Reaction

by Jessica Roberts

  “I don’t mind,” she replied, too busy to look up, poking around the contents in her purse.

  After that, the table remained eerily quiet, no one knowing exactly where to look or what to say. Until someone spoke up from Peter’s side of the table, “Awkward.”

  Not a second later, Nick asked Paige if she was ready to go. The goodbyes were so uncomfortable that even the older couple clued into a problem. Regardless, we picked up and said our goodbyes at the same time.

  I didn’t watch them walk away together. And I told myself not to look up until I was certain they were gone. But I looked up anyway, too soon, my eyes finding them by the entrance. Though his back was partially in the way, by the way they were standing there, unmoving, it looked like she was angry. But soon he leaned into her, paused for what must have been a kiss, and then led her out.

  That was when my heart had had enough.

  It was a valiant attempt. Nevertheless, he went home with her. And what I was expecting, for the engagement to be called off tonight?

  I swallowed my dignity and found my group standing behind me. “Are you guys ready?” I was hugging my arms, adding up every stupid thing I’d done this evening.

  As we walked to the car, the combination of emotions barreled over me. The exhilaration of being in his arms again, and then the agony of watching them leave together; the contrast was almost paralyzing.

  I found myself speaking aloud, “Great night.”

  “I think it went well,” Liz commented.

  “I agree,” Creed responded. “Good food. Good conversations, for the most part. Good…”

  “—food,” Liz finished for him.

  At the end of a chuckle, Peter sighed. “You’re all so messed up.”

  I didn’t know about any of the others, but I absolutely was.

  Whatever my body language communicated, Liz heard, because she put her arm over my shoulder and announced, “You’re coming home with me tonight.”

  Chapter 5

  We lounged on Liz’s bed, me staring blindly at the TV, and Liz attempting to bolster my spirits.

  “Sure,” Liz continued with the recap of the night, “I can see why a guy would be attracted to her, but really, her personality’s about as exciting as a flat, cardboard box.” Through the distorted prism of jealously, I heard only the first part of Liz’s sentence about Paige’s attractiveness, and gave her a cranky look. But Liz didn’t even notice, just kept on talking. “You, on the other hand, are the total package. He’d be crazy not to—”

  “Liz,” I cut in, “I told you already, he didn’t even acknowledge me. He doesn’t want to be friends anymore, which is fine with me since I don’t want to be friends either. He’s gotten uglier anyways.”

  “So much uglier,” she responded. “Yeah, I definitely noticed. That sexy little five o’clock shadow on his chiseled face, yuck! And his body, filling out that dark suit tonight the way it did, just disgusting. And for sure he doesn’t want to be friends with you since he invited you to the banquet, and if that’s not a tell-all.”

  I shook my head, sidestepping her sarcasm. “He thinks it’s too complicated; I’m too complicated.”

  “Well, you have to admit, it’s not the simplest situation in the world.”

  I readjusted my heavy head on the pillow to find a spot that would support it. “Did I mention he gave me the silent treatment for most of the dance?”

  “You did mention that. That ugly boy needs a slap upside his head!” The bed jostled; Liz angled toward me. “Did he really say he didn’t remember the first time you guys danced?”

  Recalling the night, I grabbed her bedspread and hid my face, moaning. “And then I kept dancing even after the music stopped,” I confessed, hoping the barrier of the blanket would buffer the truth.

  Liz snagged the bed sheets from my grasp. “You did not.” Her face was cynical. But when she saw mine, it turned confused. “Wait, you what?”

  What was the use? I couldn’t change what happened. “Yep. I swear. I was so wound up I forgot to stop when the music stopped. It was like I forgot where we were.”

  “Oh, now, that’s classic,” Liz choked out between chuckles. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

  The bed sheets unfortunately remained off my head. “I can’t believe I didn’t let go of him.”

  “Well, from where I was sitting, it looked like he didn’t want to let go of you either. Although I’m wondering if that would have changed had he seen the look on his fiancé’s face when she caught sight of the two of you dancing together.”

  “Really?” I gave her a desperate glance. “What did she…what kind of look did she—” I cut myself off. “Oh, who cares? It doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t say a word to me at the table.”

  “To anyone,” Liz added.

  The events of the night zipped around in my mind, darting from one catastrophic scene to the next. “What a night.” I laughed; it was easier to accept the truth that way. “It’s strange to think he doesn’t even care about me anymore.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true,” Liz defended.

  “What am I doing?” Surrendering, I laid my head against the pillow again. “I’m done with him.” It was a flimsy idea to reach for the remote and turn on the TV to find a means of escape. The screen featured a couple in a restaurant, carrying on a romantic conversation while holding hands across the table. I sighed—not the soft, yearning type of sigh, but the hard, life-sucks type of sigh.

  Liz was shaking her head. “No, you’re not really done with him.”

  The TV held me for only a moment longer. “Ugh,” I groaned again, pressing the off button. I was hopelessly in love with someone who loved someone else. I felt like a giant loser. Trying to manifest my feelings, my desires, my love; it all blended into one big disaster of a night.

  “Okay,” Liz said firmly, still in good spirits. “So this is what we do…”

  But my spirits weren’t riding as high. “Between my insults to his fiancé and our disastrous slow dance, I can’t really blame him for choosing her,” I confessed.

  “Nope, not true. He didn’t choose her over you, Heather. He chose her over no one. It was only her back then; there was no other girl. But now there is. And you owe it to both of you to give him a chance to choose.”

  Liz was sharply observant, and smart. Yet giving advice was so much simpler than acting on it. And after tonight, I wasn’t sure if I could handle the emotional twists and turns of giving him “a chance to choose.” And I was also pretty sure he didn’t want that chance. But it was midnight and too late to play the guessing game with his feelings. I needed to regroup, pull myself together.

  “Frozen yogurt with tons of candy on top?” Liz suggested, jumping off the bed and throwing a pillow at me.

  I caught the pillow, heaved a long, large sigh, and then launched it back in her face. “Let’s go.”

  *******

  The turning of a new week, unscheduled hours, my favorite restaurants open for lunch, perhaps those were all reasons Saturdays were special days to me. This particular one was special because I was spending it with Creed. We went to a late breakfast together and then I talked him into running a few errands around town, most of them involving garage sales and antiques. By the time we got home it was after five and time for a rest.

  “What do you mean?” Creed asked as we relaxed on my red vinyl couch together. Our heads were at opposite ends and I was under the blanket he’d pulled off my little bed in the corner of the room for me.

  “I mean, am I considered twenty-one since I’ve really only lived eighteen years, though technically I’ve been alive for twenty-one years.”

  “Huh, good question,” Creed mused.

  “Cuz I still feel like I’m eighteen.”

  “Well, you’ve always been older than your age.”

  “What do you mean by that?” my head thrust back a notch.

  “You grew up fast, Heath. You had to.”

  After co
nsidering his comment, I decided he was right. When Mom died, things changed. I knew this due to the surfacing memories of late. Doing laundry, preparing all my meals, cleaning up the house, forcing myself to do well in school and go to work at the library each day, these were all tasks I was required to take on. But they were necessities, not choices. If I had a choice, I doubted I would have been as responsible back then. And how could I forget all the stupid, irresponsible, immature things I’d done over the first six months of college, such as lying to everyone about my family, and pretending I was someone I wasn’t? Maybe I was forced to grow up, but I certainly wasn’t a grown up.

  My elbow went to the couch-back and my mulling head rested on my hand. “I don’t think you’d be very proud of me if you knew some of the things I’ve done.”

  “Heath,” he reached for me and pulled me across the couch next to him, placing my head on his shoulder and then readjusting the blanket. “Why are you always so hard on yourself? Let it go.”

  I cuddled into his solid frame, feeling loved and understood and peaceful. There was nothing so refreshing as knowing you’re unconditionally accepted by someone, faults and all. It felt heavenly to be able to trust him completely, with my life, my well-being, my weaknesses, and especially my feelings. He would never do anything to hurt me. He was solid, my rock.

  “You know, when I was…sleeping for all those years, I dreamt about you.”

  “Oh really,” he whispered mischievously, playing with the innuendo.

  “Not like that, loser.” He received a nice smack against his chest.

  “Ouch,” he joked. “So what if it was ‘like that’? It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

  “You’re not serious?” I lifted to catch the look on his face, but he rested my head back on his shoulder, preventing me. It wasn’t like him to hide his feelings. Unless the feelings were actual feelings.

  Interesting ideas slowly began to circle in my head.

  “Can you think of us that way?” I heard myself ask.

  “With this other guy,” he began, completely evading my question, “are you sure you want to put yourself out there like you are? What if it ends badly?”

  Instead of restating my question that he utterly tossed by the wayside, I chose instead to answer his. “Honestly, I don’t know. But what are my options?”

  “You have options,” he said in a way that made me think he might not want to evade my question after all.

  “And you’re one of them?” Forcing myself up too fast for him to prevent me, I sat upright, expecting to see dimples. To my distress, there was a straight face instead.

  “You and I can’t go there, Creed,” I said quickly, looking down as I admitted this next part. “It’s selfish of me, but I need you too much to risk that and have it not work out.

  “How do you know it won’t work out?”

  “I just know. You can’t be intimate with someone and then go back to being friends. It just doesn’t work that way. And I can’t risk not having you in my life. You’re the only family I have. And even if you weren’t, you mean too much to me.”

  “My point exactly. And you think no two people in the entire world have ever kissed and then decided to be friends?”

  “No two people as close as we are.”

  “A kiss is not that big of a deal, Heath. People kiss all the time.”

  “No they don’t. If they do, they shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because a kiss is…it’s one of the most intimate gestures you can share with someone.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m really glad you think that. But—”

  “How did this conversation get to kissing, anyway?” I interrupted him. “Can we talk about something else?”

  He chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you embarrassed around me. Except maybe the time in 10th grade when I walked into your room while you were in your underwear. Do you remember that?”

  I laughed, grateful for the comedy relief. “I remember telling myself over and over that you saw about as much as you would if I were wearing a two-piece bathing suit.”

  “Generally bathing suits aren’t grey jersey material and just thin enough to wreak havoc on a high school kid’s imagination. I think I took a cold shower every day for three months straight. And I was purposely avoiding you.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Stop it. No you weren’t.”

  “Oh yes, I very much was.”

  “Creed, you can’t tell me things like that. The barriers get too confusing. I don’t want that.”

  He laughed again, without me.

  Though his short blonde waves still softened his handsome face, his aura was all confidence and strength. He wasn’t the boy I’d left behind all those years ago when I took off for college. He was a man now; the type of man who went for what he wanted, and usually got it.

  And I loved that about him.

  Maybe it was because I wasn’t laughing with him like usual, that he teased a little. “Where’s the daring girl I used to know?” he jokingly replied as he cuddled me back into him. “You don’t need to be embarrassed around me.”

  I was certain that at any other time, in any other circumstance, I would have had second thoughts about what was coming. And it would have been a way bigger deal. But I was mad that he made reference to not knowing me anymore, or that I’d changed in some small way. Because I really wasn’t sure, maybe I had changed. And I didn’t like the way that felt.

  And yet, we had just been lying so comfortably under the blanket, and everything had been perfect then, and why had he ruined it? And that made me even angrier. And the lone lamplight dimmed the room, and our faces were already so close, and I was sleepy and wistful, and on paper he was everything I wanted in a man, and still, there was nothing he could have said to make me tilt my head toward his. Except the part about me being different.

  Sensing a shift in my will, he lifted my chin so that our faces met.

  During the small pause, when I closed my eyes, I smelled a more concentrated scent of Creed. I loved his smell; it reminded me of crisp autumn leaves, or a rich rainforest.

  Before I had another coherent thought, his mouth descended on mine like a leisure cloud cover on a sunny day. His lips were soft and pressed warmly against mine. It wasn’t awkward like I thought it might be. During the kiss, he even sat up for a moment to readjust himself. He definitely knew what he was doing. In fact, I now had a few curious questions for him about what went down the past few years while I slept.

  “Hm,” I said when we broke the kiss and opened our eyes. “How do you know how to kiss, Creed? And so good?”

  “But not as good as him?” he whispered near my lips.

  “It’s not that.” My head bent down half an inch. “It’s just, when I kiss him, I can’t even speak afterwards.”

  “Here, let me try again.” He didn’t hesitate to lean in for another, and the readiness of it almost caused me to laugh.

  It wasn’t appropriate at the time. In deed, it would have offended Creed to tell him how much I really felt toward Nick. And even if I wanted to, I didn’t know if I could. Why had I fallen so thoroughly in love with Nick? True, he made me laugh, smile, feel safe and wanted. But that was true with Creed also. Then why Nick as opposed to someone else?

  Wow, Creed sure knows how to kiss. My stomach’s starting to tingle.

  “Okay,” my hands pushed his chest back so we could see each other without having to go cross-eyed. “Say we’re at a party and I started acting wild and crazy, like dancing on top of a table or something. What would you do?”

  “I would be wild and crazy with you.”

  “See, Nick would probably laugh a little, then haul me off the table, throw me over his shoulder, and tell me to calm down. I think I need someone like that.”

  Apparently Creed was still recovering from the fact that we’d just made out because his breathing was heavy and his eyes were in a trance with the couch cushion.r />
  “I don’t know,” I continued explaining, a little out of breath myself. “Maybe it’s because I never had a father-figure around, and so I want that feeling of someone being in charge, taking control of me, challenging me.”

  A few more moments passed; he was still dazed. It was like a spell was cast on him; he wouldn’t move. I had to admit, he wasn’t the only one shaken. We ended with our arms wrapped around each other, hugging.

  After a while, we leaned back against the couch again, wrapped up in the blanket, and then my head rested against his shoulder.

  I loved Creed; I would always love Creed. Where I put my trust in him, my devotion went to Nick, however hopeless.

  The predicament, if I wasn’t mistaken, was that romantic love needed both trust and devotion…….

  “You awake?”

  “Yep,” I told him, forcing myself to sit up. “Did I fall asleep?”

  “We both did.”

  Nighttime was peaking through the short, basement windows. “What time is it?” I asked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “I’ve been so sleepy lately.”

  “Eight thirty.”

  “Already?”

  I heard him mumble back, “There it is again. Thought I heard something.” We lifted up, the blanket tangling us together.

  Just as I was about to tell him I hadn’t heard anything, I heard it.

  A single rap.

  My heart stopped at the memorable knock.

  “Come in,” Creed yelled before I could stop him.

  As the door opened and the cold night elbowed its way in, I awakened to a lively sense of Nick’s presence and instantly shrunk back into the blanket. All my dizzy mind could do was imagine the view he was absorbing as he crossed the threshold and came inside. The scene left hardly any room for assumptions. A small room lit by a lone bulb, tousled sheets twisted over us, our bodies half lying on each other, our faces heavy-eyed and swollen. It looked worse than bad.

  He glanced around the studio apartment with interested calm, advancing toward the table and placing a jacket over the seatback.