The girls crowded around a tiny high table in a corner while the guys took over two of the pool tables and strutted for one another like peacocks with pool cues. They did shots between turns and sang along to the house band playing all the college bar standards: “Sweet Home Alabama,” “American Pie,” “Piano Man,” and so on. Several guys on both teams made frequent trips to the girls’ table, making awkward and drunken attempts to flirt, mostly with Suzanne, who seemed pleased with the attention but was apparently keeping her options open.
One or two of the guys allowed themselves to be redirected to Rebecca when Suzanne went abruptly to the bar, excused herself to the restroom, or pretended to be deep in a previous conversation with Marci. Rebecca showed a similar lack of interest, however, having set her sights on a Valdosta player in a Sigma Nu hat across the room. Marci, positioned at the least-accessible back of the table, figured that by the time they would consider talking to her, they weren’t ready for strike three. This explanation was at least somewhat plausible, and definitely kinder to her ego than the nagging suspicion that she just wasn’t the kind of girl men came to talk to in bars.
The only exception, apparently, was Travis, “Truck.” He had stopped by their end of the table at dinner and put his hands on Marci’s shoulders while he introduced himself to Suzanne and Rebecca. Even though his hair was wet from a post-game shower, Marci noticed the smell of summer grass still mingled with the cologne scent of his shampoo. At the bar, he had glanced at her periodically, smiling or winking as he leaned in to make a shot. He was quite good at pool, apparently, because he and his partner had been holding the same table against several challengers.
After several, more subtle attempts to do so, Rebecca finally managed to draw the attention of the Sigma Nu by accidentally walking behind his outstretched cue with her drink, which conveniently poured all over her in the ensuing accident. He apologized profusely for what was clearly her mistake, and pawed at her chest with bar napkins for longer than was strictly useful. When he finished his game, he returned to their table and bought the three of them an apology round. For the rest of the evening, he did not venture far from Rebecca’s side and by midnight they had found a cozy spot in an empty booth to exchange pleasantries.
Jake spent a good bit of time at their table too, and when Rebecca relocated with the Sigma Nu, he took over her seat for a while. Marci tried not to let her bitterness show, but the wounds of the previous weekend were still fresh and she found herself ranging from frosty to downright hostile whenever he was nearby. This left him oscillating between normal, avoidant, and awkwardly solicitous.
“I’m getting another beer,” he ventured at one point. “Do you guys want one?”
“Whatever,” Marci said coldly.
“Well, I don’t mind. I’m going to the bar. It’s my treat.”
“Fine.”
“Bud or Miller?”
“Whatever.” With a nice eye roll for effect.
“Um, okay. Suzanne? Anything?”
“No, thanks, Jake. Thanks for offering.” Suzanne’s voice was sympathetic, which Marci considered disloyal under the circumstances.
He walked away looking dazed and took his time getting back. Marci noticed that he stopped to talk with teammates, and once to chat with a couple of girls who were too dressed up for such a crappy bar, obviously drawn in by the concentration of guys. She watched as the brunette in a low-cut tank top twirled her hair and laughed at something he said. She couldn’t help but notice that Jake’s return smile seemed genuine. “Dear God,” she muttered, staring at them.
“Sort of makes you wish you hadn’t been such an ice queen, doesn’t it?” Suzanne piped up helpfully.
“Thanks a lot, Suze.”
Suzanne looked as if she wanted to say something, but Truck appeared at their table just then and sat down unbidden. “Hey,” he said cheerfully. “Finally lost. Well, to be honest, I threw that last one. I like pool, but I have other interests, too.” He leered at Marci as he said this, and Suzanne coughed almost inaudibly as she excused herself again. With all her feigned trips to the bathroom that evening, Marci thought most observers would be concerned that Suzanne had a bladder infection.
“So, Marci, are you seeing anyone?” Truck asked before Suzanne was even two feet away. Marci was flattered by the attention and thought he was attractive, but wished he weren’t making his intentions quite so obvious.
“No, I’m not. Are you?” It sounded stupid when she heard it, but Travis appeared unfazed. He started talking about how he had dated several girls recently but had not met anyone cool, not like Marci. She wondered what was cool about her and how Travis had managed to unearth it in the ten minutes of time they’d actually spent together.
Under normal circumstances, she would have called this kind of bullshit for what it was, and suggested that he go find someone less intelligent or more gullible. She was considering saying something exactly to that effect when she glanced over and saw Jake staring at them. Knowing it was wrong on every level, she put her hand on Truck’s arm the way she had seen other girls do, and laughed uproariously at nothing. He looked confused for only a second before he began to laugh, too, perhaps concerned that he had said something unintentionally funny.
Across the room, Jake freed himself from the brunette and returned to the table. “Here’s your beer, Marce,” he said, taking Suzanne’s empty chair and sliding it closer to her protectively. “Hey, Truck.”
“Stillwell,” Truck said, neither friendly nor unfriendly, keeping his eyes on Marci. Applause broke out at the pool table closest to them, as a guy she’d never seen in a tattered flannel shirt sank the second-to-last ball of what had obviously been a perfect game. Travis stood and stepped closer to register his opinion on which pocket the flannelled guy should choose for the final shot.
“I need to talk to you,” Jake murmured, while Travis was momentarily distracted.
“About what, Jake?” Marci’s voice was as bright and innocent as could be.
“Don’t do this. Don’t...” He paused. “whatever, with Truck.”
“Why not? Am I in danger?”
“Of course not,” he said. “But you’ve been drinking and you’re pissed at me, and I get that. I just don’t want you to do something you’ll regret later.”
“Something I’ll regret or something you’ll regret?” she challenged. Her boldness pleased her. The concern on his face made her feel powerful.
“Both,” he said flatly. Her heart jumped. The flannelled guy banked the eight ball off the side and into a corner pocket. The bar erupted in cheers.
“Well, Jake,” she said in a teacher’s voice above the din. “Unless there’s someone else here who can make me a better offer, I guess I’ll just have to make my own decisions.”
Jake looked wounded, but before he could respond, Travis returned and put his arm around her affectionately. “That was awesome. Guy could be on the semi-pro circuit.”
“I’m exhausted,” Marci said. “I think I’m going to go outside and wait for a cab. Anyone want to keep me company?”
Travis looked pleased at this sudden window of opportunity. “Sure,” he said. Then, turning to Jake, he added, “If that’s okay with you, dude.”
“Is that okay with you, Jake?” Marci feigned sugary innocence.
He gave her an icy stare for a moment, finally shrugging in resignation.
“See you later, then,” Marci said and turned on her heel. She waved at a perplexed Suzanne, who was standing at the bar nursing something pink, and followed Travis the Truck into the night air.
#
When she woke with her head throbbing the next day, she realized with a groan that Jake had been right. She did regret bringing Travis back to her apartment, for a number of reasons.
First, the slamming front door at 3 a.m. as Suzanne came home reminded her that she had the keys to Suzanne’s car in her purse, which meant Suzanne had not only stayed sober for no good reason, she’d had to take a separat
e cab home. Plus, she’d be charged double by the parking people for leaving the car overnight. In both the money she’d have to fork over and the time it would take to soothe Suze’s irritation with her, it was going to be an expensive mistake.
From the moment she’d begun descending the stairs from the bar toward the downtown sidewalk, she began to hate herself for what she’d just done to Jake. Of course, she was hurt and angry, but now she’d added petty and malicious to the list. While they waited for a cab and Travis pushed his beery tongue into her mouth, she had looked around to see whether Jake had followed them down the stairs. He hadn’t; so she wondered if she should just go back up herself. Pride held her, however. She already felt childish and ridiculous. Going back on her huffy exit from the bar was too embarrassing to consider.
Travis was another issue. From everything Marci had heard about him, primarily from Jake, he was a player, and reveled in one-night stands with pretty but superficial women. He was handsome and confident, and Marci had seen him brushing off attractive girls all evening. In all her hesitations about her own behavior and assumptions that Truck was a temporary solution at best, she had never questioned whether she would enjoy her time with him.
This turned out to be a major oversight. When they got back to her apartment Marci could not help but remember with shame bringing Jake here a week before under far better circumstances. She and Travis had raided the liquor cabinet and consumed shots of Suzanne’s expensive vodka with squirts of lemon juice. They had eventually made their clumsy way to the bedroom, where Marci was prepared to lose her regrets in simple animal sex. This part would be easy.
Or so she thought. Travis turned out to be a very sloppy drunk, evidenced first by peeing all around her toilet, including on Suzanne’s fluffy rose-colored bath mat (add that to my tab, she thought the next day). When he emerged from the bathroom and collapsed onto the bed with her, he struggled to get his shorts off and scarcely attempted to undress her at all. She tried to feel sexy and remember that she was enjoying this, but with each moment that passed it became more challenging. Truck was annoyed when she insisted that he use a condom, and fumbled so much to get it on that he was unable to use it for its purpose anyway.
Marci was ready to give up and escape into sleep. But Travis insisted on spending the next forty-five minutes trying every way imaginable to arouse himself. This involved Marci doing a lot of unpleasant work while he apologized, swore that this never happened to him, and saying, “you’re so pretty,” in a way that was more creepy than convincing. Finally, he let out a frustrated sigh and rolled over without another word. Within minutes, he was snoring louder than anyone she’d ever heard.
She was relieved when she awoke hours later to find him gone, and completely shocked when he called that evening to ask her out to dinner, “to make it up to her.” She returned his call, knowing they would certainly cross paths again meant she couldn’t be entirely rude, but pleaded a previous engagement to get out of dinner. Over the next several days, he continued to pursue Marci in a way that surprised her enormously, given his reputation and their embarrassing first experience together.
Eventually she consented to a few awkward dates with him, more out of kindness than desire. Selfishly, however, she enjoyed the impact this seemed to have on Jake—making him surly whenever she mentioned going out. She was pretty sure Jake knew as well as she did that nothing serious would develop between Travis and her, but his discomfort with the idea was a bit gratifying.
Over a couple of weeks, this became the only source of tension between them as their friendship returned once again to relative normalcy. Her anger with Jake dissipated with each interaction. They never talked about what had happened between them or about the confrontation in the bar, but somehow they came to a silent understanding that their friendship would not withstand pressing the issue further.
Chapter 12
The Sunday after midterms, Marci broke down and made the trip to Atlanta to the bridal shop to order Beth’s forest green monstrosity. The sales girl tsk-tsk’d as she pointed out that Marci was the last bridesmaid to order—even flighty Suzanne had managed to stop by before her trip to Florida—and that she would have to pay a rush fee to ensure “timely delivery.” Baffling, because the wedding was still two months away, but whatever. Anything for a friend.
Normally comfortable in a size twelve or fourteen, Marci discovered that bridal wear sizes were painfully smaller than real-life sizes. Why the wedding industry collectively decided to take one more knock at a girl’s self-esteem on the most beautiful day of your life, or your friend’s life, was incomprehensible. As though the stress of a wedding didn’t break you down enough.
Once she and the clerk had wrangled her arms and torso into a floor sample on the third try, the disapproving noises resumed. “Hmm...I’m thinking the sixteen is going to be a little snug through the middle. You’ll have to order a size eighteen and alter down, because you’re a little thick through here. The alteration fee is $65.”
“But the dress is only $105!” Marci protested. With alterations, rush fee, and the shoes dyed to match, the whole Emerald City ensemble was going to cost her more than $230.
“It’s either that,” the sales lady chirped, patting Marci’s constricted belly, “or skip dessert for the next two months!” Marci left the shop further in debt and ready to wear the first size eighteen dress of her life.
Back in Athens that evening, she sat at a high table by the window of the Globe Bar and complained about the dress incident to Rebecca and Suzanne.
“The whole wedding industry conspires against women,” Suzanne said. She’d helped plan an older cousin’s wedding the summer before and resented every minute of it. “They sell you on the idea of this ‘perfect day,’ and then make you feel like crap about yourself if you don’t get everything just right. It’s all about getting women to spend money by playing on their insecurities, if you ask me. Everything’s marked up like 200% for weddings, too. Bullshit. Total bullshit.”
“Wow, Suzanne, you’re starting to sound like one of those uber-feminists in the women’s studies department,” Rebecca teased. “Maybe you ought to slow down on the rum and Diet Coke.”
Suzanne scowled. Marci sensed a far less pleasant tirade brewing beneath her best friend’s flawless exterior, fueled by Captain Morgan and ready to fire at Rebecca. She could sense a catfight in the making, and Marci had no desire to play referee between those two sets of claws. She intervened quickly with, “Well, I certainly don’t think that awful dress was worth $240—do you guys?”
Suzanne slowly softened her glare, which Rebecca had yet to notice because she had been examining a flaw in one of her fingernails. They both shook their heads. Rebecca, who was not in the wedding but had seen pictures of the dresses in Beth’s catalog, took the reins. “Definitely not. I mean, y’all know I love Beth and all...” she prefaced.
Suzanne and Marci glanced at each other. They didn’t know that she “loved Beth and all,” because Rebecca had known Beth only during their senior year and never seemed to really click with her. Rebecca did not seem to notice their exchanged eye roll and went on unimpeded. “But, seriously, doesn’t she know that forest green went out of style like three years ago? And those invitations were so tacky. I guess that’s what happens when you marry young like that; you haven’t grown into good taste yet.”
Marci regretted bringing up the subject of the dress entirely. She had just wanted to bitch about the whole experience for a bit and throw back a couple of sympathetic tequila shots with her girlfriends. And while she agreed about the dress and even the invitations, something about hearing it from Rebecca’s mouth made her bristle on sweet Beth’s behalf. It was like when she and Nicole were kids. Marci could pick on her little sister relentlessly, but no one else was allowed to call her so much as a name without Marci running to her defense. She had a sudden desire to tell Rebecca to shut the hell up.
Fortunately for all three of them, Jake appeared in the doorway o
f the bar before the conversation could go any further. He gave the bartender an easy wave and signaled for his usual pint of Guinness before sidling up to the empty chair between Rebecca and Suzanne. He paused at the empty shot glasses in the middle of the table. “Didn’t know we were doing the hard stuff tonight or I’d have ordered one myself,” he said. “What’s the occasion?”
“We were just talking about weddings,” Suzanne said, before Rebecca could speak.
“Jesus Christ.”
“You said it,” she agreed, raising her glass to him before taking a sip from her drink.
“Did you know,” Marci added, “that Jake doesn’t want to get married?”
“Why not?” said Rebecca.
“Neither do I,” said Suzanne.
A cloud passed over Jake’s face as he looked across the table at Marci. Good. Let him be hurt a little.
“I never said I didn’t want to get married. I said I want to wait until I’m thirty.”
“Thirty is a good age to get married,” Rebecca said. “But I’m going to get married at twenty-six so I can spend four years living in New York and traveling with my husband before we have children.”
“What if you haven’t met the guy you want to marry by twenty-six?” Suzanne asked.
Rebecca didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I’ll live in New York and travel by myself for a couple of years, and I’ll meet my husband on a beach in Spain or something. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll go to my backup guy.”
“I beg your pardon?” Suzanne looked baffled. “‘Backup guy’?”
“Yeah,” Rebecca said. “Roger Simon is my backup guy. We grew up together in Birmingham. He is my big brother’s best friend, and has wanted to marry me since the fifth grade. He’s in law school now at UAB, so he’ll be a lawyer, at least. If I’m not married by twenty-eight, I’ll marry Roger. Plenty of time to get settled and have our first child by thirty.”
The Marriage Pact Page 13
