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My heart soars at his words. “Me too,” I whisper back, not wanting to break the spell of this moment. We start to bring our lips together when there’s a loud noise. At first, I think it’s someone knocking on our front door. Then I realized it was a door slamming, our front door to be exact. Then I hear the yelling. It doesn’t matter that there’s a wall between us, I would recognize that voice anywhere. It’s Justin, Meg’s now infamous ex-boyfriend and I can’t imagine a reason why he would be in our apartment and yelling. Brad and I are both quiet and listening as we eye each other. Brad and Justin are in the same fraternity, but we’ve never brought up the subject of Meg and Justin’s breakup in our conversations.
Brad finally whispers after we’ve listened to them shout at each other for at least a good three minutes. “If we can hear them, do you think they can hear us?”
“Positive. These walls are paper thin.”
His skin turns a light pink and if I’m not mistaken, I think he’s blushing. “What’s the matter?”
“Do you think she heard us hooking up?”
Hooking up? My mind instantly latches onto that phrase. Who cares if she heard us making out and heavy petting.A hook-up?Is that what this is to him? Is that whatI amto him? I throw my leg off of him and sit up on the edge of the bed. I can’t have this conversation with him while straddling him. “What do you meanhooking up?”
The always sure of himself Brad Matthews looks fucking startled. I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach now. It’s that look on his face that gives me enough strength to really say how I’m feeling and thinking. “Is that what this is to you? A hook-up?Is it not more? I thought we were becoming something more. I really like you, Brad. I’ve liked you for months.”
He looks at me and his eyes soften and I think everything is going to right itself. “Nikki, come on. I do like you. You know that.”
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding in.
“It’s just… it’s just that it’s senior year and I don’t know where I’m going to be next year. I have no clue what I’m doing or where I’m going and I want this year to have no commitments. I already have a lot to worry about in the spring.”
And that’s when the proverbial shoe drops. He likes me but he wants no commitments. No strings of attachment. That this in fact is just what he called it: a hook-up. So, what has all of this been? A long con to get me to sleep with him? To scratch an itch? I don’t know what it is, but I see red. I knowthatfor a fact.
I get up off the bed and walk to my bedroom door. I fling it open, not caring that it hits the wall behind it making a very loud noise and probably a doorknob hole in the wall to match. The arguing in the living room cuts off as if they’ve been muted by a remote. It pains me to look at Brad but I turn back and look at him now sitting on the edge of the bed. “I think you should leave.”
His lips are pursed together and I can tell that he’s upset but so am I. He came here for a hook-up when I thought we were going to be more. I thought if anything he’d be leaving here tonight with a second date planned and we would be on our way to being a couple. Now he’s standing in my bedroom giving me this look like he can’t understand why I’m upset.
He lowers his voice like that could stop Meg and Justin from hearing him. “Nikki come on, don’t be like this. I do really like you. I just want to be honest about my time.”
The burn gets worse in my chest. Time. Like I have mountains of it. “I literally have to be up in just a few hours to twirl infront of thirty-five thousand people who are going to watch and critique and criticize every single thing about me and my movements tomorrow. Yet, I chose to stay up late to spend time with you.” I pause to take a deep breath and try to calm myself down because the last thing I wanted to do tonight was to yell or get upset. “I also had practice tonight that I rushed immediately home from so I could make sure to get ready and look nice for this date. I just always thought that when youreallylike someone, you make time for them.”
And with that, I walk out of my own bedroom, down the hall, and into the living room where I am met by Justin and Meg staring at me with open mouths as I walk past them to open the front door. I stand there in my fluffy, green socks waiting for Brad to follow my lead. He comes into the living room and sees everyone standing there, the pink on his cheeks deepens to an embarrassed red.Good. He stops in front of me at the door and bends down to scoop up his tennis shoes.
“Will you please come outside and talk to me in private? Just for a minute.”
I try to read his facial expression, but I can’t. We’ve spent so much time talking on the phone and over online messages and text that I don’t know his facial expressions well enough to read him. I try to be fair and think that his intentions have been pure, so I nod my head in agreement. I look back into the apartment as I shut the door behind us for a semblance of privacy. Meg and Justin haven’t moved but their mouths are closed now.
When the door closes behind me I take the two steps out onto the walkway and lean my arms onto the balcony railing that we share with the other apartments on the third floor. We are both silent for a moment, my anger begins to simmer down, being replaced with hurt and rejection. I’m really trying to be inthe moment and hear what he has to say to me but a part of me doesn’t understand how I misread our relationship throughout the spring and all summer long.
“Nikki, please look at me.”
I stare out into the dark looking at the cars in the parking lot below. It’s the softness in his voice that causes me to turn my head and look at him.
“I’m really sorry that what I said upset you. I like you, I really do and I have for a while as I’ve gotten to know you. I’m just not in a rush to get in a relationship.”
We’ve been doing this dance for months. Rushing it is a serious understatement. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m tired, my emotions are all over the place but I say the one thing that I know will upset him. Maybe it’ll upset him enough to light a fire under his ass. “That’s fine but I have other options and if you don’t want to be in a relationship with me then ok.”
The remorseful look on his face instantly erases and it’s replaced with a look that I know will haunt me. He looks upset but in theyou just crushed my hearttype of way. He looks down at the cement under our feet and when he looks back up at me and meets my eye, I know I’m not going to like what he has to say. “Well if you have so many other options then what am I even doing here.”
And with that he walks away from me without a backward glance.
DANGER WILL ROBINSON!
September 24, 2005
It’s been one long, excruciating month since Brad and I last spoke. No calls. No text. No online messages. Even though I stalk his status icon on AOL all hours of the day. It’s as if I can still hear our final nasty words that we hurled at each other echoing over and over again. When I’m not at practice, or involved in sorority functions, I’ve been drowning my sorrows with anyone who will listen. I always lose them when I tell them what I said to him on that now infamous night.Every. Single. Personcan’t believe I said what I said to him and that includes Meg and Lola. Lola said that if a guy ever told her that he had other options she’d knee him in the balls and never speak to him again. So I guess that’s something. He didn’t knee me in my vagina.
When I went back into the apartment that night, Meg promptly kicked Justin out and slammed the door in his face. It took several days to find out why he was even there. I walked around in a fog. The game that next day was horrible. It took everything I had to plaster on my fake smile and perform for the crowd. I wasn’t going to let anyone know I was crying on theinside, especially not Brad, who I was sure was in the audience. Then come Monday, I had to go to class. I was the first to arrive and I sat in my normal seat. When he walked in he didn’t even glance at me in the back row. He walked to the front of the room and sat down in the front row.
It’s been the same every day since for each of our classes that we have together. To make matters worse, he’s been nominated for Homecoming King, and in the sick world of karma, I now get to see his photo plastered all over campus on all of his campaign posters. I go to get a sandwich in the student center and what do I see on the register? Vote for Brad Matthews! Walk to the practice courts in the afternoon, on the entrance doors a big poster: Vote for Brad Matthews! Close the door in the bathroom stall, Vote for Brad Matthews! I can’t escape it.
