. I sigh and make to get up.
“Well, I guess we better get moving,” I tell Tim. Pete, for his part, manages to not trample me in his rush to get to the door but I somehow can tell that if I don’t keep moving, he might change his mind.
Tim never really seems surprised when we make our exits. “Oh..well, all righty,” he says as he shows us to the door. “You two boys stay out of trouble.”
I laugh and tell him to do the same. “You know it,” he replies as we exit the apartment.
Pete can’t seem to leave the apartment, the building or the parking lot fast enough. As we leave the parking lot of Tim’s building, Pete undergoes a strange metamorphisis. It’s like he has suddenly remembered that he’s not a mute and has the ability to talk.
“Well that was exciting!” he says, his sarcastic four word summation of the evening.
I chuckle, then catch myself. As much as I’m sure that Pete is just being sarcastic, I’m not certain that he’s not also more than a little pissed off at me for convincing him to spend the better part of an evening sitting on Tim’s couch, with the only real forms of entertainment consisting of watching Tim play some video game or listening to Tim and I chat about nothing in particular.
I decide to keep quiet as we commence to drive around the city. It appears that Pete, if he is in fact peeved, apparently isn’t so upset that he wants to dump me off at my place and get on with my life.
And **** him if he is! I mean, he’s the one who couldn’t come up with anything else to do tonight, save for doing exactly what you two are doing right now, just driving aimlessly. If he wanted to have some exciting evening on the town, he damn well coulda suggested something.
“So, you gonna go hang out with Tim and watch ‘the Hitcher’?” Pete asks me, saying “the Hitcher” in the deep, monotone voice that we both have come to use whenever we talk about Tim.
I laugh, more in relief that Pete’s obviously not all that pissed off at me, as it turns out. “I told you, man, I gotta work tomorrow night!” I reply, still laughing.
“Aw come on, Emmett,” Pete chides, “I’m sure that whatshisname … Dan… would let you have the night off work if he knew it was to go hang out with Tim McPherson to see “the Hitcher”!”
I shake my head at the absurdity of the idea. “Dude, that asshole wouldn’t give me time off if I’d gotten shot by a customer and had a sucking chest wound,” I explain, “Of course, he might write me up for having a dirty uniform.”
We both share a laugh at that idea.
“Hey, that girl you were working with tonight. What’s her name?” Pete asks.
“Who? Andrea?” I reply. “What about her?”
I look over at Tim and see him nodding his head. “Yeah, her. What’s she like?”
I shrug.
Okay, quick show of hands, who can’t see where this is going?
Despite the uneasy feeling that Will is laying on me, I reply. “She’s okay. Cool to work with. We get along pretty well.”
“You like her?” Pete asks me. Thankfully, even if he was being sarcastic about the question or using it to set me up for something sarcastic a sentence or two later, it doesn’t seem like it. Good for him, since at least I don’t go into this portion of the conversation on the defensive.
“She’s all right,” I reply, nodding. “She’s fun to work with, more so than most of the other dregs of society that make up the crew there..”
“Yeah, but do you LIKE her?”
“Ooh…” I say, acting as if the light has just been turned on in the cartoon bubble above my head, “You mean, do I “LIKE her” like her?”
Pete feigns exasperation. “Yeah…do you LIKE her, emphasis on ‘like’?
I think on this a minute. I mean, Will has always seemed to think that I should switch my attention from Sarah to Andrea but this is the first time that someone outside my brain has ever tossed the idea out there for me to consider.
“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I mean, I guess she’s okay but I guess I can’t really picture her and I ending up together. You know, I guess I just don’t think of her in THAT way. She’s a good person, a great co-worker, she’s funny and makes me laugh and laughs at pretty much every work-related joke I make.”
“So, where’s the problem?”
HEY! Where have you heard that logic before? Who was it who questioned you as to why you didn’t take your shot with Andrea in the first place? Who was that masked man? Why, I think it might have been…uh…ME!
If Pete knew who Will was, I might kid him about sounding like him. However, since I’m not really sure how the introduction of the voice in my head who tells me what a piece of crap I am might go, I’ve never said anything. Instead I just shrug as I begin to answer this loaded question.
“I don’t know…I guess that, other than work, we really don’t have that much in common,” I attempt to explain, “It’s like at the Christmas party last year. There were about ten of us there, plus assorted dates, wives, etc, and one of the boyfriends kinda decreed that we couldn’t talk shop.”
“Right, so?” Pete says.
“Well, ten minutes later, the conversation level was pretty much dead,” I continue. “Other than work, none of us really had much to talk about. We all just sat around kinda staring at each other, trying to figure out what to talk about. I mean, a few of the college kids talked about their courses but it got boring real quick.”
“So, you’re saying that this thing between Andrea and yourself, that’s just a ‘fun time at work but nothing more’ kinda thing?” Pete wants to know.
I shrug. “I guess you could say that.”
Pete doesn’t say anything more for a few minutes. By now, it’s creeping ever closer to the middle of the night so it’s hard to get a read on what he’s thinking because I can barely see his face amid the darkness. For some reason, I get this overwhelming urge to know what’s going on in that head of his. Why is he interested in Andrea all of a sudden?
Finally, I decide to break the silence. “Sooo,” I say, as if I don’t give a **** about the question I’m wanting to ask, “why do you want to know about Andrea, anyhow?”
I look over and Pete shrugs. “I don’t know, she seemed kinda nice. Anyone who hangs out at ‘Raunchy Susan’s’ and knows about Matters Not can’t be all bad.”
“I thought you had this Lorraine you were involved with,” I remind him.
“So?” Pete says, as if I’m loonier than a bed bug to be bothered by the fact that he’s expressing interest in one girl while dating another.
A pause, then he adds, “Just because I’m with Lorraine doesn’t mean I have to cut off all ties with members of the opposite sex.”
I don’t know why, but I’m pissed off about this. It’s one of those moments where emotion defies logic. I mean, I shouldn’t be pissed off that Pete has designs on someone else besides Lorraine.
Yes you should.
Excuse me. Is this the great Will Tracey who would tell me I was an idiot if I said the sky was blue just to call me an idiot now turning around and telling me that I am right in being pissed off?
Hey, it’s one of those once-a-millenium happenings. Don’t get used to it.
Believe me, I won’t, but are you saying that it’s okay that I’m pissed off at Pete?
Damn right! Think about it. Pete is involved with Lorraine. She obviously cares enough about the guy to overlook his geeky exterior and get to know the real him (something no woman on the face of the earth has ever done for you) and fallen in love with him…at least to the point where she lets him sleep with her. And rather than be satisfied with finding someone like that, and loving her back, he’s already on the hunt for another warm body. And a warm body that, if you ever got your head out of your ass and put even 1/10th of the effort you put into mooning over Sarah towards a more achievable goal, you might end up dating.
I want to shake my head and to a degree I do. Maybe Pete sees me and gets pissed off that I’m questioning his choices in terms of relationships. Or maybe he just decides to be a prick.
It starts subtly, like he’s not even talking about me.
“What the **** is up with Tim and Mary?” he asks, almost as if he’s talking to himself.
“What do you mean?” I ask him, instead of an answer.
This time it’s Pete’s turn to shrug. “I mean, why the hell doesn’t Tim just sit Mary down and tell her how he feels?”
For the same reason, Emmett, that you don’t do the exact same thing to Sarah. ‘Cause you’re a chicken****.
“Maybe he’s just shy,” I explain, “I mean, he comes off as so over-confident, he’s practically a braggart but maybe beneath the exterior, he’s scared she’ll just do the ‘want to be friends’ deal and things will be weird between them.”
By the end of the explanation, I actually think that maybe I’ve figured out why I haven’t told Sarah how I feel about her.
Well, that, and you’re chicken****, ya wimp!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MY SUPPER WITH SARAH…AND BRAD
And just when you thought life couldn’t suck any more, fate managed to throw you another curveball.
It was about a month after that party at Brad and Sarah’s. Most of my e-mails and phone calls to Sarah, inviting her out for one of our usual lunches, had gone unreturned during that time. It was no biggy. I mean, I figured that she had this new man in her life and so he was commanding most of her time. Some part of me, that part named Will, was also telling me that a girl with a boyfriend probably isn’t going to get together with any of her other male friends too often.
And for once, I didn’t sound all paranoid, did I?
For once.
Still, I missed having her in my life. I missed talking to her, hanging out with her, just being with her. The thought of having any romantic possibilities with her were out the window, courtesy of her relationship with Brad, but I still wanted to remain friends with her. After a while, I was beginning to think that she had gone the way of most of the rest of the people I had known in college, that she had moved on with her life and that move hadn’t included me.
And then, one day, just as I was coming in the door from doing some DVD shopping at the mall, my phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered, all but assuming it was Dan wanting to call me in again to cover someone.
Most likely he doesn’t want to be there anymore and since he gets paid no matter how many hours he works, figures you can cover for him while he ****s off with his buddies.
Instead, it was a female voice.
“Emmett?” she said, cautiously. It took me a split second to recognize the voice. It had been a long time since she’d called me.
“Sarah?” I hesitantly queried, once I had formed some semblance of a clue of who the voice on the other end of the line might belong to.
“Yeah, it’s me,” she laughed. “What are you doing tonight around supper time?”
I shrugged, despite knowing full well she couldn’t see the gesture. I did a quick mental scan of my internal day planner, knowing full well there was nothing pressing.
“Not much. Why?” I replied.
“We were thinking of going out to get something to eat and I figured it had been a while since you and I had gotten together at J.Q.’s so we thought we’d invite you along.”
Hmm…awful lot of we’s there. Are WE to assume that it won’t be just Sarah who shows up to this deal?
For a brief moment, I consider backing out.
Right! Only seconds after telling her that you had a whole lotta “Not Much” planned for this evening! Good plan, real subtle. I’m sure Sarah won’t catch on.
Instead, I tell her that I’m certainly up for getting together. She tells me that they’ll meet me at J.Q.’s around 6:30.
“They”? Another plural pronoun?
Sure enough, when I get to J.Q.’s, there’s Sarah…with Brad sitting right next to her.
Well, at least he’s done something for her punctuality.
I feel kinda stupid for not being there before them.
Great, you haven’t even sat down and already you’re embarrassed. Things are shaping up already.
“Hey, guys,” I say as a way of greeting as I sit down on the opposite side of the booth from them.
Sarah says “Hello”. Brad just kinda raises his hand as his way of returning my greeting.
“Sorry, I’m late,” I apologize.
“That’s cool,” Brad says, to which Sarah adds “We’ve only been here a couple of minutes.”
“So, how have you been?” Sarah asks. Brad obviously doesn’t care about my response as he is pouring over the menu.
I shrug. “Not too bad. Working a lot, as per usual. Same ol’ story as always.”
Sarah laughs. Brad nods although I have to wonder if he’s really listening or just figures that by nodding his head every time I stop speaking it’ll appear as though he’s listening.
Well, give the bastard credit for at least putting in the minimum effort required to keep up the “I wanna be your best buddy” act. Notice that I said “minimum effort”. Not that he really went out of his way to give it the ol’ college try at that party.
See what’s happening here, Emmett?
Thankfully, Sarah has decided that now would be a good time to check out the menu herself so I can concentrate on whatever Will is going to unleash upon me.
Okay, wise guy, listen up. You see, Brad is secure in the knowledge that he and Sarah are at that point in their relationship where he has worked his magic on her and has her totally wrapped around his finger. He has charmed the pants off her…quite literally, I might add, and he can do no wrong. Remember that song “When A Man Loves A Woman”? Well, reverse it and you see where Sarah and Brad are.
Now that they’ve moved past the whole “courting” (for lack of a less corny term) stage, he knows he can revert back to his real personality. He doesn’t have to work for it anymore. All he has to do is not be a complete jerk (only a partial one will do) and he’ll have Sarah forever and a day.
“Oh, hey, Emmett, guess who I saw the other day when Brad and I went into Toronto?” Sarah asks, looking up from her menu. “Bill Sherman!”
Nice of her to give you a chance to guess…oh and by the way, who the **** is Bill Sherman?
Your guess is as good as mine and apparently the confusion showed on my face since Sarah picked up on it.
“Remember Bill Sherman?” she asks. “He lived upstairs in Residence. Political Science major?”
Still doesn’t ring any bells.
Sarah decides to continue on with her story, giving me that “Oh my God, how dense are you?” wave that I think I’ve gotten from just about everyone in my life, from customers to family to friends. Will takes note and so I’m sure I’ll relive this moment over and over again in the next day or so.
Nice to see that Sarah can find you just as much of a moron as the rest of us. Stings even more when she does it than when some idiot at the video store does, don’t it?
Chagrined, I have to agree with Will, but I push him aside for the moment, preferring to concentrate on what Sarah has to say about this Bill Sherman guy, whatever role he might have played in my past life. Before I can give my full attention, however, Will has to give me the required twice over viewing off Sarah’s wave.
“…and there he was, right in the heart of Yonge Street, waiting for a bus outside the Eaton’s Centre,” Sarah is telling me, “I guess he works downtown in some office because he was in a suit and tie.”
“Did you talk to him?” I ask, figuring this was the best way to keep the conversation going without having to acknowledge the fact that I had no idea who this guy was.
She shakes her head.
“Nah, he was about a block away when I saw him. I called out to him but you know, I only had to talk over about a thousand people or so, so odds are pretty good he didn’t hear me.”
So I sit there and kind of nod my head, not unlike the nod that Brad was giving me earlier. I take solace in the fact that I do care about what Sarah is having to say, it’s just a matter of me not really getting the reference.
By the time she’s finished her story about catching a glimpse of someone she remembers from college but I don’t, all three of us are pretty much done our meals. It isn’t exactly the greatest meal I’ve ever had but for some reason, I think the atmosphere may have put a damper on my appetite.
I mean, here I am, sitting across the table with someone I am madly in love with…
Or at least mad (in which mad is used as a synonym for “insane” to be in love with.
…and her boyfriend who is sending out all kinds of “get the **** outta here, geek” types of vibes my way.
I try to concentrate on Sarah who spends the balance of the meal talking about some memory she had (which, again, I have no recollection of) involving this Bill Sherman guy. Thankfully, there are enough plot points in her story (the food in the cafeteria, the big thunderstorm that everyone got drenched in) that I can at least plug a couple of my own two-cents into. Brad, meanwhile, seems content to sit off to one side and kind of oversee the conversation and our dinner, while laughing at the parts of this story that Sarah wants him to find funny and otherwise just nod that he’s following along.
Finally, with her meal done, and Brad and I just kind of picking at our leftovers, she announces that she has to “go to the ‘little girls’ room’.”
As she makes that announcement, her voice trails off. She looks embarrassed for a moment, putting her hand over her eyes as she giggles. “Oh my God, that’s so corny. I can’t believe I just said that.”
I laugh good-naturedly. Brad chuckles under his breath. “Back in a second,” Sarah informs us as she gets up and heads to the nearest washroom.
Both Brad and I watch Sarah as she leaves the table.
I hate to see her leave but I love to watch her go.
I’m not sure what Brad’s train of thought is but “Great”, I think to myself, (and I’m sure I can hear Will repeating the sentiment), “now I’m stuck here with a guy I don’t particularly like and who I have absolutely nothing in common with, expected to make idle chitchat for the several awkward minutes until Sarah returns.” I’d be willing to bet that Brad’s thoughts were along the same line.
Even as I’m trying to rack my brain to think of some kind of topic that he and I might possibly have in common, Brad shocks the **** out of me by beating me to the punch, and the topic he picks is enough to shock me even more.
“So, Emmett, you’re in love with my girlfriend, are ya?” Brad says.
For a moment, I try to comprehend whether I’ve heard him right. However, nothing even remotely reasonable rhymes with “So you’re in love with my girlfriend”.
What about “So tour in dove with my hurl bend?” Nah, that doesn’t work, does it?
“Excuse me,” is the only thing I can think of to say in reply.
Brad laughs, that condescending “I can’t believe I’m dealing with such a moron” laugh that the customers give me at the store all the time. “Come on,” he says, “I’ve seen the way you look at her. I know you’ve been friends for years. She told me about all the late nights you stayed up talking, all the stuff you told each other. I mean, eventually, you must have developed some kind of romantic or even just romanticized feelings for her.”
At this point, I’m still not comprehending that Brad is actually saying this to me. Will is no help since all he can say is…
Holy ****!
Although come to think of it, that’s all I can think of to say as well. I mean, what does Brad expect me to say. Is he trying to build some kind of friendship with me by getting all honest and truthful here? Is he setting me up, or what?
I shrug. I figure it’s at least enough of an answer, without being too definite. Besides, at this very moment in my life, I have no clue what else to do or say. I mean, everything he says is true but is he, her boyfriend and, as Will would be so quick to point out, lover, the one I should be confiding this to?
Again, Brad laughs, a little louder and harder this time.
“Figured as much. It’s only natural.”
Brad glances over towards the ladies’ room but when he turned his attention back, his expression was much more serious.
“Listen, geek,” he says, his tone as serious, if not more so, than his expression, “I don’t know what stupid little fantasy you got cooked up inside that brain of yours, but Sarah’s with me now and figures to be for quite a while.”
Will’s “Holy ****!” changes to “Oh ****!” He isn’t being real helpful, so I’m left on my own to try and figure out how far Brad intends to carry these intimidation tactics of his. I can tell that he isn’t quite satisfied just to be rubbing it in that Sarah was with him and not me.
“I hate to be the bad guy in this whole thing but I’m gonna tell you this now before things go any further,” he warns me. “I mean, I know you consider Sarah one of your best friends so this is going to be hard for you but you know what, I don’t give a ****. I don’t want you hanging around Sarah any more. No more calling her up for coffee. If she invites you to hang out with her, no matter what the social setting, you find yourself a more pressing engagement. Comprende? Otherwise…well, I think you can fill in the blanks for yourself.”
Holy ****! The bastard figures he’s being charitable by telling you to stop hanging out with Sarah BEFORE he goes ahead and just beats the crap out of you. Like he’s doing you some sort of public service.
At this point, Sarah makes her way back from the washroom. She gives Brad, who is back to his formerly charming self, a loving peck on the cheek.
Nice of her to add that last little tap of the hammer onto the stake through the heart.
And nice of you, Will, to finally add your two cents worth there.
Hey, don’t give me any crap here. I’m kinda overwhelmed with just where to start on this whole thing. Expect me to hit you with both guns blazing about an hour or two after this dinner from hell comes to its unpleasant end.
Wouldn’t expect it to be any other way. Hell, I’m just thankful that I had eaten most of my meal prior to Brad’s little pep talk. My appetite has pretty much gone the way of any chance of friendship between the asshole and I.
The question is: now that you’ve got it down, will it stay down?
Debatable.
The dinner starts to come to a close. Brad and Sarah continue to flirt with each other, in between Sarah trying to tell me about some of the things going on in her life, work, movies, etc. I only half-ass listen since Will has apparently decided to roll the videotape already.
And I can tell from the looks Brad keeps surreptitiously shooting across the table from me that he knows that I’m mentally reliving each and every moment of his brief soliloquy, and he’s enjoying that knowledge.
Sarah gives me a bit of an inquiring look. “You all right, Emmett?” she asks, “You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden.”
You’re ****ing transparent! You’ve never quite mastered the fine art of hiding your feelings when you’re upset or depressed or worried about something. Considering how many times over the years that someone has gone out of their way to make your experience such feelings, you’d think you’d invest a little time in that.
I look over at Brad. I can see he’s managed, but just barely, to master the fine art of masking his Chesire cat grin. He needn’t have worried. Sarah is so oblivious to the possibility that her boyfriend might have caused me any mental discomfort that, for a brief moment, she’s not even paying attention to him.
Rather than have this already uncomfortable situation become even that much more uncomfortable…
Is that even possible?
…I throw my best “I’m not upset, I’m just tired” look. Despite what Will would have you believe, it is something I have honed.
Sure you have.
“Oh yeah, I’m cool,” I explain, as nonchalantly as possible. “I’m just tired, actually. I worked until close last night and got up this morning pretty early to get some stuff done.”
Which is, ironically, true, so the lie comes easy.
Oh yeah. You could have totally talked the Watergate burglars out of that whole mess.
“Geez..uh, Emmett,” Brad jokes. “We aren’t keeping you up, are we?”
****ing asshole can’t even remember your name and yet he still manages to make you out to look like a moron. Ever notice Emmett that just about every one in your life wants to treat you like you’re about five years old. A retarded five year old at that.
I laugh, even though I’d like to reach across and slam his face against the table.
Hey, now you’re talking. See, I’m rubbing off on you. Of course, you thinking about it and actually doing it are probably two different things.
Several torturous minutes later, we’re parting company in the parking lot.
“Sure we can’t give you a ride home, Emmett?” the bastard…er I mean, Brad asks me. Sure, be a ****ing dickhead to me and then play the good Samaritan in front of your girlfriend.
“Nah, I’m good,” I reply. “It’s a nice night, and I can use some fresh air.”
Yeah, just try not to run over me as you’re driving home, dickhead!
Brad shrugs, trying to feign being good natured about the whole deal.
By this time, Sarah’s around to her side of the car and has her door open. She pauses just long enough to look over at me, standing there a few feet away.
“See ya later, Emmett,” she says, waving goodbye. “You get yourself some sleep now.”
I nod, trying to chuckle, as I wave goodbye. It occurs to me that save for an unlikely invite to her wedding, this could be the last time I see Sarah. It saddens me, and the grief I feel over losing Sarah, even as a friend, has managed to outweigh the level of being pissed off that I feel at Brad at this very moment, and the shame at letting him intimidate me the way he has.
I half-expect him to try and shoot me some kind of “You’ve been warned” kinda look as I leave, but I turn away and don’t notice, so I guess I should consider that some kind of moral victory.
Oh yeah. It’s a regular Gettysburg there, Emmett.
Will is back, and ready to somehow twist this whole scenario into a great big attack on me. How typical.
I start heading home. Thankfully, Brad refrains from trying to run me down with his car. I wonder, momentarily, if it wouldn’t have been better if he had.
I keep waiting for Will to start his running commentary on the endless loop that’s running in my head. Of course, it’s not running in sequence, instead jumping around from soundbite to soundbite.
“Sarah’s with me now and figures to be for quite a while.”
“I don’t want you hanging around Sarah any more.”
“Otherwise…well, I think you can fill in the blanks for yourself.”
“Sarah’s with me now.”
“I don’t want you hanging around Sarah any more.”
“Otherwise…”
Well, I have to hand it to the guy. He didn’t beat around the bush. He told you straight out how he wanted things to go down. No subtlety wasted. No misinterpretations. Just one direct order: Stop seeing Sarah. Only thing I might have done differently in his shoes was to be a little clearer on the consequences, although even that we could figure out, just like he said.
I take a few side streets on my way home on this night. Walk through a few crescents that lead me right back to the street I had been on before. I need to be alone right now for as long as I can be, just so I can sort out a few things in my head.
Again, as mad as I am at Brad for being a dickhead and as mad as I am at myself for letting him be said dickhead to me, I’m equally filled with a sense of loss, like I have lost someone close to me. In a way I have. Sarah, thankfully, hasn’t passed away, but her friendship, which had meant so much, is gone, taken from me by this ****ing asshole.
I mean, what does he think this is, high school? No offence there, Emmett, but this sounds like a scene from some 50s film, with some greaser in a leather jacket roughing up some nerd (that’d be you) over taking his girl to the sock hop.
Great, now I have to soundtrack to Grease playing over and over in my head. It somehow adds an element of the absurd to an already absurd situation. And in the end, it does nothing to detract from the sick feeling I have in the pit of my stomach as I walk aimlessly through these deserted side streets.
I shake my head in disbelief. I mean, I knew when I first realized my feelings for Sarah that there was little I could do about it. Just my luck to fall in love with someone just as they’ve met the love of their life. Any shot I had with Sarah was over before it even started. I mean, it sounds like a bad country song.
Merle Haggard, eat your heart out!
Still, I figured that at least Sarah and I could still remain friends. You know, get together for coffee, that sort of thing. I mean, I guess on some level, I knew that things would never be the same between us, and that Brad, just like any other guy in his position, might feel…I don’t know…threatened by the idea that his girlfriend was with another guy.
Threatened? By you? Yeah, now I know Brad needs to seek psychiatric help. He’s definitely got some self-image issues if he’s threatened by the likes of you.
Maybe if I was in the same position as him, and I was with someone as special as Sarah, I’d want to put the warning out to any guy who was getting too close for comfort with her.
Before that thought can go any further, a car passes me, slowing down as it does so.
“Oh crap,” I think to myself, “Sarah and Brad have somehow found me and are wondering just what the hell I’m doing wandering around the backstreets of the city at this hour of the night.”
Instead, it’s just some nosy suburbanite who’s apparently got nothing better to do than play Neighbourhood Watch. He gives me a dirty look, one that says “What the hell are you doing around here?”
Yeah, he’ll ignore the crack dealer son of his upper class neighbour but some nobody geek he’ll decide to play hero over. Probably got in **** at his office job and figures hassling you will make him feel better in his lot in life. Get something to tell the wife and kids and the boys at work tomorrow.
I keep waiting for him to stop the car and make an issue out of things but he passes me by, the car never really picking up speed until it’s down the block a ways. As non-chalantly as possible, I make a bee-line for the nearest major street and head towards home.
Par for the ****ing course. Like I wasn’t kicked down enough, the world had to get that extra little dig in. It was like Brad making that stupid lame-ass joke about him and Sarah keeping me up.
What’s the old saying? Don’t kick a man when he’s down, because he just might get up. Well, I guess Brad knew that once he had you down, you weren’t going to be any threat to get back up and so figured it was free-shot time.
About a half-block from my place, Will and I finally stop going over the incident with the would-be vigilante, and get back to the misery I find myself in over Brad and Sarah.
By this time, Will has managed to exonerate Brad from any part of the blame game, although he hasn’t gone so far as to add him to our Christmas list. He’s also quick to remind me that I had known, in some way, right from the get-go, that my friendship with Sarah was going to change now that she was going out with Brad.
Still, though, I had figured…or at least had hoped, that she and I would still remain friends, even if there was never the possibility of that growing into something more, what with Brad in the picture. Still, if we couldn’t become more than we were, I’d always wanted us to never become less than what we were.
And now, here was Brad, forcing me to severe even that tie with Sarah. Part of me wanted to tell him to go **** himself, that he couldn’t damn well tell me who I could and/or couldn’t be friends with.
And then there was that other part of me, the part of me that knew that if I called him on it, if I confronted him about it in front of Sarah…
Lemme guess. If you confront him in front of Sarah, she’ll immediately see him for the jerk that he is, dump Brad and ride off into the sunset with you. Is that what you’re picturing in that warped little mind of yours?
I sigh. I know damn well, and if I doubt it I can just ask Will, that I’m not the type of person who would ever get up the courage, the testicular fortitude, to confront Brad.
Besides, he’d just act all shocked and hurt and claim that he had no clue what you were talking about. He’d be adamant that he had always been very cool about you and Sarah remaining friends, as long as that was what she wanted. He’d play the caring boyfriend card and say that he only wanted whatever would make Sarah happy. Hell, he might go so far as to say that he thought you were a pretty decent dude and hoped to become friends with you someday as well.
The thing I hated about Will in these situations was that he always managed to create just the right scenario. I hated the fact that he was always right on the money. Everything that played itself out in the little mental picture that he created for me was totally credible.
In the end, I had to admit defeat. I knew that as Sarah had gotten into Brad’s car, that it was most likely to be the last time I’d ever see her. I knew she’d probably wonder, in the weeks and months to come, whatever had happened to me. I could imagine her discussing my strange behavior and all but disappearance with Brad.
In bed?
Maybe. Probably. Who cares?
You do.
Be that as it may. I could almost hear her asking Brad what his opinion was on just what had happened to me. Of course, he’ll try to play the concerned boyfriend and offer up some half-assed explanation which will all boil down to me being a complete asshole and himself being a stand-up guy “that would never turn his back on his friends”. Nothing like bending the truth to get yourself over, eh, Brad?
OR…maybe he’d end up spilling the beans on his theory that you were in love with her, only in this scenario it turns out that its YOU who were the one who got jealous and felt threatened by her relationship with him and YOU were the one who threw a hissy fit and ran away to sulk.
I sigh as I listen to Will complete his conspiracy theory about Brad. Again, nothing like bending the truth the get yourself over. The sad part is that this is one of the few times that I actually find myself agreeing with Will’s warped theory.
Hell, this is one of the rare, extremely rare instances where I actually want Will to go hog wild, hell bent for leather on his theories, the more warped and outrageous the better. My mind is such that I’m willing to listen and give all of them some consideration.
Poor Sarah. She’d never understand. She probably would think it was something personal towards her. She’d probably be hurt and confused. And it wasn’t like I could ever take her aside and explain things.
**** me!
CHAPTER TWELVE
THREE MONTHS LATER
Three months and yet barely a day goes by that I don’t think of her. I am getting better, though. When I first had to pull the plug on our friendship, everything I saw, everything I heard, everything I thought about reminded me of her. I’d hear a song on the radio and think of a time that she and I had been talking and it had been playing then. I’d clean out a drawer in my room and there’d be some little artifact from our past together, a photo or something.
I’d try and drive the image of her, the sound of her voice, the memory of some shared event but Will, the evil bastard that he is, would bring it front and center, forcing me to use all my will power (pardon the pun) to drive the images, the memories from my mind.
I swear, I was like a crack addict. There were times that I knew it was wrong to be thinking about her, but I did anyways. At night, just as I was falling asleep, or first thing in the morning, as I lay there trying to work up the courage to face another day, I would just let all my resistence fall by the wayside and would let the images I had fought so hard to keep away come rushing back.
I would find myself wondering, every time the phone would ring, if that was her, calling to see what was going on, invite me out for coffee or to come over and watch movies. I checked my e-mail ten, twenty times a day waiting for her message that we should get together, talk, etc. I would pace the floor of my room, wondering if I should make the first move, call her and make some outlandish plan about getting together. I would compose e-mails, apologizing for my lack of contact and telling her that we needed to get together and chat, in private.
But in the end, the phone calls were never made, the e-mails never sent. After a while, it got easier. A day would pass and I would realize that I hadn’t thought about her. In time, even the few scant moments where I did think of her wouldn’t cause me as much pain as they once had. I would look at those few photos that hadn’t survived the great purge of the morning after Brad’s warning and I would feel some warm nostalgia rush through me but then nothing, like I was looking at my own baby pictures. A part of me wished that I could go back to that era but sentimentality was soon crushed by the firm knowledge that it could never be, and so I would put the photo away and soon I had forgotten all about the moment that had passed.
Still, there were nights when I would lie in bed, not ready to go to sleep, with my headphones on and some mixed CD I’d made playing in my CD player. I would lose myself in the music and wonder what might happen if, some day, I got a phone call and it was Sarah, crying because the unthinkable had happened, that Brad had shown himself to be the asshole that I knew he was, and that she’d had enough and left him. I kept thinking of worse and worse scenarios for Sarah to find herself in. He’d been a complete dickhead to her, he’d cheated on her, he’d decided that he wanted to move on, hell, depending on what kind of vindictive mood I was in, I might have even imagined that he’d beaten her up.
Hey, Brad more or less hinted that he’d beat you up when he got jealous of your relationship with Sarah. Stands to reason that if he felt threatened that he might turn his rage against her instead.
Still, it wasn’t a situation that I really wanted to imagine Sarah in so I tried to hold off on the whole “domestic violence” scenario until those points where I was really feeling low. For the most part, I stuck with stuff like “Sarah comes home and finds Brad ****ing Samantha”.
You know, as much as Sam came off as a cold-hearted bitch, the thought of her naked and in the throes of passion is kinda thought-provoking, wouldn’t you say?
Can we just stick with the program? Meanwhile, I kept reliving “When Harry Met Sally…” where Billy Crystal is called over to comfort a grieving Meg Ryan…
Is that the part where they end up sleeping together? So, is that what all this is about? All this “I want to be there to comfort Sarah” bull-**** is all an elaborate ruse to get her into bed? Ah ha!
It wasn’t like that at all, Will, but once again you’ve managed to take the reality of the situation and warp it into something sick and demented, taking an innocent scenario and twist that makes me look as bad as possible.
And in what way am I any different from anyone else in your life, or in anyone else that you meet? Besides, wasn’t I there for you during that whole exorcism period you went through?
“There for me”? It was you who suggested it. Only it wasn’t like a real exorcism, involving priests and green pea soup puke.
About a month or so after Brad basically told me to get lost for fear of bodily harm, I closed up shop so to speak on a lot of things. I did some personal house-cleaning. In the course of a day, I went through all my personal belongings and wiped out any trace of Sarah. Everything that I owned that reminded me of her, all the photographs I had taken of her, all the movies I had bought because we had seen them together, everything went.
And then I continued on with everyone else in my life. I deleted e-mails from people, basically stopped checking my Hotmail account, deleted ICQ from my computer (not that there was ever anyone on there anyways), gathered up everything that people had given me, any little reminders of anyone other than my folks.
Of course, I couldn’t bring myself to toss everything away, even though Will wanted me to do everything but have a big bonfire with all this stuff.
“And our love becomes a funeral pyre”! Ah, Jim Morrison’s words would have never been more appropriate.
Instead, I decided to just box everything up and stick it in the back of my closet. And with that, I prepared for my post-Sarah life. Hell, I prepared myself for my post-social life.
Post-social life? Considering your entire social life consisted of getting together with Sarah once every few weeks for lunch and then driving around with Pete at about the same frequency, I don’t really think there was much for you to cut loose.
Point taken. Still, what little that had existed I was determined to do away with. I went to work, tried to keep my interaction with my fellow employees to a minimum…
I’ll bet that was a real chore, considering that you worked with Andrea quite a bit.
Oh yeah. There were times when I almost hated working with her, which might come as a shock considering what a bright, normally upbeat person she is. No matter how much I wanted Will to find me a dark place to try and hide away in, Andrea was always there to crack jokes and make witty commentary on our daily routine. No matter how much I just wanted to indulge myself in self-pity and hating the world, Andrea always seemed to drag me out of that pit, kicking and screaming.
I know…what a bitch! I swear, why can’t people just live and let live? I mean, I don’t know which was worse: her wanting you to explain why you were down in the dumps or you having to make stupid jokes to throw her off the trail.
Oh come on, Will, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, Andrea was just trying to cheer me up, even when I didn’t want to be. And after a while, it kinda took. I started checking my e-mail more often. At first, Will told me I was just doing it to see if Sarah was trying to contact me.
Which is exactly what was going on. Well, that and you somehow had the idea that even though people hadn’t tried to contact you in months, or in some cases, years, they might have decided to do exactly that in the five minutes since you had checked your e-mail last.
Anyways, rather than dreading working with Andrea, I actually looked forward to it. And rather than our entire conversation being about what was bothering me and/or those annoying jokes I was making…
Told you.
Shut up…Andrea and I quickly fell back into our old “Pre-Sarah routine”. We talked about the movies we’d seen, the customers we’d had to deal with when we weren’t working the same shifts. We verbally torched Don and Jessica’s not-so-secret relationship.
And yet it never occurred to you that maybe, since you got along so well, that maybe you should suggest going out for coffee after work? See if you get along as well outside of work as you do while you’re schlocking videos to the morons of the neighbourhood? Maybe…you know…start a relationship with someone you care about?
Thanks to Will, the thought did occur to me, and yet even as he was berating me into feeling ashamed for not having the courage to ask Andrea out for coffee, he was feeding me these doubts.
Didn’t Sarah teach you anything? No one wants to date you.
What if you ask Andrea out and she turns you down? What happens if she says “Yes” and it turns out to be horrible? Won’t that ruin the friendship you have? How uncomfortable will it be to work together after that?
It’s like Will was trying to tell me not to ask her out just so he could make fun of me for not asking her out.
Genius, no?
He reasoned that it was my crush on Sarah, so transparent to Brad, that forced him to take her away from me. As evil a genius as Will might have been, he had a point. And so, Andrea and I remained simply co-workers…and I remained tormented by the loss of my friendship with Sarah.
“How long have you known Pete?” Andrea asks me, clear out of the blue. I’m cleaning the comedy section, a fruitless and pointless “Make Work” task that involves me getting a bucket of water and wiping down each shelf. It accomplishes nothing, results in not one extra dollar in revenue for the company, but keeps the employees busy during the rare down-time we have.
I do a double-take when Andrea asks me this question. For a minute, I’m trying to figure out which Pete she’s talking about.
“Pete Henry?” I ask, since he’s the only Pete I really know all that well.
“Yeah…the guy who came in here to pick you up that night,” she replies.
I shrug and tell Andrea that I’ve known Pete since high school, and that I still hang around with him on occasion.
Andrea looks like she’s digesting this information but in retrospect I think she was just trying to work up the courage to ask me another question about Pete.
“Soo…,” she starts, slyly, like the answer to the question is no big deal. “Is he seeing anyone?”
Despite my insistence that I don’t want to be any more than just friends with Andrea, her question still gives Will free reign to give me a light tap, or maybe something stronger, to the gut.
I shrug, trying to act nonchalant. It actually takes me a minute to try and remember what Pete has said regarding his love life. When I answer, it’s more like I’m just thinking out loud than really answering Andrea’s question.
“I know that he was dating some chi..er, woman named Lauren…Lorraine (?)… something like that, but that was a while ago,” I reply.
I look up and I see Andrea with a bigger hint of a smile than she might have had were she just asking to make conversation.
I wonder why she’s suddenly so interested in Pete’s relationship status? Hmm…I wonder, indeed.
Telling Will to **** off, I decide to take the bull by the horns. Rather than just worry and wonder and try and come up with stupid theories, all of which are sure to be shot down by Will as ridiculously naïve, I decide to take the proverbial bull by the horns.
“So…why the sudden interest in who Pete is or isn’t seeing?” I ask.
Deer in the headlights. Andrea knows she’s been caught being overly interested in something that can only be of interest to her if she’s got one thing on her mind.
This time, it’s her turn to shrug.
“No reason,” she replies unconvincingly. “I just see him in clubs from time to time. I remember seeing him with a girl a while ago but he’s been flying solo for the last while.”
Oooh…nice going, Andrea! That’s a girl. Give old Emmett here some doubt to chew on. Even though you know and I know and, most importantly, he knows that one of his closest friends and favourite co-worker is warm for the form of one of his long-time friends, by being…oh, shall we say, vague, will give him several hours of pondering. Hey, it’s not like he’s going out to clubs or having any kind of social life, take away his precious worry time and he’ll have to find another past time.
In the time it has taken Will to verbally pat Andrea on the back, she’s decided to head back up to the counter to do returns. As I watch her walk away, I realize that even though I never asked her out, a romantic entanglement has come between us. I just hope that things won’t get as weird between she and I once the inevitability of her and Pete “hooking up” comes to pass and Will threatened they might if I had tried to be the one she became romantically interested in.
And just like that, it’s another ****ty day at work.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JUST WHEN YOU THINK ALL IS LOST
I hated watching the news. Hated reading the paper.
Every day, it seemed, there was another story about some guy who had beat up his girlfriend. I knew – and was glad to know – that would never be the ending to Sarah and Brad’s relationship. I mean, I knew the guy was a ****ing dickhead but to everyone else, but he was a perfect catch, a gentleman to everyone he came in contact with…well, save me.
You mean you read more than the comics?
I continue to read about how some guy had, according to the accounts of friends and relatives, been abusive towards his girlfriend for years. These same friends had begged this young woman to dump the jerk and find someone new but she refused. In the end, he got drunk one night, got pissed off about something and beat the crap out of her until she was dead.
You know what I think whenever you read one of these stories there, Emmett?
I shudder to think but go ahead and tell me.
There goes a better man than you. Anytime you read a newspaper article or see a report on the TV news about some ****ing psycho who beats his girlfriend/wife/kids to death, that’s the first thing that pops into your brain.
Think about it, man, just for a moment. In the eyes of God and the world, he is considered a better man than you and so therefore is further up the social food chain that you. To society, it is better to date someone who will habitually beat the **** out of someone that they are supposed to love and who unconditionally love them back than it is to become involved with a geek.
Despite whatever psychological flaws these guys may have, they never seem to be in short supply of people around them who can’t bear to be apart from them. Meanwhile, you’ve got no one significant in your life at all. Never have, never will. How exactly is all this supposed to make sense?
I mean. Think on it a while, if you will. I mean, this guy, and he’s certainly far from the only one out there, gets his jollies from physically and, we must assume, mentally abusing his girlfriend. And hey, how about all those guys out there who have a girlfriend or wife and decide that having someone special in their lives isn’t good enough for them, so they have to go out and find someone else and have an affair?
And you can make all the claims you want about how you’d have the sun rise and set around any girl in your life, that you’d be hopelessly devoted to that one person and would do everything in your power to ensure that she was as happy as she made you.
You know, no offence, but your romantic crap sounds like some really bad love song that should end up on one of those K-Tel Love Ballad compilations.
Be that as it may, the fact is that you’ll never get the chance to prove that theory of yours because apparently, according to modern society, it is better for a woman to find herself attracted to someone who will beat them up and/or cheat on them than someone like you.
Well, Will seems intent on taking a single newspaper article and using it to totally ruin my day. However, just at that moment, my phone rings.
Guess who this will be? Lemme guess, I’ll take 50 clams on Don having to head to hockey practice a little early today and needing you to cover his shift…and when I say “a little early”, I’m thinking of somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven or eight hours early.
Hesitantly, I pick up the phone.
“Hello?” I begin, hoping that I sound like I’m coming down with the flu or something.
“Hey, how’s it going?” comes the voice on the other end. With no small amount of relief, I realize that it’s Pete and not Don who has called me.
I tell him, “Not too bad.” Figure it’s better to just give him the standard response, rather than go into the whole detail about how his phone call may have inadvertently saved me from diving any further into a sea of self-pity thanks to the voice in my head theorizing how, to the world at large, I’m considered a worse catch than a wife-beater.
Really? You think that Pete would consider that weird or something?
You know what, Will? I’m thinking he might, so I’ve decided to stick with a safe, if mediocre, response. Meanwhile, as I’m telling my inner voice about how telling other people about my inner voice might be considered rather mentally unstable, Pete is telling me about how he’s thinking of going to the mall later this afternoon and asks me if I’d like to come along.
Will tries to quickly come up with something more pressing and urgent on my “To Do” list for the day but fails and so I decide to take Pete up on his offer.
“So, you hear much from Sarah any more?” is the question that Pete has decided to drop into the conversation.
It’s about two hours since Pete called me, asking me to come out to the mall and we’re sitting in the food court, on one of the rare days that both he and I both have off. Instead of actually doing anything, mind you, we’re sitting here trying to figure out what to do. We’ve been at it for about three hours. Pete of course can’t or won’t actually think of anything and his entire contribution to the thought process has to shoot down every idea I could come up with and then to make small talk about some South Park episode he’d watched the other night. After about two mind-numbing hours hanging around my place, shooting the **** and me being bored, I suggested we come to the mall, where at least I could check out the latest DVDs at Movie-Plus, the best place I know to buy movies…even if I do feel slightly disloyal to Video Emporium for shopping elsewhere.
Disloyal? Bull-****! If you can save almost 10 bucks on movies by going elsewhere, go for it. What? Do you think Dan will make you employee of the month for wasting your money on the over-priced **** he has in stock?
Well, my DVD browsing only killed about 20 minutes, and so here I sit watching Pete eat Tacos and trying to think of something to say to kill the deafening silence between us. Finally, wonder of wonders, he beat me to it.
His tone says that this particular inquiry is much more than just a harmless way to bridge the gap in the conversation. It’s more like he knows the answer but figures that me having to give said answer and elaborate on it is a way to stick it to me that in fact it’s been about three months since I broke contact with her.
“Nah,” I say, shaking my head and trying to act non-chalantly about the whole thing. “She’s too busy hanging with her boyfriend to have time for the likes of me.”
Good answer. Always go with the truth, no matter how much it hurts. The fact that her boyfriend forced you into breaking it off with her just cut to the chase, rather than delaying the inevitable.
Of course Will has taken the opportunity to show me his home movies of how my relationship with Sarah might have worked out had Brad not decided to deliver his ultimatum. I detect a pattern in his little pet projects. All of them have Sarah drifting further and further away from me. All of them have Sarah becoming more and more devoted to the idea of spending every moment possible with Brad, at the expense of her friendship with me.
Hey, when I see an idea that works, I run with it.
Anyways, the answer I give Pete must have worked since it shuts him up. I mean, anything is better than just sitting there but Sarah is one topic I just don’t need to rehash.
Actually, Pete’s question sparks the first reflection about Sarah that I have had in at least a week or so. As Pete turns his attention towards his unfinished taco, silence returns between us. Unfortunately, I find myself wondering what Sarah and Brad are up to these days, in terms of their relationship. They’ve obviously moved in together. Horrified, I realize that I’m wondering if they’re giving any thought to the next stage of their relationship, with Brad making Sarah an honest woman.
Shaking my head to rid myself of that thought, I decide that if we’re going to talk about romantic relationships, I might as well throw it back to Pete.
Yeah…might as well discuss a relationship that’s actually taking place in the real world.
“Meanwhile, how are things with you and Andrea going?” I ask. I don’t really want to know but I figure it’s better than Pete making some smirking remark about Sarah and her boyfriend….
Fiance?
…as much to say “Yeah, no one expected her to remain friends with you once something better came along. Heck, I’m only slumming it here today because Andrea’s working.”
It’s been about three weeks since Andrea approached me, wanting to know about Pete’s status. To the surprise of no one, least of all, Will, a few days later, Pete e-mailed me to say that he’d bumped into “that Andrea that works at your store” at some club downtown and that she’d asked him if he wanted to buy her a drink. By the weekend, Andrea had only one topic of conversation: how much she was “diggin’” hanging out with Pete.
By the Monday, I was back to dreading working with her. Not because I had to assure her that I was doing okay, (she either didn’t notice or, as Will theorized, couldn’t have cared less) but because I was just getting sick of every sentence out of her mouth containing the phrase “Pete and I”. I had hoped it would get better or at least easier and, in fact, Andrea managed to downshift from talking about her new relationship with Pete from 100% of the conversation to, perhaps 60%.
Pete, meanwhile, barely mentioned her, save that he would e-mail me from time to time to talk about he “and the girlfriend” were doing this or that.
This time out, his only response was to brush it off with “Eh…they’re going. She and I had an American Pie movie marathon at her place the other night.”
I nod, not so much to Pete, but at the memory of Andrea renting the movies the other night at work. I remembered thinking that in pre-Pete days I would probably have kidded her about her choice of movie selections. Instead, all I could do was remark, as casually as I could, about how she was renting all of the American Pie movies, like she couldn’t have figured that out on her own.
At the time, I figured she had just wanted to spend an evening watching the American Pie series…
Which is exactly what she did…you just didn’t realize that she was doing it with Pete.
Yeah, I never clued in that the movies were going to be the centerpiece for her …
DATE! Say it! Date
(Sigh!) Fine, her DATE with Pete. Funny how even something as simple and seemingly innocent as Andrea renting movies turns into something that causes me pain.
So let me ask you something, Emmett? Are you upset because Pete’s dating Andrea and you’re not…or are you upset that they’re just two more people that have found one another while you remain alone?
I really don’t know how to answer Will. The nice thing about Will is that even when I don’t answer him one way or the other, he’ll continue on like I’m not even really part of the conversation.
You know the one positive of Andrea and Pete hooking up…and I do mean hooking up since you know they must be on a regular basis now…is that all these horrible feelings you have about losing Amanda, who by rights, you should be dating instead of Pete are taking away from all the horrible feelings that you were having about losing Sarah to Brad.
I hate to point out the flaw in your logic, Will but technically if I’m feeling crappy about Andrea and Pete dating, how is that any better or worse than feeling crappy about Sarah and Brad dating?
It’s not really any worse or better…it’s just different. You know, it changes things up a bit. In the end, you feel like **** because someone you know you wanted to be with is happy as a pig in **** with someone else, so the end result is maintaining the status quo.
And for the 1000th time probably since our story began, Will’s logic and twisted view of the world astounds me. I decide to chat up Pete, who’s been too busy eating tacos to notice that I’ve been a million miles away from this food court.
“So other than you and Andrea watching American Pie movies, what else have you been up to?”
I expect some reply from Pete about what’s going on at work, or the latest incarnation of the band he’s been working on. Will is chomping at the bit to have me listen to Pete tell me all about his relationship with Andrea.
Every dirty detail.
What suprises me and not in a good way is that Pete sighs. For a moment I wonder if he’s about to reveal to me that he and Andrea have broken up, or are on the verge of doing so. Thankfully I have Will here to remind me of my own logic flaws.
If he and Andrea were about to break up, wouldn’t he have told you five minutes ago when you asked how things were going between them?
I owe Pete a debt of gratitude and then some for interrupting the internal argument that was assuredly about to ensue between Will and myself.
“She seems to be dragging me to a lot of clubs and a lot of concerts these days. We went to see David Bowie when he came, and that new INXS band…and ****in’ Coldplay,” he explains, “I ****in’ hate Coldplay.”
I want to laugh at Pete, not in a humourous kinda way, and not in a “Sucks to Be You” kinda way. More in a “Are you ****in’ listening to yourself, asshole?” kinda way. I realize that I would have loved to have had someone to go see David Bowie or even Coldplay with. Hell, I may not be the world’s biggest INXS fan but if Andrea had asked me to go, I would have been thrilled and, in relating the story,
abruptly get up from the table. Pete looks up, questioning my actions.
“I’m gonna head over to the book store,” I tell him having decided at just this instance that’s where I’m headed. “Meet me in there when you’re finished.”
As I head out of the food court towards the book store, I try to occupy my mind by brainstorming a list of books that I have been wanting to read as of late, and doing a little impromptu window-shopping. Amazingly it works, since by the time I enter the book store, I am almost completely preoccupied with a list of places I want to hit after I leave this store.
A moment later, that mental list goes out the window as I see a familiar looking blonde girl.
SARAH?
Mind’s playing tricks on you again. Didn’t you go through a phase like this for the first several weeks after you and Sarah “broke it off”?
Will’s memory is correct. I went to the mall, this very mall as I recall, a couple of times after the incident between Brad and I, and practically every blonde chick I passed made me have to do a double-take, with me believing that each one was Sarah…at least until I got a good look at them.
But this time, my mind isn’t playing tricks on me. It really is Sarah. Her blonde hair and petite form have me all but convinced, but when she turns slightly, I get a really good look at her face and sure enough it’s her.
I knew that I shouldn’t approach her, knew it was better to just let the past be the past. As if on cue, Will let Brad’s words echo through my brain, somehow making the warning all the more sinister with the passage of time. And yet, the more I watcher her, the more I wanted to talk to her again.
Don’t do it.
She was still as beautiful as I remembered, even more beautiful than my longing for her had elevated her to, her brow furrowed in concentration, her hand deftly pushing a lock of her hair back behind her ear.
Let it go, man. Just walk away.
I could hear Will’s pleas, but was blocking them out. I quickly glanced around the store to see if Brad was browsing elsewhere.
Great. Now store security thinks you’re shoplifting.
Brad was nowhere in sight and so I found myself walking, as nonchalantly as I could over to her.
Will was screaming at me now, telling me to turn back but me feet kept me striding towards her. It got so bad, this eternal, internal struggle that I was horrified to realized that I have no clue what I was going to say as an opening line.
Damn it. Just keep walking, walk right on past. Pretend you never saw her.
But suddenly, there I was, standing not two feet from her. She took no notice of me, and for that I was grateful. Here I was, standing within polite conversational distance of the one person on the face of the earth that I had been dying to see for so long, and I had no clue what to say, to express how much I had wanted to see her, to talk to her, just to be around her.
I realized with a bit of a start that for all the things I had told myself about being okay with not seeing her, I was just working myself.
Jeez, ya think?
The shoot version of it was that there had been a gaping hole where Sarah had been and now here I stood, just a moment away from having her back in my life, if only temporarily, and I hadn’t the slightest clue about how to take the next step.
Geez, ya ****ing geek. Maybe that’s a sign from God or something?
A sign from God. Okay, from someone who constantly criticizes me for having a flare for the melodramatic, this oughta be good.
Yes, this is a sign that God doesn’t want your admittedly less than lacking features totally obliterated by a certain jealous boyfriend.
I quickly remind my sudden Guardian Angel, Will, that I had already scouted the premises and Brad was nowhere in the vicinity. I could talk to Sarah, renew our relationship and bolt before Brad ever knew I was anywhere near his girlfriend.
And for what? A one-minute stand? What are you going to do? Say “Hey Sarah! Long-time, no see! Oh, and by the way, it’ll be a while before you see me again cause your boyfriend threatened me with physical violence.”
I knew I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but to be perfectly honest, I was beyond thinking rationally. I was beyond worrying about what Will would say or what Brad would do. All I could think about was the fact that there was Sarah, standing right in front of me and all I had to do was open my mouth and say something, anything, and she and I would be together, even if only for a little while.
Okay, if you are going to actually go through with this, re-insert yourself into her life and suffer the consequences, and I’m begging you to reconsider, could you please at least beat her to the punch before she notices you just standing there gaping like some slack-jawed yokel moron.
“Sarah?” I say, finally, feeling at once both relief that I found something, albeit a not-very-profound something to say and fear over what might be about to come.
See, I told you. Once you set this thing in motion, you can’t just hit the restart button.
She looks up from the book she’s perusing and sees me standing there before her. She does a double-take…
Probably trying to place you.
And then breaks into that smile that I’ve missed so much.
“Emmett?” she gasps. “Oh my God, how are you?”
I shrug, again as nonchalantly as if I’ve just wandered by and noticed her standing there. “Not too bad. How’s yourself?”
This time, it’s her turn to shrug, but as she does so, she laughs in that self-mocking way that people do when they feel they have the weight of the world on their shoulders and feel that if they don’t laugh, they just might cry.
“I’ve been better,” she said, “but I have definitely been worse.”
I felt my stomach drop as she spoke. I so wanted to have her tell me everything that was going on, everything that was troubling her. I wanted my shoulder to be the one that she cried on.
Man, you still don’t get it, do you? You don’t get to be THAT guy. Brad is THAT guy. He’s the one that she gushes out everything too. When something happens in Sarah’s life, good, bad or indifferent, the first person she wants to talk to is Brad, not you. He’s the one she rushes to so that she can tell him all her news. You’re just the guy who gets the watered-down Reader’s Digest version of what she wants to go public.
I don’t need Will telling me all that. Despite what he might tell you, I am not some naïve **** that figures the world centers around me and who thinks that every one wants me as their best friend and confidant. But, God Damn It, I so longed for Sarah to think of me that way.
“But enough about me,” she exclaimed. “Where have you been hiding? Geez, it’s like you fell off the face of the earth or something!”
And as I stood there, half-listening to Sarah, half-listening to Will analyze every facet of the moment, I realized that Sarah was all but handing Will ammunition.
Yeah, well here’s a little something for you to chew on: she basically told you that there’s something not quite right in her life, but would rather you spill your guts to her than vice-versa. Face it, man! She is declaring her personal life off limits to you. What the **** does that tell you?
I so want to ask Sarah what’s wrong. What had made her declare that she “had been better”? Was she in some kind of trouble? Was she sick? Had her grandmother died? Had she been fired? Did she just come from seeing a sad movie? What? There was a million different answers to the one question I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
The moment had come and gone, by Sarah’s own admission, and to go back and ask her what was wrong would seem…I don’t know…a stupid, moronic thing to do, like I was some nosy gossip wanting to rehash everything.
Hey, maybe you want to keep some kind of conversation going. Otherwise, there’s still a chance she’ll think you’re that yokel we were talking about before.
Thankfully, barely a moment has lapsed in our conversation and I am able to jump right back into the swing of things before Sarah does, in fact, realize anything is up with me (and Will).
“Oh, you know…things have been busy,” I explain, “I’ve been working a lot of hours at the store so that’s been wearing me out. Haven’t been getting out as much as I’d like.”
Sarah nods. I take that as a good indication that she’s fallen for my lie. I feel bad for lying to her but what else am I suppose to say?
Nah, a lie is good. I’m thinking “Well, I’ve been avoiding you so as not to get the crap kicked out of me by that psycho boyfriend of yours” probably wouldn’t go over too well.
While Will is gloating over his latest bit of wit, I decide to dive in under the radar and take the bull by the horns.
“So, how are you and Brad doing?” I ask, and then try to keep my eyes from widening as the shock registers over what I’ve just done.
YOU… ****ING… MORON!!!!
Yeah, I figured Will would react that way but I’m more concerned about how Sarah is going to react.
Her breath catches and she begins to look shaken, uncertain, almost the way she did on that afternoon so long ago now when she first told me about her and Brad.
“Uhm…not so good,” she says and in that instant I am totally ashamed of myself for asking the question, for bringing up the subject.
Well, no ****! I mean, you couldn’t have just left well enough alone on that particular subject. Couldn’t have just stuck to nice safe, melba toast subjects like the job, current events, what book she was browsing? Nope, had to go poking your nose in to where it didn’t belong, her personal life. And now you’ve gone and obviously drudged up something she obviously would have preferred not to think about.
Even as Will berated me for asking the question that I had, there was a part of me who truly hoped that she would tell me more about what was going on between her and Brad. What was “not so good” about the relationship between her and Brad?
Well, tell you what, why don’t you have THAT part of you go ahead and just ask her to explain herself? Hell, why don’t you grill so unmercifully about the status of her relationship that she breaks down and cries right in the middle of this book store? Come on, play good cop, bad cop on her? Grill her like she’s Oswald!
She kinda beat me to the punch, Will. Instead of me having to give so much as an inquiring look in her direction, she told me…almost blurted it out, actually.
“Brad and I…well, we broke up” she said.
Holy ****.
Holy ****!
Almost immediately after she told me, she let out a long breath, the way a smoker might after taking a drag off a cigarette. I could tell that it had just happened recently and I was probably one of the first people she had actually told about it. It was almost as if telling me, or someone, was making it real for her, and she had survived the revealing of this news quite well, and was proud of herself for surviving the ordeal.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure about myself. All of a sudden, it was as if a whole new road had opened up for me. Suddenly, possibilities that I had thought had long since been declared hopelessly out of the question were now a little more promising.
Hey, dickweed. Don’t let me tell you what I think you should do but take this into consideration: maybe you should pretend to be the caring, supportive friend right now rather than some over-zealous horndog who’s too busy trying to figure out how to get Sarah into bed. In other words, rather than exploring the possibilities of what this means, you should be telling this chick that you’re sorry to hear that she and her boyfriend have broken up.
And so, in a flash, I pushed all the thoughts I had regarding new possibilities for me and Sarah out of my head and composed myself.
“Ah, man!” I said, hoping that the words I said didn’t sound as phony out loud to Sarah as Will was making them sound in my head. “God, I’m so sorry, Sarah. How are you holding up?”
She shrugged, grinning that “I have to smile in spite of it all” smile that we all plaster over our features in the aftermath of one personal disaster or another in our lives.
“I’m okay,” she said, not sounding 100 percent sure but willing to try and fake it, “You know, I think it was a case where he and I just moved too fast. I mean, one minute we were dating, the next we were sleeping together, the next we were living together. In the end, I think it all caught up to us. I think we figured this whirlwind romance was something more than it was.”
I nod, commiserating with Sarah over the tragic turn of events that have taken place in her personal life.
Oh, bull****! You’re nodding because deep down inside you’re thinking “Yeah, I coulda told you that months ago, ya dumb bitch!” You’re not commiserating, you’re agreeing in a pompous, “I told you so” kinda way.
She shrugs, “Eh, live and learn, I guess. But hey, it’s great seeing you again.”
As she says this, she puts her hand on my shoulder and my God, it’s the best feeling in the world. I’m so distracted by her brief touch that the rest of her speech, about getting together some time to catch up, barely registers. I nod politely, agreeing with whatever she was saying. Hell, she could have suggested we go on a cross-country killing rampage and I would have totally been up for it.
Actually, as the voice inside your head, I believe it’s my job to suggest that but hey, if Sarah wants to put the plan in motion, more power to her.
And then she was gone.
I stand in the store for a few minutes, not even bothering to go through the motions of pretending to be browsing. I just stand there, trying to comprehend the possible fallout of what I’ve just been told.
Sarah is single.
Brad is out of the picture.
“Can I help you find anything today?”
The posed question snaps me out of my trance. I look up to see one of the store clerks, probably no older than 18, staring at me like I’ve just grown another head…or that I’ve just pocketed half the store. His look tells me that he wouldn’t be all that upset if the latter should happen to be true, just so long as it doesn’t inconvenience him. It’s as if he’s trying to tell me that if I’m planning to shoplift, I should just quietly leave the store and don’t drop any evidence on my way out, less he might have to fill out some paperwork.
I stutter for a minute. I feel my face getting hot and bits of perspiration dripping down from my armpits.
Sure…that kind of behaviour won’t make him even more suspicious. I’ll bet he’s about to break out in tears and choke out an apology.
“I’m just looking, thanks,” I reply.
Even as I stammer out the phony-sounding reply, I come to the horrifying realization that I have no idea what section I’ve been found standing in. Sci-Fi, True Crime, Young Adult…
Or how about that section with the erotic fiction. Yeah…won’t look like a complete pervert then, would ya? Just standing there, staring off into space.
Thankfully, the clerk is satisfied as long as I don’t utter a declaration of guilt. He tells me that if I need anything, just to let him now, and then heads off in search of someone else to help.
I don’t want to arouse suspicion, but I inwardly breath a very deep sigh of relief as he leaves and I find myself in the history section. Nothing too embarrassing about running into a store clerk there.
Save for that whole staring off into space thing.
Just to make sure I don’t look any more suspicious and have to outrun mall security, I spend a few minutes browsing the section, coming across a pretty interesting book on touring Civil War battlefields that I make a mental note to remember when Father’s Day comes along.
After what I feel is a reasonable amount of time, I make my way out of the store, stopping briefly to check out the new releases, and letting Will make me feel as though, the moment I was out of earshot…
Or probably not even that long…
…that the clerk would point me out to his buddies as the weird dork who was acting retarded in the history aisle, with the story getting more disgusting, and yet, to his audience, hilarious with every telling.
I’m about 20 paces out of the store before I realize that Will is screwing with me, and he’s doing it for a reason. Instead of worrying about some kid in a book store…
Who, at 18, is already bored with a job you have in your late 20s?
I should be focusing on the bombshell that just landed on me back in what turned out to be the history section of that books store. My mind begins to reel once again.
Sarah and Brad broke up.
I don’t know how I managed to get out of the store. My meeting up with Pete and the drive back home is all but a blur. Pete knows that something is up because I remember him asking what was up with me. I tell him the truth, that I met up with Sarah, and that she has informed me that she and Brad had broken up.
He smirks at me and doesn’t really give me much of a reply. I know he’s got some snide remark he wants to make but has the good sense not to do so. I really couldn’t care less, as my mind is racing a million miles a minute. Thoughts are flying across the expanse of my consciousness like headlines on CNN.
My friendship with Sarah can continue without worry that some jealous asshole is going to beat the crap out of me.
Maybe…just maybe, mind you, that friendship can develop into something more.
Film at 11.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
J.Q.’s REVISITED
It’s four a.m. and I still haven’t managed to get any sleep. I am totally going to suck at my shift tomorrow, but then what will be different tomorrow for any of the other thousand shifts at Video World?
Well, instead of just the customers and management telling you how much you suck after you’ve worked your ass of for seven or eight hours, you’ll go in knowing that you’re going to be dead-tired and brain-dead and aren’t even going to try and make an attempt to change that branding. And see, here I was blasting you for letting your mind run away with you and stay up ‘til all hours dreaming up bizarre “never-gonna-happen” scenarios.
Will’s summary of the evening’s (and by now, early morning’s) events is on-target. No matter how many times I tell myself that I’m going to try and clear my mind and get some sleep, another image of Sarah jumps into my brain.
I relive those few brief moments in the book store over and over and over again. I still can’t believe that it actually happened. Even before, before her relationship with Brad, before my Brad-imposed eviction from Sarah’s life, I would have been thrilled to have bumped into her at a store. It would have made my entire day.
But to see her now, after so long, and for her to tell me that she and Brad had broke up, it was like…
What? What? A dream come true?
Exactly.
Good God, have you got an appetite for corniness.
Yeah, I know, I know but it’s like something I always wanted to imagine could happen, hell, I went ahead and did imagine it. It was exactly as I had played it out in my head. Well, maybe not exactly, but close enough. But the major elements where there. Sarah and I are together and she tells me that Brad is out of the picture.
Yeah, but she didn’t cry on your shoulder and, in trying to comfort her, you didn’t end up sleeping together.
Details. Details. Don’t sweat the small stuff, Will.
Oh **** me, he’s quoting self-help books. What’s next? Are you going to call up Dr. Phil and get him to tell you how to win Sarah over? How about a copy of “Chicken Soup for the Pathetic Loser’s Soul”?
By now, I’ve exhausted all the “what I could have done differently” possibilities and have moved on to the future echoes. Was that chance meeting the beginning of something? And where might that “something” lead?
Down the long, decrepit path to Nowheresville? Where you can check yourself into the Heartbreak Hotel, only with no Elvis singing show tunes?
As it turns out, Will is wrong, for once. The chance meeting between Sarah and I in that book store does lead to something.
Oh I am, am I?
A couple of days later, I get a call from Sarah. Just to see her phone number on my call display is enough to make me catch my breath. It’s her cell phone number, the one I never quite managed to forget, no matter how hard I tried to put everything about her out of my head.
God, what a ****ing mark you are for this chick? Can you imagine what kind of reaction you’ll have if she ever deigns to sleep with you?
For reasons I’ll go into later there, Will, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t put the thought of Sarah and I sleeping together into my head right at this juncture.
Ah, but it’s already there. Nothing I can do about it.
Thankfully Will at least shuts up (or goes into some rambling solilogue in the background) long enough for me to answer the phone.
“Hello?” I ask as if I’m questioning just who might be on the other end of the telephone line.
“Hey, Emmett, it’s Sarah,” comes the reply. I knew exactly what she would say and exactly how it would sound coming from her and somehow the familiarity and the total expectedness of it just added to the rush of pleasure that washed over me. It was like I didn’t realize that I had been missing her voice on the phone until I heard it again.
“Hey there,” is my reply. It’s funny because that’s the way I would have replied even if we had just talked on the phone yesterday. Instead of having been out of contact for three months, it felt like we’d never been apart.
Uh…exactly when were you two ever…you know…together?
I didn’t mean it as being apart as a couple, I meant it felt like our friendship hadn’t been ripped apart by the jealous actions of her now departed boyfriend. Instead, it instantly felt like we’d always been friends and I had always been able to expect her to call me up on occasion. I realized that from this moment forward, every time the phone rang I would have to stop and find out if this was Sarah calling me.
Okay, stop the ****ing horses! Don’t make yourself out to be more mentally sound than you really are when it comes to this chick! Ever since this whole “love triangle” between you, Sarah and Brad…or more like the love “straight line” between Sarah and Brad… started, you’ve kept jumping for the phone every time it rang hoping and praying that maybe, just maybe this was Sarah calling to tell you that she and Brad were through. Hell, how many hours did you waste fantacizing about how it was all going to play out?
“…so if you’re not doing anything tomorrow, maybe we could get together at J.Q.’s again?” I can hear Sarah asking as I finally tear myself away from this go-nowhere conversation with Will.
All of which is true, I might add.
I manage to ignore Will long enough to answer. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
We agree to meet at J.Q.’s at 11:30. Of course, as is want to happen, Dan calls me at 10:00 that morning to try and get me to come in to cover his shift. He does the worst impression of a guy with a cold on record. Thankfully I’ve grown smart enough to let my folks’ answering machine pick it up. Dutifully I simply ignore it, deciding that if he calls me on it during my next shift, I’ll just use some bull**** story about having left early that morning on some personal business.
Of course, it means that I have to walk a couple of extra blocks so as to make to J.Q.’s without passing in full view of the video store. It sucks but at least now I don’t have to worry that Dan just happened to look outside at the precise moment I came into view (or a certain blonde-haired stoolie) and will ream me over the coals the next time I’m in for a shift.
Unless Dan got someone else to cover his shift and left, driving by J.Q.’s at the precise moment that you walked in.
Great Will. Way to come up with an even more ludicrous scenario so as to get me worried about something that has probably a 1 in 1000 chance of actually happening.
Well, I aim to please. Least now you’ve got something hanging over your head while you’re out enjoying your lunch with Sarah.
My worrying over the possibility that Dan might have actually seen me and that my pitiful attempts at subterfuge might all be for naught lasts only until Sarah shows up.
Fashionably late as always. Nice to see some things never change. Same with the décor and the noise level here at J.Q.’s.
She looks as great as ever. The jeans she’s wearing fit her as snuggly as anything that Jessica shows up in, but without the slutty essence to them. I don’t know why but I can’t stop looking at her jeans as she walks into the restaurant and over to the table where I’m sitting.
Holy ****! I’m checking her out.
It dawns on me, with no little amount of shock, that for the first time since I came to the realization about how I felt about her that Sarah is available. I mean, I guess I knew but I’m just putting two and two together as we speak.
As Sarah comes over, I quickly avert my gaze, pretending to read the menu. Like I actually have to make up my mind what I’m going to order. I say a silent prayer that Sarah didn’t notice that I was staring at her.
“Hey, there!” she says as she slides into the booth across from me.
Just like you’d like to slide those tight jeans down her firm thighs to reveal the lacy lilac panties that…
Oh man! Will you ****ing stop it, Will?
Trying to fight off the images Will is playing in my head, most involving me somehow getting Sarah’s jeans off, I looked up, pretending that I hadn’t noticed her arrival.
“Hey,” I nod in the way of a greeting. “How are things?”
She shrugs…not in the distracted way that she had a few months ago when she met me right in this very restaurant to tell me that she had met someone. Nah, it was more like a “life goes on” kind of way.
“Good,” she replies and there’s no deception in her voice, no trying to hide anything. And with that I realize that the similarities between our lunch together this time and the one we had about a year or so ago are limited.
Sure, same music, same crappy ambience but everything else, everything between Sarah and I is different. I’m looking at her in a different light, and not simply with a want of sexual desire, like Will would have me believe. I see her not as just a friend, not as someone who I went to college with, but as someone I want to be with.
Meanwhile, I still can’t help wondering how she’s doing. I mean, I hated the dumb muther****er but for a while ol’ Brad sure did make Sarah happy. For the last few days, ever since I bumped into her at the mall, I’ve wondered how she was holding up, I wondered how many nights she had cried herself to sleep…and it killed me to think of her in that much pain.
Aw! What? Did you want to hold her and comfort her, maybe tuck her in after a warm glass of milk and some of Mom’s home-made cookies? Face it, ya dumb ****, when her heart was so broken her first instinct wasn’t to call you. She probably called Samantha or any of the other umpteen friends of hers to cry on their shoulder. Hell, if you hadn’t bumped into her at the mall, you’d probably still be wandering around in a heartsick daze about your lost love, never knowing that she was back on the market.
“You sure?” I query, trying to get just the right amount of concerned suspicion into my voice. “I mean, how are you holding up…after…you know?”
Man! I so want her to come back with “No…I don’t know. What the **** are you talking about, Emmett?”
**** you, Will. Sucks to be you, cause you don’t get your wish. Instead she just smiles, a little sad this time and replies “I’m doing okay. I mean, I guess Brad and I just weren’t meant to be ‘Brad and I’…you know?”
Okay, now I so want her to add “But thanks for bringing that particularly sore subject up, you asshole!”
Oooh….sorry, Will…that makes you 0 for 2…although you did succeed in making me feel guilty over the whole situation. I know…I should have just let it lie. Call it a foul tip and we’ll call it even.
Even…hell, on your best day we’re never even. Even if you were to ever find yourself in a great 9-5 Monday to Friday office job, living in your own bachelor pad and screw…er, I mean…ahem “dating” Sarah, I could still come up with enough ammunition to tell you what a piece of crap you are. That’s just the way things are…and believe me, for a geek like you there’d still be someone out there willing to back me up.
It’s a truth that I’ve always feared. That no matter how happy I might consider myself, that there’d be someone there to knock me down a peg or ten. Still, I decide to take that little tidbit of information and store it away for later. Will, no doubt, will be happy to remind me of it at a later date.
OH YEAH!
Meanwhile, Sarah doesn’t seem to be holding any ill will for bringing up the subject. (So there, Will!) In fact, my question about her condition in the aftermath of her breakup with Brad seems to have opened a floodgate for her. I turn my attention back to the conversation as she’s in mid-dissertation.
It’s weird but I actually want to somehow steer the conversation away from Sarah’s current topic. I’m not sure exactly why but I can’t find myself interested in her talking about her ex-boyfriend. Perhaps it’s because I want to somehow insert myself into her life as her next boyfriend.
Still, I sit there in the booth at J.Q.’s and nod politely, and try to seem concerned and understanding. I guess because I’ve never been in a relationship myself and thus have never broken up with anyone, there’s really not a whole lot of real life experience that I can add to the conversation. I guess I can take solace in the fact that at least it’s just me and Sarah there alone and I’m not having my discomfort over lack of relationship experience compounded by having two or three other people, all adding their two cents in.
And yet, as I sit there, watching her and listening to her talk about the demise of her own relationship, I am strangely drawn to her. Perhaps it’s how she looks as she continues her one-sided chat. She looks vulnerable, her heart battered and bruised if not broken by the bastard I always knew that Brad was. And yet, this vulnerability looks good on her.
Speaking of bastards… “this vulnerability looks good on her”?
You know damn well that I didn’t mean it like that, not that I was happy to see her heart-broken or that I figured that she got what was coming to her. I meant, the vulnerability made her all the more appealing. Seeing her in pain made me want to hold her all the more, to take her in my arms and reassure her that everything would be all right, that Brad being out of her life was for the best, that there would be someone else.
And lemme guess who you’d be nominating as a leading candidate to be that “someone else”.
Presently, Sarah had run out of things to say about her and Brad no longer being “her and Brad”. She sighed this great gasp of breath, as if she had just emerged from the water after a long, hard swim. I half-expected her to wipe away a tear or two. I sensed that she had been wanting to talk to someone about this for quite some time and when I gave her the opening, it all came rushing out. Every thought, every feeling, every memory. All of it right there before me…and I had barely heard a word.
I didn’t want to hear any of it. I didn’t want to hear any more about her and Brad. I didn’t care. I hadn’t wanted it to start in the first place and it had cost me, at least temporarily, my best friend. Now that it was all over, I just wanted to put it in the past and move on to what I hoped would be the next step in our relationship.
On this day, however, that wasn’t going to happen.
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed, “I can’t believe how long I’ve been talking about this. You must be bored out of your skull.”
Well, now that you mention it…
I shake my head. “No, it’s okay. I mean, it probably did you a world of good to talk about it. Get it off your chest. Verbalize your feelings, as they say.”
Emmett, you better pray that she never quizzes you on one word of what she said today.
In response, she smiles, almost meekly, like someone who had gorged themselves at some meal and then realizes, embarrassed, that they’ve left nothing for anyone else. Then her expression changes. She still smiling, but this time it is an appreciative smile.
“Thanks, Emmett,” she says, “I really needed that. It’s good that you’re here for me.”
Even as she thanks me for listening…which I really wasn’t…she gets up to leave.
Even before I realize what’s happening, the words come tumbling out of my mouth that would take my relationship with Sarah, hell, my entire life in a new direction.
“Hey, are you doing anything tomorrow night?”
Where the hell did that come from?
Yeah, doofus, where the hell did that come from? I mean, if she answers “No, not really” or some facsimile thereof, what exactly do you plan on saying in response?
Well, I guess, we’ll just have to wait and see. I mean, she’s probably got plans to do something with her sister, Samantha, or any one of a dozen of those friends of hers from work.
Hey, maybe she’s already moved back into the whole dating scene. Wouldn’t that be a kicker? Maybe she’s already moved passed Brad and already has plans to go out for a movie or dinner or just heading straight into some new guy’s bedroom for…
“No, not really,” she says, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders just slightly.
A pause and then she smiles, almost knowlingly at me and asks, “Why? What did you have in mind?”
Okay, now here’s where you stammer and stutter and try and think of something that you two can do that will be fun and yet won’t seem like you’re asking her out because even though you’d give your left nut to do so, now that the opportunity has actually presented itself, you’re reacting more like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
As amazed as I am that I even asked her if she had any plans that night, I am equally amazed at the words that tumble out of my mouth next.
“I don’t know, maybe we could go out to dinner or something. Be good for you to get out.”
Wow! Even Will is impressed.
Indeed I am. I mean, not only did you get out an intelligible sentence but you even made it sound less like you wanted to date her and more like you were playing the sensitive guy card.
Thanks. And if I wasn’t afraid that I was going to faint from the fear of how she might respond, I might be ready to faint from the sheer shock that you actually gave me credit for something.
Of course…
Of course, what? There is no “of course”. I mean, I asked her out without asking her out, that was the whole goal here, right? Right?
Quit interrupting me…as I started to say, before I was ruuuuuudely interrupted…of course, now you come off as less boyfriend material and just friend material.
And what’s wrong with that? Friends is good, right? RIGHT?!?
Well, friends is okay but you’re going to turn into the “cry on your shoulder” type friend where Sarah comes to you and tells you all her future dating problems, rather than the “get into your pants” type of friend where Sarah comes to you every time she wants to get laid.
Okay, I don’t know what deep, dark thought patterns you’ve been reading, Will, but you must have me confused with someone else. I mean, maybe you’re picking up something from someone in the vicinity. Hey, that creepy looking guy over in sci-fi is probably fantasizing about having that kind of relationship with…uh that chick who played Seven of Nine or Zena or Chyna or something. I’m not into Sarah just because I want to sleep with her, I like her because I want to be with her in a relationship kind of way.
And do you mean to tell me that you aren’t hoping that all roads lead to her bedroom?
You know, you’re really putting the cart before the horse because she hasn’t even agreed to go out as friends for din…
Wait, is she nodding? Is she nodding because she is saying yes or there’s someone jumping and down behind me and she wants to read what their shirt says.
Are you even listening to yourself?
Sorry, Will, you’ve got me trained so well that even when I think something good is happening, I’m still looking for any excuse, no matter how ridiculously irrational, for the positive to be negative.
“Actually,” my ears hear her saying but my mind almost refuses to comprehend, “That’d be nice. Nice to just get out of the apartment and forget about…well, let’s just call him what’s-his-head…for a while!”
I’m hoping my eyes don’t widen to the point where my eyeballs pop out, but it’s a tough job reigning the suckers in.
Okay, moron, close your mouth and nod and say something to the affirmative.
“Great, any preference as to time or place?” I reply, dutifully nodding as per Will’s instructions.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE START OF SOMETHING
It’s amazing. When I have to get ready to go in for my shift at the store at 5:00 in the afternoon, there have been times where 4:30 has still found my walking around our apartment in my underwear, checking my e-mail one last time before finally having to will myself to get dressed and head out for another long horrible day at work.
Sarah and I had worked things out so that we would meet at J.Q.’s (again with the J.Q’s) around 6:30. Even though I knew that I could leave the apartment at 6:00 and have plenty of time to make it to the restaurant, I started getting ready around noon that day.
You know, I don’t think Eisenhower took this long to plan the Normandy landings. I mean, how hard can it be, take a shower so you don’t stink, shave, and then just pick out a pair of pants and a shirt and you’re good.
But is it a jean-and-t-shirt kind of affair? Is it THAT casual? Is it better to dress up a bit? But how much is enough? Is it more like jacket and tie? If I show dressed up, will that impress her? Or will it make her think that I’ve got more on my mind that just having dinner with a friend to talk?
Well, considering you do have more on your mind that just having dinner with a friend to talk, maybe that’s what you should take your cue from.
Oh, don’t start this again, Will. I mean, I am just getting together with Sarah so that we can talk, catch up, find out how she’s been…
And hey, if comforting her about her recent break-up means having to sleep with her…well, it’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.
Can we get back to the business at hand? I mean, if we’re just getting together as friends (man, am I starting to hate that word) can I go in just casual wear?
Well, J.Q.’s is a pretty casual place. I mean, you have met her there before in just that, jeans and a t-shirt, maybe you can get away with it again.
But before…before was she and I just getting together as strictly friends, with me having no inclination to take it any further. Now, though…
Ah ha…so you admit that you want this to develop into something more.
The relationship? Yes! I’ve never NOT admitted that, at least since you were kind enough to let me in on the little secret you’d been hiding from me for the past couple of years. But I can’t go rushing into this, it’s not like I can show up at J.Q.’s and lean across the table and French her.
Why not, might make for a good icebreaker? And while you’re doing that, maybe you could stick your hand down her…
Before Will can complete the sordid details of that particular sick fantasy, the phone mercifully rings.
“Are you home?” I can hear my Mom ask.
“No!” I yell back, even as I head towards the living room to see who might be calling us today of all days, as if I have any doubts.
“It’s Video Emporium,” she informs me. “Are you going to pick it up?”
“No ****ing Way,” I reply, hating that I swore in front of my mother but having to use profanity to get my point across as to just how much I am NOT going to be picking up the phone.
Even as I hear Will laughing somewhere in the background, I check the call display just in case Mom somehow misinterpreted the message. But sure enough there it is “VIDEO EMPORIUM” spelled out in bold letters.
Hmm…maybe the world is trying to tell you something. Maybe this thing with Sarah is doomed from Day One by the very Fates that have damned you your entire life.
The phone just keeps ringing and ringing, trying to entice me to pick up, ordering me, taunting me, perhaps even begging me to lift the receiver off its handle and find out just why someone might be calling me.
Hmm…I wonder how many brain cells it would take the average person to figure out just what the nature of this call might be?
You forget, Will, as stupid and naive as you make me out to be, I have been in the retail business long enough to know Don’s not calling to tell me that he’s got a new position for me: Official Movie Reviewer. For five or six times my normal salary, I can stay home and watch the new movies as they arrive at the store so I can advise the Video Emporium HQ staff as to how many copies they should ship to our stores.
Although that does sound like a good job.
But of course, the real truth of the matter is that Don is calling to, in a few sentences, undo what I have been wanting for weeks and months and…yes, years, to take the first baby steps into a relationship with Sarah Ferguson….all so he can go hang out with his buddies.
**** him, I say…out loud I think. The phone still rings but I stare at it, almost willing it to stop. I can hear the whispers Will wants to make me listen to, like maybe if they’re calling and letting it ring this long, that something must be really wrong.
Did those tills balance when you left the other day? Did you forget to lock the safe, the doors, turn the lights off, sweep under the rug…or any other of the umpteen dozen things that Don expects you to be doing at all times? Maybe they got an extra big shipment in and they need all the help they can get?
I don’t give a flying **** if they had ten trucks full of shipment, they can handle it on their own. Besides, it’s probably a case where someone decided that they were too sick to show up…
At the same store where you once went in for a nine hour Saturday night shift two hours after having been draped over a toilet puking your guts out, possibly literally? Man, must be nice not have to live your life by dork rules, huh?
Finally, the phone stops ringing, and I can get back to trying to figure out what I should be wearing. Man, even when I take one tiny step forward, the world tries to pull me back ten steps. Instead of having dinner with Sarah and, if nothing else, welcoming her back into my life, I was supposed to stand behind a cash register and let total strangers tell me what a piece of crap I was because they had returned Most Valueable Primate III a day late. Not really a tough decision!
In the end, my decision as to what to wear wasn’t so hard once I thought about it. I decided to go casual, but wear the best casual I had, jeans and a button down shirt and a vest over it. Not exactly something I could wear to work but the next thing to it.
For once, Sarah is actually at J.Q.’s before me, something that would surprise me if I had time to think about it, what with Will having me checking my watch to make sure I wasn’t hours behind schedule and just not aware of it.
Hey, when something is out of the ordinary, always assume you screwed something up.
As per usual, that first sight of her, as she’s looking at a menu, is enough to take my breath away. No matter how much time I take trying to make myself look something resembling “passable”, she always looks incredible, and it doesn’t look like she’s even had to put much effort into it, like she just snapped her fingers and everything from her wardrobe to her hair just fell into place, and the best place possible.
As I’m about two feet from the table, she looks up…and smiles. Will, maybe you can remind those knees of mine that they can only weaken so much before I collapse on the floor.
Heheh! Actually, that would make for a great “first date” impression. You falling on the floor like you’re having some kind of attack. I wonder if someone would overreact and call the paramedics, taking this totally into “There’s Something About Mary” territory. I’d have to pull up a chair and watch.
First of all, this is not a “first date”, second of all…this is not a “first date”!
“Is this a first?” Sarah asks.
For one brief, horrifying moment, I wonder if Sarah can read my mind.
If so, you might have some explaining to do about that fantasy you had a couple of weeks ago about the two of you doing it in the shower.
But mercifully, she continues.
“Am I actually here BEFORE you?”
I laugh, almost out of relief than the humour of the statement. I nod my head as I sit down.
“Yeah,” I affirm, “You might want to call Ripleys.”
A moment later, I playfully slap my head.
“What?” she says, knowing I’m about to make one of my normal, idiotic “break the ice” jokes.
“I should have said that I had been here for a half an hour but got bored and had to use the washroom, and that’s where I was when you came in,” I reply.
Sarah laughs even harder than before. “Missed your chance,” she says.
After the waitress comes to take our order, Sarah sits back in the booth and sighs.
“God, work sucks!” she exclaims. But before I can rib her about how working in an office sucks less than working in retail and even before Will can compose one of his normal profanity-filled diatribes on the same subject, she continues.
“You have no idea what it is like to work in an office immediately after breaking up with someone who every one in the office knows,” she says.
That’s right, Emmett, since you’ve never been in a relationship, you have no idea what the aftermath of a breakup is like. Thanks Sarah for pointing that out to us.
Will does have a good point. I’m trying to convince myself that Sarah didn’t mean for it to come out that way and do a 90% job of doing it. Instead, I just let it go and continue to the conversation.
“What? The people at work giving you a hard time about it?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, actually, most are being pretty supportive. Therein lies the freaking problem. Every day, it’s ‘How are you doing, Sarah?’ ‘Is everything okay?’ ‘If you ever want to talk, I’m here for you.’ And I mean, they give me all this advice but it’s all just Dr. Phil type bull**** that I swear they’re reading from cue cards. It’ll get easier, you’re better off without him, when one door closes, another opens, blah, blah, blah.”
“Have you ever noticed that people always tell you that if you ever want to talk that you can come to them? And yet, I’ve always wondered what would happen if you took them up on the offer, I mean, I wonder what kind of success rate you’d have,” I ask. It’s a philosophical point I have actually been pondering for quite a while to that point and I figure that it gives me a chance to add to the conversation with something that is actually relevant to the situation.
Sarah nods and replies, “Oh, I know, I hear people say that and yet I wonder if they’re not literally scared to death that I’ll actually come to them and say I need to talk about what I’m going through. It’s like they feel obligated to say ‘Hey, if you need to talk…” but really what they’re thinking is “Oh God, please don’t ever bring up this subject again and expect me to actually talk or care about it.’ It’s so hypocritical.”
“And what pisses me off is these hypocrites make it bad for the people who actually do care about the person and would actually want to listen and help out where they could,” I tell her, “ It’s like you can’t say ‘Hey, if you ever need to talk…’ without feeling that it’s going to sound like a cliché.”
Wow! Way to make a statement about society in general and double-duty it as a way of telling Sarah that you’re a caring individual and that you’re not like all her co-workers in that you do want to hear what she has to say.
Thanks, Will, is that a complim…
Of course, you were so NOT subtle about what you were trying to do that Sarah probably knows exactly what your intentions were.
Shoulda known! Well, if Sarah does believe that I was basically badmouthing the ways of society as a, in Will’s eyes, not-so-subtle way of getting myself over as a caring individual, she shows no hint of it.
“Well, to be perfectly honest, if I never have to talk about Brad and I ever again, I will be very happy,” Sarah explains.
OOOHHHH!!! DENIED! There goes your big chance to go back to her place, have her talk about her heart-wrenching breakup with Brad, have her cry on your shoulder and when you kiss to make it better, one thing leads to another and…
Eventually I just try and shut Will out and listen to Sarah as she talks about how she’s sick and tired of having to explain what happened between she and Brad to her co-workers, to her parents, to her OTHER friends.
Yeah, Bull****! You’re doing your usual ga-ga “Oh look how beautiful she is” schtick and trying not to realize that, while she was more than happy to give everyone else the low-down on the breakup, when it comes to you, she decides to clam up.
Will’s theories aside, the evening progresses pretty well. The food is semi-decent, although I am beginning to agree with Will more and more that the chef decides he can scrimp on the quality when he sees a dork like me come in. With me not seeing her in several months, there’s lots to talk about, mostly work-related exploits and movies we’ve seen and how she got an e-mail from Ryan telling her about his new promotion to sports editor at the Toronto Times.
Hmm…should we focus on the fact that Ryan is actually working in the journalism field and being quite successful at it instead of working part time at a video store like someone else we could mention or should we instead brood over the fact that Ryan keeps in touch with Sarah but not with you?
How ‘bout we put both on the back burner until later…when assuredly you will remind me of both facts in between telling me every thing I did wrong with regards to this dinner with Sarah.
Sure, can I pencil you in for 6:45 a.m. tomorrow morning?
As we’re leaving the restaurant and just before I am hit with the realization that the scene now is vastly different from the LAST time I had dinner with Sarah (and, of course, Brad) here at J.Q.’s, Sarah turns to me and, pretty much out of the blue, hugs me.
Hooo boy, remember my pep talk at gradudation, try not to get too excited. Wouldn’t do to sprout wood at this particular time.
“Thank you,” she whispers. She just feels so right against me and so I hug her back. God, I’m not sure I want to let her go.
When she finally does step back, I notice that she’s wiping her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Did you hug too hard? Step on her toe? Do something else stupid?
She nods, wiping still. “Yeah, it’s just…it’s just so nice to go out and NOT have to explain myself for breaking up with Brad. It’s like tonight was the first night where the whole conversation wasn’t about what had happened, why did I do this, why did he do that, you know that kind of thing. It’s like tonight was the first step towards getting over him.”
She paused, wiped her eyes one last time and then laughed.
“I suppose the fact that I’m talking about getting over him means I’m really not over him yet.”
“One step at a time,” I say, hopefully in my most comforting voice. “Every day it’ll get a little easier.”
Sarah smiles…oh man that smile is going to be the death of me if this doesn’t work out…and nods. “Thanks. It was good to see you.”
“Yeah, it was. We should do this again sometime,” I tell her, the last sentence amounting to what I hope will be an invitation for her to commit to another…
DATE?
Well, let’s just call it a “night out together” or maybe…maybe a date?
Instead she just answers with the vague “Yeah, we should” before adding “Well, we should probably call it a night since I have to work in the morning and I’m pretty sure they can’t run the video store without you, either.”
I laugh, suddenly remembering with dread that I have to work five to midnight the next day. By the time that thought gets processed, I have to remember to wish Sarah a good night and watch her head out into the parking lot to her car.
After a moment I turn and begin the walk back to the apartment. I am almost skipping I am so damned happy when, barely seconds into the trip home, Will pipes up.
Well, that blew!
What do you mean? I just had dinner with someone I really care about and who I’ve been dreaming about seeing for months and it went well. I’m pretty sure I kept up my end of the conversation okay, didn’t make too many stupid jokes, didn’t come off as a moron. In the end she hugged me and yes, she didn’t exactly set anything in stone but she seemed pretty open to getting together again.
You should have gotten a job in Public Relations. (I mean, you have a journalism diploma but not a lick of experience so you can forget about REALLY getting a PR job but go with me on this one.) How you can take the events of this evening and spin doctor them into it being the greatest night of your life is beyond me.
No worse than you taking a perfectly fine evening and “spin doctoring” (as you like to say) them into a horrible night where I end up looking like anything closely resembling my normal dorky self.
What did you accomplish? She still has no better clue that you LIKE her and if anything you actually distanced yourself more from the boyfriend category and further solidified yourself in the FRIEND category.
Hey, Will, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Yeah, Rome probably took years and years to build, and by the time it was finished, most of the original architects and workers probably were dead and never got to see the finished product.
The scary part is never when Will is at his most outrageous, telling me things that couldn’t possibly be true and producing theories that could never come to fruition. The scary part is when he starts making sense.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Another midnight shift, but at least Andrea is working with me. It’s approaching 12:20 and by some luck, I’m actually ahead of schedule for the close.
Of course, you can’t really celebrate until the door is locked, and you’ve gone home and tossed and turned and done your mental checklist of everything that had to be done before you could officially close the doors and go home…and even then I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeves to…
Okay, Will, enough. I’m telling the story here. And your little midnight mindgames have nothing on what happens here over the next few paragraphs.
Wow! Someone’s got guts.
Someone has someone special in his life, for the first time, and I think I’m allowed a little ego here for the moment.
Someone THINKS they have someone special in their life, but no proof to back it up. Just remember, big shot, Sarah has not said anything about developing romantic feelings for you. You’re just some guy she likes to share meals with.
And talk on the phone to, every few days, and go to the mall with and even take on grocery runs and come over and watch movies with…Is any of this making you realize what I am now to her.
Yeah, you’re her gay friend who she feels comfortable and not threatened by.
Anyways, none of Will’s negativity has anything to do with tonight, save to give you, the reader a quick update on what’s going on. Yes, over the last couple of weeks, we have started seeing more of each other. We have gone out for coffee and dinner a couple of times. The dinners have been no biggie…
Not to her, but to you, you practically wet yourself thinking back on it. And let’s just say it was a good thing you didn’t jump up on the table and announce that you, Dork Boy, was here with the best looking woman in the joint and everyone else, all those who sneered at you when you walked in, should bow down to your greatness for landing Sarah…even though only one of you thinks of this as a boyfriend-girlfriend situation.
Anyways, in addition to going out for a bite to eat, we also engaged in these mammoth phone conversations, the kind that would start at 8:00 in the evening and would end, almost hesitantly and begrudgingly, around 11:30 at night.
These phone calls were almost like phone versions of the conversations, the deep and meaningful and long-lasting conversations, we had in college. It wasn’t simply “How was your day?” type fare. It was “what was the most pivotal moment in your life?” stuff. Sometimes it was funny, mostly it was serious. And as well as we knew each other, after all these months and years of being friends, I was learning so much more about her, stuff that she had never told anyone. Not her other friends, not her co-workers, in some cases, barely even her family.
And then about a week ago, she had called me up, asked me if I had the day off and by the grace of God and the will of Don, I had. She told me not to plan anything. She had some shopping to do and she needed some company. And the next thing I knew I was accompanying her around just about every mall within driving distance.
Her father’s birthday was coming up and she wanted to get him something memorable. You know, not the typical tie or coffee table book on cars. Having never met her father, I had no clue what to suggest, and most of what popped up in my head was the same cliché stuff mentioned in the previous sentence. So I just kept quiet for the most part, thrilled just to be tagging along with her.
I think it says something about Sarah that we spent very little time in the big box stores, the lowest common denominator shopping experiences like Walmart and Zellers and Sears and Best Buy and Future Shops. Sarah headed for the smaller chains, the privately owned shops. Even that didn’t show her what she wanted to see.
I’m not sure why but suddenly, I remembered this flea market that was open seven days a week, just on the outskirts of the city. My folks had gone to it a few times. Most of the “dealers” seemed like people who had just gone into the attic and dragged all their garbage down to this flea market to sell. It was either this or organizing a garage sale…or selling it on Ebay. But there was always at least one thing, one old book or piece of memorabilia that I ended up buying. I thought maybe Sarah might have the same experience.
As it turned out, even the biggest loser does something right. What were the odds?
Well, about the same as Sarah finding this Civil War chess set. Turns out her father is a major history buff and had always wanted to send away for just such a set. It was in pretty good condition, which made the buy all the sweeter.
We may have been talking,
I’m so intent on reading the back of the movie box for Speed that I don’t notice Andrea sneaking up behind me, until she playfully poked me in the side. She startles me to the point where I almost drop the box.
During that blink of an eye that it takes me to get a read on what’s going on, a couple of possibilities of who this might be rush through my head. At first, I’m worried that some customer has come up and decided, rather than ask me for help, they’re just going to jab their finger in my side as a way of short-handing “Stop what you’re doing, ya lazy ****, and help me find some brain-numbing sequel that I saw on TV but have no other information about!”
And when I say scared, it’s not a fear of what they’ll do or say, it’s that I’ll finally lose it, this sudden shock will finally rip me off my mental hinges and I’ll lay into this moronic, lazy-ass customer, giving him or her both barrels as to how dare they come up and jab me in the side like a ****in’ piece of meat. The end result of all this would be me getting fired and the customer probably getting a life-time supply of free rentals. Knowing Dan, he’d probably call me up every time the customer came in and say “Yeah, I just had to give away another free rental to that customer. This is totally screwing up my Yearly Rental Income Average and that affects my bonus, you know. Nice going, ya dork!”
Of course, if you got fired and Dan did call you up AFTER you got fired to ream you out, you could probably really lit into him since it wouldn’t be like you could get fired twice!
Hmm…Will does have a point. Anyways the second possibility is that Sarah has come in to say “hi” and figured that she’d have some fun with me.
You know, the ratio between the number of times that you’ve imagined Sarah calling or stopping by on a whim to the number of times she’s actually done so is mind-boggling. As in 99999999 to 0!
And, as it turns out, this time isn’t the first time, as it’s only Andrea.
“Did I scare you?” she laughs. Normally, me thinking it was Sarah and it turning out to be someone else playing a prank on me would piss me off. If it had been Jessica perhaps, since I know she’d be doing it to be mean-spirited, and she probably would follow it up with some smart remark that put me in the worse light possible. Something along the lines of “Ya fallin’ asleep there, Emmett?”
But with Andrea, I can’t get mad at her, because I know that she’s just doing it to be funny, and that there’s no hard edge behind it.
:”Yeah!” I reply, laughing as much as she is. I feign to throw the movie box at her and she recoils in mock horror. I glance around the store. There’s no one in the place and for that I’m glad. Heaven forbid retail workers should have fun at their job or talk amongst themselves. Better to be mute automatons who stand at the cash ready to serve.
After Andrea stops laughing at our impromptu skit (sans laugh track), she says, “While you were over here brushing up on your reading, I was talking to Pete.”
I glance around the store. I don’t remember seeing Pete stop by. Andrea notices this and shakes her head.
“I was talking to him on the phone,” she tells me. I think she hopes this will clear things up but it just adds to my confusion. I didn’t hear the phone ring and if it had, why didn’t he ask to talk to me. If Andrea notices my continued confusion, she pays it no mind.
“There’s a place over on Cheapside called The Styles that we were thinking of checking out tomorrow night. It’s supposed to be a bit calmer than some of the places we’ve been going to lately. You know, decent food, nice atmosphere, no blaring guitars, some place you can kinda sit and talk. Kinda like JQ’s without the price tag.”
Ah, am I the only one who noticed she said “some of the places we’ve been going to lately”?
No…that kinda got red-flagged by me as well. I’ll think on it in a moment, right now I’m trying to pay attention to what Andrea is telling me.
“Anyways, we were wondering if you wanted to come out with us. Maybe bring your friend, Sarah.”
Now, normally I would have been focusing on Andrea’s use of the pronoun “we” especially since she said she’d just been talking to Pete and had to bring that up. But any paranoia and overthinking that might have been creeping in just got obliterated by the vision of Sarah and I, together at this “the Styles” that Andrea has been talking about, especially with Pete and Andrea there as well. Finally, I could show my…dare I say it…girlfriend (?) off to two very good friends of mine. I can see it, the two of them munching on nachos and complimenting Sarah and I on what a cute couple we make.
Uh, pardon the interruption, but I think Andrea needs an answer?
“Sure, that could be cool,” I reply.
Good for you, Emmett.
What’s this, a compliment from Will? Okay, what’s going on? My inner voice is starting to make me paranoid, only this time I’m getting paranoid about my inner voice.
No need to be. This time, it is a legitimate compliment. And the reason is that you are now becoming the typical boyfriend. Make plans and then tell your…ahem…girlfriend about it!
Ah crap. Wait. This is like chess, as long as I don’t take my hand off the piece, it doesn’t count.
Do I really want to know what you’re referring to here?
What I mean is, as long as I’m still in control of the conversation, I can still rectify things. As long as I can get another word in before Andrea replies and keeps the conversation going, I can still make things right.
Better hurry, ya moron. Andrea’s nodding her head. She looks like she’s about to say something.
“Let me just give Sarah a call and make sure she’s free tomorrow night,” I manage to get in before Andrea tells me that she and Pete are going to go around 9:00.
“Think you can hold down the fort?” I ask, knowing the question is a silly one, but I toss it out there anyways, just because that’s the rap Andrea and I have going.
As if on cue, Andrea looks wildly around, as if looking for some horde of customers to magically appear. I laugh because she’s playing her part in this little theatre piece so well. After she sees that the coast is clear, she looks back and me and gives me a mock thumbs up.
“I think I can handle it,” she says, winking at me.
Again I laugh. So much laughter in my life lately, even here at work. As I head off to the back office to call Sarah, I realize that somehow, over the last several weeks, things have changed between Andrea and I, and changed for the better. She’s with Pete and I am in the genesis of a long-desired relationship with my beloved Sarah, and so I can be happy for Andrea, and for Pete, and not see her as having what I wished I could have, a loving romantic relationship. Instead of having to tense up whenever she’s around, and try not to visibly cringe whenever she tells me what she and Pete did over the weekend, I can just be happy for her, and for once, be happy for myself.
Jesus Christ….if you’re happy, this can’t end well. God, turn on CNN, there’s probably another 9/11 about to take place. The world will get hit by a meteor. A plague is about to be unleashed upon the earth…something!
If I didn’t think that Will would unleash a verbal plague of his own upon me, I’d almost kid with him that perhaps there was a little bit of fear in his voice. Perhaps he’s afraid that the forces of good will soon run his bitter ass out of my inner monologue.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting at the back desk, feeling the illicit thrill I always get when I sit on Don’s side of the desk. I always feel like I should put my feet up and lean way back in his comfy easy chair..
Too bad you’re too chicken-**** to do so, for fear that you’ll leave a tell-tale scratch or break the back of the chair and there’ll be hell to pay.
Instead, I’m noticing just how my hands got sweaty and there’s a knot in my stomach as I dial Sarah’s number.
I’m surprised you haven’t pulled one of your infamous brain farts and forgotten Sarah’s number…or name…or how to use the telephone.
The nervousness that Will has inflicted upon me increases tenfold as the phone begins to ring, and he sucker-punches me with a wave of self-doubt.
She’s probably not home. She probably has a life now that she’s single.
She’s probably run into Brad and they’re having a torrid reunion in the backseat of his car.
She probably sees you’re calling from the store and is thinking “Oh God, how do I get rid of this dor…”
“Hello, you.”
It’s Sarah. And not only that but rather than being horrified that I am calling her from work, she sounds like she’s happy about the whole turn of events. I almost want to put her on hold just so I can rub it in with a “So there!” to Will.
Yeah…that’s not weird.
“Hello YOU,” I reply in what I hope is my most charming voice, “I just thought I’d give you a shout because I wanted to ask you something,”
“Ask away, but aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she asks. Hey, she keeps track of my schedule. Another point in my favour.
I chuckle, again hoping it sounds like I’m being suave. “Well, you know. Cat’s away so the mice play.”
I pause just long enough to hear her laugh.
I’m laughing too…Just at you, not your joke. And come to think of it, are you 100% sure that’s not the case with Sarah.
I don’t even dignify Will’s question with a moment’s thought. I love how this conversation is going.
There’s no guarantee that she won’t be busy or just not interested in hanging with you tomorrow night.
One thing I give Will. He is persistent, and not totally ineffective in his methods. I decide to just go for it, rather than give him any more time to get his little claws out and scratch away at this good feeling I have going.
“Anyways, the reason I am calling is to ask you if you had any plans for tomorrow night?” Even as I’m asking, I’m tensing up for what Will will tell you is the inevitable letdown.
Hey, congrats, Emmett. You just asked Sarah out for what she believes is a one-on-one DATE.
And of all the things that Will has ever said to me, every cocakamammy theory that he’s tossed out there, every never-could-happen scenario that he’s given me reason to believe might happen, this is the scariest thing of all. He might as well have reared back and driven a battering ram into my mid-section and then tossed a gallon of ice water on me.
All at once, I realize that, if I’m Sarah, getting a phone call from yours truly asking if I, again as Sarah, have plans for tomorrow night, that’s exactly what it sounds like.
For it now dawns on me that Sarah isn’t privy to the details of my conversation with Andrea. She doesn’t realize that Andrea and Pete will be coming along. She doesn’t realize that it’s just four friends going out to a quiet bar to chat, have a drink or two, and have fun.
Oh dear God, she thinks I’ve put her on the spot and have asked her out.
Suddenly, I’m not trying to sound suave or charming. All I’m trying to do is damage control.
“Yeah,” I add quickly, before she can react one way or the other, “Andrea and Pete are going to The Scene, and they invited me and then she asked if you wanted to come along…so I thought I’d give you a call and so here I am.”
Wow! From deboinair to dorky in five seconds. A new World Record, ladies and gentleman.
Save for Will’s inane commentary on this disappointing turn of events, there’s silence, dead silence for several minutes. Okay, it’s maybe a split second but it’s as if time has suddenly decided to stand still. Will nicely turns on the movie projector and shows me Sarah standing by her phone table, receiver in her hand, mulling the offer over, making an imaginary (or perhaps an actual physical list) of pros and cons to going out with me and my friends.
“That sounds like it’d be cool,” she says. There’s no doubt in her voice, no hesitance, no “Well, I guess there’s nothing better going on tomorrow night so I guess I’ll go.” Suddenly, the uneasiness and fear are washed away, replaced by that good vibe I had going just minutes ago.
She asks for specifics and so I empty my fountain of knowledge on the subject…which consists of the fact that Pete and Andrea are going to be there around 9, that they likened it to J.Q.’s and that it was on Cheapside. Sarah says she’ll stop by my place around quarter to eight. I say that sounds good, and we say our goodbyes.
As soon as I place the phone’s receiver back in its cradle, Will is instantly bowled over by my mind’s version of the Philharmonic Choir belting out a chorus of “Halleluiah!
I take a deep breath of relief and head back out onto the sales floor. As I come out, Andrea is waving goodbye to a customer. I take a quick scan of the store and notice there’s no one else in the place.
“Busy?” I ask.
She nods in the direction of the departing customer. “That was the only person that’s come in since you left. He knew exactly what he wanted and was in and out within a couple of minutes,” she explains with some sense of pride that she can somehow affect good behaviour in customers.
“Why don’t I ever have customers like that when I’m alone on the floor?” I ask. “Any time I have to man the fort, there’s always like a half-dozen people, all of whom can’t seem to remember what they came in for and figure I should somehow know…and then have fifty bucks worth of late fees they refuse to pay.”
Andrea shrugs, and smiles at me. “I rock?” she asks, “ So did you get a hold of Sarah?”
I hope I don’t break my neck as I nod.
“Yeah, I did,” I confirm.
CHAPTER 18
It’s two nights later and the four of us, Andrea, Pete, Sarah and myself are seated around a table in the corner of the Styles, about ten feet away from a writhing, mass of humanity on the dance floor. If I thought the noise levels at J.Q.’s was bad, it would seem like a library compared to the Styles. Some reworked version of a Britney Spears song seems to be in constant rotation. One rendition just seems to begin as the last one ends.
The conversation between the four of us has been limited to a few shouted phrases that had to be repeated at least three times. Andrea and Pete seem to be having a good time, but it looks as if it’s taken a few beers to get them there. As I take another sip of my Coke, I’m beginning to realize that I might just be the oldest paying customer in the place. As I look at Andrea and Pete laugh at something (I’m not sure what since I can’t see where you could actually tell a decent joke in less than a half an hour of “What”s followed by a repeat of the line) I wonder what drives them to come to clubs like this night after night.
I look over at Sarah, who’s sitting next to me. She just smiles, and shakes her head as if to say “What are we doing here?” before taking a sip of her beer. For some reason, and maybe it’s just because I can’t even hear Will over all this, but I’m not really worried that she’s not having a good time, or that she’s suddenly realizing that if she and I continue to date, this might be what she has to look forward to for the rest of our relationship.
Instead, I get a very good sense that she’s just taking this all in stride; that this is something we’ll look back on later and laugh about.
You know what else she’ll probably look back on later and laugh about? Your dancing skills…or rather, lack thereof.
Damn, no matter how loud the music is, Will’s voice of doom always come through clear as a bell. I can’t hear what Sarah is saying and she’s sitting right next to me, but Will I can hear for miles.
Hey, it’s a gift.
Perhaps Peter and Andrea can hear Will as well, because almost as if on cue, they decide to get up and head out into the crowd. Sarah and I watch them for a few minutes. I never picked Pete as much of a dancer but at least Andrea doesn’t laugh in his face and dump him right on the spot. The entire crowd doesn’t stop and begin to turn and point at him, laughing up a storm as they go.
I believe the image that is playing out on the video screen of your mind isn’t of Pete…
It’s of me, I know. Thanks for tonight’s feature, Will. And of course, it’s immediately followed by Will reminding me that I am here with someone, someone who might be wanting to be asked to dance as well.
I decide that as humiliating as it will be to be on the dance floor, it can’t be any worse that feeling like perhaps Sarah might be getting upset with me for not asking her to dance. I turn to her, to see her watching those on the dance floor with little more than a slight interest. I’m wondering if I’m reading too much into things when I decide that she’s looking on with relief that she’s not out there in and amongst the rest of the college-age dancers herself.
She turns to me and before I can motion towards the dance floor, she smiles at me. Her smile is amazing and I have no idea what I was going to ask her, and don’t want to say or do anything that might cause her to lose that smile.
I watch as her eyes drop to the table, searching for a napkin. Snagging one, she takes a pen out of her purse, she writes something down. She doesn’t scribble, she takes her time.
Yeah…that’ll make you hard every time. Excellent penmanship.
As she finishes, Sarah decides to pretend that in the middle of a loud, crowded dance club, we’re back in high school, and she’s passing me a note. Everything about what she does, from the sly smile she gives me, to the looking over my shoulder to make sure she’s not being seen, to the way she folds the note over and slides it across the table to me.
All at once, just as she slides the note to a stop next to my hand, which rests on the table next to my glass, I get a frightening sense of what this note might be about. Perhaps…she wants to take our relationship to the next level. Perhaps…a certain mood has struck her.
Oooh…yeah. Slutty broad that she is, Sarah has written you a note offering to do you right here in the club. Speaking of things that will get everyone on the dance floor to stop, point and laugh at you.
Of course, I realize that Sarah has more style than that…but maybe she’s asking me if I want to go home with her tonight. Maybe tonight is THE night.
Man…how many beers has this girl had? And how desperate is she? I mean, she JUST broke up with Rob a while ago. How horny can she be that she wants to do it with you? No offence, Emmett, but we are in a club filled with good looking, well built college guys who are probably here on an athletic scholarship and have been having sex while you were working at the video store. If she wanted to get laid, she could probably just wait to see something that captures her fancy, and ditch you while you’re sipping your Coke there.
I’m surprised that Will doesn’t come up with some depreciating theory on what Sarah might have written on that note, if it isn’t an invitation to go home with her. And so my hands still shake just a bit as I unfold the note and read it:
Do you want to go outside and talk?
Visions of me ending up sleeping with Sarah vanish in an instance…but part of me is actually relieved.
Yeah, the wuss part…which is quite a bit of you, I might add.
Maybe so…but there’s a part of me that would love to go somewhere a little quieter and talk with Sarah. Rather than keep her in suspense, I quickly nod my head. She smiles at me, but it’s such a wry grin that a part of me and not the wuss part, wonders if tonight might be a very special night in our relationship indeed.
What? Is she going to go down on you in the parking lot?
She and I head towards the nearest exit. I look out on to the dance floor and catch sight of Pete who’s dancing with Amanda. I hold up my hand and flash five fingers at him. Even I’m not sure what it means, since I doubt we’ll only be outside for five minutes but he seems to know what I mean as he gives me a thumbs up and goes back to dancing.
Once outside, both Sarah and I agree that it’s a lot quieter out here than it was inside.
“God, it reminded me of those bars…or clubs as they call them now, we used to go to when we were in college,” Sarah reminisces, “Remember that?”
A part of me can feel the onslaught of the memories that Sarah and I share from those nights when we were dragged out to loud bars by the rest of that circle of friends formed during that first night of our study group. The bars weren’t as loud back then, the music not so pointless and irrelevant…was it?
I can feel that rush of memories much like I would feel the ground shake if a freight train was going by me from only a few feet away. There’s a part of me that wants to grab Sarah’s hand and get caught up in that rush of memories, taking her away to some place quiet and intimate where we could reminisce, telling each other the endless stories that we both already know.
About the time that (INSERT NAME HERE) made a move on (INSERT NAME HERE), trying to plan a drunk and slobbering kiss on her, only for (INSERT NAME HERE) to turn around and slap him. Everyone gathered there that night gasped, fearful that the turn of events might cast a shadow over our collective friendship. The next morning, however, neither of them could remember anything about the indiscretion or its outcome, althought INSERT NAME couldn’t figure out why there was a hand-shaped red mark across his cheek,
Or maybe we would mentally relive the time that INSERT NAME decided that a night out at the bar was just the stress-reliever we all needed, the night before a major exam. Sarah and I were smart, stayed for one drink and then headed back to the dorm for some more studying and a good night’s sleep. INSERT NAME, in
MORE REMINISCING
But then there was that night, that wonderful bittersweet night, the night after classes ended for our senior year, that night we knew everything was ending and as happy as we were over what we had accomplished, we were also sad because we knew things would never be just as perfect as they were in that one moment. For many, for most, we would never see each other again, and it was that unspoken thing that no one wanted to talk about, but we all felt it.
The bar we all went to, having all piled into INSERT NAME’s car and driven the long way, all across the city, from one side to the other, with some mixed tape that somebody had made of all the songs that had meant one thing or another. All of us were singing along at the tops of our lungs, not really caring how badly we sounded.
Although Sarah sounded beautiful, her voice just as strong and proud as the rest of her.
I think you sounded more like a dying cat.
And even if Will tries to make me remember that everyone else in the car was noticeably wincing at just how horrible I sounded, I try to force those images, obviously faked by Will’s editing abilities, out of my mind.
The night was already shaping up to be a great memory, even before we got to the bar, with the singing and the laughing and the memories we tossed out, about teachers and classes and classmates. Because no matter what happened during the trip to the bar, the greatest memories of that night would come once we got inside.
I still swear that every single student of McCallum College showed up to that bar that night. It was packed, and maybe the sheer volume of people and noise had finally been able to force Will into hiding or maybe he’d gotten carded.
Very funny.
Or maybe there were just too many images and I was just going into sensory overload but I don’t remember getting the whole dork-hunting vibe. What I do remember is watching Sara as she sat at the table we considered ourselves lucky to find, sipping her beer and watching the people jammed together on the dance floor. I watched her smile even as her face clouded over.
“Emmett?”
I see Sara looking at me even now, out in the fresh air and away from the loudness and hectic chaos we just left behind inside, and she’s still smiling, but there’s not a cloud in the sky in the smile.
“Where did you go just now?” she asks, laughter in her voice that’s not judgmental or mocking, but the most welcome sound in the world to me right now.
I’m not sure how I should answer that question. I want to tell her that I was remembering one of the most special nights of my life, but I’m still not sure if I should be that open to her. I’m sure she’ll remember what happened that night but she may wonder why I chose to remember it, and why it meant so much to me.
“You were talking about how we used to go out to bars and I was just remembering some of those times, and I guess my train of thought just kinda got away on me,” I explain. I hesitate for just a second, figuring that I could just leave the story as is and that’d be as good as explanation as any.
Stick with that one, Emmett. It’s safe and the odds are in your favour. You went out to bars and clubs hundreds of times. What are the chances that Sarah will be able to zone in on that one particular night.
“I was just remembering that night college ended and we went to that bar…”
You idiot! You couldn’t have just let it go and let Sarah pick up the conversation, and hopefully remember a different night?
Before Will can get too far into his latest rant, Sarah’s smile widens and she shakes her head, laughing softly.
“You know, I was just remembering that night myself,” she says, her mind wandering back to the place mine had just come from. “That seems like so long ago now. There have been times when I wish I could have just stayed there forever.”
I nod my head. “I know what you mean,” I reply.
All at once Sarah gets this look in her eyes, like an image, long-forgotten (by her at least) has just flashed back in her mind. She tries unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh as she playfully swats at my shoulder.
“What?” I ask, as if I don’t know exactly, 100% for sure what she’s about to bring up. For it was the exact same thing that Will had been so fearful about the conversation leading to.
Sarah’s voice has a touch of bittersweet longing to it as she recalls the events of that night. “You remember what we did that night,” she says, mock-accusingly.
Now before any of our readers think we’ve been holding out on them and that Sarah and Emmett had some wild, drunken sexual escapade that she instantly regretted and he relived over and over again for years, let’s just add that Sarah quickly adds…
“That was the night we danced together.”
Perhaps the reason Will was so hoping that Sarah nor I would not go there is because…
Like a lot of other things that most people need to be good at in order to have any kind of social life…
I am not a good dancer. When I got out onto the dance floor that night, I swear that everybody in the bar immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to look, stare, gape at me. There’s a moment in my recollection of it where the music even stopped. However, I’m almost certain (despite Will’s best efforts to reassure me otherwise) that didn’t happen, and that hardly anyone outside of a five-foot radius was even aware I was on the dance floor. Maybe there was some dork-hunter there, there always seems to be one around no matter where I go. And maybe the jerk turned to his date or his buddies or whoever he was trying to impress and make some snide comment about my lack of dancing skills, but if he did, I certainly never heard him.
All I could concentrate on was the fact that Sarah and I were on the dance floor together, and to be honest, there were times when it seemed like we were the only two people there.
Again, Sarah spirits me away from my memories of that night.
“Emmett,” she asks, “Will you dance with me tonight?”
Before I can answer, her arms encircle my waste and she leans her head against my chest. Without really realizing it, I’m holding her against me and we’re swaying back and forth in a rhythm that is about half the speed of whatever thrasher slam dance hit that’s playing inside the bar.
“I don’t think this is that kind of song, Sarah,” I point out.
We both laugh softly and then Sarah says, in a voice so thick with sadness it alarms me, “Just shut up and hold me.”
And so I do.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Something weird happens in the aftermath of Sarah and I dancing together, outside that bar that night. It’s almost as if he becomes two people, or is constantly contradicting himself…or perhaps the entire incident spawned ANOTHER voice in my head, one that is in fact, the yin to Will’s yan.
Hey, don’t start talking about my yan.
Well, no matter how Will or I choose to describe the relationship between the two, it certainly seems as if whomever this new voice is, it’s giving me the opposite advice to that which Will wants to dish out.
This other voice, yet unnamed, appears even as I am still holding Sarah against me, her head settled against my chest, our bodies swaying in time to some unheard melody, the tempo of which is vastly different from that which plays inside the bar we exited shortly before.
At first, everything is fine…more than fine actually, even as a thousand thoughts rush through my head. In spite of the bar noise, the night seems unnaturally quiet. Like there’s only Sarah’s breathing and the wind. My own breathing seems to have come to a complete stop. (Thankfully, as Will reminds me later, I’m still taking deep inhales through my nostrils, and I don’t end up passing out.)
And then, out of nowhere comes this new voice.
“Just kiss her, you idiot!”
At first I think it’s Will, and maybe it is. But it’s so unlike Will, who has spent so many days and weeks and months, since the first moment I realized I had feelings for Sarah, telling me not to get my hopes up, not to let her know those feelings existed…and now he’s changed his tune completely.
All of sudden, Will 2.0, for lack of a better term, is no longer sending me these wild scenarios where I completely fail with Sarah, or that Sarah spurns me to go back to Brad. Instead, I get this compressed 30 second video, which starts with me tilting Sarah’s head up so that I can kiss her and ends with me waking up next to her tomorrow morning.
Suddenly, a scenario that would have been deemed ludicrous and just the wet dream of a horny loser is being championed by the very voice that ridiculed it only a few hours ago.
As I stand there, overwhelmed by both the sensation of Sarah against me, and the temptation to, at the urging of this new voice or at least a new incarnation of the old one, take at least a small step towards turning our friendship into something more, those thousand thoughts are multiplied by another thousand.
And even thought Will 2.0 was kind enough to provide me with the scenario I wish could be certain would play itself out, there must be a little of that old bitter Will still left kicking around my brain, for I still see scenarios where my kissing Sarah actually drives her away, leaving me right back where I was just a few weeks ago, without her in my life. Only this time it wouldn’t be because of Brad, and Sarah wouldn’t be left wondering what was going on. It would be my fault.
I could even envision this scenario where Tom and Andrea came out of the bar looking for us, Tom perhaps joking about “We thought you’d ditched us” to find me standing alone in the night, and me having to explain or, more likely, make up some plausible excuse as to why Sarah had left so abruptly while trying, most likely unsuccessfully trying to convince them that “No, nothing was wrong”.
And so, I didn’t kiss her.
And Will 1.0 thought you were a moron! You had her right there, literally within arm’s reach. All you had to do was suck up a bit of courage and you could have had the very thing that you’ve been mooning over for so long.
And there was every reason to believe that she wanted something to happen just as much as you did. I mean, it wasn’t like she was content to just stand outside and reminisce about your old college days or talk about how work was. No, damn it, she wanted something more, and she wanted it from you.
Come on, Will 2.0 or however I should refer, let’s not get gross here. This is Sarah we are talking about, someone who is very special to me.
Oh, I’m not talking that she was begging for raunchy sex, the likes of which would make Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee blush. I was thinking more along the lines of her just wanting you to be tender to her, to make her feel loved.
Okay, where the hell is this coming from?
For the moment, it really doesn’t matter. Even as Will 2.0 screams at me to kiss her, to hold her tighter even to say something that might jumpstart what he believes Sarah and I are on the threshold of…
Or hey, if you’re too much of a wuss to make the first move, give Sarah an opening. Hell, something as simple as “This is nice!” Come on, it’s three words, and if, in fact, Sarah isn’t interested in anything more than just a dance, it’s still a completely harmless statement.
And then suddenly, Will Version 2.0 decides to up the ante a little bit. Suddenly, even as he/she/it must realize that I’m not going to utter those three simple little words that might someday lead to me uttering three other little words, he decides that in for a penny, in for a pound and before I realize it, he’s got me wanting to do more than just make a simple, seemingly harmless statement about how nice it is to be dancing in the cool night air, to a song that neither of us can hear but instinctively move along to.
Instead, I can suddenly hear this fantastic monologue that he wants me to pour out to Sarah, about how even when we danced that night in that club at the end of college, I realized that my feelings for her extended way beyond friendship, and have only grown since. In a few brief seconds, Will 2.0 composes this brilliant and touching soliloquy about my feelings for Sarah and what I would be willing to do to be her soulmate, her lifemate.
“I want to be there for you on the worst day of your life, to give you a shoulder to cry on, to be that comforting voice that is going to tell you that everything will turn out all right. I want to be the one who wakes you up the next morning and tells you that it’s a new day and help you pick up the pieces.”
But even as I hear those words echo through my head, I know that I won’t be saying them. Not tonight. Tonight I have Sarah here in my arms, her body slowly swaying against mine, and I rationalize my lack of action by telling myself and more importantly, Wills 1.0 and 2.0, that I don’t want anything to spoil it. I don’t want to look back on this night years from now and say that I ruined it by opening my big mouth and spilled my guts to Sarah, only to watch her face melt into a horrified visage and have her run crying into the night.
And so, Sarah and I do nothing more than just dance. I want the night to last forever but eventually she leaves my embrace. She looks up at me not with love or romantic feelings, but simply one of gratitude.
Yeah, like you’re her cousin and just offered her your coat to keep out of the rain.
She pauses for a moment before she says anything, and in the indeterminable amount of time, a thousand thoughts of what she might say race through my mind, aided no doubt by Will 2.0’s brainstorming efforts.
“Well, I should probably get going. Long day at the office tomorrow,” she explains.
I nod, thinking this was probably the blandest outcome that could have happened. Will 2.0 agrees.
“Do you want me to give you a ride home?” she asks. For a moment, I wonder if she means “home” to my place or hers and for another moment, I try to decide if I should take her up on the offer and see where this night might lead.
Before I can answer, though, Sarah continues with “It’s not out of my way or anything.”
The worst thing about having your hopes, wild though they might admittedly be, deflated is trying to put up a front that nothing is wrong because that immediately leads to embarrassing questions. Thankfully, this is one of those rare occasions where I can mask my disappointment pretty well.
I shake my head. “Nah, it’s cool,” I say, even thought it’s the complete opposite of cool. “I should probably go back in before Pete and Andrea start worrying.”
She gives me a weak smile and starts walking to her car. I watch her, agonizing over whether or not to run over, tell her I’ve changed my mind. Even though it’s assured that she won’t invite me back to her place, just spending an extra few minutes with her would be worth it. But instead I just stand there. As she gets into her car, we exchange waves and then she’s in her car and out of the parking lot.
Within seconds of her leaving, a group of guys come out of the back of the bar. Loud, obnoxious and drunk, they brush past me and I’m almost assured that one of them tells me to “get the **** out of the way, dork.” However, they’re drunk and mumbling and slurring their words, laughing and yelling at each other, so I can’t be sure.
Sure, you can’t be sure.
I’m not sure if that’s Will 1.0 or Will 2.0 talking but at this point it doesn’t really matter.
And at this point it doesn’t really matter that they bumped into you, you are the one at fault, right? And what really amazes me is that even in their inebriated conditions, these jerks still have their dork radar going full blast. The sad part is that they probably won’t even remember it tomorrow. A perfectly good dork-hunting expedition completely wasted.
It just seems fitting that as Will 2.0 is kicking me for not accepting that ride from Sarah, some jerk has to put his two cents in. Nothing like kicking a dork when he’s down.
And perhaps the most fitting part of the evening is that I end up just back into the bar for a quick goodbye to Andrea and Pete. Both of them have had a beer or three after they tired of trying to carve out a space amid the mob on the dance floor and so have returned to the table.
It’s weird because Pete seems a bit more of a jerk now that he’s had a couple of beers, while Andrea just seems all that cuter. She’s giggling a little bit, but it’s less that she’d be laughing at someone reading the obituaries and more that her increased alcohol level has just made her already bright and cheery personality a little bit more cheery.
“Dude, where’d you take off to?” Pete asks, “We thought you’d ditched us!” And the way Pete asks, it’s not quite demanding an answer but more like showing whoever might be watching on that he can make fun of the dork as much as the next guy. Like he’s posturing but doesn’t mean anything by it.
For a moment, I contemplate just turning around and walking out, and for that same moment I feel the same helplessness and frustration I feel when I’m confronted with an angry customer who just wants to vent at me. No matter what I do or say, I’m still going to end up looking like some pathetic loser put on this earth just to be a verbal punching bag.
Luckily Andrea, a bit of giggle still in her voice, comes to my rescue.
“Oh come on, Pete, we knew that’s not what happened,” Andrea says. But as she says that, she looks past me for someone who clearly is not there.
With a frown that’s not so much disapproval or disappointment as worry, she asks “Where’d Sarah go?”
Will 1.0 would of course be quick to point out that Andrea is always worried about me. Worried that somewhere in the world there was someone out to do me harm and she instantly, sight unseen, hated that person. I could see it in her eyes. She was afraid that Sarah had in fact ditched, not so much us, but me in particular. And so, even though I don’t feel it completely, I give her my best “Don’t worry” smile.
“She has a busy day tomorrow so she headed home,” I explain, adding that I’m about to head home myself. I get some quick reassurance that both Pete and Andrea will be going home in a cab and then I make my goodbyes.
Andrea nods slowly, but I can see the machinations working behind her eyes. She suspects, incorrectly unfortunately, that I’m BS-ing about Sarah having already left. Andrea’s suspicions have Sarah sitting in her car with the engine running while I make my goodbyes. In this scenario, I’ll go home with Sarah and spend the night with her.
And even as I see this scenario play itself out in Andrea’s mind, I can see her smile fade just a touch. Noticeably perhaps not even to Andrea herself and certainly not to Pete, who’s too busy trying to figure out what smart remark he can spout off to push me a little further down the social ladder and earn himself a few points. As I turn to go, I wonder why Andrea’s smile did falter and fade, even if only for a moment. She’s sitting in this club, with this new guy in her life, assuredly going home to sleep with him tonight, and yet there seems to be some distress that I might be doing the same with Sarah.
Before I can dwell on those questions too long, I notice a couple of the same guys I encountered outside returning to the club and I decide to focus more on just getting out without any further incident or mutterings. In what might be considered a minor miracle, I don’t “accidentally” bump into any of them and if they make any snide remarks, I can’t hear them over some dancer version of a Coldplay hit.
CHAPTER 20
As weird as that period of time between Sarah’s departure from the club and my own was, it gets even weirder the next morning. I finally pry my eyes open at 10:35 a.m., head pounding and a taste in my mouth as if I had gargled cigarettes.
And a certain lack of company in your bed, not from a lack of opportunity if you’d had any guts at all.
Will 2.0 is still there. At first I assumed that he was simply a one-shot deal, something that Will had dreamed up just to screw with my head. And yet, here that same voice is again, the next day, still giving me the gears about having not gone further with Sarah.
The one saving grace about just how rotten I feel is that I have the day off. That doesn’t stop Don from calling my apartment around 10:30 that morning, leaving me a rather condescending message about needing me to come in and cover a shift.
“Mr. M. We need your customer service skills and stat to pull our collective butts out of the fire. Randy called in sick and we’re looking for someone to close. If you’re our man, give me a call, pronto,” he says in his message.
As I’m listening to the message, I have this image of Don, sweat stains and beer gut, sitting in the back at his executive desk, feet up and one hand behind his head, thinking he’s Joe Cool as he tries to butter me up and work so he won’t have to.
And just as that image has settled into my brain, I realize that there must still be a bit of Will 1.0 floating around in my head somewhere because suddenly I see a bit of blonde hair bobbing up and down around Don’s “lower abdominal area”, obviously, Jessica “servicing” her man.
I try not to focus on that particular part of the image any more than I have to. Instead, I rationalize NOT calling Don back and agreeing to work for Randy. My argument is that I’m not working today because why should I have to fill in for someone when they’re not feeling well when I know the favour won’t be returned and besides, I’m not feeling so well myself.
If I can just interject for a moment…while your logic is sound, it does raise the question of just why you don’t just call him back and be done with it?
I ponder that question for a moment. Not because I don’t have an answer for it (I’m a complete wuss who knows he would get talked into going in and covering Randy’s shift if I did so.) but because I’m not sure just which Will might be asking it. Certainly, the question was one asked with the answer already known, but it lacks the overwhelming condescention that Will would normally ask something like that.
The question is asked simply and straight-forwardly. And in fact it’s asked. Will Version 1 would have said words to the effect of “You’re such a ****ing wuss. Now you have to hide out because Don might see you on the street somehow and force you to go in and work, alone if need be. Actually you’d probably agree to work even if you were being hospitalized for pneumonia.”
And the sad part is that’s probably true. But it still doesn’t answer the question of just what is going on up there in my head.
Has there been a coup?
And for that matter, is there a Will Version 3.0, a kindler, gentler Will who gives me an idea. It’s a Saturday, a rare Saturday off for me. A Saturday that, if I hadn’t been trained to NOT pick up the phone and let it go to voice mail when I’m at home, I might have gotten sucked into work. A Saturday after a Friday night where I danced outside a club with a girl I’ve had a crush on for years.
No matter who or what possesses me to do so, I soon find myself dialing Sarah’s number.
“Hello,” she says, sounding about as bad a I did when I first got up. A part of me wonders if I woke her up.
And another part of you wonders who she woke up with.
Okay, if this is Will 2.0 speaking, there are obviously some similarities between this updated version and the original. Or perhaps Will 1.0 is still kicking around somewhere.
“Hey, Sarah, it’s me, Emmett.” Good start, I suppose.
“Oh..hey,” she says. One of the Wills starts in on just what a lackluster response that is, and it’s a point I’ll grant them, but then again, she probably just woke up and is feeling like crap, so I try not to take it personally.
“Hey,” I reply. Okay, so not exactly Shakespeare but I’m trying to keep it loose and casual. “I just wanted to thank you for coming out with me last night. It was fun.”
Sarah laughs at that, for reasons I’m not too clear on. “Yeah…it was fun,” she admits, “although it kinda served to tell me I’m not a kid anymore. Can’t do the all-night bar scene. Hell, can’t even do the partial-night bar scene anymore.”
I can already feel Will (1.0, I must assume) storing this conversation away. I expect he’ll bring it up later, and kinda twist my guts a little bit, making me assume that Sarah made that comment to send me on some kind of guilt trip about how I had dragged her out and ended up making her feel old.
“Tell me about it,” I reply, hoping that I sound like I’m commiserating with her.
Okay, I tell myself and who knows how many of the voices that are in my head at this point, things aren’t off to a great start. She’s tired, I’m tired, and I should probably just tell her that I called to thank her for a great evening, say my goodbyes, hang up the phone and hit the sack.
And all three (or four or twenty-five of us) are in agreement. Which is why we’re all kinda stunned when we hear someone who sounds suspiciously like me ask
“Are you doing anything today? Do you want to go out and grab something to eat?”
What the ****?
What the ****?
That’s what I said. (Not out loud, thankfully!) Every part of my body cringes. My hair, my toes and all points in between.
There’s a pause. A long pause. A long horrible seemingly never-ending pause where I keep expecting her to being with “I’d love to but…” and end with “But maybe some other time.” After which Will 1.0 and 2.0 will recombine their collective powers towards berating me about being such an idiot to not just let sleeping Sarahs lie.
And when she finally does respond, she initially gives me the impression that this is exactly what is going to happen, even if in not those exact words.
“Actually, Emmett, I have to go to the mall and pick up a couple of things. A friend of mine from work is having a birthday and I need to get her a card and a gift.”
And so at this point, one of the Wills is telling me that this is Sarah giving me the brush off. But then, in what has to be a complete reversal of our expectations of the situation, she continues
“But if you want to meet me there, and we could grab something at the food court afterwards.”
And then there’s another long pause. Even as I dialed the number, Will was disabling that part of my psyche that gave me a reason to hope that maybe, just maybe, Sarah might say “Yes” to this request to get together with me today. And in doing so, he never really prepared me on how to respond. He was too busy filling my head with any number of reasons why she might say “No”.
Let’s see, there was the vague and generic“She has other plans”, “She’s not feeling well”, ”She’s too tired after being out too late last night”, “She’s going to hang out with her other, less dorky friends”, “Your pathetic attempt at dancing scarred her for life and she never wants to see you again”.
Oh, and don’t forget the “She met some random stranger on the way home and decided he, or for that matter, she was better to sleep with than you and so she hooked up with him (or her) and is just taking a break before giving herself to him/her again.”
Yeah, Will has all that time to dream up these wild…
And yet, and the same time, perfectly feasible…
…scenarios, and yet he can’t scrape up enough of that over-active imagination of his, to give me one decent response line should the unimaginable happen and Sarah actually want to see me today.
Hey, I didn’t totally leave you high and dry. I was helping a brother out at one point.
Yeah, sure, Will. You sure helped me out…by making damn sure you had that pathetic “Oh well. No problem…I understand…Maybe some other time” line all set up for me.
Suddenly, Will makes sure to punch me in the gut by making me realize that between me realizing I wasn’t sure how to react when Sarah didn’t blow me off for one of the reasons Will suggested, and then me arguing with him over the lack of a prepared response, I still haven’t responded to Sarah yet. He helpfully provides me with an image of her standing by the phone with this “Uh…hello…is anyone there?” look on her face.
“That sounds great,” I reply, much too rushed I know, like those three words have suddenly become one. I remember all those lessons I had thrown at me when I tried to give speeches in English class back in high school.
“Slow down, Emmett, you won’t be marked for how fast you say your speech,” I used to be told, amid the laughter of everyone in class. Sometimes the teachers could just be as big a dorkhunter as the kids.
“Do you want me to meet you at the mall?” I ask, slowing down so I don’t look like a complete spaz.
There’s another pause but thankfully, I realize it’s just Sarah contemplating timing and scheduling. A moment or two later, she replies.
“Let’s say, an hour, in the food court, by the Chicken and Ribs Deluxe.”
I tell her that sounds good and we hang up. Much like Sarah did moments before, I start contemplating the schedule. If I don’t bother breathing, I can get cleaned up and shaved, changed and to the mall with about 30 seconds to spare.
Of course, that doesn’t leave me a lot of time to decide what to wear. It has to be cool enough to impress her but casual enough so that I don’t scare her off by making her think I’m trying to impress her. Basically my aim is to have Sarah think that I just tossed together an outfit but it just works for me.
You know, if you spent less time worrying about what everyone else but you knows is a lost cause (the possibility of you looking cool) and more time worrying about ensuring that you don’t look like an idiot by showing up 20 minutes late, you might have better luck.
Sorry, I’m trying my best to designate how much time can be spent on what. I’m still new at this whole dating thing.
Uhm…excuse me? Dating thing? What makes you think this is a date? This is her going to the mall and you tagging along to help carry her bags. Odds are that she’ll be scoping out the next Brad even as you’re trying to be deep and chat about the meaning of life.
It’s a date because I called her up, asked if she wanted to get together and she accepted. Granted this isn’t dinner at a fancy restaurant and going to the opera, but it’s the best I can do under the circumstances. The way I look at it is, the best thing I can do right now is just give it my best shot. Try and win her over during whatever time we have together. And it doesn’t matter if that’s going out for a night on the town together and then back to her place, or just an afternoon at the mall, the best thing I can do is just see what openings life gives me and go from there.
Actually, the best thing you can do right now is to stop with waxing philosophy about how you’re going to take lemons that aren’t really lemons and make lemonade and actually get ready to go out on this non-date.
Oh geez.
Will’s condescension prompts me to look at the clock and sure enough I am behind schedule, and as per usual when you’re late, everything starts going wrong. No matter what I choose, the shirt never seems to look right with the pants, every pair of socks I pull out has at least one of them. I can’t find my wallet or my cell phone, and I’m tempted to leave the latter behind. Nobody at work (save Andrea) knows my cell phone number, but still, I’m paranoid that if I take it, Don might somehow track me down and call me in the middle of an important moment with Sarah and completely ruin the mood.
Even as I debate whether or not to take the cell, I lose valuable minutes. In the end, I decide to take it (on the off-chance my folks have an emergency and need to get ahold of me) and so I jam it into my coat pocket as I rush out the door. I’m practically running most of the way to the mall, slowing down just a block or two once I know that I’ll make it on time and so I’m not out of breath and one false heartbeat away from a heart attack.
I’m in the food court right on the hour.
And where is Sarah? Nowhere to be seen. You either ran all the way for nothing or she got her, waited until one minute to the hour, got impatient and left in a huff, pissed off at you beyond belief that you stood her up and ruined her whole day.
Okay, Will…sometimes you’re not even trying to make sense. But before Will can offer some even more ridiculous rebuttal, Sarah arrives. It never ceases to amaze me how she can look so amazing in little more than what I’m wearing, just jeans and a blue t-shirt with an unbuttoned blouse.
“Hey,” I say, waving her over to the table where I collapsed, still a bit out of breath from the run.
She waves as she walks over to the table. She kinda regards me just sitting at the table.
“So are you going to want to have lunch first or do you want to hit a couple of stores first?” she asks. Immediately I can tell which option she’d prefer I choose.
“Let’s hit the stores,” I say, getting to my feet. I realize that my legs really hurt from running but I assure myself that once I get walking, they’ll get better. After a few minutes, even Will has to agree that I’m right on this one…well, to a point.
Sarah leads me into the Sears that anchors this mall and for a few minutes we just kinda wander aimlessly up and down the aisles, looking at whatever items the aisle we’re in happens to be showcasing.
“Let me guess, you’ll know what you’re after when you see it,” I joke.
Sarah kinda frowns and nods. “Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” she admits. “I mean, I’ve worked with Crystal for about three years now…Well, she works in the same department as I do, but really, I barely know her.”
So why does she feel duty-bound to get her a gift?
For once, Will’s sarcasm comes in handy. It’s a fair question that I pose it in a far better tone than he does.
Sarah shrugs. “It’s her birthday and the head of the department thought it’d be a real team-building thing if everyone drew a name at random and that’s who’s birthday you were in charge of.”
We’re walking on the fringe of the Kids Department now and I have to dodge a couple of racing, screaming kids who didn’t seem to see me or just figured out, even at that young age, that if a dork gets in your way, he’s the one who has to make sure there’s no collision. I expect that if any one of those screaming kids had banged into me, their seemingly-absent parents would suddenly appear and start screaming at me about how I had assaulted their little darlings.
Instead, there’s no collision, but one of the parents does materialize but the only one he yells at is whatever little hellion belongs to them. Apparently, she’s now concerned that Billy is going to break something. I want to laugh, because I’ve seen enough kids break things, only to have the parents claim that it was broken already or the display was improperly set up.
Instead of focusing on the kids and parents for too long, I turn back to Sarah. “So, it’s kinda like Secret Santa, only all year long,” I suggest. It’s only a single sentence, barely a complete thought, but the way Sarah’s eyes widen and light up make it all worthwhile.
She nods thoughtfully. “Exactly,” she agrees, adding that “sometimes you know just how to put things, Emmett.”
And suddenly even though we are indoors, in the middle of a store with at least one more floor above us, in the middle of a multiple story mall, it’s as if the roof has opened up and the sun is shining down right on me.
Good Lord, and you say I’m getting ridiculous. Imagine if she ever told you she was crazy in love with you, your head would probably explode.
No matter what Will says, there’s a spring in my step that isn’t hindered at all by how tired and sore my legs were just a few moments ago. I don’t care if Sarah notices, I don’t care if the whole world notices.
“So, what do you know about Crystal,” I ask, deciding that I am going to help Sarah get the perfect gift, just so I can chase this feeling for as far as it will let me.
Sarah shakes her head. “Not a whole heck of a lot,” she admits, “She has the kids/husband thing happening. She’s like me, always on the go doing something, actually even more so since she’s higher up the food chain than me.”
If Will was too busy thinking up reasons why the worse-case scenario would be the most probable scenario when it came to Sarah agreeing to go out with me today to provide me with a comeback line if she did accept, he kinda makes up for it here, or maybe this is Will 2.0 or maybe this is just Emmett Morrison 1.0 who finally comes up with a brain storm because I suddenly come upon an idea.
“Would you saw she’s stressed out a lot? In need of some rest and relaxation, a battery recharging?” I ask.
Sarah thinks on that a moment. “Yeee-ahhh!” she says, obviously wondering where I’m going with this line of questioning. “But if you end up taking me to the automotive department, I’m leaving.”
We both laugh, and it’s the laugh we share that I plan to use against Will if he continues to bombard me with the “You’re fooling yourself if you think this is a date” attitude. The way Sarah looks at me, I can sense that there’s something happening between us here as we wonder through the mall, and I’m almost positive that Sarah feels it too.
I shake my head at her suggestion that I’m going to get her something from the automotive department. Instead I decide that I better double-check a couple of things before I spring this idea on her and end up looking like an idiot on a technicality.
Hmm…I have to admit, that’s not the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.
I pause for a second while I take in what Will has just said to me. Thankfully I recover quickly enough that Sarah doesn’t seem to notice. Was that a compliment, Will?
Pphht! Hardly. I simply stated that it wasn’t stupidest idea you’ve ever had. I mean, when it comes to stupid ideas, you’ve had some real doozies over the years and there are probably 50-100 ideas that would rank higher than this. Hell, just this morning, you call Sarah…and then you got the idea that helping her shop for one of her fellow office jockeys was a date. There’s two ideas more worthy of the crown right there.
I choose to ignore Will and instead turn my attention back to Sarah.
“How much are you thinking of spending on this gift?” I ask.
And there’s another contender for that “Stupidest Idea” title. You never bring up anything of a financial nature with a woman you want to keep fantacizing that you’re on a date with. Here’s what’s about to happen, Emmett. Sarah is about to get indignant about you asking that question, bluntly tell you that it’s none of your business and this “mood” you seem to think you’re both caught up in will immediately be spoiled.
But Will is wrong again, as Sarah just kinda shrugs and says “Oh…I don’t know…maybe about a hundred or so.”
In all the years I’ve had Will lurking around in my head, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him cough…until today.
“A Hundred or So?” She’s blowing a hundred bucks on some chick she barely knows? What the….
I have to admit. Knowing that Sarah is in that income bracket that can spend a hundred bucks on a gift for a co-worker comes as a bit of a shock. Rather than react with that same bit of shock, I just kinda (hopefully) casually nod, trying to give the impression that I’m just mulling my options over.
Instead of thinking, “Holy F*ck, how loaded is this chick?”
I decide that since being impetuous got me here on this date in the first place, continuing on that path might lead to something more. I take Sarah by the hand and lead her towards what I hope could be the right destination for us in this mall.
“And where do you think you might be taking me?” she asks, playfully and all at once I realize that I must be hearing her bedroom voice.
We could always ask Brad, right?
And once again I’m thankful for Will’s sarcasm because hearing Sarah’s voice is, I’m ashamed to admit, getting me a little excited. Not throbbing erection excited but a little stiff nonetheless. I sneak a glance “down there” and don’t think it’s noticeable. Nevertheless I try to keep myself in front of Sarah and don’t meet the eyes of any of the store patron’s eyes until I’ve got things under control again.
I lead Sarah out of Sears and towards Relaxation Spa and Boutique. As we get closer to the store she realizes that this is the idea I had.
“A Day at the Spa, right?” she says, taking a guess that just happens to be right. I nod, and then she does. I nod because she’s right and she nods because she likes the idea.
“Think that’d make an okay gift for Crystal?” I ask, adding that “I know it’s a bit cliché, a day at a spa for the stressed out businesswoman, but…”
Before I can finish, Sarah is laughingly swatting at me to stop. “Not at all,” she says, “It’s perfect. Hell, I’m jealous that it’s her and not me.”
Will tries to get me excited again with a vision of Sarah, naked, lying on a massage table, getting oiled up and rubbed down by an equally beautiful, equally naked female attendant but before Will can break out the inevitable lesbian encounter, I tune him out and refocus on Sarah, who seemingly couldn’t be happier at the suggestion I’ve made.
“Wait right here,” she says as she takes off into the boutique. I grab a bench and watch her through the window as she takes care of things. I watch her listen intently as the saleswoman explains things. She laughs at something and then smiles. For a few moments, I’m no longer that dork that Will leads the world in putting down at every given opportunity, justified or not. Instead, just for those few moments before Sarah returned, I could imagine that I was her husband, and I was watching my wife pick up something for one of our couple friends, and soon we would be heading back to our townhouse to get ready for dinner.
I knew that wasn’t what was happening. I wasn’t the successful author married to my best friend. Even Will didn’t need to remind me that I was just a lowly retail employee, who may or may not be out on an afternoon date with a girl who’s probably way out of my league.
But for that moment, I could imagine.
As Sarah comes out of the store, she throws her arms wide as if to say “Hey, how easy was that?”
“Good thing I have you along. That was easy.” she says as she comes to stand by the bench I’ve been sitting. She nods towards the food court. “You up for getting something to eat.”
I feign thinking about it. “I suppose I could be persuaded to accompany you,” I joke, with Will cutting me off from adding what would assuredly been the too corny “M’lady!”
I get to my feet and we’re back at the food court, sitting ironically at the same table that Pete and I were sitting at when I decided to go to the book store and bumped into Sarah so many weeks ago.
As I’m finishing up my second taco I contemplate telling her that story. Thankfully, about a bite or two later I dismiss the idea. After all, she might bring up the fact that we hadn’t seen each other in a while and if she’s in a reflective mood, she might ask me just what happened to cause that disappearing act on my part.
So…go ahead and tell her. Tell her that her ex-boyfriend was a complete jerk who turned from moron party boy to jealous psychopath and threatened you with bodily harm if you didn’t stay away from her.
But as I look across at Sarah, as she takes a sip from her 7-Up, I can see that she’s happy, not just about life in general but being here with me in particular…and much like Will warned me about spoiling the mood by talking about money, I decide I don’t want to spoil the mood by starting a conversation that might end with me spoiling the mood by spilling the beans about her ex-boyfriend.
“I’m so glad you called me today, Emmett,” Sarah announces, and she doesn’t seem to realize that those eight words just made my heart leap into my throat.
This is it, I think. Sarah’s about to tell me what a good time she’s had today and how much she cares about me. I’ll reply that I feel exactly the same way and she’ll invite me back to her place and…
“It’s funny,” she says, and I wait with baited breath to hear what she says next, “but when I got up this morning, I felt really tired after being out late last night. I was going to put off this shopping expedition until tomorrow, but when you called I figured it was a sign that I should get out and get this taken care of today, rather than putting it off.”
Sarah continues to explain. “Then when we got here, I figured we’d be wandering around the mall for hours. Instead, you get this great idea and all my problems are solved.”
Wow! Not really the whole “Emmett, being with you today has made me realize that I’ve always been in love with you. Come back to my apartment and make sweet love to me, my darling.”
Admittedly, no, but what is that buzz word that people are always tossing around: “Baby steps!”
I guess the fact that Will has been wrong on more than one occasion today and I’ve been able to call him on it. Not to mention that I’ve been on top of my game, so maybe I’m feeling a little cocky. Later, Will will say that I should have quit while I was ahead.
“So, what’s the rest of the afternoon hold?” I ask, hoping, almost expect her to instantly brainstorm an activity or two for us to partake in. Instead, she suddenly looks like she’s about to fall asleep.
She shrugs lazily. “I don’t know…I’m tempted to go home and take a nap. Maybe read for a while. I picked up the new John Grisham the other day. Been kinda wanting to crack that open.”
I nod, as if I completely understand and am totally cool with it. But it’s not all that deep down inside that I’m kinda disappointed that this is where our day together ends.
Your DAY together? Not even an afternoon together. Try an hour or so together? And you know what sucks? If you had just kept your bright ideas to yourself, you ****ing idiot, you might have had that day together. I mean, as bright as Sarah is, she was kinda shooting blanks in terms of ideas. The two of you might have ended up wandering around the mall for those same hours that she was expecting to.
Wow! After a slow start, Will sure made the comeback today. He’s exactly right.
“But this was fun,” Sarah says. After we’re finished eating, we walk to parking lot where she’s parked.
“Do you want a ride home?” she asks. I contemplate it, but suddenly decide that I’d rather hang out at the mall for a bit, maybe catch a movie. We say our goodbyes and then I watch as she drives away.
As she does so, she smiles and waves at me, and the feeling that something more than just two people going shopping has transpired returns. Maybe I’m imagining things, but I want to believe I see something in those eyes of hers as she looks at me before driving away.
And in those eyes I see something else, I see a possibility. Baby Steps, I tell myself and any Wills that might be listening, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Maybe today was just a few hours, but maybe the next time she needs someone, she’ll be calling me instead of the other way around, and maybe “next time” will last all day…and into the night.
Even as I make my way through the mall, I’m declaring this a successful first date. I head towards the theatre complex in the mall, for you see, the idea of me hitting a movie wasn’t B-S, a ruse to get Sarah to avoid feeling sorry for leaving me at the mall. There have been a couple of movies that came out recently that I’ve been wanting to see, and I decide that today is the perfect opportunity to catch at least one of them.
However, I figure that if I’m going to see a movie, I should probably give my folks a heads-up. I fish the phone out of my jacket pocket but before I can even start to dail, the phone rings. It kinda startles me but thankfully, I don’t send the phone crashing to the floor of the mall.
I check the number and realize it’s my folks. I wonder what they could be calling for.
“Hello?” I answer, probably a little more worried-sounding than I should be.
“Hello, Emmett, it’s Mom. Listen, I just got a call,” my Mom starts. My shoulders drop. I’m assuming that Don has called again, and this time Mom has picked up, which lead to Don more or less guilt-tripping her into calling me about coming in to cover Randy’s shift. I decide that if he’s even so much as raised his voice to her, I’m going to walk right into the store and tell him off, and if I get fired, so be it. It’s not like I can’t find another pointless, minimum wage, dead-end job within a day or so. Hell, I can see two Help Wanted signs right here in the mall from where I’m standing.
Instead, Mom continues with “It was Tim. He said for you to call him. He sounded kind of upset.”
Part of me is concerned and part of me thinks that some Star Trek marathon has been cancelled. Either way I figure I should probably call him. If nothing else, maybe I can impress him with the fact that I was just on a date. I promise Mom that I will and let her know that I might be sticking around for a movie.
I toy with the idea of not calling Tim right away. I’m still not sure when the movies start and I don’t really feel like missing out on one because I’m too polite to interrupt Tim’s long-winded diatribe about some call during the 1967 Stanley Cup Finals. Still, if Tim sounds upset, there might be a legitimate reason behind it and I know that Will wouldn’t let me forget that I was so callous at a time when my friend needed me.
I don’t know why but I can never forget Tim’s phone number. It’s one of those numbers you can kinda sing as you’re dialing “555-4657”.
Can’t you do that with any number?
Will!
As soon as Tim answers the phone, I know something horrible has happened. Tim’s voice sounds like either he’s just woken up, he’s got a horrible cold or somebody’s died. It’s late afternoon and not cold and flu season. That leaves just one more option.
Tim sounds terrible. Worse than I’ve ever heard him before. I have to actually physically ask if I have the right number.
“Tim?”
“Emmett…” Tim begins. I can hear his voice breaking and it takes a moment before he can get everything out. “Emmett…Mary…she’s dead…She was killed in a car accident last night.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND OF A FRIEND
Back when my grandmother died, one of those old men who’s always wandering around town three sheets to the wind had corned me and said that he was sorry to hear about my grandmother but that he didn’t attend people’s funerals because they wouldn’t come to him. He thought that was probably the funniest thing he had ever heard because he let out one of those half-coughing spells, half-laughs that everyone within a quarter mile could probably have heard.
At the time, I kinda chuckled at the joke, more out of politeness than anything. However, on the morning of Mary’s funeral, as I sat on the couch, waiting for Pete to show up and trying not to itch myself to death, I wondered if I shouldn’t adhere to that rule. It would have gotten me out of having to go to this deal.
To be honest, if Tim hadn’t had been such a close friend to her, I probably could have gotten away with sitting this one out. I mean, I had known Mary from the few times that she’d tagged along with Tim when we’d go hang out for burgers or to watch movies but other than that, we hadn’t really had much interaction with her that didn’t involve him.
Of course, I knew that Tim had had a lifelong, unspoken infatuation with Mary, so I figured that this must be just killing him. No matter how much of a moron the guy might be, he was going through something that Pete and I could only have nightmares about. I figured I owed it to him to be there for him.
Think if the situation was reversed, he’d be there for you?
You know what, Will, he probably would be.
Actually, you’re probably right. I just hope we can get this over with and get home in time to do something with the rest of our day.
Before I could take Will to task for his misguided sense of priorities, the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, there was Pete, looking as uncomfortable in his “Sunday best” as I was in mind.
“Hey Emmett,” he said, “You ready?”
I nodded and we headed out.
“So, I guess Tim’s gonna be taking this hard, eh?” Pete asked as we drove over, listening to some Howard Jones cassette that I think had been in Pete’s car since he bought it in 1987.
“Yeah,” I sighed in reply. “I guess he got the news first thing yesterday morning. Musta just knocked the wind right out of him.”
Pete shook his head. He had never really liked Tim, was always quick to make fun of the guy, but today he seemed to be willing to let bygones be bygones, at least for today.
When we got into the chapel, we noticed that Mary’s family had filled up most of the front pews, with her closer friends filling in behind. I motioned Pete towards an empty bench near the back of the room, just far enough away from everyone else.
It was probably a wise move since Pete decided to do a running commentary on everyone in attendance for the first few minutes after we sat down.
“Hey, there’s Susan Eckersley!” Pete whispers to me. I hope that his voice isn’t carrying over the dismal keyboard arrangement they always play before the commencement of these services. Of course, just in case it isn’t totally obvious, he points over at her.
“Yeah, I see her, “ I reply, a little more tersely than I’d like.
“She was totally hot back in high school, eh? But man, looks like she’s put on about ten pounds.”
I shrug, not because I don’t agree…
Yeah, gotta give it to Pete, the cow has ballooned up.
…but because I want Pete to drop the subject.
I had always wondered what going to a high school reunion might be like. I never figured that it would come here at a funeral. Half of me just wants to lend support to Tim til this thing is over and then get the hell out of Dodge. The other half is expecting “Heard It Through The Grapevine” to start playing, with the rest of the Big Chill soundtrack soon to follow.
Every once in a while, someone from the old Glen Lorne High School crowd will look back, and eventually kinda gives me and Pete a look like “what the hell are YOU doing here?” Like I said, I’m just here to give Tim some support.
“Wait here a sec,” I tell Pete, like he’s going anywhere. “I’m gonna go talk to Tim.”
Pete nods a more solemn look on his face. Maybe I’m being too hard on the guy, maybe he just needs something to take his mind off why we’re here. If Susan Eckersley’s weight helps him get through a difficult time, who am I to judge?
Tim is sitting in the second row back, on the opposite side from the rest of the high school crowd. Part of me wants to ****in’ lay into the pricks from high school for treating the guy like an outcast at his best friend’s funeral, like it would have killed him to put aside the ****ing class divisions for a couple of hours.
I get a couple of more looks like the ones me and Pete got earlier. Will has me glare back at them just enough to make them look elsewhere. Tim looks up. He looks every bit the professional mourner, with the sunglasses and business casual attire. I shrug it off. He’s dealing with something I can’t hope to understand. Like Pete, if this is what helps get him through this, I got no place to judge.
As soon as he sees me, Tim takes off the sunglasses and gets to his feet. He tosses his arms around me and gives me a hug that’s way over-done. I don’t know what to do but stand there and hug him back, albeit more subtly.
“Glad you made it, man!” I hear Tim say, although his voice is muffled by the fact that his head is buried in my shoulder. “Thanks for coming.”
A moment later he lets me go.
“Just wanted to be here for ya,” I reply.
He nods like this is the single greatest act of human compassion ever committed on God’s green earth.
“Thanks, man!” he says.
Oh man! I can see the thought forming in your brain. Stifle it, Emmett.
Despite Will’s warnings, I take hold of the very idea he’s been warning me against.
“Hey, Tim,” I say, “After all this is over, you uh…
I’m begging you, for the love of God, to finish with anything other than the words “wanna go out for coffee!”
“…wanna go out for coffee.”
AUGH!
I know that Will is dead-set against me hanging out with Tim, but it just seemed like the decent thing to do.
Even as I comfort myself with the knowledge that I’m making a good, kind gesture here, I see that Tim is nodding. He’s good to go, I guess.
“Cool,” I reply. “Just meet me and Pete out in the parking lot after the service.”
“Sure,” he says. I start to head back to the pew where Pete and I are sitting. I haven’t taken a complete step when I hear Tim call after me. “Hey man, mind if we go somewhere more substantial than just a coffee place. I’m gonna be famished by the time we get through her.”
Un-****ING-be-****ING-lievable!
Every time Pete and I get together with Tim which Pete always tried to keep to a minimum, Tim would always talk us into going out to get something to eat, and then immediately beg poverty on us and we’d end up having to pick up the tab.
For the first few minutes during the service, Will had me all but envisioning Tim taking us to the most expensive restaurant in town and ordering everything on the menu, with us paying for the whole deal.
Finally, I had shut him up long enough to get into what the minister was saying. I had been to a couple of funerals in my time to know what the minister was going to say. With Mary only being in her early 20s, there was the pre-requisite “gone before her time” speech along with the minister, who probably had never even met Mary in her lifetime, talking about how she was such a special person with a loving family and friends.
A couple of the girls who had been close friends with Mary in high school and college got up and spoke about their memories and how much joy Mary had brought to their lives.
I half-expected to see Tim get up and start speaking. Actually, the phrase I should use is I was “afraid” that Tim would get up and start speaking. No offence to the guy but I knew if he did, he’d end up going overboard, flowering his speech with too many over-the-top sentiments and he’d end up making a fool of himself. In the end, Tim seemed content to let the others speak their peace. Maybe he finally realized that he didn’t know the words to say and so by saying nothing, he was better off.
Hey, Emmett?
With the fear of Tim’s possible attempt at public speaking over with, I was able to relax, which meant that Will was able to come back to the forefront of my psyche.
What is it, Will?
Do you think Tim ever did it with Mary?
It’s all I can do not to scream obscenities to this little, irritating, evil voice inside my head.
Flattery will get you nowhere, bud. Come on, man. I’m just asking the question that all those bitches and assholes sitting up in the front few rows are wanting to ask. I mean, they all knew that Mary was close friends with Tim, and that Tim had the hots for her. So, I’m sure that one of the hot topics of conversation between them will be whether or not Tim and Mary ever become more than “friends”?
The difference between them and me is that I am asking just as a general question. Personally, I kinda hope that you discover that somewhere along the line Tim and Mary took their relationship beyond just friendship, even if just for one night. It was what Tim always wanted…actually I suppose he wanted such a relationship to be more than a one-night stand but still even the memories of that one night would be of great comfort to him now.
Meanwhile, those muther-****ers up there are probably aghast at the idea that someone like Mary would lower herself to even be friends with a guy like Tim, much less sleep with him. I’m sure that even the possibility of a sexual or romantic relationship between the two have been, will continue to be and perhaps even at this very moment are the subject of a lot of mean-spirited jokes among the former social elite of Glen Lorne High School.
Man, it gets scary when I start agreeing with the stuff that Will comes up with.
Actually, considering that I’m a manifest of your psyche, on some level you agree with everything I say.
As scary as that thought is, I’m going to ignore the implications and cut straight to the answer to your original, if vulgarly phrased answer: No, from what I could figure out from Tim, unless something had changed just in the weeks leading up to her death, Tim and her were never more than just friends. As we’ve both pointed out, I think it was his fondest hope that some day the two of them would have more than just a friendship between them, but it never happened, at least to my knowledge.
So, basically you’re saying that Tim and Mary were in the exact same situation as you and Sarah….
YOU AND SARAH!
For a moment, I black out…well, almost. I can’t hear the music or the minister. I’m not aware of Pete talking next to me. All I can hear is Will’s disembodied voice echoing inside my head. I shake the feeling that’s rushed over me away and concentrate on what the minister is saying as he concludes the service.
It’s supposed to be a beautiful ceremony, with the minister saying all the right things and “capturing Mary’s spirit to a T’. I nod whenever anyone comments about the service, since I hardly heard a word he said. Hell, someone could have come up to me and started in about how the minister kept flipping off the crowd and making liberal use of the F-word and I probably would have nodded. How was I to know the difference? Weird how one malicious thought…
I think you’re over-dramatizing this. It was a boring service, you nodded off. Get over it.
As I started to say, weird how one malicious thought can just take over your mind and block out everything else.
By the time I’m in the parking lot waiting for Tim, I’m trying to get Pete to talk about something, anything, just to keep Will’s voice out of my head.
“What did you think of the service?” I ask him, not really wanting to start this conversation but thinking of nothing else even remotely appropriate to be talking about in the parking lot after the funeral service for a close friend.
Pete just shrugs. “All right, I guess,” he says, then lapses back into silence.
Great, lot of help he is. I can’t tell if he’s upset at Mary’s death, somber just for the sake of being somber, or if he’s pissed off that I somehow invited Tim out after the service. I think Pete hoped we could show up, sit through the service, give our condolences and get the hell out of Dodge with little or no interaction with Tim at all.
I don’t know why I did it. Maybe I felt like the guy shouldn’t be alone, having just walked out of a funeral where he had to say goodbye to his best friend. Maybe I would have wanted someone to have done the same for me if I was in the same boat.
Maybe I figured that if Pete wasn’t going to help me out, I knew that Tim could, at the very least, be counted on to talk so much that he might just drown Will’s voice out of my head.
A half an hour later, I’m sitting in a booth at Burger Hutt, having barely heard a peep out of Will. I’ve loved the Hutt’s “Massive Burger Attack” since I was a kid and right now I could almost try to repeat Tim’s historic “Three Attacks At One Sitting” feat that he accomplished in our senior year in high school. (He was trying to impress Mary, of course!)
Instead, I opt for one “Massive Burger Attack” as I listen to Tim reminisce about those same high school days. Pete has gone back into his silent sideline mode. For some reason he fails to mention how much weight Susan Eckersley had gained since high school, instead being content to sit next to me, pick at his fries and listen to Tim and I talk about the past.
“So, of course, I’m totally late for school cause of this and so I literally had to run out of my room with my pants hanging around my ankles, scrambling for the door,” Tim remembers. I suppress laughing my ass off at the mental picture I’m getting of Tim with his pants around his ankles. I look over at Pete, and even he’s doing his darnedest not to laugh.
“Thankfully, I managed to make it to school fully-dressed, in one piece and, amazing off all, pretty much on time,” Tim continues, laughing at the memory. That works for both Pete and I since it allows us to laugh as well.
“I’ll tell ya something, guys,” Tim reflects, “I may not have had the best marks or the best attendance, but those days at Glen Lorne High were some of the best days of my life.”
I want to laugh again, only this time not WITH Tim but AT him. I look over at Pete and he’s not really laughing with or at Tim, and instead is just rolling his eyes at me. With good reason, I guess. None of us ever considered our days at Glen Lorne High the best of our lives, least of all Tim.
He had spent four years bemoaning and bitching about how much he had hated high school, how he hated the clique-system that ran rampant on the social scene at Glen Lorne High, how everyone save for Mary, Pete and myself were either jocks or preppies, how all the teachers were out to get him, how he couldn’t wait to get out of high school and on to some better life.
And now suddenly here he was telling Pete and I that he found those days to be the best of his life? Part of me wanted to just shake my head in astonishment at his sudden change of heart. I knew that’s all that Pete saw. Just Tim telling another one of his wild, bull-**** tales of yesteryear.
But as I sat there, I came to realize what Pete could see, on today of all days. Back in high school, Tim was able to come to school every day and see a friendly face, Mary’s mostly. For every idiot who took a cheapshot at him, for every snide remark he overheard in the hallway, for every bad grade he received, at least he had Mary there to make him smile. Once we all got in our caps and gowns for graduation, that was the end of it. Mary left for university, just like Pete and I left for college and for Tim, that was the end of his “safety net”.
As I said before, he knew early on that he wasn’t going to amount to much more than a lifer at some dead-end job, so he never worried too much about his effort in class nor did he ever try to get into a college. More than his lack of stellar grades, I think Tim was just scared that he’d never find that small cluster of people who gave a **** what he did the way that Mary and I did.
“The way Mary and I did”?
Okay the way Mary did and the way he thought I…and Pete, to a lesser degree did. He just figured if he was going to lose that “safety net” and become an outcast again, he might as well find a job that paid him rather than just sit in a classroom and have a repeat of high school.
As we left Burger Hutt, Tim kinda hung back as we walked through the parking lot towards Pete’s car. Pete seemed oblivious to it all, obviously simply wanting to get us home but I could sense that Tim had something he wanted to say. As I reached the car, I turned back and there was Tim, the same sad somber expression that he’d been wearing all day, kinda shuffling his feet, his hands in his pockets, looking down at the brown loafers he’d worn to the funeral.
“You guys wouldn’t want to take a walk, would ya,” he said finally.
I looked across the roof of the car to where Pete was standing, frozen in his tracks as he opened the car door. He sighed in exasperation, looking over at me as if to say “I am so outta here!”
A moment passed and I realized that Pete was looking to me to come up with some miraculous excuse that would get both of us out of spending any more time with Tim than we already had. He shook his head slightly, his way of telling me that he was NOT going to make this evening into any more of a charity case than he already had. Finally, sensing that I wasn’t going to say anything of the kind, Pete decided to work his own way out of the situation.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “I gotta get up at an ungodly hour tomorrow, so I gotta head out.”
And so here I was, stuck in the middle of not wanting to be the heavy and force Pete to stick around and not wanting to desert Tim at a moment where it seemed like he didn’t want to be alone.
Hey, you did your friendship duty. You went to the funeral; you let the guy mooch a meal off of you. Now get the heck outta Dodge.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind some fresh air,” I heard myself say. “Why don’t we hoof it home, Tim?”
I had never really been afraid of a good walk. Will would tell you that I was going to end up a good mile out of my way just to play the face to Tim but some other part of me…
The part of you that I wish I could beat the crap out of.
…told me that a half hour of walking would do my soul some good if it meant that I could be there for a friend.
The night was cold, unseasonably so and so I shivered as we walked, jamming my hands as far into the pockets of my suit jacket as I could. I could hear Will mumbling questions about why we were even out here.
Damn it, you moron, if you’d gotten a ride home with Pete, we’d be home by now and warm.
I ignored them as best I could.
The streets were ours on this night. Everyone had deserted the outside for the warmth and comfort of their suburban living rooms and dens. The only sound, save for the odd passing car, were our two sets of feet on the pavement of the sidewalk.
Tim was quiet, unusually quiet for a guy that Pete and I had once agreed was in love with the sound of his own voice. Pete and I had had the misfortune of walking home with Tim on countless occasions during high school. We never waited around for him after the final bell but by after walking a half-block he would come rushing after us, this stupid “Ha! Ha! I caught you!” look on his face. Tim and I would groan as he would throw his meaty paws around our shoulders and cry out “hey buddies!” loud enough so that anyone within shouting distance would turn and give us a strange look.
And then, for the rest of the walk home, Tim would do everything short of making our eardrums bleed with whatever was on his mind, from something that had happened in science class to a recap of last night’s football game to what must have been a lifted-from-TV-Guide preview of what he would be watching on TV that evening…and that was when his conversation was actually even somewhat relevant to current events.
Tim hadn’t changed much over the years. Any time that he and I got together, he would just strip the emergency breaks off his tongue, set it into high gear and start talking.
But not tonight. Tonight there was nothing but silence. As we continued to walk towards his apartment building, I wondered if he wanted to talk but just didn’t know what to say and was looking towards me to make the opening salvo of this conversation, or if he just wanted to be alone with his thoughts but needed someone around to ensure he didn’t go too far off the deep end.
Finally, he spoke.
“You ever wished you could go back and live your live over again? Maybe not your whole life, or even a year, but even say five or ten minutes?”
He had said it in such a way that I wondered if he had meant to say that out loud. It was as if he had been carrying on some conversation with himself in his head, with his own version of Will Tracey, and then had just begun to utter some of the passages from that internal conversation.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I should answer him or not. Before I could make a decision on that question, he looked over at me, gave me a half-smile and continued.
“This whole weekend, I keep wishing I had that ability. Just five minutes to do over. I wouldn’t even have to go back all that far. About a week or so,” Tim says.
For all the years I’ve known Tim, I’ve known him to go off on some tangent, usually about sports or some movie that he’d just watched, and of which I maybe understood a tenth of what he was talking about. But on this night, as we continued to walk along the quiet, cold streets of our home town, I got what he was talking about. Even though to any passer-by, it would have sounded like some sci-fi geek spouting gibberish, I knew it was more than that…and I knew what was coming next.
“You know, Emmett,” he told me, “As sure as we’re walking here, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give up, not material possessions, nothing, for five minutes with Mary…just to tell her how I felt about her.”
“You never told her?” I asked, even though I knew that he never had. We’d joked around, commiserated with each other too many times for me to have any doubt that Tim had left things unspoken between Mary and himself.
I looked over and saw him as he shook his head.
“Nah,” he said, “I mean, I always wanted to…but was afraid of what might happen if she didn’t feel the same way. I mean, I loved her so much as my friend that I didn’t want to jeopardize what I had with her.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if he wanted me to jump in and say the right thing, or if I should just be quiet and let him talk. The realization hit me that even if I were to say something, I didn’t know what the hell to say. Tim’s ability to keep talking, a trait that had annoyed me so much over the years, came to my rescue on this particular occasion.
“I mean, maybe I was always kidding myself. Maybe in retrospect, I realized that there was no way she and I would have ever been…you know…she could never have thought of me as anything more than just some guy she hung out with.”
This time, I had to jump in and say something.
“Don’t beat yourself, Tim. Mary thought the world of you,” I told him.
“I know, Emmett, part of me knows that. But part of me remembers the crowd that Mary hung with in high school when she wasn’t with me,” Tim confided to me, “It’s that part of me that keeps telling the rest of me that Mary was too much a part of the ‘in crowd’ to have to settle for the likes of me. I mean, she could have had the pick of any guy in town.”
I shrugged, “Maybe she could have, but I think when it all came down to it, she knew you had more to offer than any of the others.”
Geez, are you stealing lines from some Kleenex Movie of the Week?
I didn’t know what to say and what I had said sounded forced and phony. I could tell Tim wasn’t buying it and I didn’t blame him. I wish I had kept my mouth shut.
“Maybe you’re right, Maybe you’re wrong,” Tim replied, his voice filled with melancholy. “The bitch of it is, I ain’t never gonna know, and that’s the part that’s killing me.”
By this time, we had reached the corner of Victoria and Durand. If I kept going straight on Victoria, I’d be back home after a couple of blocks. Durand was a short side street that led to Tim’s apartment complex. Neither of us were ready to call it a night, so we just stood there, trying to remain oblivious to the cold.
“I always figured I’d tell her someday,” Tim said, “I used to fantacize about it, picture it in my head. The time’d be right, the right song would be playing somewhere, and I’d just tell her. Never really knew how she’d react, never really planned it that far. I guess I figured it’d be a victory for me if I just had told her.”
For a moment, a smile passed his lips, and I wasn’t sure if he was enjoying the memory or if he was laughing sarcastically at his naivete.
“Someday…Someday,” he repeated. “I never figured I’d run out of somedays. I mean, Jesus Christ, we’re in our mid-20s. People our age aren’t supposed to die, just like that. This is the time we’re supposed to be able to fool ourselves into believing we’ll conquer the world, live forever, all that bull****”
I nodded. I guess I’d thought that way too. Tim had started to walk down Durand Street towards his place when he turned around and called back to me.
“Hey, Emmett,” he said, “You still got the hots for that Sarah chick?”
How do I reply to that? I shrugged, “Yeah…I guess so…Yeah!”
Tim looked at me, and for a moment, I didn’t see the pudgy, loud-mouth obnoxious jerk. Instead, I saw a sad, lonely man who wanted to be as good a friend to me as he could.
“Take it from me, buddy. If you’ve got feelings for Sarah, tell her. Cause you don’t want to wake up one morning and realize that you’ve got to spend the rest of your life wondering ‘what if?’ Cause take it from me, the rest of your life can suddenly be a very long time.”
And with that, he was gone.
I lay in bed, the clock on my night stand reading “2:35 AM” and I couldn’t stop thinking about what Tim had said to me. I never figured I’d get wisdom from such an unlikely source as that, but here I was, contemplating the idea that perhaps I could learn from the tragedy that he had suffered.
In my head, in a somber, grief-filled voice that managed, at least sporadically, to drown out Will, I kept hearing him tell me that “the rest of your life can suddenly be a very long time.”
And somewhere, in that stage just this side of sleep, I realized that, but for the grace of God, it could have been me who got that call. It could have been me who stood there, receiver in hand, the sick realization setting in that the love of my life was gone, and I was never gonna know for sure how she felt about me.
And I’d have to spend the rest of my life with the same questions that Tim was having to wrestle with, and would have to wrestle with for years to come.
I wasn’t sure when I fell asleep that night, but when I woke up the next morning, the same thoughts were on my mind. This time, however, Will was there to chime in with his own opinion.
Listen, man. I mean, yeah what happened with Mary was a ****in’ tragedy. No two ways about it, and as big a dickhead as Tim is, no one deserves to go through what he’s going through but don’t let this make you go something stupid, like what you’re contemplating.
And just what am I contemplating, Will?
Oh, don’t ****ing play that game with me. You think I don’t know? Hey, moron! Here’s an update! I live in your brain. I know what you’re thinking before you’re even aware that you’re thinking it. I know where you wanna go with this, and I’m here to tell you: Don’t ****ING do it!
Well, Will, why don’t you spell it out for the good folks at home?
Ah geez! You’re gonna do it, aren’t ya? You’re gonna use Mary’s death and Tim’s tragedy as an excuse to finally tell Sarah how you feel about her. You figure that you gotta spill your guts just so you can say that you did it.
Hey, sorry, man but this deal with Tim has sparked something in me. I mean, I was always afraid (thanks to you) of what might happen if I told Sarah about my feelings towards her. But now, I think I’m more afraid of what might happen if I don’t tell her.
This is your problem, you dumb ****! You seem to think this is some kind of TV show, where the character does something and no matter what the outcome, they just hit the reset button for next week’s episode and it’s like nothing ever happened. Well, here’s a free clue for you: When you tell Sarah about this and she reveals that she wants to be just “friends”, you’ll end up being anything but. It will be the end of everything you two ever had.
I didn’t say anything for a moment. No comeback or retort. I just lay there, absorbing what Will had told me. I knew he was right. That this gamble was an all-or-nothing deal. If I told Sarah and she told me that the feelings were mutual, it would be the start of the best thing I’d ever experienced in my life. The problem was that if the reverse was true, if Sarah didn’t think of me that way, well then…I didn’t know what I’d do, but I knew that, just as Will had so callously pointed out, it would mean the end of our friendship.
Suddenly I became aware of this large knot of fear that had formed in my stomach. Will was responsible, I was sure, sending it there as a firm reminder of his feelings on the situation. I was sure that he was relishing in watching the knot as it grew. Silently, I damned him for it.
“**** it.” I said aloud as I got out of bed. As far as I was concerned, fate had sent me a message in the tragedy of Mary’s death. This was a wake-up call. I didn’t want to go through life the way that Tim would have to, constantly wondering “What if” when it came to expressing my feelings to the woman I loved and who I thought maybe, just maybe, might love me back.
By the time I set off to walk to work that morning, I was sure of one thing. I had talked myself into it and damn it, Will’s objections aside, I was going to do it.
I was going to tell Sarah that I was in love with her.
****ing Moron! You’re going to regret this.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I’M INTO SOMETHING GOOD
Only I didn’t exactly drop everything, rush to be with Sarah and tell her everything. I mean, it was late and I was just coming home from a funeral and I was sure that she was probably in bed after a hard day at the office and I didn’t want to wreck everything right off the bat by getting her pissed at me for calling so late and…
Keep brainstorming, Morrison, I’m sure you can come up with a few more reasons.
Will, it’s 11 friggin’ o’clock, what am I supposed to do? Call her up right this instance and say “Sarah, by the way, I love you”? She’ll probably assume she’s in the middle of some dream…
Or nightmare, depending on how she takes it.
…and say “That’s nice, Emmett” then hang up and turn over and go back to sleep. Let’s just say that I’d prefer that she was awake and in total control of her sensibilities before I lay this on her.
And let me guess? You can’t do it tomorrow because you have work and she has work and you’ll both be worn out and not in the mood. And you don’t want to call and set up anything until you have a couple of days in a row off just so you can have that buffer to get over the massive bout of depression you’ll dive right into if she doesn’t respond the way you want to and..
And you say I ramble?
Okay, I’ll nip this in the bud and get to the point. You are going to keep making excuses as to why this isn’t a good time to sit Sarah down and have it out with her. Meanwhile, she’s going to meet someone else, maybe even better for her and worse for you than Brad and then where will you be.
It’s beginning to sound like a broken record but once again, Will is right. I can procrastinate about getting my resume out and looking for another job, I can procrastinate about working on my sure-to-be-a-bestseller manuscript. I can procrastinate about watching all those videos I bought through Columbia House…but I can’t procrastinate about this.
As I’m walking in the door to our apartment, I make my decision. I will call Sarah tomorrow after work about getting together for coffee.
Are you sure you want to specify coffee?
Sure, why not?
Well, are you sure you want Sarah to have something hot in her hands in case she’s really offended by what are sure to be your repertoire of corny come-ons?
**** you, Will.
The next day drags like every other day at the store, only a bit more so. It’s not really any day that’s any different from any other day. Don’s a dickhead to me, telling me that I should be pushing the pre-sale of some movie more than I am. I try and do just what he asks as a way to keep him happy and three customers start bitching at me that I’m just a brainless corporate sheep trying to pressure them into buying something I don’t need, to say nothing of the endless variations of “I shouldn’t have to pay late charges” that go anywhere from “because you told me the wrong date” to “you shouldn’t charge late fees because that’s bad business practices.”
After that last one storms out, swearing she’ll never rent here again, I turn to Andrea, who smiles and says “I got $5 and a free rental coupon that says she’ll be back in her this weekend and will still return her movies late.”
I shake my head. “No way am I taking that bet!” I check the clock above the “Coming Soon” board and groan. It’s just barely 2:00.
“What’s the matter, Emmett?” Andrea asks, “you got big plans for this evening?”
She’s joking about my lack of a social life but it’s Andrea so I don’t take it personally. In fact, I toss it back to her. “As a matter of fact I just might,” I reply.
This causes Andrea to regard me with one eyebrow raised. “Oh really?” she asks, “Do tell.”
I shrug. “I’m not sure what to tell you,” I reply, truthfully. “I’m gonna give Sarah a call and see what she’s up to tonight.”
Andrea nods approvingly. “Cool,” she says. She stacks some movies before continuing. “She seemed nice when we met her at that club. So is it serious between you guys?”
Will pipes up with the thought that I should continue to be truthful with Andrea and tell her that any “relationship” we might have is still in its infancy stage and exists more in my fantasy world than the real one.
“We’re kinda taking it slow,” I explain.
And the prize for “Lamest Explanation of a Non-Existant Relationship” goes to…Emmett Morrison! Congratulations Emmett, you’ve just won a Chrysler Cordova and you can pick it up at Morty’s Office.
Deciding I don’t want to have to lie to Andrea any more than I have to, even if for no other reason than to keep Will from his little outbursts, I decide to change the subject, sort of.
“So, how are things going between you and Pete?” I ask.
I’ve always known Andrea was kind of on the shy side. In fact, before Pete came along, I was probably the person who saw Andrea out of her shell the most. But she’s gone a bit shy on me now in response to this question.
She shrugs just as I did a moment ago, but it’s a different kind of shrug. My shrug was “there’s not much to tell” whereas Andrea’s shrug is “there’s lots to tell but I’m not sure I can tell you everything”. Normally when someone lets me know they’re keeping something from me, it upsets me. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into a room and someone will stop in mid-conversation, even mid-sentence and say words to the effect “Oh, I’ll talk to you later”. Geez,ever heard of subtlety.
I’ve even had people start in on a conversation while I’m there, and talk around any “sensitive subjects” by repeatedly telling the other person that they’ll discuss that part “later”. There have been times when it’s all I could do to shout “Jeez, if you don’t consider me a close enough friend to talk about this in front of me, don’t start the conversation.”
But I don’t get that this is the case with Andrea. Maybe I’m misreading things but I almost get the idea that Andrea would love to sit down and tell me all about what’s happening with that particular relationship, but just not here in the store where a nosy customer (or an noise AND obnoxious manager) might step into hearing distance at any moment.
Eventually, however, she decides she has to say something, and so with a shy smile, she says “it’s going good. I’m really having a good time with Pete. He’s a really great guy.”
All of a sudden, she take a quick glance around the store, takes a couple of steps closer to me and in hushed tones, reveals that “I’ve never really been at this stage of a relationship with anyone before, so it’s all new and so I’m kinda nervous…but it’s good, you know.”
And on that note, Andrea has just revealed that she’s lost her virginity to Pete.
I blink a couple of times and am not sure how to react. Will is ready with a myriad of “I told you so’s”, misreading my feelings of shock that Andrea would reveal something like that to me as feelings of disappointment that her first time was with Pete and not with me.
But really, Will’s theories aside, I’m really happy that one of my closest friends, Andrea, is in a good place in her relationship with one of my oldest friends, Pete. I really just want her to be happy and I can see that she is.
“Well, it sounds like things are going well between you two,” I note, adding that I’m happy for Andrea.
Liar! Just like you did when you found out Sarah was dating Brad, you’re finally admitting to yourself that you have a thing for Andrea, only once again it’s too late because she’s sleeping with Pete and are on a good course in their relationship.
You know, if Will was a real person, he’d probably be dating Andrea, Pete be damned, because he’s been carrying a torch for her for so long. If I am in fact a tad jealous because Andrea is with Pete instead of me, well, isn’t that even more of a reason to tell Sarah, the woman I really love, just what my feelings are so that I don’t miss out on another opportunity to be with someone I care about.
It’s just too bad that the person you’re planning to spill your guts out may not really care about you back. I mean, Andrea has just opened up to you about one of the most important events in her life, her first time, and yet you’ve got your sites set on someone who barely confides in you at all.
But you’re forgotten one major point. Andrea is dating and yes, as you’re so quick to point out, sleeping with someone. Sarah is available.
Sarah is available, true, but not interested in you.
Are you forgetting what happened the other day at the mall? The way she looked at me when I was helping her get that gift for her co-worker?
Yeah, and that got you a total of about an hour hanging out in a purely platonic situation. Odds are that Sarah has probably done that with at least one or two of her girlfriends, and that doesn’t make her a lesbian.
I suddenly get the point of all this. Will is trying to distract me from what I should be concentrating on: getting ready to see Sarah and not let anything else happen between us before I tell her how I feel. Will may be concentrating on who Andrea is sleeping with but the most important thing to me is who I’ll soon be sleeping with.
Things aren’t exactly weird between Andrea and I for the rest of the shift, but the topic of conversation tends to be less about personal stuff, like our relationships and more about general, safe topics. In a way, it’s like we’ve suddenly leaped back in time a few months. We go back to talking about movies, making whispered jokes about Don, observations about customers.
It feels a lot more comfortable, I realize, than it has been in quite a while. It’s “old school” Andrea and Emmett and the rest of the day passes quickly, and we both are smiling and laughing as we leave the store at the end of our shift.
We’re almost to the bus stop when I notice that Andrea has gotten quiet. “Have fun tonight, Emmett,” she says, a cloud passing over her face. I nod, and say “I will”, then ask “have you got big plans with Pete tonight?”
She pauses for a second and I’m not sure why. It’s like she’s thinking about something, remembering something, contemplating something. After a moment, she replies “Yeah, I kinda do.”
I nod and reply “Well, you have fun, too, then. See you tomorrow.”
Andrea gives me this wry smile and says “Yeah, see you tomorrow” before stepping on to the bus.
I watch the bus as it pulls away. Andrea is seating next to the window on my side of the bus. She waves but I see the look on her face, as if she’s never going to see me again. As I start walking towards home, the memory of that look bothers me for a block or so. Eventually I decide I’m just imagining things and just push it out of my head and try to focus on tonight.
I silently damn Will for putting everything from Andrea’s sleeping with Pete to that weird look on her face to worrying about customers and Don instead of trying to prepare something to say to Sarah. I mean, I can’t just blurt out “I love you Sarah” when I get to her place, can I?
I try to brainstorm just how to phrase things but nothing seems to be working. After a long and more stressful than normal day at work, my brain is fried. I doubt I could remember a single sentence about the weather, much less several paragraphs on my feelings toward Sarah and how I want to act on them.
And if I thought picking out clothes for going to the mall to meet with Sarah was an important but difficult decision. Tonight I have so much more to think about. I don’t want to just look cool, I need to look boyfriend material. I need Sarah to take one look once I tell her how I feel and realize that she’s felt the same way all along.
And holy crap! What do I do about underwear?
Okay, let me interject here… “What do I do about underwear?” Where in the blue hell did that come from?
Come on, Will. What if I tell Sarah my feelings for her and she kisses me and those kisses lead to…well, us getting naked together. In order to be naked, I’ll have to strip down to my underwear and the last thing I need is for the mood to be spoiled because she’s laughing at my boxer shorts.
You are clearly overthinking this. Just be yourself. Odds are that if, by some miracle, she doesn’t laugh at you, not at your choice of underwear, but at your cornball “I love you” speech, and you do become a couple, she’s going to end up seeing you in your ratty old jeans and your best suit jacket at some point. Let’s face it, if you show up in a tux and tails but wearing a G-string underneath, you’ll probably have her freaked out because you overdid it.
Finally, I decide to wear a buttoned down shirt that I once wore to a job interview (although I didn’t get the job, I always thought I looked good in the shirt and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the shirt that lost me the job) and a pair of black jeans.
Uh, don’t you think you should have called Sarah first to make sure she’s even home (or for that matter home alone) before you put all this time and effort into picking out your outfit (and shaving, and putting odd a ton of aftershave and body deodorant and washing your hair and every other part of your body).
Crap! I was going to call her around 6:30 to see about me coming over, but as Will points out, I did get rather caught up in making sure I looked as presentable as possible. (And in my defense, seeing as how I’ll probably be sweating buckets once I’m there telling Sarah what I plan to tell her.) It’s now about 7:30, I notice, as I check the clock in my bedroom.
Will may make a big deal out of it, but I shrug it off. It’s not like it’s 9:00 and she’ll be settled in for the night, right? Still, better not to wait too long, in case a friend calls or she notices a good movie on. It takes me a good five minutes to find my phone but when I do finally locate it (stuffed into the pocket of my work pants) and call Sarah, the call goes to voice mail.
“Hey Sarah, it’s Emmett. Just wanted to know if you were up to doing anything. Maybe we could get together and watch a movie or something. Give me a call when you get this.”
I wait for about an hour, until 8:30, with each passing minute making me more and more anxious, not that I’m necessarily worried about Sarah. It’s just that if this doesn’t happen tonight, Will may ground this “cursed missed opportunity” as Coldplay used to sing, so far down into my soul that I may never have the courage to do this again.
Then, at 8:30, I decide to go for a walk. A nice long walk. One that will just happen to take me past Sarah’s apartment building. It’s a nice night and so I figure that even if nothing else, I’ll get some exercise.
When I get to Sarah’s building, I notice that the light is on in her apartment. Will tells me that means that she’s doing something too important to deal with the likes of me. I wonder if maybe it just means she went out and left a light on for security reasons. Will is telling me to turn around and walk home and call it a lost cause for tonight. I’m inclined to agree…but then somehow I find myself knocking on Sarah’s door.
Even if Sarah and Andrea had answered the door, announcing that they had gotten along so famously the other night at the club that they decided to become lesbian lovers, I don’t think my blood would have so quickly than from the site that greeted me when Sarah opened the door.
CHAPTER
I had never seen Sarah cry before. She always seemed so strong, so in control of her emotions. And yet here she was, tears streaming down her cheeks, her lip quivering, her shoulders shaking.
“Emm…Emmett,” she begins, barely able to breath, much less form words. She has to take a deep breath to even talk to me. “What are you doing here,” she finally asks.
“I was just in the neighbourhood,” I begin, before realizing that my state of affairs isn’t important in the least. “What’s wrong? What happened?” I try not to demand the answers from her but part of me just wants to know what has transpired to leave her in this emotional wreckage. Has one of her parents died? Did I miss the second coming of 9/11 on the way over? What?
Instead of being able to tell me, she just leans back against the door and starts to laugh one of the half-laughs/half-cries. Some part of me actually does the right thing for once and leads Sarah back into her apartment, shutting the door behind us. No reason for the neighbours to have a good view of whatever is going on.
After we’re both inside, I lead Sarah over to the couch. She’s leaning heavily on me but I don’t care. I can handle this. I would do whatever it takes just to get her through the after effects of whatever has happened.
Meanwhile, she’s still alternating between laughing and crying.
“God, I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I’m reacting like this,” she says, almost to herself as much as to me. After a moment, the laughter stops and she’s simply crying, a heart-breaking collection of deep sobs where, at times, I wonder if she can even breath.
I’m not sure what she’s talking about so I’m not sure how to react. I figure the best course of action is just to keep quiet and be there for her. For once, even Will thinks I’m doing the right thing.
After a few moments, Sarah stops crying and starts trying to get her breath back. I put my arm around her and rub her back. I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to do, but it seems like it.
She’s quiet for a bit. Not crying, not talking, just breathing. Finally, she takes a deep breath and starts explaining what’s happened.
“I got an e-mail from Brad today,” she explains. The mere mention of her ex-lover’s name sparks some kind of reaction from Will but I don’t really hear what it is. Better to focus on Sarah and worry about Will later.
“He seemed to be alternating between begging me to come back to him and telling me that I needed to be with him. And then the next minute he was promising to do whatever it took to be with me, like going to councelling or whatever. He wasn’t making any sense and I think he was probably drunk when he wrote it and sent it,” Sarah tells me.
“And I know that I’m better off without him, but yet when I saw his name in my In Box, I just felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. It was like every feeling I’d ever felt for him came rushing back to me…and as much as there were a lot of bad feelings there, I remembered what it was like to be with him during the good times.”
“And that’s what scared me. I just had this vision of me opening my door one morning and him standing there with this lost puppy dog look on his face, wanting me to take him back…and me just saying ‘Yep, we can work this out’ and I’m right back to where I was six months ago, stuck in a bad relationship with a person I can’t trust not to just snap back into the jerk he was.”
She slowly shakes her head. She’s crying a bit more.
“I always thought I was this strong person who could take control of her own life, no matter what it threw at her, and yet here I am seemingly forever emotionally bound to this guy who made me happy for a few weeks and miserable for so many months,” she cries.
At this, something prompts me to speak up.
“Sarah, you are a strong person. You’re probably the strongest person I’ve ever met. More than anyone else that came out of our graduating class, you made something of your life,” I tell her. I want to tell her so much more but I realize that this isn’t the time.
“But Emmett, just because I’ve got a good job doesn’t mean my life is perfect. I’m just so afraid…I’m just so afraid that Brad was the one, and that no one will ever fall in love with me and I’ll end up alone,” Sarah reveals.
And suddenly Will 2.0 is back.
This is it, this is your once-in-a-lifetime opening. She’s afraid no one else will fall in love with her. Tell her you’ve already fallen in love with her years ago.
No! I decide. I want to, and yes the opening is there. But I couldn’t live with myself if I used her grief over a failed relationship to start one of my own with her.
But I know I have to say something and so I just start.
“That’s silly, Sarah,” I tell her, “There’s someone else out there for you. You’re smart and you’re funny and you’re so strong, moreso than you give yourself credit for. You are exactly what any guy in their right mind is looking for in someone to love.”
She’s crying again and I’m holding her close as she cries. I can feel her body shake and am ashamed to admit that it’s a great feeling. Not erotic, not arousing, just nice to be able to hold her and comfort her. God, I realize, I want to do this forever. Just be there for her when she needs someone in a situation like this.
She breaks away from me, just a bit and I’m afraid that the moment is over. That she’ll compose herself, apologize for dumping this all on me and that will be it. I can envision the whole scene and I’m again, ashamed to admit that I’m disappointed that the moment has passed.
She looks at me, sniffling and trying to smile. She doesn’t quite make it but I manage to fall even more in love with her as she makes the attempt.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“It’s okay”, I say, nodding just slightly.
With that, her hand reaches up and strokes my cheek. Then she leans forward, almost hesitantly…and kisses me.
Her lips are pressed against mine and I realize that after nearly three years of wanting this, the moment is finally at hand. Sarah Reynolds is kissing me and more importantly, I’m kissing Sarah.
I want this moment to last a lifetime and it did, or at least it seems to. I keep expecting her to break away, a shocked look on her face. But when she finally does, the tears were gone, and a full smile has spread across her mouth, the same mouth that had just been pressed against mine.
“Wow!” she jokes, “How did that happen?”
I shake my head. I suddenly don’t care how it had happened or even, at this point, why it happened. All I care about was whether or not it will happen again. I look into Sarah’s eyes and maybe I see something that isn’t there but I believe with all my heart that I see a sign that says she wants it to happen again, too.
With an instance of bravery and daring I have never known before nor since, I take her face in my hands, and bring her lips to mine once again. The kiss is deeper kiss this time. I keep expecting her to offer some sort of reluctance, to break away, but she doesn’t.
Suddenly things begin happening so fast, I barely have time to realize what’s happening. The kisses become more passionate. I hear her moan and I can feel her tongue in my mouth.
That’s when I realize that tonight I will sleep with Sarah. I almost gasp aloud but it comes out a moan and so Sarah must assume that I am reacting to the physical activity, the same way she is.
Or maybe she’s just as shocked, but not in a good way as you are, and she’s reacting the same way you are, instead of the other way around.
It starts with one button, the top button on Sarah’s blouse. She unbuttons it, and then another and another and before I know it, I am staring, unable to look away if I tried, at Sarah’s firm, full and very naked breasts.
In all the years I’ve known Sarah, I’ve never really had a good long, lustful look at her breasts. I mean, I knew she had them and on some level I was interested in seeing them. I could even recall, on more than one occasion, she’d worn clothing (dresses, T-shirts, blouses) that would have called attention to them. Sometimes she’d wear a tight sweater that accentuate the fullness of them. Every once in a while, she’d wear something with a neckline that hinted a bit of cleavage. But I’d never indulged myself.
Oh yeah, what about how you stared at that one photo of her taken of the six of you about a week before graduation. The one where she was wearing that very tight McCallum College T-shirt, the one that clung to everything, if you know what I mean. Didn’t you once…or more than once…fantacize about stripping her off that T-shirt and burying your head in her breasts?
Suddenly I’m so hard it almost hurts. She has to know, she has to see the bulge in my jeans. I keep expecting her to notice and begin laughing at me, as if I’m some high school kid who can’t control himself. Or worse, I keep expecting to blow my wad, to cream my pants and have her throw me out of her apartment, screaming at me like I’m some sex maniac.
Things go by in a blur and we start clothes off, sometimes our own and sometimes each others. We continue to kiss and caress each other. Sarah continues to moan and it only makes me harder. By the time we’re down to our underwear, I’m fully erect.
Is she going to be disappointed? I mean, certainly when Brad was in this position, he must have had a hell of a lot more offer in terms of pecs and muscles than you do. Maybe this is the moment that she decides that she’s made a huge mistake and will call this off.
Instead of making the paranoid scenario that Will dreams up a reality, Sarah instead gets to her feet and offers me her hand. I’m almost light-headed and Wills offers up the idea that I’ll pass out and totally ruin the mood. But the next time I know, I’m in Sarah’s bedroom and then, I’m in Sarah’s bed and then, all at once, I’m in Sarah.
I’m bombarded with all these sensations. Hearing her moan. Caressing her body. Her hands on me. Kissing her breasts…and the feeling of being naked and being inside her.
My mind thinks back to all those romance novels I used to read late at night. At the time it was just a horny guy trying to get stiff in the horniest way possible, but now it seems more like research….Yeah, research, that’s it.
For a moment, I expect Will to make some condescending remark about that, but I suddenly can’t hear him.
I try to think back to what the heroes in those novels did. What moves did they use? Where did they kiss their lover? Where did their hands roam? But it’s a lost cause. I can’t think about words on a page. A real live girl, not some character in a novel, is lying beneath me, allowing me to have sex with her, and so that’s all I can concentrate on.
I remember enough to keep thrusting myself into her and before I know it, I’ve climaxed. I hear her groan and her whole body goes limp against the mattress.
And just like that, the euphoria of what has happened wears off and even without Will, the questions start bombarding me.
Was that too short? Did I come too quickly? Was I any good? Did I satisfy her?
Was I any good?
I’m quickly obsessed with getting an answer to that question. I’m lying beside her now, watching her breasts heave and hoping that’s not enough to make me hard again.
(One thing I learn in that instant: The idea of getting a boner in front of a woman is just as emotionally scarring even after you’ve just had sex with her.)
Was I any good?
It’s all I can do not to just blurt out the question.
Yeah, not like that will spoil the mood or anything. So even if Sarah isn’t totally offended by the question, what happens if she gets all condescending on you and gives you the whole “Well, it was your first time…you’re not supposed to be good?” I mean, there have been a lot of people who have talked to you like a retarded two-year-old but how disillusioning would it be for one of them to be your first lover.
I mean, you’d probably be so emotionally messed up that you’d never want to have sex again.
I’m not sure that lying in bed next to Sarah just moments after we’ve had sex is the right time to be having a debate with Will, but I will say that if the first time you have sex is the worst, then no matter what Sarah says to me, odds are that I’ll still want to have sex again.
Sarah rolls over towards me I feel myself stiffen a bit…okay, more than a bit because my first thought is that she’s about to roll on top of me, which will of course lead to more sex.
And even as I prepare myself for that, I still want to ask her if I was any good.
She kisses me, on the mouth. I can feel myself reaching for her, not sure what the boundaries are now. I mean, we’ve had sex but can I put my hand on her breast before I’m 100% sure that we’re about to repeat the performance.
Before anything more happens, she breaks away, smiling down at me as she raises herself up off of me.
“That was nice,” she says.
“Nice.” I decide that I can live with nice. I mean, that means I was okay, right? I mean, “nice” may not mean “the best sex of her life” but it means it was… “nice”.
There’s a part of me that wants to pull her to me, wants to unleash the floodgates of how I feel about her, about how special she is, about how long I’ve wanted her, about how much I love her.
But before I can say any of that, she rolls off me and out of bed. I watch as she walks, naked, into her bathroom, returning a few minutes later in a white cotton robe.
She looks at me and smiles. It’s not the same smile she did just a moment before. Now it’s more like the one she’d give a two-year-old who doesn’t know any better.
Oh God! Here it comes! Here comes the part where the “nice” feeling has worn off and she’s going to critique my performance. That has to be it. I mean, what else could it be?
She nods her head towards her kitchen and asks “Do you want some coffee or something to eat before you head out?”
And suddenly, it all makes sense. She’s just wanting me to vacate so she can turn in for the night and this is her subtle and gentle way of doing so. I decline the offer and start looking for my clothes.
A few minutes later, I’m standing at her apartment door. Two hours have passed since I first showed up there and found her in tears, and in those two hours, everything has changed. More than I know at this point.
We hug at her doorway, and she kisses me on the cheek. I want to say something, but I’m not sure what. In the end, Sarah says it for me.
“Thank you…for tonight. It meant a lot. I didn’t realize it before but I needed this to happen,” she says.
I nod. “Me too.” It’s not dialogue out of some Hollywood romance but it’s all I can get out. We say our goodbyes and I head home.
CHAPTER
YOU’RE DEAD AND YOU DON”T EVEN KNOW IT
There should be some warning, they way there should be some warning before all such major events in one’s life. Nothing major, mind you, just a little something that says that your ****ty life’s one bright spot, around which all your life revolves, is about to get stomped on. Maybe then, one could be prepared for it.
I don’t know what you’re whining about. Like it’s some great surprise. I told you it wouldn’t last, that it was all some huge elaborate hoax that the world was playing on you.
Damn you, Will, can’t you save the sanctimonious self-righteous babbling for another time.
Oh, don’t worry, I will. Like say, in about six hours from now.
Yeah, come back around mid-afternoon. Because this morning, nothing seems out of place. For one brief, shining moment, as the sun drifts in through my window, and I lay in bed, in that blissful stage between getting my ass out of bed and being completely asleep, I was happy.
And why the hell shouldn’t I be? I was out late with the one person in the entire world that I wanted to be with having the best time of my entire life. I wait for Will to start chiming in with his complete run-down on every mis-step I had made, every stupid, inappropriate remark I had made. But he isn’t there. Could it be that there is nothing for Will to second-guess about? Where’s the criticism, the sarcastic critique, the worries over what I should have done as opposed to what I had done?
Instead all I have is silence, and the memories of what happened the night before. And maybe the memories, those sweet, sweet memories that are just beginning to flood over me as I became fully awake are just too much for Will to handle.
Hey, do you suppose that maybe Sarah is the one doing the “sarcastic critique”? At least in terms of how you compared to Brad is several key categories?
I knew it had been too quiet. Well, screw you, Will, I didn’t exactly hear Sarah complaining last night.
And then like that, Will is gone again, as so many images and sensations hit me all at once. How she felt in my arms, how she had reacted when I began to kiss her, the weight of her body against mine. Almost instantly I’m aroused as I remember her gasping as I had entered her.
I’m playback in my head is from a weird angle. From time to time, it seems that I’m reliving last night from my own point of view but then my memory cuts to a long shot, like one you’d see from a movie. It’s almost as if I was watching someone else has sex with Sarah while I was standing in the doorway to the bedroom.
Like you’re some perverted Peeping Tom?
Do you suppose that’s some Freudian thing? Like maybe I felt like I shouldn’t actually be involved in Sarah’s sex life, even though I was the co-star? Maybe I wanted to sleep with her for so long that when I finally did, it was so incredible that it had actually happened that my mind couldn’t handle it and is forcing me to remember it as if it was just some movie I was watching.
Man, this job gets easier every minute. Now you’re second-guessing yourself for me. Keep this up and I may have to take up a hobby. Maybe I’ll learn a new language.
But I know I was there. Some parts of me (most located on the lower half of my body) remember it quite nicely. And somehow I manage to put those thoughts to the side long enough to get dressed and head out to work at a reasonable time. I mean, as good a mood as I’m in, I’m
As horrible as it would turn out to be, the day starts like any other…
Like any other? Okay, what OTHER day in your life did you wake up knowing that you had slept with the woman you had been in love with for years the night before?
Well, okay, it isn’t like any other day in THAT respect. What I mean to say was that the day looks as though it was going to play itself out in much the same way that most days do…save for yesterday, mind you.
I have another shift at the video store to get through, but somehow…at least for the first couple of hours it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be too bad. A couple of customers that would have, on any other day, might have been just subtly rude enough to bring me down. But not today! Today, even when some customer asks me, with their “You are so below me that it’s funny” tone, why I can’t just suddenly produce something we are out of stock of, I get a flashback of what has transpired the night before. Instead of some fat, ugly white trash welfare mother, I see the beautiful, calm face of Sarah as she led me into her bedroom. Instead of a sarcastic tone, I hear her soft moan as I kissed her.
Yeah, you might want to keep a lid on those those memories, else one of these broads might figure you’ve got the hots for her. I mean, do you really want to end up saddled with two or three brats that are learning how to interact with the world through watching their parents while they berate some clerk over a dollar-fifty late charge on some crappy movie they were too lazy to bring back to the store?
I don’t want any of these people. All I want is Sarah and, God willing, perhaps she’ll invite me over to her place tonight so we can pick up where we left off.
Heheheh. God, I am so giddy today. Hell, I’m so right with the world that I’m even cracking jokes with the customers. Andrea notices right away and seems genuinely happy for whatever the reason is behind my new-found mirth.
“Okay,” she says, smiling almost proudly at me, “You are way too happy for someone working retail. This isn’t because Dan isn’t in today, is it?”
I laugh. I am so happy I’m almost bursting. For a moment I almost consider telling Andrea everything that happened last night. But talking about making love…because that’s what it was, it wasn’t “getting laid” or just having sex. I made love to Sarah, my best friend, my soul mate.
GAG!
And after years of believing that there was no one out there who was interested in me, I realized that I was wrong…that everyone who had ever told me that I didn’t measure up was wrong…that WILL…Will Tracey…was wrong!
Uh, I think Andrea is still waiting for an explanation as to your sickeningly overwhelming cheeriness. (And **** you!)
I shrug, not sure at first what exactly to say since, as much as I like Andrea, I don’t really feel comfortable talking to her about my sex life, especially in the middle of the video store where the white trash of suburbia might overhear. I mean, my self-esteem may have risen a couple of notches over the past couple of days…
Along with other parts of your anatomy.
…but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that the majority of people ever saw me as anything more that a socially retarded dork who deserved their scorn…even if they were wrong and had been proven wrong by the events of the last twenty-four hours.
In the end, I decide to take Andrea’s lead and use her suggestion as my reason.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding, “It’s always a little less stressful when the boss isn’t around. You know what they say, when the cat’s away…”
“The mice will play…yeah, yeah, I gotchya.” Andrea replies, not looking totally convinced that Dan’s absence is the total reason for my good mood. To prevent further prying, I decide to change the subject.
“So, are you and Tim still going to that club you guys always hang out at?” I ask.
Feigning indignance, Andrea replies, “We don’t ALWAYS hang out there…but we’ve been there a few times.”
I notice the look on Andrea’s face as she thinks of her time with Tim. It’s one of contentment, the kind that comes from knowing you’re with someone special and they make you happy. I smile, believing that someday soon, Sarah will have that look on her face when she talks about me.
If you’d played your cards right, Andrea could be looking like that when she talks about you, instead of Tim.
I shrug off Will. I have no beef with Tim and Andrea. They make a nice couple, not as cute as Sarah and I do, but okay. And as much as I like Andrea, Sarah was always the one for me. It took a while for us to get together but here we are now.
The next couple of hours pass slowly, creeping by with time almost coming to a standstill at times. No matter what my shift at Prime Emporium, it always drags. Doesn’t matter if it’s a short shift of four hours or a full eight hour shift. One minute will seem like an hour, an hour like a lifetime…but today seems to be worse. I guess because I know what’s going to be waiting for me at the end of the day, another chance to see Sarah.
By the time I go for lunch, it seems like I should have aged ten years. As I head out the door of the video store and head towards the sub place at the other end of the strip mall, I swear I see Brad’s car, and for a moment, I’m stricken with fear.
Make sure you don’t piss yourself. That would be embarrassing.
I turn my back and keep walking, hoping that I’m wrong. I don’t know the make or model or year. My Dad could probably tell me everything there is to know simply by seeing one of the headlights. All I know that it was blue and in the dim lights of the restaurant, Brad’s car and the one I just caught a glimpse of look remarkably similar.
Ooooh….two blue cars. What are the odds? And for this you almost wet yourself?
As I say, they look similar. And the reason I’m scared is that Will, despite his less-than-playful teasing over me being scared, has managed to concoct a little scenario where Brad finds out I slept with his girlfriend, and has decided to track me down to beat the crap out of me.
I keep walking and since I have yet to feel a beefy hand on my shoulder or a fist between my shoulder blades, I must assume that, much like Will suggested, the car I just saw was NOT Brad’s car. With every unimpeded step I take, I feel a little less anxious and, thanks to Will, a little stupider for believing the scenario he dreamed up.
About five minutes later, I am heading back towards Video Emporium along the same stretch of sidewalk.
As I make my return trip, I ponder how I have been going to the same sub shop just about every day for lunch for the last few years. I always order a six-inch turkey sub. It’s my “usual” which is how the staff at the store derisively term it. I guess they figure if they make fun of me long enough for ordering the same thing, I’ll get sick of it and go someplace else. The joke’s on them because the sub store is the only place within walking distance for me to get lunch…so it’s put up with their asking if I want “the usual” or go hungry.
Not the greatest of options…but that’s par for the course for you isn’t it?
Ah Will, you had better get all your venom out now, because if this shift should, by some wild stretch of the imagination, EVER END, you will be shifted to the back burner as I race into the arms of…my lover?
I have to take a moment, pausing in mid-step, to contemplate the impact of that statement…Sarah is now my lover? I shake my head. Days ago I was convinced I was such a loser that I would never have a girlfriend…and now I have a lover? What is this world coming to?
Dude, you ****ed once! And need I remind you that you are not in the 17th century. You are not some knight, Sir Dork, returning from the Crusades to find Lady Sarah in her castle.
Will’s words, harsh as they always are, break me free of my contemplation on just what terms I can use when thinking about Sarah. I also notice, as I head towards the store, that the blue car, Brad’s or not, is no longer anywhere in sight. I guess it must have been just some moron coming by to drop off a movie.
And probably marking on his calendar a convenient time to come in and complain about it, you, or whatever else is on his mind.
As I come in the door, Andrea is just finishing up with a customer, she waves me over to the counter.
“Oh great,” I think, “she’s got some problem that, through no fault of her own, will take the rest of my break to solve.”
Instead she says, “Your friend, Sarah, was just in.”
Sarah? Here? I kick myself for heading out to lunch at the exact moment that Sarah came in to the store. I must have missed her by just seconds. Damn it!
“She said for me to give you this,” Andrea says, handing me an envelope.
I take the envelope from her and regard it for a moment. I open the envelope and notice there’s a sheet of paper in it and can see it’s a letter in Sarah’s handwriting.
Wow, my first girlfriend has just written me my first love letter.
And immediately we go from the 17th century to the fourth grade. Maybe tomorrow we can become adults in the 21st century.
It has to be in response to making love last night and therefore too steamy and private to be read on the sales floor. I head to the back office. I make sure that the door is closed tight before taking a seat at Dan’s desk. With my fingers shaking, I withdraw the letter from the envelope and begin to read it.
Before I even finish the first sentence, my stomach drops…all the better to make room for the dread that begins to fill it.
Dear Emmett,
This is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Last night, we shared something so beautiful but, alas, Fate has intervened.
About an hour ago, Brad showed up at my door. Not only did he beg forgiveness for how he had treated me but he told me that he still loved me and then asked me to marry him.
I’m sorry to tell you this, Emmett, but I never hesitated. I accepted and by the time you read this letter, I will be on my way to becoming Mrs. Brad))))))))). We are going to get married at City Hall.
This isn’t anything personal, Emmett. It’s just that Brad was all I ever wanted. I love him and he can give me a life that you never could. I want the white picket fence, and the apple pie and the golden retriever lifestyle, the way my folks and Brad’s folks had.
I know that you built me up to be some kind of perfect dream girl for you, the answer to all your problems…but you and I can never be.
I’m sorry,
Love,
Sarah.
My hands were still shaking as I finished the letter, rereading it again as much as to let the pain sink in as to try and find some little spark of hope that I had totally misread Sarah’s letter…but in the end there was nothing.
I put the letter back in the envelope…and then calmly tore it up into as many pieces as I could and threw them in the waste paper basket by the desk. Taking a deep breath, I got up from the chair and walked over into the bathroom. I shut the door behind me, made sure it was locked and turned out the light.
I had barely flipped the switch when the first blow landed.
IDIOT!
Then the next,
MORON!
And another…
Each shot is a good one, hard and from the base of the fist, just above the temple, where my greasy brown hair will cushion the blow just enough to mute any sound and won’t leave any marks that will need to be explained.
****ING DORK! WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?
I have no time for any attempt at an explanation before the next blow comes down.
YOU ****ING DORK! DID YOU REALLY THINK SHE WAS GOING TO STAY WITH YOU?
I did. I really did. Even as Will was telling me there was no way, I still wanted to believe. I wanted to believe, so badly, that I had finally made it. The days of being a hopeless loser, forever alone, were finally over. That maybe I had found a way to fit in with the rest of the human race.
Even as he pounds the hell out of me, Will is laughing at me. A maniacal laugh, the kind I used to hear all the time when I used to make a mistake in class.
YOU NEVER SHOULDA LEFT HIGH SCHOOL! YOU KNEW WHO YOU WERE THERE. IT WAS ****IN’ MCCALLUM THAT SCREWED YOU UP. MADE YOU BELIEVE YOU WERE BETTER THAN YOU WERE!
I suddenly realize that these blows, the laughter, they aren’t coming from Will alone. I can almost see them, all those people who made fun of me, who told me that I was nothing, who made me feel as worthless and pathetic as I thought I could feel.
I’m no longer standing in a darkened bathroom in the backroom at a video store. I’m back out on the playground at my old public school. And all those people, the people I went to high school with, the customers who come into the store, people who yelled at me from passing cars. Everyone. They’re all here, reveling in this, laughing and pointing.
And all the forefront is Will. This is his day. The day he knew was coming, the day he saved everything up for. It’s like he’s taken a deep breath and just fires in on me, the hits coming in quick succession, one after the other.
IDIOT! ****ING IDIOT! SHE DIDN’T WANT YOU! NOBODY WOULD ****ING WANT YOU! SHE NEVER LOVED YOU! IT WAS ALL IN YOUR HEAD!
I wince as each hit rattles my skull, but I don’t want it to stop. I know I deserve it. Will was right all along. They all were.
YOU’RE ****ING PATHETIC!
BAM!
YOU”RE A ****ING LOSER!
BAM!
YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER. YOU WERE NEVER ****ING GOOD ENOUGH!
He’s opened the floodgates and they’re all pouring in. Every demon I ever had. Every doubt, every fear, every second-guess. It’s all here. Even as I wince from Will’s blows, I can see every smirk, hear every taunt.
LOSER! GEEK! IDIOT! NERD! DORK!
Will hits me a few more times, but he’s finished with the ridicule. Now he’s just laughing at me. Laughing at just how pathetic and ridiculous I must have sounded, only a few short moments ago, believing that I had won…that I had found the person who finally looked beyond my shortcomings, who didn’t see just some ugly, stupid dork but saw the person that I always believed myself to be.
That only makes Will hit me a few more times and laugh all the louder.
YOU ****ING IDIOT! All she saw was the big nose and the big ears and the bad teeth. You really thought you could measure up to Brad. All she wanted was someone who could give her the ****in’ white picket fence lifestyle…
I would have broken my back to…
IT DOESN’T ****IN’ MATTER! COME ON….
BAM!
Did you really expect her to go home and and say “Hey Mom and Dad, I broke up with that good-looking guy with the decent job but now I’m gonna date this dork who works at a video store?” DID YOU REALLY??? DID YOU???
Will lands a couple of quick blows, as if he’s expecting me to answer this one. And the sad truth of the matter was that I did. I figured that if she just let me show her how much I loved her…and how much I was willing to sacrifice just to be with her and what I was willing to do to make sure she always knew how much I cared about her.
And now, I’d never get the chance to say or do any of those things. And in a matter of a few paragraphs, my soul had been torn out of me, the most important thing in my life, the centre of my world, was gone.
The demons were quiet now, resting on their laurels. If those people could see me now, they would probably smile and feel better about themselves. After all, that’s all I was good for, an easy target for some self-satisfying abuse. On the same token, none of them seemed to be leaving, they were all waiting to see what happened next.
And in the end, I saw the future through Will’s eyes. The future that he had been warning me about all along, or at least trying to. The future that every ****in’ asshole who knew me in high school could see coming a mile away. I saw the end of the road that I was on, and it was all just a matter of how long it was going to take me to get there.
And at the same time, I saw the other roads that other people would be taking. I saw Andrea and Pete, together, having finally found each other. I saw them at dance clubs, partying the night away, forever young and living for the moment. I saw Dan, growing ever fatter, still screwing Jessica or whatever other blonde fluzzy swung her perfect, tight ass in the door and was willing to go down on him.
And I saw Sarah and Brad. They’d have the proper wedding some months, maybe even years from now, and somehow I’d end up with a photograph of the Happy Couple. And I’d have to look at it and see look beautiful and happy she looked, in the most perfect wedding dress ever created. And he’d be standing next to her, some ****-eating grin on his face, smirking at the camera, all but saying “that’s right, dork. I treated her like **** and I got her! You were willing to change your whole world to be with her and you ended up alone! Deal with it!”
And after the wedding, they’d go back to their two story bungalow in upper middle-class suburbia, car-pooling to work, raising their 2.5 kids and their golden retriever. Bar-b-quing in the backyard on long weekends with the neighbours and the in-laws and the PT-****ing-A!
And then I saw where I’d be. In my mid-30s, still living with my parents, still working at the video store. Hell, by then maybe Dan’d give up his dream of making me quit and promote me to the lofty goal of Assistant Manager, so he could dump all the stuff he was too lazy to do unto me. And I could work twelve hours ….or fourteen or fifteen or twenty-hour days to cover all the people who didn’t feel like showing up for their shifts. And I could see the employees, these eighteen, nineteen year old kids just in from high school for a part-time job over the summers or until college started, could laugh in my face and tell me, maybe even in so many words, to go to hell with even thinking of telling them what to do.
Eventually I’d become a local legend of sorts, an attraction if you will. GO to the video store and see the biggest loser on God’s green earth. Maybe Dan could pick up a few extra bucks, selling tickets, like a ****ing carnival. I’d become a cautionary tale: “Eat your string beans, Bobby, or you’ll end up like that Dork at the Video Store!”
And maybe in time Sarah would contact me, want to put the past behind us, become friends again. And she would call me, send me e-mails about the camping trip that she and Brad went on, she could tell me that she was pregnant, that Brad was off taking little Timmy or Beth to their first day of Kindergarten, or how they went here or there for their anniversary.
Eventually, after enough time had passed and when she figured I was “over all this”, maybe she’d get enough guts up and we’d meet at a restaurant, somewhere safe where she figured I wouldn’t make a scene and we’d talk. You know, she could explain to me why she did what she did. Why she chose him over me.
Yeah, and you know what, no matter what she said, no matter what excuses or reasoning she used, no matter how gently she talked to me, it would still kill me. No matter how long it had been, no matter how much I had attempted to heal my wounds, all this feeling, this sick, gut-wrenching would come flooding back to me. Every phone call, every e-mail would just reopen the wounds.
I’d become pathetic, looking for some hidden meaning to her words. Expecting that every sentence was a secret cry for help. That her talking about some event in her life was code for “he’s gone back to his *ssh*le ways”. I’d be waiting for them to get divorced. I’d waste my life away, living from e-mail to e-mail, waiting for that one call, the one call where she’d be in tears, saying everything had gone wrong and that she wanted to see me, that she wanted to be with me. I’d run to her, drop everything and she’d collapse into my arms, begging for my forgiveness.
And I would, I would forgive her. And until that day came, I would continue to live in hope. That one day, Brad would **** up and she would leave him and we could be t…
STOP!
For a moment, I think that’s Will that has screamed that through my head, interrupting the vision I had of a possible last minute reprieve for me. But it’s not Will, it’s me. It’s about this time that I notice that Will isn’t saying anything. He no longer needs to. At long last, after so many years of listening to him tell me what the score was, and wanting to believe he was wrong, I finally clued in.
For a moment I wonder if the horror of what has transpired over the last few minutes has wiped Will from me forever. Perhaps Will has completed his teachings and has moved on, like some wise guru. Perhaps in losing Sarah, I now have come to understand that Will, and everyone else, was right all along.
But Will is still here and I sense him and I sense he has one more duty to fulfill. And I suddenly realize that Will has known that this day would come since the moment he came to me all those years ago.
Come on, Emmett. We have to take a walk for this one.
For a moment, I’m startled. Will has called me many names over the years: Dork, Geek, Nerd, **** Up and countless others, but never Emmett. This is a first.
Even I know the trek I have to take with him, and after everything, all the years of being told that every word out of my mouth is wrong, every though I have had is wrong, every thing I did was the wrong thing, and after all the strength I put into fighting the way things were, I have no strength left to fight him. Sarah’s letter was the last straw. I realized that I had been fighting a war that I was never supposed to win. I was struggling against a current towards a destination that I would never be allowed to reach.
And suddenly I’m so tired. More tired and exhausted than I ever have been before. And so damned tired that I have no fight left in me. Whatever direction Will wants to lead me, I’ll go. Whatever place these demons want to take me, I’m there.
I leave the washroom. I leave the backroom. As I pass Andrea, she looks at me startled, like she wonders what happened to the happy-go-lucky guy that was just here a few short minutes ago.
“I’m going for a walk,” I tell her and wave to her. I wave goodbye to her.
I don’t look up as I leave the video store. I don’t care what the weather is like, although the day was sunny when I woke up this morning. I’m sure of it. Hell, when I went up to the sub store ten, fifteen minutes ago, it was sunny.
It’s raining now. A cold bitter rain that seems to drench me instantly. My body temprature seems to drop tenfold with every miserable step I take.
I can hear people laughing at me from their warm, dry cars as I walk down the street. I’m not completely sure that they’re laughing because of the pathetic, drenched site I must be.
**** you, ya ****ing moron. They’re laughing at you cause you’re a ****ing pathetic drenched geek who just got his heart broken because you took a stupid, hundred to one shot on a deal you never had a chance at and just ruined your relationship with your best friend!
I knew Will would be here, waiting to swoop in for the kill. I can practically feel the venom he’s spitting at me.
And for once, I know he’s right.
Scratch that…I’ve always known that he’s always been right. All the times he told me, point-blank, how I should forget even attempting to turning my friendship with Sarah into something more, he was right.
I was pathetic. A **** up. A loser. I was everything that everyone had ever said about me. The people I went to high school with. The customers at the video store. Even people who I passed on the street, who took one look at me and decided I was just a ****ing geek. The ones who yelled things at me from car windows as they went by, just to get a laugh from their friends.
Any one of them would have told me I had no shot at winning Sarah over. And they would have been right.
And Will was right.
I stood there, in the pouring rain, scared ****less that Sarah might drive by and see me, take pity on me and offer me a ride home. Thankfully, a minute or two passed by and that one final degredation never came.
And so there I stood, prepping myself for Will’s next onslaught of verbal and mental abuse, almost wincing as I waited for the backlash of what had to be the most disasterous outcome that I could have imagined.
It never came. Instead Will’s voice was soft and calm although still like that of a grade school teacher speaking to a slow student who was upset at his failing grade on a relatively easy test. I guess maybe that’s where I’d heard it before.
You’re doing a pretty good job of beating yourself up. You don’t need my help anymore Hell when it comes right down to it, I’m a pretty lazy mother****er so why expend the energy on something I can let you handle.
And then he added,
Why don’t we go for a walk?
On some level, I guess I had always known, ever since Will had made his prescence known to me, that eventually, he’d lead me on this walk. There had been times, earlier on, when I had actually wondered when he would ask me to go for a walk with him. There were even times when I wanted to do it and it had been Will who had made fun of me for asking, calling me stupid and weak for letting the world get to me. For letting some stupid incident at work or even with my personal life get me all upset.
And so, I had never taken this walk with him. For a moment, I thought of asking him why this was different, why Sarah’s rejection had meant so much. Why her off-hand, even flippant comments about how outlandish any thought of her and I becoming a couple was had shattered me so much.
Because you set this up to mean so much. You built your whole life around this one girl’s opinion of you. You couldn’t see any future that didn’t involve you two being together. No matter what I told you, no matter what proof Sarah provided me with that she wasn’t interested, you just wouldn’t listen, couldn’t see the truth I was putting right before you. Now that you know that the future you had planned out can never be, you’ve become incapable of seeing any future at all.
Will’s voice hadn’t changed from the calmness that it had shown only a moment before. It didn’t take on the screeching, angry tone that I had come to expect. If anything, he sounded sad, frustrated, like that of a teacher who has finally been forced to give up on a slow student who, despite all of the teaching provided, has still failed to improve, has regressed.
For once, after all these years, I think Will had to admit defeat. He had fought a grave battle to keep me from getting hurt by Sarah, by the world as a whole, and was now surrendering.
When Sarah had turned on me in that coffee shop, everything Will had always tried to tell me had finally sunk in. All these years, whenever I had heard his voice in my head, I had just assumed that it was part of my damaged psyche, battered and bruised by years of being told what a piece of crap I was, first by the people I went to high school with and then by countless, endless lines of customers so quick to jump on every little idiosyncracy, no matter how insignificant.
I always told myself that things couldn’t possibly be as bad as Will made them out to be. The things people did or said to me must have been misconstrued by the paranoia that Will tried to inflict upon me, they couldn’t have possibly meant them in the mean and hurtful manner in which Will interpreted them.
And yet now, as I tried to put as much physical distance between myself and the coffee shop as humanly possible, it all made sense. Everything that Will had said about himself was true. He was simply showing me the way the rest of the world say me, and I just didn’t want to admit it. But I realized now that I was not worth anything more than what Will had made me out to be.
Only, I came to realize, it wasn’t Will that had put me into that slot, it was everyone else. Everyone in my life had tossed me aside from the first moment they could. The people in high school, they’d declared me a non-entity almost from the moment I’d walked in the door, the people I knew in college forgot I existed ten minutes after the graduation ceremonies and hell, the customers at the store so didn’t want to know of my existence, they got pissed off when they had to acknowledge me at all.
And then there was Sarah…Try as I might, I couldn’t hate her. To her, I had just been some guy she knew in college and for whom, she didn’t have the heart to tell me to go to hell until I forced her into a corner.
But, like Will had told me and, like so many things, he had been right once again about, she had just been like everyone else. I wanted to kick myself for opening up to her on so many occasions, telling her things that I had never told anyone and that I wish I could still say that I had never told anyone.
The rain refused to let up but I didn’t care. All I could think of was how many times I had put myself out for her, gone the extra mile to remain friends with her…and the entire time she had simply wanted me to leave her alone and let her live her life in peace.
Will had been trying to tell me that the entire time, and so for all the effort I had made, I was
Come on, we haven’t got much time.
Just for a moment, Will became stern once more, like a parent hurrying a child along. And so I began to walk. Off in the distance, I could see the Number 42 Crosstown bus coming along Victoria Street. It had just dropped someone off and was beginning to pick up speed.
Another hundred yards out to do it. Just far enough from the next stop so it doesn’t start to slow down yet.
I broke into a jog, a short sprint, just until I was where Will figured would be a good spot. Then I slowed down, walked a few paces, back and forth along the edge of the roadway.
I couldn’t see Will but it was almost as if I could feel him nodding. Yeah, this should be a good place as any.
Don’t make eye contact. Don’t give the driver any indication you want him to pick you up. As far as he’s concerned, you’re just some guy walking down the street and stopping for a second.
For the second time in an hour, a knot formed in my stomach. My breathing began to speed up, my heart rate: dido. I could feel the sweat pouring down from my armpits.
Just play it cool. It’s not a hard thing to do.
I nodded. If anyone could see me they’d probably have thought I was crazy. A crazy geek. Well, like I gave a **** anymore.
The bus was a half a block away.
Gotta time it just right. Not yet. Give it another couple of seconds.
It was going at a good speed. Probably better for everyone in the long run. This whole thing, right?
Damn right. ****in’ right. I mean, really, who’s gonna care? This ain’t no “It’s A Wonderful Life”. No difference in the world one way or the other. Come on, it’s time.
Yeah, it’s time, and so I just start walking. It’s simple really, just put one foot in front of the other. Look across the street. I catch sight of a tree, a little sapling, really. And I just keep my eye on it as I walk, don’t look at the bus, or the driver or the passengers. Nah, this was no Wonderful Life, Will was right. It was a pretty ****ty life.
One foot in front of the other, just stare at the tree.
Who’s gonna care? I mean, Bob at work might have to scramble around to cover my shift tomorrow. Hell, maybe he’ll have to work a double shift himself. It’d look good on him. The customers? Hell, who will they berate into submission to get out of their late charges.
By now, the driver has to have figured out what I’m up to, right? Maybe he sees I’m just some geek and he figures he’s not hurting nothing by ridding the world of one more loser like me. Maybe he gets a bit of conscious and applies a bit of pressure to the breaks at the last second, so he can look at himself in the mirror tomorrow.
“I tried to stop but it was too late!”
Sarah?
One foot in front of the other. Just stare at the tree.
By now, I can hear the bus’s tires squeal. I guess the driver’s conscience got the better of him. I can feel it’s shadow fall across me. Another split second and I’ll feel the impact. I wonder if Will’s still back on the sidewalk, watching. He must be. I haven’t heard from him in a while.
Unless the voice that’s telling me about one foot in front of the other is his. I keep seeing Sarah, not the Sarah from today, but the Sarah from college. The idea of Sarah that I fell in love with, even without really knowing it. And the voice keeps telling me to keep walking. Like I could stop this from happening now, even if I wanted to.
And I don’t want to…do I?
I wonder if Sarah will grieve when she hears the news. I wonder if she’ll come to the funeral. I wonder if she’ll take a moment and wonder if she had anything to do with this. If she’ll ask herself, in some grief-induced stupor, what might have been if only she had agreed to go out with me. Might I still be alive?
I wonder if word might filter back to those people I knew in college. If they’ll see my obituary in the paper and remember me, or if they’ll pause for a moment, wonder why that name sounds so darned familiar for a second, and then turn the page and check out how the Blue Jays did against the Red Sox, or see if the weather is going to be nice this weekend when they take the kids fishing, or read about how their stocks are doing.
I suppose that one of the diminished few who show up at the funeral will say something along the lines of “they say he never knew what hit him” but they’ll be wrong. I knew damn well what hit me.
I just didn’t care.
THE END
Started – July 1st, 2003
1st draft – finished April 12, 2008 2008
johnmilner.ca 