Stay (11 page)

             
Not soon enough, I start to drift off to sleep with wishes of being in Jason’s arms for one more day.

             
“Damn you, Jason.” I mumble in between sobs.

             
Then at some point, I finally succumb to the blackness surrounding me.

Chapter Five

Four Months Later

             
“AAAHHHH!!! I’M GETTIN’ LAID TONIGHT, BITCHES!” Jesse shouts as he barges in through the doorway with a satisfied look on his face.

             
He walks past Magda who’s doing her makeup in front of our large mirror and jumps on top of my bed, proceeding to bounce up and down like a third grader.
I need more mature friends.

             
Startled, I hit his leg. “Jesus Christ, Jesse, you scared the shit out of me! When are you not getting laid anyway? I swear you and Magda get more action than this whole campus,” I say getting off the bed he’s currently assaulting.

             
I grab my desk chair and take a seat to watch him abuse my twin bed.

             
He stops abruptly and sits on the edge of the bed. “Listen, don’t hate the player, hate the game, baby girl.”

             
I roll my eyes.

             
“Aaagreed,” Magda chimes in, puckering her lips to apply some bright red lipstick.

             
“A comeback that would be expected from Sex on a stick…” I point to Jesse, “And Jenna Jameson Wannabe over there,” I finish by pointing at Magda.

             
She turns quickly towards me leaving a line of bright red on her cheek from the lipstick, making her look like a clown.

             
I burst out laughing and they both stare at me like I’m a freak.

             
“What?--She looks like a fucking tool!” I laugh some more as she narrows her eyes at me while Jesse tries to mask his laugh with a cough.

             
My eyes begin to water, so I try to control myself.

             
She points a finger at me. “You’re lucky you’re my best friend or I would have to cut you for that statement. Besides, we all know I am way better than Jenna Jameson. I don’t see the humor in you thinking I want to be like her. Although, seeing you laugh made that little joke worth it,” she adds.

             
That’s when I stop laughing because I know where this conversation is headed and I don’t want to go there.

             
Jesse stands and walks over to Magda’s side. They both look down at me sitting on the chair.

             
“True. You haven’t laughed since J—“

             
“Stop!” I run over to cover his mouth to keep him from saying his name out loud. “I’m fine. I have been for the past four months, all right?” I shrug nonchalantly so they think I don’t care.

             
I hope that my indifference will stop them from going any further into the subject because the truth of the matter is that I am totally not okay.

             
I’ve spent the past four months trying not to even think about what happened, let alone talk about it.

             
Ever since I found out Jason left I made trips to his dorm room thinking he would come back but he never did.

             
I even called him like five hundred times and came up empty except for those stupid hang-ups that had me on the verge of changing my phone number, of course, I couldn’t do that, in the hopes that Jason would call me to explain himself. That didn’t end up happening, though. I got
nothing
from him.

             
I realized at some point during my madness that I had to accept the fact that Jason disappeared from life without a care as to how I would feel about it. This acceptance didn’t make the pain go away, nothing did.

             
I still wonder where he is and why he left without so much as a goodbye but in the recent month Magda and Jesse have made sure that I no longer torture myself thinking about what could have been.

             
I know that my friends want me to move on and forget
him
…but if it were that simple, it would have happened already. Jason ran away with my heart, my love, and my happiness.

             
I’ve spent every month since his abrupt departure listening to sappy love songs to help me in some way, but they haven’t, it’s just made the pain feel worse.

             
After two and half months of torturing myself to the tunes of Avril Lavigne, Toni Braxton, and Mariah Carey, I made the decision to live each day without regret of ever meeting Jason. The time I spent with him was the best time of my life. I wouldn’t take that back, not even for all the pain I feel right now.

             
I remember that on a particularly bad day for me right after he disappeared is when Magda started to make it her mission to get me out of the deep depression I fell into. She started by burning all of the pictures of Jason and me together in a nearby trash can by the Cafeteria. “Just putting the trash out” she said.

             
I was numb at that point but I still had the capability to keep the one picture that will haunt me for years to come—the one I took of him leaving me that fateful night four months ago. That picture is a constant reminder of what I lost.

             
I keep it hidden inside my favorite book
Taking Chances
because I know no one will find it there—my friends aren’t necessarily into the sappy love stories as much as I am, so I know my only picture of Jason will be safe along with the memory of him being mine for a short period of time.
God! I’m so pathetic, I look at that picture everyday—why do I torture myself?

             
Anyway, I also made the decision to not show anyone any ounce of feelings about my situation because the day after I found out he had left. I had about the whole campus asking me if I was okay and acting like I was going to jump off of a bridge, which I was close to doing, but that’s totally not the point.

             
I just hate it when people do that, get up in your business because they don’t have better things to do than feel sorry for you.

             
I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me, he left, I’m still here…there’s nothing left to say about it. I mean, do I sound okay to you? Granted, I haven’t been the same since, but I do try to keep my friends happy and keep them from asking me about my feelings every hour.

             
Wanting to keep them away from nagging at me, leads me to the reason I am going to a bar called “Bobba Louie’s” on Main Street tonight. Do I want to go? Absolutely not, but in order to avoid the drama of my friends saying I look homeless and need to move on, I am forced to go.

             
Magda got us some fake ID’s in the beginning of the school year so there’s no problem on that front because my name is Michelle Mason and I am a twenty one year old foreign exchange student. I don’t know how she got those. The only thing I know is that someone named Adalric got them for her. I know that because he used to call our dorm pretty often and I could not understand him, aside from his name, due to his thick German accent.

             
I hear Magda’s voice and it breaks me out of my sad thoughts, “That’s amazeballz! You better be because you’ve got Zac now, anyway. Way better catch than J-turd--so get ready for Bobba’s and try to remember that it’s the end of our Freshman year and have some fucking fun, Bitch! No sulking allowed and get laid by someone else for God’s sake—preferably hunky Zac!!!”

             
I ignore her comment when she leans over and licks Jesse’s cheek for some odd reason.

             
“Mmm…” I hear.

             
I shudder with disgust.
Gross!
He, of course, doesn’t seem to mind so he licks her neck in return.

             
“Fucking sick!” I say disgusted with their behavior.

             
They both laugh.

             
“You guys need to scratch that itch, already!” I yell as I leave to go to the bathroom, shaking my head to get ready for another night of pretending.

             
I sigh heavily at the thought of Zac.

             
He’s someone I met at a party I was dragged to by Magda like a week or two ago. I am not the least bit interested but he’s nice and easy to talk to, so I don’t mind hanging out with him whenever I get forced to go out because it makes the time go by faster. I do however, hate that it seems like everyone thinks we are dating, when we clearly are
not.

             
He is a nice guy and the star basketball player here, but I am still too heartbroken over Jason to even entertain the idea of someone else.

             
The stupid part is that I haven’t even been on a date with him for everyone to be thinking that we’re going out.
Drama
.

             
I mean it’s not that he’s not a looker with his six foot five frame, hazel eyes, and sandy blonde curly hair, but the fact is, I get ill thinking about being with anyone that’s not Jason.

             
No matter how much I don’t want to think about him, I do, and that doesn’t let me picture my life with someone else. My friends try to get me to replace him whenever they get the chance but I can’t. I’ll never be able to replace the one person that owns my heart.

***

              Three hours later I’m sitting on a bar stool at the bar watching my friends enjoy our last night as freshmen.

             
I am officially a sophomore tomorrow, it should make me happy, but it doesn’t. It’s like my life has gone by in a blur and I have no idea how I got here.

             
I grunt and turn back around to avoid everybody glaring at me for not having as much fun as they are.

             
I tell the bartender to give me another Long Island to torture myself with. I hate those things. They are
not
good, no matter what anyone says. To make matters worse its couples’ night tonight or lovers’ or fuck buddies’ night—can’t remember which one. So that is great since I’m here all
alone.

             
Ugh!
Listening to all these sappy ass songs just make me think of the one person I’m supposed to have forgotten about already.

             
As she places a new drink on my coaster I hear all this commotion coming from behind me so I turn around and look to where my friends are.

             
I see everyone huddled in a circle near the stage where a bunch of stripper-esque looking girls are dancing a little too close for their own comfort.

             
At the same time I’m looking over, I see Magda standing outside the circle and her face is as white as ghost. I start making my way towards the group and she catches my eye.

             
Before I know it, she’s trying to get to me before I reach her but it’s impossible because of all the people surrounding her on the dance floor.

             
I keep seeing her open her mouth like she’s saying something but I can’t hear anything with everyone yelling.

             
I finally make it closer and when I’m about to reach her, she grabs my hand and pushes through the crowd, dragging me towards the exit.

             
“What the fuck?!” I yell over Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist’.

             
She ignores me, so I pull my hand away to free it from her death grip.

             
She turns and glares at me. “Let’s get out of here, NOW! I’ll call Zac so he can come and pick us up.”

             
Her eyes look angry but I can’t figure out why.

             
I know then that something serious is going on because she knows that Zac hates being at parties or bars or anything remotely considered “fun”.

             
He’s probably studying or sleeping. For her to say she’ll call him is a legit red flag for me but I can’t think of what could possibly be making her this crazy.

             
I start to get butterflies in my stomach from my anxiety building up. “No. You dragged me here. What the fuck is going on?” I ask, turning to look at our group of friends.

             
At that moment, I wish I hadn’t because I see a familiar face staring right at me. It can’t be though, so I tell myself that I must be dreaming. I close my eyes and open them again –
Jason?
He’s really here?

             
Time stops for me and I can’t move when I see him standing by Ryan and Lindsay—Ryan’s new girlfriend. It doesn’t even feel like I’m breathing right now.

             
I feel a lump in my throat when I see him just staring back at me with the same blue eyes I fell in love with all those months ago. He still has the same haunted-- almost sad look. My eyes start to water as I try to focus in on the meaning behind his penetrating gaze.