Beware of Love in Technicolor (32 page)

He looked at me with surprise, then flung his coat to the floor.

“Something wrong?” I asked with a bit of an attitude. The quiet peace of my room was lost, and I wasn’t happy about it.

“It took me half an hour to walk from the lot at the SUB to here. It’s a complete sheet of ice out there.”

“I know,” I replied, thinking about my walk home with Topher. I absently rubbed my elbow, which was throbbing slightly from banging it on the pavement and ice. “I thought you had to work tonight.”

“I do. But my car isn’t going anywhere in this ice. Not with my tires. I need to use your phone.” He proceeded to call the grocery store, where they apparently understood the nature of the night,and let him off the hook and off the schedule without much of an argument.

“So, what do you wanna do?” he asked when he hung up the receiver. I had settled back down with my book. He was still standing, hovering over me on the bed. He looked a mess. Although I normally liked his hair a little long and wild, it had been just too long since the last time he had cut it, and it hung in messy curls around his face. His clothes were rumpled, like he had picked every piece out of a pile on the floor. And now that I was really looking at him, he looked like he was putting on weight. His Nordic features were puffy.

“I need to get a bit of this book read for tomorrow,” I told him, holding up the paperback.

“So, what am I supposed to do?” he asked sullenly, dropping down on the bed next to me.

“I don’t know,” I replied, looking at him with a bit of impatience. “You can read, look out the window, put on some music, use my Stairmaster.”

“I’m hungry,” he whined. “Did you have dinner?”

“Yes,” I answered shortly.

“I didn’t. I’m starving.” He got off the bed and began rooting around in my little fridge. “Ew, strawberry cream cheese. Don’t you have anything good?”

“Why don’t you call Dominoes?” I answered, giving up on my book and placing it on my pillow.

“Do you think they’re delivering on a night like this?”

“Call and find out.”

“I don’t have any cash.”

“I have money,” I told him. “But you’re going down and paying the guy.”

He called, they promised thirty minutes or less. Even in the mess.

“You don’t have any weed, do you?” he asked while waiting for his dinner. “Of course you don’t. Who would have some here on campus? Being stuck here would be so much easier if we could get high.” He was looking out the window, talking more to himself than to me.

“Oh, that’s nice,” I said, picking my book up.

“Well, you’ve got to admit that it would be more fun if we were high.”

“I am high,” I said. “And it’s not much fun.”

“Who got you high?” he demanded, sitting back down on the bed. I had to laugh, and not because the question was funny.

“Cheri,” I answered. “But she’s across campus now, so good luck.”

“Why are you being such a bitch?” John asked, getting up and looking out the window.

“Oh, I’m a bitch?” I felt my cheeks go hot. “You bust in here with nothing but complaints and insults and sour moods, and call me the bitch?”

“Where’s your money?” he asked, completely ignoring what I had said.

“Your money. For the pizza guy?”

“Oh,” I said, shaking my head. “Coat pocket. On the back of the door.”

I sat there on my bed while he paid the guy downstairs. I had the urge to lock my door or something truly bitchy like that, but I just sat there.
Pissed off. Wondering why the hell I put up with him.

When he returned, pizza in one hand, bottle of Coke in the other, he flashed a smile at me like nothing was wrong. I felt like I was going crazy.

“What were you saying, Sweetness?” he asked, placing the pizza box on the small table near my only chair. He took a seat, and smiled at me again. “You want a slice?”

“No, thanks,” I said quietly. I wasn’t sure whether to push a fight, or just drop it for some peace. I really needed to get my reading done.

“No, you were saying something,” he continued, biting into a slice before realizing it was too hot to eat. “Something about me busting in here with nothing but complaints and insults and what was it? Oh, yeah. My sour mood.”

So it wasn’t over. I should have known better.

“Yeah. Ok,” I started, trying to achieve the upper hand quickly. My mind started to race, my body tensed up.

“I did say something to that effect, and with good reason. I was having a nice, peaceful
, quiet night when you burst in here with your whining and criticisms. I bought you dinner and that wasn’t good enough because I can’t get you high, as well. Because we both know what a drag it is to hang out with me when you are sober.”

“Is that what you think?” he asked, placing his slice down on his paper plate on his lap. He wiped a spot of sauce from the corner of his lip, and looked at me expectantly.

“What else can I think?” I pleaded. “Based on the evidence, it’s pretty clear.” And when I heard myself say it out loud, a heavy sadness came over me, and more important than him knowing it was true, suddenly, I admitted to myself that it was true.

“We just don’t work anymore,” I heard myself say quietly.

“Oh, no,” he finally said. “No. No. You are not doing this. Not now. Not tonight.” He got up from the chair and took a seat next to me on the bed. He bent his neck down to look into my eyes.

“Well,” I continued softly. “Are you happy?”

“No,” he answered, just as quietly. “But...,”

“Are you hopeful?” I asked, meeting his gaze and doing my best not to cry. He shook his head.

“But it’s not because...,” he tried again.

“Do you love me?”

There was a long pause where we stared into each other’s eyes in silence. The air was thick and warm in the room, mirroring the oppressive feeling of the conversation.

“I want to,” he started.

I immediately broke our gaze and dropped my shoulders. I couldn’t help but cry. It just washed over me. All the emotions I had been holding back for so many months now, always pretending everything to be alright. There was nothing Greer Bennett could not handle.

Except her heart, apparently.

“I want to love you again,” he said, taking my hands in his and forcing me to meet his eyes once more. “Make me love you again.”

“What?” I asked, removing my hands quickly. “Make you love me? Either you do or you don’t.”

“Do you still love me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered so fast it surprised me. “I do, even though right now, I wish nothing more than to hate you.”

He laughed.

“See, that’s what I need,” he said excitedly. “You shut yourself off, Greer. You have since I’ve known you, and it is so much work to crack that exterior. I guess lately, I’ve been wondering if it’s worth all the work.”

“What else can I do?” I asked, doing my best to rein in the tears. “I never know which John I am going to get. The happy, funny guy who likes to be social and sweet; or sullen John, who is cryptic and surly and likes to lash out at the world. You’d protect yourself, too.”

“I’m sorry, you’re right,” he said. “You’re right. I’m not happy, and I haven’t been in a while. I just don’t know if it’s all worth it, you know? All this school and studying? And for what? So I can make a lot of money so I can buy a big house and a big car and a big life? What is it all for?”

“Being a doctor means helping people. What’s wrong with that, even if you do get paid well?”

“Because I never wanted to do it to help people. I always wanted to be a doctor for the money. Like, I know I’m smart, smarter than most, and it all comes so naturally to me. So, why not? But now, I just wonder: Why?”

“So pursue something else. Find something meaningful. Don’t give up and resign yourself to some life you haven’t even gotten to yet. “

“Again, you are right,” he said, smiling at me. “You’re always right.”

“You should eat your pizza before it gets cold,” I said, pushing the mass of curls out of his face. He nodded.

“So, you’re not dumping me?” he asked.

“Not tonight,” I joked. “Where would you go in this ice storm?”

“Seriously, Greer,” he said earnestly. “I want nothing more than to be with you.”

And wouldn’t you know it, two weeks later, that fucker broke up with me.

Part Three

Chapter Nineteen

             
To say I did not handle the breakup well would be an understatement. If it had happened the night of the storm, I think I would have done better. It would have been my decision. It would have made sense.

             
The morning after the ice storm, I got scared. I thought about my life and tried to imagine it without John. I thought about my friends, and realized that except for Topher, I had nobody who didn’t go through John first. So for two weeks, I busted my ass to get him to “love me” again. I stayed at Cloud 9 more often and kept my mouth shut about the drafty windows and moldy bathrooms. I missed a special showing of
Gone With the Wind
with Topher to watch John play a video game with his roommates.

             
And as for Topher, I believed half the reason he hung out with me was because of John. I was his link to that crazy world of drug-induced off campus parties. It was where you found the pretty hippies, if you could make that sort of statement. Many of the students who hung out at Cloud 9 as if it were a second home were Trustafarians: the ones with the SAAB’s and new, hundred dollar Birkenstocks each season. Northface fleece in every color, trust-funded excursions through Europe upon graduation. Of course he wanted to be near them. Who could possibly like me for me? It was hard enough keeping John’s interest, and I was sleeping with him.

             
And so the downward spiral continued to twist and turn out of control, into a tight little knot of self-doubt and fear. I thought I needed John. Suddenly, I couldn’t imagine life without him. And so it was on that night, exactly two weeks after the ice storm, I found myself on the shitty end of my first breakup.

***

              He had stopped by my room one evening. I had been expecting him, and had timed my shower just right, so I could be naked under my robe, but powdered and glossed and neatly combed up top. It was about as sexually aggressive as I was comfortable with at that point on our emotionally shaky ground. But on that night, he didn’t go for it. He didn’t even notice. He was distracted, pacing from my window to the center of my room, and back again.

             
“Is there somewhere you need to be?” I finally asked. I tightened the belt of my terrycloth robe, and resumed combing my wet hair. It was something to do.

             
“What? No,” he stammered, caught off guard by my question. “Maybe.”

             
“What’s up?”

             
He looked at me with the strangest look I had ever seen on his face. Cold, expressionless, like someone had flipped the switch on his humanity.

             
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” he stated flatly.

             
“What?” I demanded, taken by complete surprise.

             
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” he said again. Hs blue eyes were like ice.

             
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked with a high-pitched laugh.

             
“I’m not kidding,” he continued, cutting me off. “I think it would be best if we don’t see each other for a while.”

             
“You bastard!” I yelled at him, throwing my comb at his feet. He kicked it under my bed, without so much as a flicker of emotion on his face. Then he turned, and actually walked out the door, without looking back once.

             
I sat on my bed for a few moments, dumbfounded. Then I sprung up, threw my door wide open, and dashed down the hall to the stairs, just in time to see him pass through the door to outside and have it slam shut behind him. I ran barefoot down the cold, sandy stairs, and opened the heavy door. The wind whipped in, sending a rush of frigid air up my robe. My body turned to instant ice, and I realized it was pointless to yell like an idiot after someone who wasn’t going to turn around and respond. I watched him get into his car and speed out the parking lot, eyes straight ahead.

***

              I suppose these days, I would have inundated him with a flood of text messages and voicemails. I’d tweet about what an asshole he is, or bomb his Facebook page with angry rants. I wouldn’t have to wait to give him a piece of my mind. But those things didn’t exist yet, and I had to wait.