by Nicki Elson
David stood. “I’ll get it for you.”
He was back in a flash, leaving Jen with no time to figure out how to make this better. She wanted to be supportive of her friend, but fake dating wasn’t an option. The only thing she could do for now was let David work his own way out of his snit. She boxed her food, and as soon as they walked out the front door, he made an excuse to go in the opposite direction of her.
He didn’t text or call Jen for a full week afterward. She didn’t see him again until the following Thursday as she crossed the central quad on her way to the library. He stood by a fat, nearly leafless oak tree, bouncing a hacky sack, his mouth pulled tight in concentration. She stopped dead upon first spotting him and almost turned around to head the other way, but resisted the instinct. The friendship wasn’t over just because of one stupid conversation—at least not on her end.
There could be a million different reasons he hadn’t gotten in touch during the past several days. He may have simply been busy with schoolwork. She had been, too. The only way she’d find out if he was intentionally avoiding her would be so say hi.
The tiny sack bounced off his knee a couple of times, then fell further to be kicked straight up by his deft ankle.
“Show off!” Jen shouted.
He caught the toy in his hand and jerked his head toward her, breaking into a wide grin. Tiny, happy prickles ran up Jen’s arms, bringing a relieved smile to her face.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
She moved down the sidewalk toward him. “To the library. I have research to do for a big econ paper.”
“Wrong answer,” David said. “You’re coming over here for your first hacky sack lesson.”
“I suppose I have time for a short one.” She threw her backpack onto the dried leaves at the base of the tree.
He started her out with a basic knee bounce. “You’ve got to meet it right about here.” He slid his hand under the bend of her knee, holding her leg in the proper position. “Okay, try it.”
He handed Jen the sack. She dropped it, lifted her knee…and the sack hit the ground. David continued his verbal instruction, and Jen eventually made contact with the bag, but rarely achieved so much as two bounces in a row.
David stood back, watching her, his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the tree. “Nice form.”
“Liar.”
“Oh, well, yeah, your technique stinks. But nice form.”
She tuned to see his eyes meander up her body, from her ankle-high boots, over the curves of her jeans, and to her face. He winked, and she flushed. It was the first time he’d ever overtly flirted with her.
“Maybe we should try something different.” He stepped away from the tree and put his hands on her hips, turning her so that her back was to his chest. Though they were separated by her ribbed down coat and his hoodie/jean jacket combo, she was warmed by his body heat. “Mirror me,” he said, lifting his leg and reaching across her body to slide his hand under her thigh and lift it side-by-side with his.
Jen was much too distracted by the contact to pay attention to anything he said after that. Like a robot, she mimicked his movements, keeping her leg pressed to his as it pumped up and down. David alternated dropping the sack onto his leg and then hers. She was broken from her trance when she heard a laugh in the distance. Something about it sounded vaguely familiar. Glancing over, she recognized Ashley’s strawberry blond curls pulled up into a high ponytail. David’s ex was walking across the opposite edge of the quad with a few other girls. Jen flicked her gaze at David, but his concentration stayed fully on their game.
She slid her eyes back across the square until Ashley and her friends disappeared from her sight. Lowering her leg, she took a step away from David. “I really do need to get working on that paper. This was fun, though.”
“Yeah. I should probably do something productive, too.” They hoisted their backpack straps onto their shoulders. “Hey, I’m sorry I was a jerk the other day.”
She nodded. “No worries. I’m sure I’ll make it up to you one day.”
He smiled. “Do you want to do something this weekend?”
“Um, sure, yeah.” Was he asking her on a date?
“I’ll be in touch.”
* * *
The next day, Jen’s phone vibrated with a text during her sociology class. She was sitting in a large lecture hall, so it was easy to pull out the device unnoticed by the professor.
David: Mitchell’s laid hands on something heretofore only considered myth. He’s prepared to unveil it Saturday night to a select few. Would you like to be one of the few?
Jen: Ummmmm sure?
David: Great. I’ll swing by your dorm at 8ish.
Jen: Are you going to tell me what this mythological creature is?
David: Nope.
Jen was waiting for him in the Longbourn lobby when he showed up at eight-fifteen. They headed west, just off campus toward the house where Mitchell lived. Jen had met Mitchell the previous year but hadn’t ever been to his place.
Nothing in David’s actions indicated one way or another whether he intended this to be a date. “What’s your tolerance for suspense and gore?” he asked as they walked along the cracked sidewalk spanning a row of small houses. This late in the year, it was already dark outside. The overcast sky didn’t even provide starlight. Only a faint glow from the moon made it through the haze.
“David, seriously—what is this thing?”
He grinned. “It’s not too late to back out.”
“Do you want me to?” She stopped, crossing her arms over her chest.
“What? No. Come on.” He ran his fingertips along the side of her arm. When she loosened her stance and dropped her hands, he grabbed onto one of them. “I’ll protect you.” He tilted his head and, from what she could see by the light of a decrepit streetlamp, gave her a gentle smile.
If she was any kind of cool, she’d have smiled back or squeezed his hand. Maybe even have winked and said something sassy like, “You better.” But no. Instead of being cool, she was frustrated by not being able to decipher whether or not she was on a date. She didn’t need any more mystery added to the evening. Slipping her hand from his hold, she said, “Just feakin’ tell me what it is already!”
“It’s a VCR.” He resumed walking, and Jen kept step beside him.
“A what?”
“Video…erm, something-that-begins-with-C recorder.”
She punched him in the side of the arm. “How is that scary? And how is that mythical when I watched The Little Mermaid on a VCR about a thousand and eighty times when I was little? A mermaid would be mythical. See the difference?”
David gestured toward the front stoop of what she presumed was Mitchell’s house. “I guess extinct would be a better word for it. Mitchell found the last living one. It’s what we put in it that might scare you.” He waggled his eyebrows up and down and pushed the door open.
Mitchell was there, along with five other people, two of whom Jen hadn’t met before. David introduced her to them and grabbed two cans of Old Style from a cooler, handing one to Jen.
Mitchell was kicked back on a ratty recliner with the footrest fully extended. “You’re late, dude.”
“Sorry, man. We can get right to it. Slide over, Beano,” David said to his friend with full-on ’fro of long, curly brown hair.
Beano inched toward the center of the sofa, leaving a cozy space for two on the end where David and Jen squished next to each other. Jen didn’t complain.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mitchell said, lifting an enormous remote control and pointing it at a silver box by the TV. “I give you…The Hitcher.” He let out a bogeyman chuckle.
Jen had never heard of the movie. “What’s it about?” she whispered to Daivid.
“Just what it says—a hitchhiker. Are you cold?”
“Shut it!” Beano said, so Jen nodded her yes. Either the house was poorly insulated or the college students living there were too cheap to
turn up the heat. David reached over the side of the couch and pulled up a fleece blanket emblazoned with the CIU logo. He threw it over both of them and found Jen’s hand underneath, curving his fingertips over her knuckles and between her fingers to pull her palm to rest on his thigh.
Okay, she thought. This is definitely a date. Now she was glad she hadn’t known for sure ahead of time as that would’ve only made her more nervous. Someone from the other end of the couch tossed packets of movie candy onto their laps. “Thanks,” Jen whispered, only to be silenced by a harsh, “Shhhh!”
Even with the wobbly quality of the old VCR tape and the constant, low whirring of the machine, the morbid psychological thriller was terrifying. As the plot thickened, Jen buried herself deeper and deeper into David’s warm side. Before long, his arm was around her. By the time the kid in the movie found a finger in his french fries, Jen’s nerves were pushed as far as they could go. She screamed and threw her half of the blanket over her head with no intention of ever emerging—or at least not until the credits were safely rolling.
David poked his head under the blanket. “Is everything okay in here?”
Jen shrugged.
“Here, chocolate will make you feel better.” He held up a bag of M&Ms.
She reached in to grab a few candies and felt something warm and thick inside. The thing moved and Jen realized it was a human finger! She gasped and yanked her hand out. David laughed, so Jen investigated and saw that he’d pushed his finger through a hole at the bottom of the bag. “Not funny,” she grumbled, smacking him in the chest.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “If you could’ve seen your face, you’d probably think it was pretty funny.”
Jen tried not to smile as she leveled a glare at him. David’s impish grin played all the way into his eyes, giving them a sudden brilliance, even under the dark blanket. As Jen stared at him, caught in his gaze, his grin faded into something more serious. Then, just like in a movie—one more to Jen’s tastes―they slowly leaned into a long, tentative kiss.
David touched his fingers delicately to Jen’s face, as if checking to make sure she was real. Jen wondered the same thing―was this really her David? She figured it must be him, because his lips were every bit as soft as they looked. She pressed her mouth more firmly to his, and he responded by pulling her to him, running his hands down her spine. David tasted like M&Ms.
Something soft and lumpy thumped against Jen’s head from outside the blanket. “Get a room!” It sounded like Beano’s voice.
Jen and David broke apart, exchanging shy, conspiratorial smiles as they pulled the blanket from over their heads. For the rest of the movie, she leaned on him while they interlaced their fingers. The rest of the terrorizing movie plot flowed like a barely-noticed fog through Jen’s mind. She was much too preoccupied with David’s thumb rubbing slow, methodical lines up and down the side of her hand. Someone had told them to get a room!
Chapter 4
“I always knew you and David would get together,” Chris insisted as she and Jen stepped out of the showers in their shared dorm bathroom. It was their first Friday back on campus after Thanksgiving break, and the girls were getting ready to go out. They planned to meet up with David and some other guys at the Romans house where a live band was supposed to play.
“You’re so much better for him than she was,” Chris continued.
“I thought you liked Ashley,” Jen said.
“Nah. She’s a fake bitch.”
“Then why were you always so friendly with her?”
“I don’t know.” Chris shrugged. “Guess I’m a fake bitch, too.”
One of Chris’s sorority sisters picked Jen and Chris up at their dorm. Jen was excited to see David again. They’d exchanged a few texts over break, but nothing in them gave her a solid indication of where they stood. He’d called her earlier that week to tell her about the party, which was a good sign, but being with him in person would do a better job of allaying her tiny, unspoken fears that he might regret the kiss.
The girls entered the house and made their way up the stairs to the dark attic. Jen spotted David and the other guys standing along a wall not far from where the band was setting up. Within seconds of the girls walking up to join them, David came to stand next to Jen. He slipped his warm hand around hers and she breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Before they had a chance to say much to each other, the band flooded the dark room with heavy bass and thumping percussion. The wild-haired lead singer stepped up to the mic and belted out plaintive lyrics in a rich, somber voice. Before long, a crowd had converged in the center of the room, pulsating with the beat. Jen and David stayed by the wall, watching the throng and letting the music vibrate in their chests.
The makeshift dance floor looked to Jen like a roiling, black sea. It seemed all color had been drained from the room, creating a completely different atmosphere from the peppy Romans nights. She watched shadows play on David’s serious face while he watched the band. She was anxious to kiss him again but knew she’d have to wait. David wasn’t one for public displays of affection,, which made the kiss under the blanket an extra special moment. In all the times she’d seen him and Ashley together, she’d never noticed him give his girlfriend more than a light peck on the lips—though she knew from suggestive remarks from Ashley that far more than kissing had gone on when the two were in private.
The room was packed to bursting by ten thirty, and David had been gone a long time on a beer run. He finally pushed his way through the press of people near Jen and handed her a half-filled cup; it was wet along the sides. He wiped his hands on his jeans, scowling.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted over the amplifiers. Her ears were starting to ring with static from the barrage of noise.
David shook his head to indicate everything was fine, but Jen didn’t believe him. The crease between his eyebrows was deeper than a few drops of spilled beer should warrant. Every couple of minutes, his eyes would dart around the room. Jen wondered if he purposely avoided looking at her. She’d had it with the second guessing and didn’t want to fall back into that pit, so she decided to make him tell her right then and there what bothered him. When she turned to talk to him, he shot his hand out and grasped the back of her head, pulling her to him. His tensed mouth pressed onto hers.
She was completely unprepared for the kiss. Her first instinct was to push away, but she’d been longing to kiss him ever since the VCR night, so she went with it. But something didn’t feel right. This was nothing like his soft touch under the blanket. Tonight his lips were more like an iron clamp. His grasp behind her head was too firm, too desperate. Jen opened an eye to look at David and saw that he, too, had an eye cocked, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking past her, across the room. Jen instinctively thrust her head back and broke away from him, turning to see what he was looking at.
She saw Ashley.
Jen turned back to David, who at first kept staring across the room. He eventually tore his eyes from Ashley and looked at Jen as if surprised to see her standing there.
“Unbelievable,” Jen said unevenly. Her heart raced. Their conversation at Mike’s came spilling into her mind. No way. David wouldn’t do that. No way! “Was this all pretend?”
“What?”
“You set me up!” Jen tossed her half-filled cup to the side, sending the people standing near her into a tumult.
David glanced back and forth between Jen and Ashley. “Can we go talk about this somewhere else?”
Any more words were impossible for Jen. He hadn’t denied her accusation, which Jen took as confirmation that he’d used her to get to Ashley. She turned and pushed her way through the crowd while the band’s lamentations rang throughout the room. Once she’d cleared the press of bodies, she dashed down the steps and out of the house. She didn’t stop running until she was three blocks away. Though she’d slowed her pace, she continued moving away from the party at a brisk pace, worried David would catch up to her.
When she turned to see how close he was, he wasn’t there at all. He hadn’t even tried to stop her. Jen stilled, bending forward with her hands on her knees, catching her breath. The music still throbbed in her eardrums. Humiliation dominated her emotions; sadness and anger were only beginning to bud. She felt utterly stupid. He’d laid the plan right out in front of her—no, she’d laid the plan out to him—and when she’d said no, he’d tricked her into it. How could I have believed he was actually interested in me? She became desperate to get back to her room so she could bury her head under her pillow.
“Jen! What the hell?” Chris called from down the block. Jen didn’t move, forcing her friend to come all the way down the sidewalk. “Why’d you leave? David told me to come out and get you.”
“I’m not going back in,” Jen said, shaking her head back and forth like a stubborn toddler.
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She kept her steady gaze on the sidewalk.
“So, you want to go to a different party?”
“No. I want to go home.” Jen fought back the tears that raged to burst out.
Chris sighed. “Let me go back in and get Heather.”
Jen shook her head, her tears leaking out. She didn’t want to stick around any longer and risk seeing David. She continued shaking her head and backed toward the street that would lead her home. “I’m just going to walk.”
Chris groaned. “Fine, but you’re going to owe me. It’s a long ass haul.”
“You don’t have to come. I just want to be alone.”
“Sorry, chicky. You’re stuck with me.” Chris threw an arm over Jen’s shoulder and led her to Heather’s car, where they pulled their puffy jackets out from the backseat and started the journey home.
Jen spilled every mortifying detail to Chris during the long walk. As she told the story, it didn’t feel real. Chris consoled Jen by coming up with creative strings of curse words to describe David. By the time Jen fell into her bed, she was completely exhausted. That was the only reason she’d been able to sleep at all that night.
