Misunderstandings (10 page)

Present Day
2:41
PM

“This is seriously getting ridiculous,” I ranted, stomping my foot in frustration. We were past hour three of being stuck and I was regretting my decision to not use the restroom when I had the chance. Of course, if I had taken the few extra minutes to go to the bathroom, I wouldn’t be stuck on the elevator from hell. That’s the thing with hindsight. You had no way of changing anything. It was just a way of highlighting your mistakes and getting pissed off about it.

“I can see your temper is still intact,” Justin observed as I stomped my foot again.

“I don’t have a temper.”

He raised his eyebrows skeptically, calling my bluff.

“Fine. Normally, I don’t have a temper,” I ground out, which was partially true. Justin always had the knack of igniting the anger in me. It wasn’t like we fought all the time, but when we did, a temper I never knew I had would emerge.

“Admit it. You’re really a closet redhead.”

“Maybe I have Irish blood in me.”

“Tell me about your job,” he said, changing the subject. “Is teaching as fulfilling as you thought it would be?

“My job? Do you really want to know whether I find my work fulfilling?”

“It’ll help pass the time.”

“Talking about work and whether I find it fulfilling would lead some to believe we’re friends,” I pointed out.

He looked uncomfortable with my assessment, obviously not sure he was ready to call that much of a truce. I wasn’t surprised by his reluctance to wave the white flag. If you had told me that morning that Justin and I would be talking cordially to each other, I would have laughed in your face.

“It’s good. I’ve been subbing since I graduated last spring, but a full-time position will be opening up after Christmas.”

“Are you living with your mom?”

“No. I have a small apartment above the hardware store in Woodfalls. It’s more of a loft than anything else. Kinda reminds me of your apartment in your mom’s house.”

“How did your mom feel about you not living at home?”

I laughed at his question. He had a good memory. “She fought it at first, but in the end she didn’t have a choice. We
get along much better without her checking to see what I’m doing twenty-four-seven. She’s still meddling all the time and worries about me, but we make it work. Tressa thankfully still takes a lot of heat off me. Mom is so busy wondering who Tressa is corrupting that most times I’m able to skate under the radar.”

“Do you miss the city?” he asked, showing how well he knew me again.

“Every day, but it’s not as acute as I thought it would be. Tressa was glad to have me back in Woodfalls, and I’ve made a few other friends.”

“Guy friends?” he asked, stepping into no-man’s-land.

“Really? Are we talking about my sex life now?”

“Never mind. It’s none of my business,” he muttered, looking a little green in the face.

“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked, unable to stop the words even if I had clamped a hand over my mouth.

After what felt like a full minute had passed, I began to think he wouldn’t answer the question. “I just ended a relationship,” he admitted. “You?” he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders “You know me. My track record is the same as it always was. In my defense, it’s not like there are a lot of choices back home,” I answered as he smirked at me. “Why did you end your relationship?” I asked, not liking the knowing look on his face. It wasn’t like he was some chick whisperer when it came to relationships.

“She wanted things from me I wasn’t willing to give.”

“Commitment?” I asked. This time it was my turn to smirk.

“No,” he snapped before smiling somewhat sheepishly. “Okay, yeah, maybe. It’s not like you have any room to talk.”

“I never said I did. We might as well face it. We suffer from commitment-a-phobia,” I said, making him chuckle at my terminology. “Maybe that’s why we worked,” I mused.

His chuckles died midway through and his eyes clouded over. “We didn’t work,” he answered simply.

I stifled a sigh. Welcome back to no-man’s-land.

December 2010

“You’re being irrational,” Justin argued, pacing in front of me with a light drizzle of rain dripping down his face.

“Right. It’s all my fault. I’m the irrational one,” I yelled, glaring at him with my hands on my hips.

“You think you saw something you didn’t see,” he countered, stopping in front of me. “You can’t break up with me without listening to my side.”

“Your side? Your side! She was in your goddamn arms. Let me guess. She slipped and just happened to land in your arms with your mouths inches apart. If I wouldn’t have shown up, you would have been lip-locked.”

“No, we wouldn’t have been. She’s an old friend.”

“I bet she is.”

“She just found out she got into the master’s program she was hoping for. She was happy and wanted to share it with me.”

“She certainly did,” I said sarcastically. I sank down on the rain-covered bench in front of my dorm. The fact that it was raining seemed fitting and matched my mood. Dark and brooding. Earlier, my mood had been the exact opposite. Melissa had labeled it as “downright chipper,” claiming I was a different person now that I was dating Justin. I didn’t even try to argue. She was right. Being in a relationship with Justin had changed my outlook on life. Of course, that was before I saw his arms wrapped around another woman. The arms that I was growing quite partial to were wrapped around a blond girl with legs practically up to her armpits. I wanted to snatch her by that long shiny hair and tie it in knots. Most of all, I wanted to punch Justin to make him hurt as much as he had hurt me, but I did neither of those things. Instead, I stomped away, trudging through the puddles and belittling myself for being so stupid for falling for him. Melissa found me on the bench in front of our building an hour later. My raincoat had kept my clothes relatively dry, but my hair was a mess of dripping curls. Justin arrived ten minutes later. It didn’t take an Einstein to deduce that Melissa was behind his arrival. Twenty minutes after he showed up, we were still arguing.

“Nothing happened,” Justin said loudly.

“I know what I saw. She wanted you.”

“But I didn’t want her. I only want you, you idiot.”

“Don’t call me an idiot, you cheating jerk,” I said, surging to my feet as a new wave of anger roared through me.

“I’m not a cheater. If you could get past your narrow-minded prejudiced views, you would see that.”

“I am not narrow-minded or prejudiced,” I shouted, thrusting my balled-up fists into my jacket pockets so I wouldn’t punch him. Two girls from my dorm stopped to stare at us but scurried on when I glared at them.

“You are. You’ve assumed from day one that I was a cheater. You are prejudiced. I have never cheated on a girl and I never will. So for the love of God, will you stop expecting me to?” he pleaded, gripping me by my shoulders as if he wanted to shake some sense into me.

I wasn’t sure if it was the actual words or his pleading tone, but all my anger began to leak away. “Okay,” I finally whispered, sagging beneath his hands.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Okay, I believe you.”

“You should,” he said, tucking me under his arm and leading me out of the rain and into the building.

“Did we kiss and make up?” Melissa chirped as we entered the room.

I stuck my tongue out at her in a completely childish way.

“Does that mean we’re still going to see that new indie band tonight?” she asked, ignoring my childishness.

“Eight o’clock?” Justin asked, looking at me questioningly.

I nodded, giving him a small smile. All the anger was gone, but embarrassment and confusion had replaced it.

“See you then,” he said, placing a tentative kiss on my lips.

“Okay,” I said, shrugging out of my raincoat as he left the room.

“How goes it?” Melissa asked once the door had closed behind him.

I shrugged, flopping back on my bed. “I swear he’ll ruin me. Never in my whole life have I ever shouted at another person like that. He brings out the inner monster in me,” I said, feeling sick now that all the anger was gone.

“Not anger, passion,” Melissa piped in.

“What?”

“You feel passionately about him,” she said, proud of her diagnosis.

“I’m pretty sure what I felt was anger,” I said wryly.

“Anger and passion are basically the same thing. If you truly were angry, you would have walked away. Instead, you faced the problem. You embraced it passionately,” she said insightfully as she stood up and stretched. “Now, I need to take a shower before the person I feel passionately about shows up,” she said, flouncing off to the bathroom.

I contemplated her words. Was she right? Did I feel passionately about Justin? She had to be wrong. People felt passionately for each other months into a relationship, not after one month. I knew what I had felt in the courtyard when I spotted him with the other girl wrapped around him like some serpent or something. It was jealousy and hurt that waged a battle inside me as I tried to comprehend the scene. For a moment, every insecurity I’d ever felt surfaced. He made
me feel that way, whether accidental or not. He made me face the reasons why I tried to avoid relationships.

I was still on my bed studying the ceiling and contemplating the doom of my sanity when Melissa exited the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her torso. “Are you okay?” she asked, taking in my expression.

“No. I’m a weak, nimble-minded female who’s letting some guy lead me around like I’m his bitch or something,” I grumbled. “Why did you have to introduce me to him? I was fine without some guy clouding the water.”

“Yeah, but think how boring that would be. Cloudy water is good for everyone. It’s the people who have the crystal-clear water who scare the crap out of me. So stop taking everything so seriously and enjoy your swim in this crazy murky water,” she said, grabbing a change of clothes and heading back to the bathroom.

I watched the door shut behind her and felt slightly better. That was the beauty or at times the horror of living with someone who was all rainbows and unicorns. Maybe she was right. Maybe murky wasn’t bad. So what if I had dived into water that was impossible to see through? Maybe just once I would let myself go.

Maybe I could put my faith and trust in one person.

Present Day
2:53
PM

“I’m hungry,” Justin complained, checking his phone for the millionth time.

“We’ve covered that,” I said, shifting my position to help ease the numbness that had set in.

“I know, but I’m now thinking about food like it’s a lover or something. Like how juicy and delicious a cheeseburger loaded with bacon and all the fixings would be at the moment.”

My stomach rumbled loudly at his words. “Not nice,” I said, placing a hand on my stomach to quiet the gurgling.

“Or a large pepperoni pizza with extra cheese,” he continued, ignoring me.

“No, a tender steak cooked to perfection with a side salad and a loaded baked potato.” I added my two cents in.

He groaned at my words. “With a hot fudge brownie sundae,” he added, looking pained but eager at the same time.

“We’re gluttons for misery,” I pointed out as my stomach growled its displeasure.

“We have to do something to pass the time.”

“I have a deck of cards,” I offered up.

“What? Why are you just now mentioning this?” he asked, scooting across the floor until he was sitting less than a foot and a half from me.

My heart stuttered for a fraction of a moment before kicking into warp speed at his close proximity. The tantalizing smell of his cologne, which I had spent the last three hours trying to ignore, swirled around me like a blanket woven from countless memories. It was his scent. It didn’t matter that millions of men probably owned the same cologne. On him it smelled different. I knew this because back in my pain-filled road to recovery, I had made the forty-five-minute drive to the mall outside Woodfalls and purchased a bottle of it. Unable to wait until I got home, I had sprayed my jacket, wanting that small part of him. I was bitterly disappointed that it wasn’t the same. Sitting across from him on the elevator floor, I couldn’t help breathing in, trying to brand the smell to my memory so maybe this time it wouldn’t leave me.

“What do you want to play?” Justin asked, shuffling the cards like he was a blackjack dealer in Vegas.

“Go Fish,” I teased, laughing outright at his look of dismay.

“Not funny,” he claimed. “If I never play another hand of Go Fish, I’ll die a happy person.”

“Oh, that’s right. You don’t like Go Fish,” I commented in a voice laced with false innocence.

“You’d feel the same way if you were me. I swear Hollie made me play a million hands the week she was recovering from getting her appendix out when she was seven. Mom threw out all the decks of cards after that.”

“I remember you telling me. You always were a great big brother. Travis and Hollie are lucky to have you.”

“They’re good kids. Well, I guess they’re really not kids anymore. Hollie would have my head if she heard me referring to her in that capacity. I haven’t seen a whole lot of them these past six months,” he said, shuffling the cards again.

“You don’t still live at home with them?” I asked, surprised. I just assumed nothing had changed in my absence, which was silly of course. Just because I was no longer there didn’t mean time had stood still.”

“Nah, once Mom married Paul I was no longer needed at home.”

“What? When? Your mom married Paul.” I said the last part as a statement. I’d met Paul only once, since he and Trish had just started seeing each other right before our relationship had gone to crap. He was the new single parent who had moved in next door right after Christmas. Hollie had been ecstatic when she found out he had two kids, including a daughter her age.

“Yeah, right after Christmas last year. Exactly one year after their first date.”

“Oh boy,” I muttered, snickering at how cliché it seemed.

“You never were one to overromanticize things,” Justin commented as a smirk spread across his face.

“I’m not the only one. If memory serves, you mocked such rituals yourself.”

“Can you blame a guy? I’m not against romantic gestures, but if you’re going to do something, do it right. Go big or go home,” he said. “Anyway, once Paul moved in with Brady and Andrea, the house became pretty crowded. Travis took over my basement and I moved out.”

His words faded as I focused on his previous romantic gestures comment.
Go big or go home.
He had done that once. One grand romantic gesture that had stolen my heart completely and left me breathless. I wondered if that moment crossed his mind as he told the story of Paul and his mother. Only in my loneliest self-pitying moods did I allow myself to ever think about it.