Binkies and Briefcases

I drove for hours and by the time I got there I was having second thoughts, but it was too late and too far to turn around and go home. I didn’t feel much like partying at all, but maybe my friend was right. Maybe it would help to be around new people and get my mind off of the same conversations with Eddie that played on loop in my head. Maybe it was time to stop dwelling on what I could have done differently or how I could get him to come back and embrace the moment for a little while. Besides, what if he found someone else and never came back? Was I just supposed to mope around at home, a lady in waiting, until I received word from Eddie about whether or not I was good enough for him after all? Forget that.

My friend gave me a tour of the small house he lived in with a few friends. I remember being surprised that he had his own room. All of my other friends who were away at college had tiny dorm rooms that they shared with roommates. For some reason, this revelation of unexpected privacy seemed to seal our fate in my mind. Not that he had done anything at all to give me that impression, he was being a perfect gentleman.

He gave me some privacy to rest and get ready while they got the basement ready for their party. At one point he came up from the basement and found me near the top of the steps. He looked down at me and said, “I’m glad you came. You look beautiful.” Then he kissed me. I gasped, surprised, although his advance was not unwelcome. He pulled away quickly and apologized, saying I probably wasn’t ready for something like that and he didn’t mean to push me. We didn’t talk about it anymore and before I knew it the house was crowded.   

 I don’t think I drank anything. I probably did my patented “just walk around with an empty red Solo cup and pretend to take a sip occasionally so that people leave you alone and stop asking you why you’re not drinking” move. I tried to smile and be polite, but frat parties just really aren’t my scene. Mostly, I sat on a sofa and thought about the fact that someone who was not Eddie had just kissed me and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Actually, I did know how I felt: I felt attractive and this was a big surprise to me and also a big relief. I had been spending a lot of time, money and energy getting my body to look the best it possibly could, and I was actually pretty confident about the way I looked, but I wasn’t used to getting that kind of attention from other men. Or any attention really.

In high school everyone knew me as “Eddie’s girlfriend” and no one would dare to come onto me. Since I went to a women’s college, there weren’t any men there either and my only other guy friends were Eddie’s friends from college. No one in any of those situations was going to be putting the moves on me.I wasn’t the type of girl to pick up random men in bars. So where was I going to meet anyone now that we were both supposedly out spreading our wings or whatever we were doing?

I realized that when Eddie left I had been scared that I didn’t really have any other prospects, whereas he was literally surrounded by thousands of women at College Park and he’s never been one to have a hard time making friends. I have always had a irrational insecurity about just being myself. I’m scared that once people really get to know me they won’t like me any more. It makes me shy and reserved. Eddie leaving really brought it front and center and made me scared that if even he didn’t like me enough to stay then no one ever would. Having a friend who knew me well confirm that I was still likeable was a big relief. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to articulate that to myself until I was standing in dingy basement counting the minutes until yet another tedious fraternity party would end.

Every fraternity party at every college is the same. A bunch of people stand around a basement taking turns playing beer pong, which people claim is a ton of fun, but is really just bouncing ping pong balls into cups. The guys drink from a keg and the girls are supposed to drink something called “jungle juice” that is a disgusting mixture of cheap alcohol and Kool Aid or juice. Then people make a lot of bad choices and wake up in the morning feeling like they have the flu. When you are in college these parties are labeled “having fun” and attendance is mandatory if you want to be “anybody.” If you have ever had actual fun, you probably know that it generally does not involve drinking mystery substances in a dirty basement then spending half the night in line for an even dirtier bathroom. I don’t know how many fraternity parties I endured in college, but there were a lot of them. This one was pretty much par for the course.   

That night, like he said he would, my friend gave up his bed and made himself a makeshift pile of blankets on the floor. He listened to me for hours talking about how I lost the person I thought I was going to marry. It had been a little less than a year since I had done the same thing for him.

He apologized again for kissing me earlier. I told him not to be ridiculous. His friendship meant a lot to me and it made me feel good to know someone else could see me the same way Eddie did.

Then I invited him back into his own bed.

We kept seeing each other for a few weeks. I guess you could call it dating, although we didn’t call it that. We both realized fairly quickly that it just wasn’t going to work between us. Finally, one day we sat in his car and had the “What exactly are we doing here?” discussion.  

I told him that I didn’t think this was going to work because the distance was too far and he had any number of girls fawning over him all the time, football star that he was. One in particular I met once when he took me to the pool hall. She was head over heels in love with him and being very obvious about it. She invited herself over the minute she found out he was there with me. I wasn’t interested in playing the role of a jealous long-distance girlfriend and I told him so. He laughed at me and told me to just admit what it really was already.

“Yeah, yeah, all that. And you’re not over Eddie.” He was smiling, without a trace of hard feelings.

“I will never be over him.” It was a simple statement of fact. It wasn’t that I had rushed into something too soon or that I didn’t like this person I was seeing. It was just that nobody else would ever be Eddie.

“You have to try to work it out with him. If I could go back and save my own relationship I would, but that’s over. You and Eddie? That’s not over yet.” It was a big deal for him to say something like this, considering the intense dislike that he had for my ex-beau.  

“How do I even do that? How do I save it?”

“I have no idea, but probably not like this,” he waved his hand back and forth in the space between the two of us, indicating our connection.

I knew he was right. I also knew that it meant I would probably never see him again if things worked out with Eddie.

It was the first time that I ever had to make a conscious choice to walk away from a friendship I that I truly valued.   

It hurt, but I did it. I turned and walked away, towards the past that I hoped would also be my future.

I haven’t seen him or spoken to him for about eight years, but don’t worry about my friend. He married the girl from the pool hall.

Part 9

It was our second year of college. I had gotten a scholarship to a small women’s college in Baltimore and moved in with my grandmother, the other love of my life, to be close to school and help her out when I could since she was getting up in age.

Eddie and my BFF Lauren had both chosen to go the University of Maryland. It was only an hour away, but it felt like a different world.  I would go up almost every weekend and stay in the dorms for one night. It was a welcome taste of freedom and gave us the chance to explore our relationship even further.

Eddie and I had been dating for over three years and we were legally adults now. We had a specific plan of action for our future. We had opened a joint savings account to save for it, although I was the only one contributing to that account because he hardly ever had extra cash, trying to put as much towards school as possible to reduce the amount of student loan debt we would have to take on when he graduated. We planned to get engaged during our junior year and marry after graduation. He bought a ring early so that he could make payments on it and have it paid in full by the time he gave it to me the following year. He hid it in a small box inside of a sock in the back of a drawer in his room at home.

Somehow his mom found the ring and his parents went ballistic. He got in a huge fight with his father and his mother drove him to back to the jewelry store and made a very public display demanding that the ring be returned because we were too young to make our own decisions. They claimed that I wasn’t the problem. They liked me well enough; they just wanted him to shop around a little more to make sure I was the best choice for him.  

I didn’t understand at all. I knew I wanted to be with him forever and it didn’t matter to me if we were only nineteen. There was never going to be anyone better for me. Waiting just for the sake of waiting didn’t make sense. It was like someone giving you a slice of cake and then trying to take it away saying, “We know you’re going to eat this cake eventually, but you shouldn’t eat it right now. Maybe you should put the cake away for a few years instead and try this tapioca pudding first.” I already knew that Eddie was my cake and I would be happy with cake every day for the rest of my life. Any other guy was just gross lumpy pudding and I didn’t want any. I had always been confident that he felt the same way.

But his faith in us was shaken by what he saw as logic. It started to become clear that he might need to try the stupid pudding first, just to make sure that he could handle cake every day after all.

“They do kind of have a point. How can we be sure that we are right for each other if that’s all we’ve known since we were fifteen? If you bought a shirt when you were fifteen, you probably wouldn’t want to be wearing the same thing when you are forty. Sometimes teenagers make the wrong choice. You know that.  If we separated for a little while I would know I was choosing you as an adult and for the right reasons. And it’s not like either one of us had a ton of options in high school, our school was so tiny. We should both see what else is out there so that we can make an informed decision.”

Tears rolled own my face, but somehow I was able to keep my voice steady and speak calmly, like I was brokering a business deal. “Fine. If you need space then you should take it. I think we should make it at least two months. I don’t want you to come back in a week, marry me, and leave again in a few years because you never got the chance to go exploring.” I spit out the final word with sarcastic bitterness.

Out of habit, when we said good-bye I said “I love you” without thinking.

“Maybe we shouldn’t say that right now.” I could hear the pain in his voice as he whispered it and I didn’t understand how he could possibly want to do this to both of us on purpose.

“Bye.”

I curled up on the bed in my grandmother’s spare room and gave in to silent heavy sobs. I didn’t know I could feel such intense physical pain just from a single conversation. I thought my heart might literally break from the cramping in my chest.

I grieved for a few days and then I got angry. Really angry. And also pretty shallow. How dare he? Did he actually think he was going to get anybody better than me?

I called my friend Ashley and told her that she better be ready for the most intense shopping trip of her life. I had just withdrawn every penny from our joint savings account (it was all my money anyway) and I was going to spend it all on making myself look fan-freaking-tastic to show him what he was missing. We drove all the way to the state capitol to the fanciest mall I knew and I dropped hundreds of dollars on a new slutty clubbing wardrobe.

 I started going to the gym for longer hours every day and I spent more money getting haircuts, waxes, and joining a tanning salon than I ever have. Manicures, pedicures, teeth whitening…I looked hot but I was still sad.

I only had one friend who could possibly understand what I was going through. The year before his long-term girlfriend had left him just before he was going to propose. He had been a close and trusted friend for almost ten years, my best guy friend outside of Eddie. He was away at a college several hours from home. I called him just to talk, but he knew right away that something was wrong.

“Steph? What’s the matter? Does Eddie know you’re calling me?” It was not a secret that Eddie wasn’t a huge fan of our friendship.

“He’s the problem.”

“Did he hurt you? Because I will f—ing kill him.” They really didn’t care much for each other.

“What? No. He wouldn’t. Not like that anyway. It’s just…he’s gone. And I know you know and…” the tears came again.

“Sh—. Look, I’m so sorry. Please don’t cry. I can’t get home for a few weeks because of football. Could you come up here this weekend? We’re having a party after the game and it might help get your mind off of things. I’ll sleep on the floor and you can take my bed. We’ll talk after things quiet down.”  

I didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified. There had always been a spark between us, but we had ignored it for years because we were never single at the same time. Until now. I knew what was going to happen if I went. It was a long drive to make by myself, but it’s not like I had anything better to do and the whole point of this stupid separation was supposed to be to test the waters elsewhere.

“Ok.”

With just one word I felt like I was betraying my best friend. Because I was, but only because he told me that was what he wanted.

It was time to go exploring.

Part 8