by Nicki Elson
The band started up a rendition of “Louie, Louie,” and Big D clumped together with his fraternity brothers for a singalong. Jen and the other girls formed a circle around them. Half way into the song, D removed his tie from his neck and placed it around his forehead. As Jen feigned enjoyment, clapping and smiling along with the other girls, she struggled against the panic that surged inside her. Could she do this?
D was sweet. D was good. D loved her. Of course she could do this. She wanted to do this. She made herself snicker when she reasoned that it was simply a matter of asking him to remove the tie from his forehead before he made love to her. She laughed out loud when she considered what he’d look like if he didn’t. For a brief, renegade moment, she imagined Dave on top of her instead of D, no ties in sight.
The party ended, and D took Jen’s hand in his, giving her a tender, loving look. She was still nervous, but she was ready. As they stepped out of the elevator and walked down the overly air-conditioned hallway to their room, she wondered if Dave really expected her to meet him at the bar. She wondered if he’d actually wait for her until two…
Chapter 10
Jen trudged up the steps to the stark hallway leading to her apartment. Her weekend bag weighed down one shoulder. Kate’s dress, covered in plastic, draped over the other. She was exhausted; it had been a long and emotional weekend. The carload she’d gone to Indianapolis with had spent the day as tourists in the city, including dinner at a rooftop restaurant, so it was late by the time she got back.
As she cleared the top step, she saw David sitting on the floor with his back against her front door. Her first thought was to suspect she was on a new hidden camera reality show called This is Your Sucky Ass Love Life.
David looked as if he may have been living with wild animals for the last few days. His clothes hung off him in a stretched out, wrinkled mess. His tousled hair had a greasy sheen. What should’ve been the whites of his eyes were more pinkish. Dark circles colored the pale skin underneath.
“You look like hell,” Jen said, more concerned that he’d placed himself between her and her bed than for the possible reasons behind his startling appearance. All day, she’d wanted—needed—to be alone, and David posed a barrier when she was so close to her goal. She set her bag on the floor, laying Kate’s dress over it, and rummaged through her purse for her keys. “Why are you here?” She found her key and fumbled with it in the lock.
He stood and hovered over her, not answering. She kept her focus on the lock, but felt his stare. David silently reached out a steady hand and placed it on Jen’s shaking one. His touch unleashed a torrent of pent up frustration, and Jen flung her hand in the air, knocking David’s away. She abandoned the lock and took a step back, glaring at him.
“Ellie and I broke up,” he said.
Jen returned to focus on the damned key. Her hand trembled too much to make much progress. She didn’t mean to be a bitch, but she didn’t have the energy to walk David through another breakup right now. “I’m really tired, David. Can I call you tomorrow to talk about it?”
“I don’t need to talk about it. I don’t love Ellie. Breaking up with her is something I should’ve done a long time ago.”
Jen’s gaze snapped onto him, surprised. Now that she examined him closer, she saw that he truly didn’t look sad or dejected, more like…scared shitless. “Then why are you here?”
“Because…because I love you.” He kept his frightened gaze on her.
Jen swallowed, her eyes popping wide in what easily could’ve been interpreted as horror.
“I know, I know!” He stepped away from her and began pacing back and forth along the opposite wall. “I don’t have a right to say it. I’ve been trying for so long to shake it off and leave you alone. I swear. Remember when we came back to school junior year and we ran into each other at ReBar? We saw those stupid acts in the basement, and you kept cracking up?”
She nodded, dumb with shock.
“And you wanted a refresher course? I couldn’t do it. I wanted to. Believe me, I wanted to. But I was confused. And I was afraid. I loved hanging out with you that night. It finally felt like old times, and I didn’t want anything to change the feeling between us. I didn’t want to take a chance on blowing it for good. I was sort of in the middle of a wild streak, and I wasn’t sure I could break it. I was so afraid that if we started up again, I’d end up messing around on you. I didn’t want to hurt you again and make you hate me forever.
“Or…worse.” His eyes dropped to stare at the floor. “I would’ve woken up the next morning and found out you were only in it for sex. You don’t know how hard it was for me to walk away from you after that last time together. If we’d done it again, and you walked away like it was nothing…” His voice trailed off, and his forehead crinkled.
He lifted his gaze back to Jen. “So I stifled my feelings and hoped they’d fade. I thought they did. I started dating Ellie and kept you at a safe distance. Then you met Dave. What a disaster. I tried to stay out of it and mind my own business, and I did an okay job of it until that night when I walked you home—that night he was such an asshole to you.”
He’d stopped pacing, and pressed his back to the opposite wall, sliding down it to once again sit on the dirty hallway carpet. Jen left her keys dangling in the lock and also sank to the floor, assuming his original spot against her apartment door. She needed to use all the energy she had left to absorb what David was telling her.
As he continued, he looked down at his hands, picking at the thick, calloused skin around his fingernails. “I guess it was about three punches in that I realized my feelings for you were more intense than I’d thought. I broke his lip. His warm, sticky blood spread over my hand, and I just kept punching and punching. Somewhere along the way, I realized it might’ve been an overreaction.”
Jen remembered seeing Dave’s battered face that day on campus when he’d blown her off. “You did that to him? Because of me?”
The corners of David’s soft, serous lips twitched upward for a second. “Probably not an entirely fair fight since he was passed out when I started laying into him.”
Jen had cried her eyes out that entire night, but Dave had apparently had no trouble falling asleep the moment she’d left. She knew she should probably be mad at David for interfering, but she was glad to know Dave’s peaceful slumber had been so rudely interrupted.
“I tried to tell myself it was just an overprotective big brother thing, but I knew that wasn’t true. Part of it was protective—I was pissed that he hurt you. But there was more to it. I couldn’t stand thinking about him touching you…and you touching him back. The second I got home, I tore up the stairs and wailed on him. It was like I hoped every punch would wipe the image of you two together out of my mind. I kept hitting his face. I think I was trying to make him ugly so you wouldn’t want him anymore.” David raised his eyes from his hands and watched Jen through his scraggly, dark bangs. “After that, I knew I had to stay away from you.”
A charged silence settled in the space between them. He chewed his lower lip, staring at the carpet.
“Would it have been so terrible to just’ve told me how you felt?” Jen asked.
David exhaled slowly. “I still thought it would be better for both of us if I only looked at you as a friend. It wasn’t until Springfield—after I kissed you, or maybe while I was kissing you—that I realized this was never going away. But by then it was too late, because you and Big D were getting serious. He’s a good guy. The kind of guy you should be with.”
Jen knew it wasn’t fair for anyone to measure himself against Super D. “You’re a good guy, too.”
“Thanks, but I wouldn’t have been a good boyfriend to you.”
“How can you say that? You were a good boyfriend to Ellie.”
“Uh, not exactly. I cheated on her. Constantly.”
Jen stared across the blank hall at David, her forehead pinched, her mouth gaping.
“Don’t look so scandalized. S
he cheated on me, too. We were both totally dysfunctional—that’s why we made a good match. I didn’t expect anything from her, and she didn’t expect anything from me, at least not until recently.”
Jen scrunched her lips together like she’d just eaten something rotten.
“I wish you could see the look on your face right now,” he said. “Then you’d understand why I stayed away. I was so afraid of hurting you. I tried to do the right thing and leave you and Mr. Wonderful alone to carry on while I floated along with Ell. But when she started talking about moving to California with me and wanted to go apartment hunting, I just…I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t move forward and make actual plans with her.
“Then I was out yesterday, and Mitchell showed me a picture of you and D all dressed up on someone’s Instagram. And I knew…I just knew.” The muscles at the back of his jaw bulged as he grit his teeth.
“Knew what?” Jen asked.
“I knew you. You’d want a perfect, magical night to seal the deal with Big D. I knew this stupid formal thing would seem like exactly the right time. I snapped. I went completely mental, like when I thought of you with Dave.” His hands clenched, working his thumbs over his knuckles so that they cracked. “But this time was different—because I knew D deserved you. Still, all I could think about was you and D…together. I saw you smiling up at him and his hands…” He let out huff of air, and his eyes darted. “I walked into my house and Ellie immediately started bitching at me about God knows what. I couldn’t even listen to her. I just turned around and walked back out. I jumped into my car and took off, not even thinking about where I was going until I was on the highway to Indy.”
“Indianapolis?”
“Yup.”
“Indiana?”
“Is there another Indianapolis?”
“In your car?”
“Yeah.”
“So, it didn’t make it all the way,” she concluded, trying to piece together David’s evening. After all the incredible things he’d told her, he’d finally given her something tangible to wrap her mind around. She could imagine David’s crappy car speeding along a highway whereas she couldn’t yet fathom him having such intense feelings for her.
A small, ironic smile flashed across David’s lips. “It made it. I rolled into town and realized I had no idea which hotel this party was at. I’d left in such a rush, my phone was still back at the house, so no chance of looking up the info or calling anyone for it. I asked around with no luck. But that was a good thing. All the walking gave me time to think. I realized I was being a selfish prick. I had no right to insert myself into your big night.”
He pressed his lips together and tightened his eyes, squinting at his hands. It was a look of such raw pain that Jen had to fight an urge to jump up and wrap her arms around him.
He sniffed off the look, forcing a smile. “Besides, I had this vision of Big D and all his Sig Chi brothers pummeling me in the parking lot. I moped around the city for a while longer. Then I got back into my car and headed for home. I still knew I had to tell you how I felt, but it was only fair to let you and D have your night uninterrupted. I was driving home, wondering how I’d make it through until today without going insane, when the car crapped out along the side of the highway. Wouldn’t move at all. I hiked to the nearest exit and to a gas station and begged them to use the phone. Then I called the only person whose number I know from memory—Ellie”
Jen gasped. “What did you tell her?”
“I said I’d explain when she got there. As we drove home, since I was finally being honest with myself, I decided to keep that train rolling. I told her everything—how I didn’t love her, probably never did, and definitely never would.” He paused, locking his deep brown gaze on Jen through the screen of his long, messy bangs. “How you’re the only one I’ll ever really want.”
Jen held her breath for a second, liking it better when she wasn’t the focus of the story. “How did she take it?”
“Not well. She screamed horrible things at me most of the way home. You should definitely check under your bed tonight in case she’s hiding under there with a giant hatchet or something.” He gave Jen a wry smile and sighed. “She kicked my ass out of the car on a side road in the middle of a cornfield, way off campus. I walked for most of the morning and crashed on Beano’s couch all afternoon before coming here, which explains my stellar appearance.”
“So…I still don’t understand. You came here to tell me you love me but you can’t keep your dick in your pants long enough to ever be my boyfriend?”
David pushed himself to standing, keeping his gaze steady upon her. “I’m here to tell you that I love you, I have for a long time, and now, finally…I’m ready for you.” They stared at each other for a few silent moments before he continued. “But I’m not here to make things difficult. I know you and Big D just moved on to a whole new level. I just want you to have all the facts, to know exactly how I feel. If he’s your choice, I’ll back off. But if you’re willing to give me a chance, to give us a chance, I’m here. I’ll wait for as long as you need me to.”
Jen’s heart thundered in her chest as she rose to stand, staring evenly across the hall at David. Just when she thought her emotions were on the verge of snapping, they stretched further. “D and I broke up.”
Chapter 11
Jen’s red dress had lain in a heap at her feet as she’d stood next to the king-sized bed, wearing only her pushy up bra and lacy thong. Big D had stood in front of her, stripped down to his striped boxer briefs, running his large hands up and down her body, telling her how much he loved her and how happy she was about to make him.
Jen had frozen. Completely frozen. And it’d had nothing to do with the size of D’s penis. Something had been wrong. Off.
She didn’t love Big D.
The realization had crashed down on her out of nowhere. She’d tried to shake it off, but it had gripped her so forcefully there’d been nothing she could do but explore it. D was wonderful and perfect and good. D loved her. D would undoubtedly provide her with a bright and glorious future. But desperately wanting to love someone and actually loving him were two different things. She didn’t love him.
It would’ve been easy to compartmentalize her emotions so she could’ve enjoyed the ecstasies of a night between the sheets with D. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint him. But not only had she promised herself to never again sleep with someone she didn’t love, going through with it would’ve been unfair to him. Making love surely would’ve strengthened his already strong attachment, making it more difficult for him when he learned her feelings didn’t match his.
“D…” She’d pulled his hands away from her bared hips. “I’m so sorry. I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Have sex with you tonight.”
“Babe.” He’d pulled her close, cradling her with an arm across her back and the other curved up to comb his fingers through her hair. He’d kissed the top of her head. “Don’t be scared. I’ll be gentle.”
“I know.” Tears had sprung forth, and she’d buried her head against his chest. “It’s not that.” Then she’d pulled back from him, placing her hands on either side of his face and staring straight into his beautiful blue eyes. “Please understand that I love you. I love you so much—as a person. I’m just not sure I’m in love with you.”
A crease had formed between his eyebrows. “You’re not sure or you know?”
She’d bitten her lip, and fat tears had leaked out the corners of her eyes. “I know.”
His steel blue gaze had fallen to the carpet. For several moments, the only sounds that had passed between them were Jen’s sniffles. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he’d finally said, then walked away, pulling his pajama pants from his duffel bag and going into the bathroom. The shower had started, and he’d stayed in there a long while. By the time he’d come out, Jen had cried herself to sleep. She’d hated hurting him.
In the morning, she’d woken at the edge of the
bed with D’s back facing her from the opposite side. Moving as quietly as she could, she’d gone from the bed to the closet and then to the bathroom. In the shower, she’d let cool water run over her face, trying to calm the puffiness around her eyes. When she’d come out, fully dressed, D had been up, sitting at the small, round table with a mug of coffee.
“There’s more if you want some,” he’d said.
She’d walked over, taking the chair across from him but staying silent, letting him guide how the morning would go.
“I’m sorry I was short with you last night,” he’d said. “You caught me off guard. It seemed like things were going so well. Guess I misread it.”
“Thing were going great. You didn’t misread anything.”
“Then what the hell, Jen?”
She’d looked away from the glare he’d shot at her. “I don’t know.” Fresh tears had welled in her eyes.
“Look, we’ve got a long day ahead of us at the track and White River. I still love you, and I hope someday soon you’ll be able to love me back, so for now can we forget last night happened and shelve further conversation about it until we’re back at CIU?”
Jen had nodded. It was a better plan than any she’d been able to think of.
Except D hadn’t shelved the conversation. At every opportunity he’d pulled her aside from the group, asking questions like, “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. You didn’t do anything wrong. I promise.”
“Is it that drug dealer Dave guy? Do you still have a thing for him?”
“God no. He’s a jerk.”
“Is it someone else, then?”
“No, D, there’s no one else.”
“Then what is it, Jenny?”
Jen hadn’t been able to make D understand because she herself hadn’t known how she could be so sure her affection for him wasn’t love. She’d doubted herself throughout the day. It hadn’t been until his last question that she’d become once again as certain as she’d been the night before.
