Being Invisible (5 page)

“Oh. That’s right. Doesn’t matter
though, because we won the pool game.” Liz high fived me.

“Damn. I can’t believe we lost.
And since I am a pool legend, it must be that you sucked worse than poor Lucy.”
Drew shoved Colin.

I started to tell him where he
could go, but Liz talked over me. “That was not luck. Lucy had a few good shots
in there. And if anyone’s a legend, it’s me. “

“So are you ladies up for round
two?”

At the same time I said “No,” Liz answered
with a definite “heck yeah.”

“Scared, Lucy?” Colin whispered
into my ear.

“I don’t get scared. I just didn’t
want you to have to endure a second loss. But hey, if you don’t mind
humiliation, I have no problem serving it to you.”

“That sounds like a challenge. Did
that sound like a challenge, Drew?”

“Care to make it interesting?”
Drew added.

“What do you have in mind?” I’m
sure they thought we were falling right into their trap.

Colin spoke up first. “If you
girls win, we will take you ladies to dinner.”

“I don’t know. That sounds kind of
like a treat for you.” I teased him.

“But we’re not talking any dinner.
We’re talking tacos...with all the nacho chips and salsa you can eat.” Colin
wagged his eyebrows, as if there was no way we wouldn’t be impressed.

“Really? Free chips and salsa?
Well that makes it worth it right there.” I playfully shoved him.

“Fine. What about if you win?” Liz
liked getting down to the nitty gritty.

“If we win, you buy us dinner.”

“Oh, I see. So either way, you
guys get to go to dinner with us.” Liz looked at me and we both shook our
heads. Smooth guys.

“But we want steak.” Drew added.

“You get steak, but we get tacos?
I don’t think so. You can have hamburgers. And of course, because we are kind,
we will let you have all the dinner rolls you want.”

“Well if you’re going to be cheap
about it.” Colin conceded, and racked the balls.

As expected, Colin got
significantly better with the second game, and since I only hit one ball in my
first turn, they were already discussing what we were going to buy them.

“So, Lucy what’s your major?”
Colin asked while leaning in close to me. He did it under the guise of hearing
each other better, but I noticed that throughout the night he kept making small
gestures that ended up with him touching me or being near me in some way. Not
that I minded.

“I am going to school to be a
journalist. I am hoping to be one of the little guys for the news. You know,
the one who does the grunt work that you don’t see? Fingers crossed that will
be me.”

“I better get my autograph now.”
Colin nudged me.

“Oh, my turn,” I realized, when
both Liz and Drew looked at me in anticipation.

“So, it looks like there are a lot
more solids on the table than stripes.” I leaned toward Drew like he had been
doing to me.

“Looks that way.” Colin answered.

“And the girls are solids, right?”
I asked analyzing the table as best I could.

“Yep.”

“Then I need some skills pretty
quickly. Maybe you could help me?

“Sure. I could teach you.” Colin
smiled.

“Okay. I’ll go, and you tell me
what I’m doing wrong.”

A small smile spread across
Colin’s face. “I would love to help you with your form.”

I glanced at Liz, who nodded once.
After lining up my shot, I hit most of the remaining balls in. Turning to Colin
I murmured, “How was that?” before returning to the game.

Two more shots and the game was
over.

“Did she just hustle our hustle?”
Drew asked, while Liz and I high fived.

“Just so you know, your hustle sucked.”
Liz said. “You guys need better game.” As soon as the words left her mouth,
Drew came up behind her and pinched her side.

“Hey! Are you guys really that
upset because you have to buy us tacos? Just for that we want margaritas too.”

“Top shelf too. None of that
Cuervo nonsense.” I added.

“Keep it up, ladies. We may just
take you to Taco Bell.” Drew tried to look menacing, which just made us laugh.

After the game, we called it quits
to hang out with Annie and the soccer guys. After a few rounds of quarters, Liz
took Drew to her room to “show him her art.” He must have been quite the art
connoisseur, judging by the length of time it took him to check it out.

 
Eventually, Colin and I ended up outside
on my mom’s old porch swing, looking up at the stars. As the evening wore down,
the Indian summer temperatures dropped, and it started to feel more like
October. When I wrapped my arms around myself to warm up, Colin put his hands
on my shoulders, and rubbed my arms. Once he felt I was sufficiently warm, he pulled
me against him.

 
He held me like that for a long time. We talked
about life and tried to find constellations. And when we realized we had no
idea where most of the constellations were, we made them up.

All of that ended up a vague
memory. The only part I remember in detail was when, after the tap had run dry and
most everyone was gone, Colin made a joke about how I had yet to fully
experience his awesomeness. I laughed, and told him that I would believe it
when I saw it. His smile remained, but he raised his eyebrows, letting me know that
he accepted my challenge.

The song 'Pull Me Down' had just
started to play. He tilted my chin, and leaned in so close I could almost feel
his lips against mine. Instead of kissing my lips, he lightly kissed the corner
of my mouth. He followed that kiss with one to my cheek and my jawline, before
grazing my neck with his teeth. He kissed my neck; lightly touching it with his
tongue, then slowly worked his way back towards my mouth.

Somewhere along the way, the night
air had lost its chill. I licked my lips briefly, not taking my eyes off of
Colin.

Gently placing his hand on the nape
of my neck, Colin guided my lips close to his, then stopped and smiled. He knew
what he was doing to me. I tried unsuccessfully to look unaffected, but we both
knew that I was no longer the one doing the teasing.

Finally he pulled me in and kissed
me, slowly at first then with increasing intensity.
 

Everything seemed to stop in that
moment. I was only aware Colin.

My mind wandered to the Colin I
met yesterday. He had been apologetic. Sweet yet tentative. Charming, yet
worried about me.

That Colin wasn't kissing me.

The lips that kissed me belonged
to a man who held no hesitation. Every brush of his hands as they drifted from
my hair, to my neck and down my sides to my waist was deliberate. Every touch
of his lips guided me with assurance. He only stopped long enough to grab my
hand and haul me to his lap, where he immediately returned to assaulting my
senses.

I committed every bite of my lip,
graze of his hands, whisper in my ear and taste of his lips to memory.

We kissed like that until we were
so tired we stumbled inside and fell asleep on my couch.

I hated to admit it, but he was
right. I hadn’t fully experienced his awesomeness before that moment.

That night I knew.

Why is my whole right side asleep?

I woke up feeling disoriented. I
was on my right side, with my right arm stuck underneath me and my left leg
bent forward. I tried to turn over, only to come close to falling off the
couch. The only thing keeping me from landing on the floor was Colin, his arm
wound loosely around my waist.
 

I turned my head toward him as
best I could. He was still sleeping. I slowly pulled away so that I could get
up and shake my arm loose. It was starting to get its feeling back, which hurt
like hell.

I snuck upstairs and ran into
Drew, who was presumably doing the walk of shame through my hallway.

"Hey, Drew." I drawled
playfully.

"Hey, Lucy. How was Colin
last night?" He teased back.

"He didn’t do anything but
sleep, so probably well-rested. How about you?"

"Who needs sleep?” his smile
made me laugh.

I shook my head as I walked past
him to shower and change.

By the time I got downstairs,
everyone was sitting in the family room, eating bowls of cereal and drinking
coffee. Liz was sitting on the floor in front of Drew, resting her back against
his chair. They looked cozy.

Annie stayed with James at his
house, so it was just the four of us.

As soon as Colin saw me, he smiled
widely. “Hey there. Hope you don’t mind, I’m eating your Frosted Flakes.” He
pulled the pillow off of the couch so that I could sit beside him.

“Sure. Help yourself.” When I sat
down he handed me a mug.

“Thanks.” I smiled at his
thoughtfulness.

“Sure. Anytime you want me to
steal your coffee then offer you a cup, let me know. Liz told me that you take
it black.”

We all relaxed in silence, still
tired from the day before. After breakfast, the guys helped us clean up from the
party, then got ready to leave. On the way out, Drew whispered something to Liz
that made her laugh then planted a wet kiss on her lips.

Colin grabbed my hand, pulling me
into the room where we kept the pool table. “Thanks for letting me crash your
party.” He pulled me to him so that he could kiss my neck, finishing with a
kiss on the lips.

“There was a party here?” I
laughed then returned the kiss.

Just before the kiss became intense
Colin pulled back. “I keep forgetting. I need your phone number.” he handed me
his phone so that I could type it in.

“Thank God you remembered,” I
laughed, relieved that I finally had a way to communicate with him.

As soon as I handed him his phone,
he texted me. “Now you have my phone number too.”
 
He waited for me to add it to my
contacts then grabbed my hand. “So... do you think I could take you out
sometime? I mean we already have the tacos, but if you want to do something a
little more...like a date?”

I smiled at his uncertainty. I
liked both Colins, but while the Colin that kissed me made my knees buckle,
this Colin made me smile.

“Sounds great. For both. With and
without tacos.” I answered quickly, happy to have the pressure taken off to
come up with an excuse to see him again.

“Okay then. I need to think up the
perfect date.
 
I will call you with
the details.” Then he kissed me again, this time slowly like he was trying to
memorize my mouth.

“Dude, let’s go. My mom’s gonna be
pissed if we don’t help her move her furniture.” Drew’s interruption ended our
moment.

“I’m coming.” Colin rolled his
eyes, and squeezed my hand before turning to leave. “I’ll call you soon.” He
glanced at me with a look that I could only imagine was a promise of what was
to come, then turned and left.

Colin lied.

And I was wrong.

He wasn't adorable. He was a spineless,
lying asshole.

It had been over a week and no
word from Colin. He must have been planning a pretty fanfreakingtastic date
since after five days he still hadn’t had a chance to pick up his phone to text
me. Even Drew had the decency to call Liz to get together sometime and ‘hang.’
Unfortunately, he played dumb when she asked what was up with Colin.

What was worse was that
I
finally got up the nerve to text
him
, just to ‘casually’ check in. So casually
in fact that I planned the text ahead of time, with Liz and Annie there to be
sure I exuded just enough casualness to let him know I didn’t care either way.
Mostly I just added ‘or whatever’ to everything I said.

My hope was that he somehow lost
his phone, rendering him unable to find my number. Therefore my call would be
met with relief over finally being able to talk to me. Or something similar to
that.

No such luck.

"Hey, Colin? It's Lucy."

"It's good to hear from
you." Colin texted me back right away.

"You too. Hadn't talked to you
in awhile. Thought I would check in." The girls gave me a thumbs up at my
casualness.

“Glad you did. Not a great time
tho. Can I get back to you later?”

Seriously?

"Don't worry about it. Probably
going to be too busy."

 
Not the best way to handle the situation,
but in my defense, we practiced casualness, not maturity.

"Don’t you think maybe he was
in the middle of something so it was, in fact, not a good time, and that he was,
you know, going get back to you later?" Liz asked.

"I don't know. Maybe." I
answered sullenly. "But how long do I want to wait this time for him to
get back to me? He said ‘sometime.’ Not in a few minutes. Not later today. Not
even soon.

“I see your point.” Annie said,
while pondering the situation.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Liz added.
“Now that I think about it, what kind of guy does that? He felt terrible about
hurting you, but didn’t even check in on you. Especially considering he
specifically said he was going to call you for a date. He’s obviously a...
Annie, tell her what he is. My limited vocabulary prohibits me from using a
word that best fits his description.

“Um...Douche canoe?” Annie
shrugged.

Liz snapped her fingers and
pointed to Annie. “Yes. That’s good. I like that.”

Despite my pissed off mood, my
friends made me laugh. And as the evening progressed, they had lifted my mood
considerably. We decided to turn it into an impromptu Colin bashing complete
with s’mores and pumpkin lattes.

Over the next few days, I
concentrated on my classes, almost totally, but not quite completely,
forgetting about Colin. I reasoned with myself that since we only knew each
other a couple days, I really shouldn’t waste my time thinking about him. Only
I wasn't sure how to go about not wasting my time thinking about him.

By Friday, I was really starting
to tick myself off.
 
I had prided
myself on not being the kind of girl to swoon over a guy- any guy, but especially
the general population of douche canoes. Even when my ex-boyfriend cheated on
me, I gave myself a few days to mourn, chalked it up to lesson learned, and
moved on.

So why did I keep checking for him
when I ran in the mornings? And why, when the phone rang, did my heart jump a
little, thinking that maybe he was calling to tell me that after he left my
house he was hit by a truck, and therefore unable to plan our date?

 
By the time Liz and Annie arrived home
from class on Friday afternoon, I couldn’t take another minute of myself.

“We’re going out tonight.” I
barely let my roommates get through the door before I pounced on them.

“Ladies’ night?” Annie asked.

“Yep.” I was already heading
towards the stairs to get ready.

“I’ll tell James that I’m not coming
over.”

By the time I got upstairs, Liz
was already changing.

I love my roommates.

After we got ready, we grabbed a
light dinner at home, then headed out. We didn’t want to be too early, so we
took a leisurely walk, making sure to stop at all of our favorite shops along
the way. At about 10:00, we arrived at Firm.

While most of the campus was out
partying at the local bars, we were at our favorite girls' night spot,
kickboxing at the only 24-hour fitness location near campus.

We discovered it when one of
Annie’s friends was robbed while walking home late one night. We decided that
we were going to learn to protect ourselves. At first we just took a couple
self-defense classes, but over time we started trying out anything that looked
like fun or could help us become major ass kickers.

One night, on a whim, we decided
to check it out on our way to meet some friends at a bar, just to see what it
was like at midnight. We discovered that since everyone was pretty much at a
bar or a kegger that late on the weekend, we could have the entire place to
ourselves.

After that, whenever we needed a
night out, we headed to the gym and hung out for hours, trying out all of the
equipment and making up challenges.

We had already warmed-up and used
the Nautilus equipment by the time we got to the punching bags. We were
debating on whether to have a competition to see who could kick the bag the
highest, or who could punch every bag in the room in the fastest time, when we
heard a noise that made us all jump.

“Is someone else here?” Annie
almost whispered, surprise etched on her face.

“No one else is ever here at this
time.” I echoed her bewilderment.

“Well,” Liz said slowly, “This
isn’t just
our
gym. And it’s a 24-hour
gym. We were bound to run into another member sometime.”

“At 11:00 at night?” Annie asked.

“Well, maybe word got out that all
the hot chicks work out here at this time.” Liz clearly thought we were crazy
for being concerned.

“Probably.” I agreed, “But we
should be careful, just in case. Someone might have seen us come in and
followed us to steal our stuff or something.”

“Fine.” Liz conceded. “We can sneak
up on them instead. Maybe we can do it while hiding behind gym equipment until
we get close enough to take a look. If it looks suspicious we can call security
on our cells.”

As we wove through the bench
presses and butterfly machines, we realized that we looked like a bunch of
idiots acting like we knew what we were doing. While we were pretty freaked out
about who was invading our gym time, we were also breaking out into quiet fits
of laughter over how we would make the worst Charlie’s Angels.

At one point Annie got her
shoelace caught on one of the machines, then tried to save herself from getting
hurt. She ended up falling into a half split, half downward dog. Liz and I thought
it was hilarious. Annie used words that Liz couldn’t.

Finally, we heard the noise just
around the corner from us, near the free weights. There was no way that we
could get a good look at the perpetrator without the person seeing us.

Our “plan” was for me to
nonchalantly walk by as if getting a drink of water, and if the perp tried
anything, I would ask, “Do you know where the bathrooms are?” This would signal
the girls to run out and use every move we have ever learned to take down the
accused. Since our experience with this kind of thing rested solely on watching
reruns of
Law and Order
, it was the
best that we could come up with.

So, I took a deep breath and
walked out from behind the wall, trying to glance in the direction of the sound
without looking suspicious. I was sure that I saw something out of the corner
of my eye, but when I looked that way, nothing was there.

Okay. I’m a little freaked out.

I decided to stand still for a
second to take in my surroundings... or maybe it was because I was frozen in
place… hard to tell.

 
After a few seconds of not hearing
anything, I decided to head back to the girls- safety in numbers and all. But
as I turned to walk back I felt someone behind me, coming from the direction of
the bathrooms.

All of my instincts kicked in at
that moment, and I did what anyone with multiple self-defense classes under
their belt would do. I screamed at the top of my lungs and tripped over my own
foot, causing me to fall into the person who may or may not have been trying to
kill me. We both fell ungracefully onto the floor.
 

Thanks karma. I have to make a note never to laugh at my friends
again.

Before I had a chance to look at
the perp, I caught my bearings and remembered the plan. "Bathroom!
Bathroom!” I managed to get out. Which, in hindsight, probably didn’t make much
sense since I was supposed to be casually asking the suspect that so as not to
attract attention.

Terrible plan execution aside, I
was effective in getting two very pissed off roommates with self defense training
in front of me quickly. But before they jumped to my defense and attacked, they
stopped dead in their tracks.

“What the...” Liz trailed
off.
 
I turned around to see what
caused her confused expression, when I saw
him
on the ground behind me
.

“You have got to be kidding me!” I
half yelled, partially from the adrenaline still coursing through my veins.
“What the hell are you doing here?”

Colin took a second to answer, clearly
as disoriented as we were. “I…I was working out. Am I not supposed to do that
here?” he asked looking around in mock confusion.

“Not at midnight. You scared the
shit out of us.” I was trying to sound calm, but my heart was still on
Law and Order
time, and I wasn’t sure my
brain had completely caught up with my eyes yet.

“Yes, Colin, What brings you to
the free weights at midnight on Saturday night?” By her tone, it appeared that
Annie was taking on the role of bad cop.

“Um...would it be weird for me to
state the obvious- that the three of you are, in fact, at the exact same gym.
At midnight. On Saturday night. Should I be asking you the same question?”

“We come here all the time.” Liz
jumped in. “But we’ve never seen you here.”

“I have been coming here almost
every night for the last two weeks. And I haven’t seen any of you three once
during that time.”

“Well, that’s because we only come
this late at night on Saturdays…and only every once in awhile. So it’s been
like…what three weeks?” Annie turned to me for clarification.

“Sounds about right.” I answered
her, looking everywhere but in his general direction.

Since my body was finally coming
off my Nancy Drew Mysteries high, an acute reminder that I was standing in
front of the lying asshole himself was slowly replacing my panic.

“So, can we agree that we all
scared the shit out of each other, and move on?” Colin asked.

His comment made me glance in his
direction, and for the first time since we ran into each other, I noticed his
demeanor. He seemed pretty freaked out- like, as freaked out as we were. I
almost felt bad for him. Almost.

“Well, now that we have figured
out that other people do in fact come here to exercise, can we please get back
to the bags?”

 
I was pretty sure that was Liz’s ‘I told
you so,’ so I ignored her and started to head back. Not that I felt like doing
anything else that night. I just needed to get away from what had apparently
become the ‘Colin Collision’ Part II. Before I got too far, I heard Colin’s
voice.

“Hey, Lucy. Can I talk to you for
a sec?”

I let go of a deep sigh to let him
know it was a huge inconvenience, but turned around to talk to him anyway.

“What do you need?”

“I’m just really surprised to see
you here. I’m surprised to see anyone here actually.” he let out a nervous
laugh. “But I kinda feel like it was meant to happen or something.”

At that I laughed. “Meant to
happen, huh? Right. Like you were meant to knock me down, then pretend like you
felt bad about it? Like you were meant to call me because you wanted to take me
on a date? Do you think that you are
meant
to be a huge jerk? Because if that’s the case then I think that I am
meant
to stay as far away from you as
possible.” I started to turn to tell my friends we could go, but then realized
that they had already made themselves scarce.

Thanks guys.

“You’re right.” Colin exhaled in
defeat. “You should be pissed at me, and I don’t deserve your time.
 
But if you can give me a minute, I
wanted to let you know...” He stopped, unable to find the right words.