Following My Toes (18 page)

“Hello?” he persisted.

I had witnesses, so I couldn’t chicken out now, even though my instincts were telling me to. I tried to disguise my discomfort with forced gaiety.

“Peter, hi! It’s Faith. How are you?”

“Faith?”

“Yes Peter, it’s me. How have you been?”

“Uh, I’ve been fine.”

“And Lacey? How is she doing? Are the two of you still together?”

“Lacey’s fine.”

“So are the two of you still together?” I hated myself for asking, hated myself more for asking twice, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to know.

There was a pause, and then Peter took on his own tone of bra-vado. “Actually, I’m surprised that you haven’t heard.”

“Haven’t heard what?” The room was spiraling, but I remained entirely still. Could it be they had broken up?

“Lacey and I became engaged last month.”

“WHAT?!!” I yelled loud enough for every person in the bar to hear, and there was a moment of silence as all conversation surrounding me ceased, and every head turned in my direction. I barely noticed. “You’re engaged? You’ve only been together for a couple of months. How could you?”

“I.... I love her, Faith.”

“Yeah, well you said you loved me. Was that a lie? Huh? We were together for two years and you never saw fit to propose to me, not even once! When we broke up you said you weren’t marriage mate-rial. And you run off with my best friend and get engaged after two months! How could you? How could you do that to me?”

“Faith, I’m sorry if I hurt you, I am. You’ve got to know that was never my intention. But understand this. Lacey and me getting engaged, it has nothing to do with you. We both just want to be happy.”

I broke out in a cold sweat. My stomach was firing out warning signs that it had had enough, and I felt like I wanted to die. All I could think was, “Now it really is over.”

“I hate you Peter. And you need to know this; I have never said that to somebody and meant it, never until now. I hope you and Lacey have a miserable life together. Goodbye.” I hung up the phone and stumbled to the bathroom. Thankfully I was able to control myself until I got there. After that the evening became a haze of pain, puke, and tears.

Chapter 13

I don’t remember a lot about getting home, but I was later told by Missy and Margaret that they practically had to carry me out to the car. After a while I passed out. I woke up several hours later in my own bed, grateful to find that someone had the foresight to place a bucket by my side.

In the early morning I was lying in bed, somewhere in between sleep and consciousness, when a memory passed over me so vividly it was as if I was reliving it.

* * *

Remember a Thursday night, senior year of high school, two weeks before prom. The phone rings. You pick it up and all you hear is crying from the other end of the line.

“Did you know?” she wails. “Tell me you didn’t, because if you did, you would have told me.”

“What are you talking about?” You say. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She gulps down some air. “Trey has been dating Amanda Robbinsdale behind my back for the last two weeks!” Her crying resumes. “Promise me you knew nothing about it!”

You honestly don’t, which is a shock. Your high school is small, and word gets around so efficiently that every student’s life is an open book. She has no reason not to assume you would know about Trey and Amanda. You look down at your American History textbook. Right before she called you were trying to memorize the important dates and events from World War Two. Now they seem as utterly unimportant and far away as the idea of one day setting up a retirement fund.

You close your book and move from your desk chair to your bed. Trey had seemed like a nice, John Cusak type of guy, and she was so into him. You try to soothe her with your words. “Of course I didn’t know. I would have told you if I did. Are you sure it’s true? I have a hard time believing it.”

“Oh, you can believe it. Trey told me himself. He wants to break up, and he and Amanda are going to the prom together!”

“I am so sorry.” With the prom approaching so fast, this, in your minds, is a tragedy of epic proportions. At seventeen you have no perspective, no knowledge of what the world will someday hold.

“What am I going to do? I’ve got to get him back. I can’t let him go to the prom with Amanda.”

“Well, what did you say when he told you? Did you try and convince him not to?”

“Yes, but it didn’t work. He said he likes her better. I don’t get it. What’s wrong with me? I thought he loved me. Otherwise I would never have, well, you know.”

You do know. She had lost her virginity to Trey about a month before, and it was a huge deal, especially because she had been raised a Catholic. But she had decided she was in love with Trey, had even convinced herself she would someday marry him. That was how she justified her actions. “And you’ll be my maid of honor,” she said when she told you the whole story after the fact.

You had gone along with her delusion, even though you suspected it was one at the time. But now you no longer can. Sometimes the toughest part of being a best friend is the need to be honest. “I don’t think you should try and get Trey back,” you say.

Instantly her voice turns to granite. “What! Are you kidding? Of course I should. He’s my soul-mate. Don’t you get that?”

You fear your next statement will cause her to direct all the anger she feels towards Trey onto you, but you forge on nonetheless. “If he was your soul-mate, I don’t think he’d be doing this to you.”

“What do you know? You’ve never even been in an intimate relationship. You’ve never even had a boyfriend for more than a couple of weeks. Love isn’t always perfect, and neither are the people we love.”

Ouch. Leave it to her to shamefully remind you of your lack of experience, i.e., of your virginity. She is a woman of the world, and you aren’t. How could you possibly presume to give her advice?

“Look, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m still going to tell you what I think. There are other guys out there for you, and maybe you’ll have to go through a few of them before you find ‘the one.’ But you’re pretty, and fun, and you’re a great person. What guy in his right mind wouldn’t want you? Someday you’ll meet the guy you are going to marry, and I’ll bet you’ll just know. And everything will fall into place, and you won’t believe you ever even considered marrying Trey.”

There is a pause on the other end of the line, while she blows her nose and wiped away more tears. Then in a trembling voice, she asks, “And when that happens, will you still be my maid of honor?”

You can feel your own tears starting to form. “Of course. I can’t imagine it any other way.”

* * *

I forced myself back to reality, back to a time when the unimaginable had come true. Had Lacey known when she first met Peter he was the one? How long had Peter harbored feelings for Lacey without my knowing it? I used to pride myself on my perception, so how had things gone so wrong?

My head was pounding, and my throat was as dry as cotton. I wanted to get up and have a drink of water, but I was afraid moving around would be too painful to make it worth it. I decided it was better to let myself die a slow and painful death from dehydration when there was a knock at the door. Neither Margaret nor Missy answered it, so I had to assume they weren’t home. I stumbled to answer the door after the second round of knocking, and opened it to find an increasingly familiar and friendly face.

“Hi,” Bill said. “Sorry if I woke you up, but I thought you might need your purse, and I didn’t want to leave it outside your door.” He held it up, the contents of which included my wallet and my keys, plus my favorite lipstick. Not a good idea to lose that.

“Wow, I had no idea I’d even lost this. You’ve come to my rescue again, Bill. Thanks so much.”

“You look like you had a bad night last night.”

“Yeah, I had a few too many. I don’t remember much about get-ting home.” I took my purse from him, thankful to have it back. “So where did you find this?”

“In the entryway. I hope you don’t mind, but I looked inside to see whose it was.”

“Of course I don’t mind, I’m very grateful.” As I said this I noticed he wasn’t looking at my face, but at my chest. I looked down at my-self and discovered why. I still had on my outfit from last night, but my puke-encrusted top was undone nearly down to my bellybutton, revealing a lacey bra underneath. I grabbed my shirt closed, while feeling the blush spread across my cheeks.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to...”

“That’s okay, Bill. It’s my fault.” Pause. Neither of us had anything more to say, yet we both still stood there. “Look, I would invite you in, but I need to wash up.”

“That’s okay, I need to get going.” He turned to leave, then thought better of it. “Oh, and I don’t know if you noticed, but somebody left something for you outside your door.”

“Huh?” I looked, and lying on the floor by Bill’s foot was a cheap rain poncho that looked like it came from a drug store. Attached to it was a note.

This should protect you from the storms that are approaching.

How ominous! It was the type of simple metaphor I tried (without much success) to get my students to understand. But at that moment, I was too hung over to care. Then something occurred to me. Bill was starting to walk away, but I yelled out to him.

“Hey, Bill!” He stopped and turned around. “When we first met, you said something about Missy. What did you mean?”

He ran his fingers through his thinning hair, his mouth frowning in confusion. “I said something about Missy? What did I say?”

“You said ‘good luck’ when I told you I was her roommate. But the way you said it made me wonder what you meant.”

With a smirk, he approached, making the distance between us so small he could speak softly. “I meant, well, she can be a handful. But I’m sure with you she will be fine.”

“But why do you say that? Do you even know her?”

“No, not really. I used to be friends with the old manager here, and he used to tell me stories about how demanding she is. And one time I was hanging out at his apartment, and she came by and started cursing him out because her toilet needed fixing. I thought I was going to have to call the police or something, that’s how intense things became.” He looked over his shoulder, careful no one could overhear him. “Be careful, that’s all. Don’t make her mad. And if she gives you any trouble, let me know. I’m right down the hall.” He patted my shoulder with a brotherly type gesture. “Have you tried tomato juice and vanilla ice cream?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Tomato juice and vanilla ice cream. Perfect for hangovers.” He walked away again, this time for good. “Take care, Faith,” he called over his shoulder.

“Thanks again for my purse.” I yelled back to him. He was by now nearly at the end of the hall. He raised his arm in a goodbye gesture, then turned the corner and was out of sight. With my purse in one hand and my new rain poncho in the other, I went back inside my apartment and looked in the freezer. I didn’t think we had any tomato juice, but vanilla ice cream would hit the spot.

There wasn’t any vanilla, but there was some chocolate-chip cookie dough, which I decided was close enough. I wedged the con-tainer out from under the frozen chicken breasts, grabbed a spoon, and dug in. As I stood in the kitchen eating, details of my evening out came rushing back to me, and I struggled to decide if it would be better to kill myself now, or give myself a few hours to put my affairs in order.

My head and my rear end were competing with each other to cause me the most grief. I made a fool of myself twice in one evening with my ill-advised phone calls, and I didn’t even want to think of what the ramifications would be. My professional life was non-existent, and I wished I never had a personal life to begin with. And, to top it off, somebody was stalking either me, or my phone-sex operator/stripper roommate. I cursed the day I decided to move down here.

The cold, sweet ice cream did taste good though. At least I still had the pleasures of food left; that was something. I found my donut pillow and sat down to consider my options. Moving back was now impossible. I needed to be far, far away from Peter and Lacey, and from the memories attached to them. But what was I going to do here? Missy was right, I had no life, and any life I did have I quickly destroyed.

Thomas walked into the room, jumped up on my lap, and instantly started purring. I gingerly put down the ice cream so I could pet him. Here was somebody who loved me, despite my flaws and my missteps; he didn’t even care if I was still wearing clothes I had thrown up on. Maybe that was the answer. I would become one of those reclusive fat women who had a lot of cats. Nobody could ever hurt me because I wouldn’t get close enough to let them, and I could eat whatever I wanted because I no longer needed to impress anyone.

The phone rang, and my stomach fell. I was afraid to answer it, for it could be any number of people calling to give me a hard time. Or it could be the stalker. Or, it could be Ethan’s aunt, calling about that job interview; on the off chance that Ethan hadn’t yet called to tell her I am certifiably insane.