Beware of Love in Technicolor

by Kirstie Collins Brote

  When I returned to the room with my Diet Coke, people were moving about, pulling coats on and moving about to leave the room. Once back outside in the early October night, John walked up beside me.

  “How are you doing? You ok?” he asked. His feet were having trouble navigating a straight line.

  “Been better,” I replied curtly.

  “Whatever,” he replied quickly, and stumbled away, back toward the people who didn’t seem to care what a fool he looked like.

  Julie took the lead. I don’t think she talked about anything but sex the entire evening. Where, when, and how often she and her boyfriend back home in New Jersey did it. What she liked to wear, what he liked to eat afterward. If I hadn’t been so blind with rage, I might have learned a few things.

  When we had wandered about a hundred yards or so down the railroad tracks, the group started to slow down. It was dark, with only the light of the full, harvest moon and the faraway glow of the university to guide our eyes.

  “This looks like a good spot,” Prim said, and they all stopped. She took something out of her pocket, handed it to John, and struck her lighter. The flame lit up the small group for a moment, and I saw a joint dangling from John’s lips, He leaned down, and let Prim light it up.

  He stood up straight and inhaled deeply. The end of the joint glowed orange. Even in the dim light, I could see the idiot smile on his face. He coughed, stumbled backward, and handed it off to Topher. Topher took his turn, and attempted to pass it to me.

  “No, thanks,” I said shortly, and walked away. I heard Brett decline as well, and his footsteps in the gravel as he joined me about ten feet away from the circle.

  “You don’t smoke?” I asked him. We sat down on the outside rail, our knees touching.

  “Nah, don’t drink, either,” he said.

  “It doesn’t bother you that Topher is doing this with you here?” I looked at him closely for the first time. He was kind of cute. Cuter than John, but not as intriguing.

  “Should it?” he asked. “I never thought about it.”

  I shrugged, and scattered some pebbles with the toes of my boots. The crunching sound under my feet was satisfying in the otherwise quiet of the night. Julie interrupted our conversation.

  “C’mon lovebirds! We’re freezin’ our asses off out here!”

  “Lovebirds?” I heard John say. He must have forgotten I was there again. I heard his heavy footsteps approach, and saw the gleam of the moon off the toes of his black boots. I looked up, way up, to his face.

  “Having fun?” he asked me.

  “The most,” I replied.

  Brett helped me to my feet. The group started making its way back to the light of campus. Brett and I walked in the lead, with the others straggling behind. John was stumbling along behind me by about six paces.

  “It’s cold,” I said to my new buddy. “My hands are freezing.”

  “Here, give them to me,” Brett said. He took my hands in his and rubbed them warm.

  “What the fuck?” I heard John mumble behind us, right before he stumbled off the tracks and fell to the back of the group.

  ***

  I let Brett hold my hands all the way to the pizza place downtown. Once there, John slid himself into a booth, while Prim and Topher went to order. Julie disappeared to the ladies room.

  I had a decision to make. Should I keep pushing John? I didn’t know him very well, but I could see I was the buzzkill I had every intention of being. I looked at him and we locked eyes. We were each too stubborn to soften.

  I slid into the booth adjacent to the one John was in, my back to him. Brett slid in next to me. I pretended to be interested in whatever it was he was babbling about. I laughed where I ought to, and tucked my hair behind my ear. I could feel John’s eyes boring a hole in the back of my skull.

  Prim and Topher were obviously confused when they approached the two tables with trays of pizza and cokes. Topher sat with us, the girls sat with John. Julie pined for her long-distance, sex-machine boyfriend, while my table companions discussed the various lives of people they had grown up with. I picked at a slice, but did not eat. I was losing my enthusiasm, and just wanted the night to end. I no longer felt a smug satisfaction for ruining his night, but only sorry that I had even dropped by his room at all.

  “Would you excuse me?” I said to Brett finally. He stood and let me out of the booth. “I’m going to get going,” I said to him.

  “What? Now?” he asked, wiping the grease from his chin with a paper napkin.

  “I’m beat,” I Iied.

  I saw John look up from his pizza, and met his gaze. I saw in the wall of mirrors that we both had the same defeated look on our faces.

  “You leaving?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll walk you home,” he said, before Brett had a chance to offer. I didn’t fight him. I wanted a chance to have him to myself, even if I wouldn’t have admitted it.

  ***

  We walked in silence for at least five minutes. The street lamps cast long shadows on the pavement of the student parking lot. Even his shadow towered above everything else. Our boots created a strange, rhythmic patter-and-thud as we strolled toward Area 1.

  “Brett’s going to be disappointed,” he started, poking me in the ribs through my jacket. “You sure you didn’t want him to walk you home tonight?”

  “You know I didn’t,” I said.

  “No, I don’t know that. I don’t know anything about you.”

  He stopped walking and turned toward me. “I’ve spent so much energy just trying to figure you out, what you want. You give nothing of yourself, Greer, and it’s exhausting.”

  I stared at the pavement, frozen, not knowing what to say.

  “What is it you want?” I finally asked. My eyes were burning, and I was fighting back tears. I clenched my fists and bit my bottom lip to try and distract myself from the sudden surge of emotion.

  “Anything,” he said with urgency. “Anything real that shows you can take a risk.”

  “I didn’t flee tonight,” I told him. “Which is what I really wanted to do.”

  “And you didn’t speak to me, either.”

  “You’re drunk. I told you how I feel about that.”

  “I was drunk. I am not anymore,” he said. “And remember, you dropped by unannounced. I don’t think that counts.”

  “I’m sorry I ruined your night,” I said. I meant it, too. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Always,” he replied. He took my hand and we resumed walking.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I’m walking you home.” He squeezed my hand.

  “I mean it, John. I told you, I’m new to all this.”

  “I like you, Greer, and I would like to get to know you better, if you will let me. But you gotta give a little more. I can’t be the only one putting myself out on the line.”

  We were silent for a minute or two. I was no longer angry. If it was possible, I think I liked him even more than I had at the beginning of the night.

  “You’re probably pretty tired, huh?” I asked him as we approached Holt.

  “Not really,” he said. “You?”

  “No,” I said. “One thing you should know about me is I hardly sleep.”

  “Well, Sweetness, you wanna come over and hardly sleep together?”

  ***

  Now, the only thing that came off that night were my boots. Even my belt, the one with the big silver buckle, was in place under the covers. We talked and listened to Elvis Costello. We lay with him behind me, holding me and kissing my neck. I told him about summer camp and he told me about being an only child.

  It’s funny, but despite the way that night started out, it is one of my favorite memories from that time in my life. Somewhere around 3am we had to evacuate the building because some drunk freshman had yanked the fire alarm. I still remember the look of shock and confusion when Brett saw John and me, wrapped up like a burrito in his black comforter, mi
lling about on the lawn.

  I must have fallen asleep shortly before the sun came up. I woke up in an empty bed. Looking around, I saw no sign of John in the tiny room. Even his leather jacket was gone from the back of the door where he had hung it. It was 8:05 am.

  I was confused. I found his toothpaste and, using my finger, ran some across my teeth. As I was pulling on my boots, John entered the room. He was carrying a coffee, and his jacket was bulging in strange ways.

  Smiling, he began pulling breakfast from the confines of his leather coat. A couple of bagels, wrapped in paper napkins, two oranges, and even a couple of tiny plastic tubs of cream cheese and a plastic knife. He had smuggled us breakfast from the dining hall.

  “Wait,” he said, reaching into one last pocket. From it he pulled a Diet Coke. He really had been paying attention.

  I taught him how to toast bagels on his iron. We ate and talked. We hardly said a flippant thing to one another. It was quite lovely.

  ***

  We spent the next few days nearly inseparable. On Sunday he rubbed my back and discovered I’m ticklish while we watched football on my small TV set from home. On Monday afternoon, while skipping his chemistry lecture, his hands found their way up my shirt. On Tuesday, with my shirt draped over an exposed pipe, I noted how quickly he unhooked my bra and managed to unbuckle my belt buckle with one hand.

  “Stop me if I am moving too fast,” he would say quietly as he kissed my neck, my ears, my shoulders.

  On Wednesday, when he slipped his fingers inside me, I arched my back and sunk my fingernails into his shoulders. He buried his head in my chest, moaned a long, low moan, and pulled himself back. He jumped off the bed, and apologizing the whole time, sat down in my desk chair, his head in his hands.

  “What? What’s wrong?” I asked, my head spinning wildly. He came back to the bed and sat down next to me.

  “I’m sorry, but do you know how hard it is to keep stopping myself? Do you have any idea how much I want you?” His eyes were serious, and I noticed small beads of sweat along his forehead.

  “I never told you to stop,” I said softly, looking down at the garish purple and yellow flowers winding their way across my quilt.

  “Greer, please don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, smoothing my hair with his hand. “I mean it when I say I want you, but I don’t want your first time to be like this. You deserve more than this.”

  I looked around the room, with Molly’s stinky sneakers in the corner, her Texas flag hanging over her bed. I laughed a weak laugh, but felt like crying. I did not understand all the emotions that went along with sex.

  “It would be so easy...,” he said, leaning in and kissing me on my lips. He ran his hand down my shoulder, over my bare arm. “You are so soft,” he murmured, and stopped abruptly again. He let out a heavy sigh.

  “Can we go somewhere?” he asked. “We need to get out of here.”

  What could I do but comply? Sex put me on foreign soil, and I still didn’t understand the exchange rate.

  ***

  On Thursday, when I showed up at Holt so we could see a movie at the SUB, he was on the phone. Wyndham, as it turned out, was one of only two dorms on campus left to switch over from hall phones to phone jacks in each room. He kissed me on the cheek, and began wrapping up his conversation.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said into the receiver. I picked up a paperback from his desk, and began flipping through it.

  “No, you are not being ‘picked over,’” he said with more than a small hint of frustration in his voice. “I told you I was going to a movie... yes, with her,” he smiled sheepishly at me. “Yes, she’s here right now...”

  I pretended not to be listening, and kept my head down and my eyes on the book. After a few more minutes, he said good-bye and hung up.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said to me.

  “Not a problem,” I lied. “Was that Abby?” I did my best not to sound jealous.

  “Yeah,” he said, sighing. ”But let’s not talk about her.”

  “Ok, what do you want to talk about?” I asked him.

  I placed the book back on his desk, and turned to face him. He was sitting in his desk chair, so it was my turn to look down over him. He placed his hands on my waist, and drew me close to him. He rested his head against my stomach, his arms wrapped around my hips. I stroked his blond curls with my hands. We stayed like that for a few moments, and then he pulled me onto his lap.

  “You trust me?” he asked suddenly.

  “Any reason not to?” I asked back.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why? What’s going on?” I was not accustomed to seeing him so distracted.

  “She wants me to come see her this weekend.”

  “Abby?” I asked, my heart starting to thump. What could she possibly want?

  “She said I owe her that much.”

  “Why do you owe her anything?” I asked, the tone of my voice accumulating a frosty glaze.

  “She wants me to tell her it’s over in person. She says the phone doesn’t count.”

  “What do you want to do?” I asked him. I did my best to keep my voice soft.

  “I want to forget all about her,” he answered.

  I should have paid more attention to the anger in his voice, but instead, I only heard the words. They were, after all, the words I wanted to hear.

  ***

  John went to see Abby that weekend. I told him to go. I thought that if I didn’t make a big deal out of it, he would see how cool I was. How understanding I was. How trusting I was.

  How dumb I was.

  But for the time being, when he returned on Sunday evening, things ran smoothly.

  “Is it over?” I asked him when he came to my room straight from the bus stop.

  “I’m all yours,” he told me.

  “Good,” I said, tossing him a root beer. “I hate sharing.”

  Chapter Four

  John and I spent the rest of October without incident. On Sunday and Thursday nights, at the SUB, they showed movies for a dollar. On Monday nights we would order Domino’s and watch Monday Night Football in my room while Molly played Tetris and tried to find some way to connect with this strange boy who was suddenly around a lot.

  Football was the only sport that John really liked to watch. My father and brother always thought John’s height and build were wasted on him.

  As lame as it sounds, I usually studied or read on Friday nights. It was John’s night to go out with the guys, and as naive as I may have been, I knew not to interfere with that. I rarely asked any questions, which I found was the best way to get a detailed account of the night’s events.

  On Halloween, we dressed in all black and gothic eyeliner and took a bus to Boston. We both missed the city, and spent a couple hours just hanging out in Harvard Square. We sat watching traffic and swapped stories about times spent using fake ID’s to get into 21+ shows at the various clubs around town.

  Downstairs in the subway station, a disheveled and disturbed homeless man began ranting about the end of the world. He really came undone when four Harvard students, dressed in bright yellow biohazard suits for a Halloween party downtown, approached the platform. He was waving his arms above his head and yelling: “The end is near! Repent!”

  “Dude, it’s ok,” John said to him in a calm voice. “It’s just Halloween, man.”

  The man focused on John’s made-up face for a moment, and calmed down. He threw his hands up in the air and sat down on the bench.

  “What do I know?” he yelled, arms still waving, though with resignation instead of indignation now. “I’m just here to deliver a pizza.” And then he fell asleep.

  It was brilliant.

  ***

  On my nineteenth birthday, in early November, John took me to the expensive restaurant at the university hotel. I wore a very slinky green dress, and a pair of black heels. John cleaned up nicely. He looked comfortable in a suit, and knew how to tie a tie. It was the
first time I saw him in anything other than his Docs.

  We had been fooling around for about a month at this point, and I was more than ready to keep things moving along. Being nineteen, I was physically and emotionally ready to give up my virginity. Looking back now, I am grateful for the awkward, chubby high school years that shielded me from having to deal with too much, too soon.

  My memories of dinner are hazy. Candlelight, a roaring fire in the massive stone fireplace in the middle of the restaurant. The clinking of glassware, and soft, romantic music floating above the din of quiet conversation. We felt worlds away from the chaos of college life.

  “Happy birthday,” John said to me when the waiter placed a decadent looking piece of chocolate cake in front of me. He kissed me gently, and set a small, light blue box with a white ribbon on the table next to the cake. He laughed when my eyes nearly fell out of my head.

  “I knew you’d appreciate the box,” he said with a smile.

  “Dinner and Tiffanys is better than Breakfast at Tiffanys,” I replied, pulling gently on the satin ribbon. Inside was a pair of silver hoop earrings. I quickly replaced my gold posts with the hoops, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “I love them,” I said.

  “You’re fun to buy things for,” he said, admiring his gift in my ears. “I imagine I’ll be broke by spring break. Now, about that cake...”

  I let him feed me the first bite. I closed my eyes and rolled the chocolate on my tongue. But the thought of him seeing me naked interrupted the joy of the moment, and I opened my eyes.

  I took the fork from him, smiling. I noticed an older couple two tables from us. The woman, dressed in pale blue, watched us with a wistful expression on her overly made-up face.