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He eventually yielded, and we got back together just in time to leave for college.
And then the fun really started.
He played passive-aggressive mind games every time I left his sight. “Don’t cheat on me while I’m in the bathroom.” “Don’t kiss any strangers on your way across campus.”
I accepted it at first. A masochistic form of self-punishment. I told myself I deserved it.
And then he crossed the line one Friday night when he was drunk at a party and called me the C-word at the top of his voice in front of crowd of, oh, fifty or so people.
Yeah. That was a wake-up call.
A Damascus Road conversion, if you will.
In front of that very same crowd, I told him to go fuck himself, and that I didn’t want to be with him anymore.
This time, he didn’t call and text and whine and beg.
No, he systematically poisoned all his friends against me.
People who had become my friends by default.
Which basically meant half the undergraduate journalism school thought I was a horrible slut who cheated on a really good guy… and I lost my entire social circle in one weekend.
It was a really, really shitty way to spend my first year at a new school.
I thought about transferring. Hell, I thought about going back to UGA… about going back to Derek…
But I’d never heard from him.
I mean, that was at least as much my fault as his. I had Ryan’s cell number; I could have contacted him and found out if Derek still wanted me back.
Unfortunately… I followed their band’s Facebook page.
In the seven months since I’d left, Inward Spiral blew up – at least as a cover band.
Which meant a lot of frat parties.
And apparently some gigs at the 40 Watt and the Georgia Theater.
There was picture after picture of show after show…
…and gorgeous girl after gorgeous girl hanging all over Derek.
Which made me want to cry and vomit and kill him, all at the same time.
Each one of those pictures actually hurt worse than my break-up with Kevin.
Derek had obviously moved on… and there was no way in hell I was ever going to contact him now.
I stopped going on the band’s Facebook page. It was just a little too much like ramming a needle into my heart, over and over again.
But eventually my wounds healed. I compartmentalized those two weeks with Derek, and turned them into a beautiful memory… nothing more.
And I began to realize all the petty little ways Kevin had controlled me. Worse, I began to realize that I had let myself be controlled. And manipulated. My self-pity and sadness curdled into anger, and that anger reignited my famous stubbornness, which made me say, Leave this place just because my ex-boyfriend is a petty asshole? FUCK THAT SHIT.
And I moved on.
I made new friends outside the Journalism school. I got involved in intramural volleyball. And I met a guy in junior year who I ended up dating until the end of school.
The relationship was fine. He was nice and sweet and giving… but he wasn’t the One. By now I was a little more self-aware and knew not to drag things out, so I tried to have a gentle talk about how we had had a great time together, and would always be friends, but after graduation it might be best if we went our separate ways.
He called me a bitch, got in his car, and drove away. Never heard from him again.
Funny, I didn’t feel anything other than a little sad.
Same with Kevin. I was ten times more angry than hurt.
Both breakups were nothing compared to the first time I heard Derek’s new band on the radio.
76
It was the summer before my senior year. I was driving around Savannah doing some errands before heading back to school, listening to the local top 40 radio station, when a Bruno Mars song finished and the cheesy-ass announcer came on.
“You’re gonna be hearing big things out of this next band, a rock group out of Athens, Georgia named Bigger. Bigger what, you might ask?” he asked with a suggestive smirk in his voice. “You be the judge… but I think they’ll be bigger stars than anybody out there, if their first single is any indication – it’s Bigger, with ‘Girl, Please Stay’!”
The guitar intro was really good – a beautiful melody expertly played.
For some reason, even though the songs didn’t sound anything alike, I thought of “Under The Bridge” and a day, long ago, spent in a basement singing along to Katie Perry and Beatles songs.
And then, like a ghost appearing in the seat next to me, Derek’s voice – sexy, deep, seductive – filled the car.
I met a girl who turned my head
She took me home one night
But when I looked, saw you instead,
My heart gave up the fight
Every moment before we met
Was time I spent in vain;
