You Give Love a Bad Name

by Marilyn Brant

  I scanned the playlist.

  “Open Arms” by Journey was coming up.

  “Hurts So Good” by John Cougar Mellencamp followed.

  And then there were about a dozen other songs that, in some way, reminded me of the Mademoiselle. I mean, she was everywhere in my mind. I thought of her whenever a popular Eighties tune played, since most of them were on my Homecoming dance playlist. I thought of her whenever there was a song about pain caused by a romantic relationship. Or whenever there was the slightest mention of honesty and openness with a lover. And, of course, whenever there was a lyric that referenced France or so much as used a French phrase. ELO’s “Hold on Tight to Your Dream” (Accroches-Toi À Ton Rêve) had me gritting my teeth and needing to escape the booth for an extra-strong mug of coffee.

  Unfortunately, this turned out to be a lousy idea.

  Both of my bosses—Doug and Leonard—were sitting in the break room going over paperwork when I walked in.

  “Blake,” they said in unison.

  “Hey, just getting some coffee. I’ll be back in the booth in a sec.” I grabbed a mug and started pouring.

  “You’ve got your next few songs already scheduled, right?” Doug asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Good!” he said. “Sit down with us for a few minutes.”

  Leonard waved a sheet of paper in the air. “Your buddy Trevor Cayne from the Gazette sent over a copy of the piece he ran in yesterday’s issue about the high school’s Homecoming.”

  “We loved that new slogan you came up with for the station,” Doug added.

  “‘The Heartbeat of Mirabelle Harbor!’” Leonard enthused. “That’s inspired.”

  I gulped about a third of my coffee, wishing it were spiked with rum or schnapps or...anything. “Glad you liked it,” I told them, taking a few steps toward the door.

  “No, don’t leave yet,” Doug said. “We’ve got some really exciting ideas for upcoming promotions and we’d like you—”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I interrupted, so rudely that my parents would’ve slapped my face if they were still alive. But if I didn’t get away from my bosses and their inane grins, I’d probably knock out one of them. That wouldn’t bode well for my job security.

  “He’s not a morning person,” I heard Leonard say to Doug as I slipped out of the room.

  “Yeah, but it’s almost one in the afternoon...” Doug countered.

  I didn’t stick around to hear the rest. It was all I could do to try to finish my shift without getting myself fired.

  A few hours later, though, just as J.J. took over the reins, both of my bosses motioned me out of the booth and into the hall.

  “Guys, look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m having a really rotten day. I just need to get home—”

  Doug put his hand on my arm to silence me. “It’s okay. We talked to Amelia. We know you’re dealing with an affaire du coeur.”

  Fuck.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted.

  Leonard nodded knowingly. “We’ve all been there, Blake. Like Bryan Adams said, ‘It’s Only Love.’”

  Somebody needed to pull the trigger and put an end to my suffering. Now, if possible. “Um, thanks,” I said, leaning away from Doug’s kindly grasp.

  “There’s nothing like music to bring out the full depth of your pain,” Leonard added. “Like the way salt draws out water from a sliced tomato.”

  I stared at him. “Okay.”

  “Just be aware that you’re not alone, Blake,” said Doug. “Others have been in that same pit of despair. Musicians know what you’re feeling. They composed songs about it. Wrote lyrics that expressed the heartache. Listen to their wisdom, and let yourself feel the beautiful sadness.”

  “Not really helping,” I murmured.

  Leonard nodded. “When all else fails, order your favorite carryout, light a few candles, and put on some Barry Connelly. Allow yourself to wallow in the misery. You can only start to come up after you’ve hit rock bottom.”

  I managed a respectful nod. “Wise words,” I said before finally escaping the two of them and literally running back to my apartment.

  “Holy hell,” I said to Winston. “You have no idea how much I missed you.” I picked him up and stroked his fur, being careful not to press too hard near his head bruises or his bandaged front leg. He was healing, for which I was incredibly grateful, but I just realized I couldn’t even look at my own dog without thinking of Vicky. Damn her.

  “What d’ya say we order up an early dinner and watch some Sunday night football?”

  Winston barked and wagged his tail.

  But when the delivery guy from Sloppy Joe’s arrived with my burger and fries, all I could think about was Vicky and the burgers we’d eaten together after that long day at the vet.

  Watching anything on TV made me think of her, too.

  And the radio was the worst of all. I refused to even tune in to 102.5, but every other station seemed to have conspired to play love songs from Tom Odell’s “Can’t Pretend” to Lifehouse’s “Everything.”

  I couldn’t even play the music on my own iPod because I’d shared so many of my favorite songs with her that they mingled with my memories. I was screwed.

  After about three hours, I gave in and streamed a few Barry Connelly tunes on my laptop. Didn’t know what caused me more agony, having to listen to all of those “ooooh, babys” in his big hit “You’re the One,” or having to admit to myself that his sappy, overly simplistic, utterly repetitive lyrics suddenly resonated with me on a deep level.

  If this wasn’t a sign that Armageddon might be coming after all, I didn’t know what was.

  ~Vicky~

  Stephanie Little bounced up to me on Monday afternoon, bursting with excitement. “Matt tallied up the sales from the car wash yesterday, and we made twice the profit that we made last year!” she gushed. “Blake is amazing. We wouldn’t have gotten nearly as many customers without his radio announcements. Did you hear him, Mademoiselle?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said.

  Whatever Blake Michaelsen’s faults (and I’d been keeping a rather extensive list of them), he was a charismatic guy and had proven to be a man of his word. He’d promised the kids he’d promote their event, and he did. With gusto. I’d heard him mention the car wash at least a half-dozen times during his shift at the station, and I didn’t even have my radio on for the whole four hours.

  Honestly, I didn’t know what my problem was, but the songs on LOVE FM were making me edgy—and a little depressed—for the first time ever. And it was so strange hearing Blake’s voice when I knew him so much better now. Maybe because no matter how upbeat he tried to sound on the air, I knew he was faking it. At least a little. I’d seen him in person just two hours before and he’d looked and sounded so down, so beat. Which bothered me because I’d felt supremely justified in being mad at him...until he’d come over this morning. He seemed weirdly withdrawn and subdued, like I was the one who’d hurt him. It didn’t make sense.

  Stephanie chattered at me for a few minutes more before rushing off to one of her many after-school clubs. Glad someone, at least, had enjoyed her Sunday.

  There was a foreign language department meeting scheduled to start just down the hall in Christine’s room, but I didn’t immediately race down to it.

  Instead, I leaned against one of the cool walls of my classroom, closed my eyes, and replayed Saturday night in bed with Blake. The way he touched me until my body hummed. Until my senses were filled with him. Until I didn’t think we could get any closer.

  We were so fundamentally different from each other out of bed that I couldn’t believe how well things worked between us beneath the covers. Still, I’d given into desire and slept with him against my better judgment.

  I hadn’t been lying when I told Blake that I didn’t regret any of it. I couldn’t bring myself to wish away that magical hour. But, ultimately, look at the way things had unraveled between us? It couldn’t have happened faster or been mo
re painful. Some people just weren’t meant to be together.

  The other foreign language teachers were already in the room when I nearly skidded into the meeting, a full two minutes late.

  Christine raised her eyebrows when she saw me. “You okay, Vicky. Is something going on?”

  Lisa, Marcie, and Janet all turned to look at me with concern.

  “Nothing to worry about,” I said, but apparently not convincingly enough because Janet crossed her arms and shook her head in disbelief.

  “We’re your friends. We worry,” she said.

  “Parle-nous,” Marcie said in her impeccable French. Talk to us.

  “Yeah,” added Lisa. “Spill.”

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to derail our meeting—”

  “We can discuss the Foreign Language Fête later,” Lisa interrupted.

  Christine, our department head, was quick to agree. “Seriously, Vicky, we’ve got four weeks to plan the event. It can wait. What’s got you looking so flustered?”

  I closed the classroom door and sank into one of the chairs, never appreciating my teaching colleagues more than I did at this moment. Maybe my love life sucked the big one, but how lucky I was to have friends like these. People who cared about me, even when I was an emotional wreck and could barely concentrate long enough to compose a complete sentence. It was a wonder that I’d made it through a full school day. But how was I going to make it through the rest of the week? The Homecoming dance?

  I took a deep breath. “So, remember how we all saw Blake Michaelsen fighting that night a few weeks ago?”

  “When we left The Lounge,” Lisa said. “At the beginning of September, right?”

  I nodded. “Well, that same week, the kids on the Homecoming committee voted to have him be the DJ for the dance this Friday. And he accepted.”

  My friends looked at me expectantly. “And...so?” Janet asked.

  “And so we’ve spent a lot of time together lately,” I managed. “And things are kind of awkward between us now.” I told them briefly about him coming to the meetings here in the high school, running into him at the park a couple of times, that day at the animal hospital with Winston, and a very PG-version of our Saturday night date.

  Marcie tilted her blond head and squinted at me. “Why do I get the feeling that you’ve left out the most interesting bits?”

  I fought a blush, but I only shook my head. Blake might have loose lips when it came to dating—I actually had no idea what kinds of things he told his buddies about the women he’d gotten involved with—but I’d never been a kiss-n-tell type.

  When my friends realized I wasn’t going to give them a play by play of Saturday night, they turned their attention toward something more productive: Psychoanalyzing Blake Michaelsen.

  Christine asked a few questions about Winston and offered a partial theory about Blake’s behavior. “It might be hard for him to put himself out there emotionally, even though he doesn’t seem to have a problem speaking with women,” she said. “But being conversational isn’t the same thing as being open. It might be easier for someone very guarded to be more authentic with a pet.”

  “Yeah,” Lisa said. “Maybe because you saw him at a particularly vulnerable time, he thinks you might be able to tell the difference between the real Blake that only those closest to him know and the DJ persona that he shows most of the rest of the world.”

  This rang uncomfortably true. If he’d felt his real self were being judged by me, he’d be more hurt than if he just thought I was taking shots at his social veneer. Especially since he was so careful to control that social perception. Had I made the mistake of treating both sides of him interchangeably?

  “That makes sense,” I agreed. “But how healthy is it to be around someone with such a split personality? That can’t be a good thing.”

  Christine shrugged. “No one is one-hundred percent consistent. You’re not. None of us are.” She motioned with her hand to include everyone in the room. “But if you give the guy a chance, he just might surprise you.”

  Her words echoed Julia’s advice that night at Drew’s Diner for the Quest group gathering. Sometimes first impressions were wrong.

  “It’s important to go into any relationship with open eyes,” Janet advised. “You’re totally justified in being cautious, but that’s different from being judgmental. Unless you have reason to believe he means you harm, maybe it’s worth giving him a chance, eh?”

  “And he’s pretty hot,” Marcie interjected. “You’ve certainly chosen worse boyfriends before.”

  Everyone burst out laughing, me loudest of all. My friends had seen me through the emotional roller coaster of being with Philippe and with Ryan and with a handful of other guys earlier on in my teaching career. But I’d been playing it safe for so long—choosing only book boyfriends and unattainable fantasy men—that I’d forgotten that my colleagues could still remember my being “in love” with real people. That they’d cheered me on when things were going well and encouraged me when the chips were down. That every single one of them had, at some point or other, tried to set me up with unattached guys they knew in the area.

  I’d once asked Lisa why they’d all been trying so hard to get me to go on a date. Shouldn’t they spend their energy on somebody whose relationship actually had a chance in hell of working out?

  I remembered how Lisa had chuckled at that. She simply said, “Maybe, but you’re the only one we know who’s a true romantic. You want to find love, even when it feels hopeless.”

  No wonder they were so excited I finally had a guy in my life again, however tenuous the relationship and however challenging the man.

  Their insightful comments about Blake did leave me pondering, though. His behavior definitely wasn’t completely consistent, and his attitude was just as changeable.

  But...I had to admit that I had brought considerable pre-judgment to my interactions with him and that, without my prejudice, I might have been a stronger listener and gotten to know the true Blake better.

  “Just think about everything you really know to be true about him,” Christine suggested. “Rather than reacting to his actions, that you may or may not know the reasons for, take time to consider what you really want to say to him. It may turn out to be a lot simpler than it seems to get to the heart of the issue.”

  I wasn’t sure how much I believed that, but I didn’t have a Plan B. So, when I finally got home that night, I sat down on my sofa—Napoleon on my lap—and thought about what I really wished I could say to Blake. What I felt was true. What I thought was fair. What I believed he deserved to know, and not just what my pride wanted me to cling to for dear life.

  And then I texted him.

  “Thanks for helping advertise the car wash on the air yesterday, as well as for making the Gazette story happen,” I began. “The kids were so grateful.” I paused and, before I hit SEND, I added, “And I really appreciated everything you did, too.”

  There. That was not only the truth, but it was good manners. If anyone in the community—even my worst enemy—had helped my students the way Blake had, I would have sent a thank-you note immediately. And Blake wasn’t an enemy. Just, perhaps, a semi-frequent antagonist.

  My phone buzzed.

  I was pleased by the speedy response, although a little disappointed in the short reply.

  Blake texted: “You’re welcome.”

  Okay, now for the harder message to write, which also happened to be true:

  “I’m sorry for the part I played in our argument this weekend. I’d been trying to be honest with you, not trying to hurt you, but I see that I did. I truly apologize for that.”

  I exhaled slowly and clicked SEND. For the longest time, there was no reply to this message. I’d begun to wonder if he’d gotten it at all or, conversely, if he was reacting to it by coming over to my apartment in person. When he didn’t text, call, or show up on my doorstep after a full hour had gone by, I figured he was still mad and just choosing to ig
nore me.

  But an hour after that, my phone finally buzzed again.

  His response this time was marginally longer, but no more revealing of his emotions. He wrote:

  “I’m sorry, too, Vicky. See you at the dance on Friday.”

  And that was it. Far worse than anger, this had the cold ring of indifference.

  Chapter Twelve

  ~Blake~

  Wednesday afternoon dragged like one of those days when you’re ill with some unspecified virus but not quite ill enough to justify taking off work.

  Not that I wasn’t tempted to stay home from the radio station anyway but, aside from the usual end-of-the-month paperwork I had to finish up, I told myself that all I’d have to do was survive a couple of hours of sappy music. And I needed to get out of the apartment for a little while. I’d been moping around my place so much this week that even Winston seemed sick of me.

  I sure as hell was sick of myself.

  And so damned sick of thinking of Vicky. Her “apology” to me—via text, no less—still stung badly. Not that I thought she was being insincere, just that her words came across as so calm, so dispassionate. No one would doubt that Mademoiselle Bernier conducted herself as a mature adult, but she’d been playing everything far too coolly for me to know if she cared about me at all.

  I needed some show of emotion. Some sign that even a small part of her was interested in me for more than just a fling. I’d give anything to have her yell at me on the street or chew me out on the phone or even post an incoherent rant about our relationship (“such that it is...”) on Facebook or Twitter.

  But, no. She was too much of a grownup for that. And, much as I respected her, I wanted her to do even one irrational, reckless act that might show her willingness to let go.

  Well, she did sleep with me.

  The voice in my head was insistent in reminding me of this fact. Guess that was pretty impulsive and reckless for her. What more did I want, right?