Broken Hearts Damaged Goods

by Gunthridge, Jack

  I tried to act like I didn’t know what she was talking about, so she became more direct and asked me how I was going to handle seeing the guy I loved show his feelings for a woman other than me.

  Megan is my best friend. I love her dearly, but I don’t know why she thinks I am falling for Jack and that he doesn’t care for me at all, or will ever like me. I mean, I don’t love him. I just think he is a really sweet guy. He’s funny and fun to hang out with. He’s just....

  Okay. While I was talking to Megan, I think he could tell that I was getting a little bit upset with her. Maybe it was because I was looking at him while I was talking to her, which he caught me looking at him and smiled at me. But when I started to lose the argument that I was falling for him when I shouldn’t be, he came over to me and put his arms around my waist and started to kiss me. He just interrupted me midsentence, and I went along with him.

  The best part was that when he was finished, he acted like he hadn’t noticed Megan standing there. “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you girls talking about something important?”

  Megan seemed a little taken off guard. “No, we were just discussing you...”

  Jack then shot a look at me that was a little flirty and playful. “Oh, so I’m the subject of girl talk. Somebody must be falling for me.”

  I was too busy blushing to really appreciate the look on Megan’s face. Of course, it was nothing compared to the look on her face when Jack turned to her and said, “But it’s okay. I’ve fallen for her, too. Just don’t tell her. I think she should hear it from me first.”

  He then winked at me and started to walk away. I started to say something to Megan, when Jack turned back around and with all seriousness said, “And, Liselle, in case I forget to tell you later, you look amazing tonight.”

  The man makes my vagina hurt. He also made Megan stop from giving me a lecture about falling in love with a guy that isn’t capable of loving me. I mean, the man is probably not capable of loving me right now, but he holds the potential. I’m okay with that right now. I would rather fake having a boyfriend with a guy that is sweet, sincere, genuine, and who has actually thought more about me than the majority of the guys I’ve actually dated than to be actually dating somebody that pretends to love me when their actions don’t match their words.

  I’m not saying Jack is my boyfriend, or that I am considering him my boyfriend. I’m just saying that it is nice to be with a guy that can sense when I want him near and knows what to say and do at these moments. What I’m saying is that I really like him and that I’m willing to do without an official name on our relationship.

  Anyway, about twenty minutes later, Steve and Brittany showed up. They tried to act like everybody was glad to see them and that nothing was wrong, but the fact of the matter was that everybody was trying to find me and Jack. We were kind of spread across the room since I was still talking to Megan and he was hanging out with Dave and Chris. That didn’t make it look like we were much of a couple.

  Megan warned me not to do anything stupid, which meant that I made my way over to Jack and sat on his lap. You should have seen the look on Brittany’s face. She gave me the evilest look I have ever gotten from another woman, which is saying a lot.

  I probably shouldn’t have been so loving on Jack at that moment, especially since I couldn’t exactly read what he was feeling. I think his heart was re-breaking. Any healing that had occurred was now gone. Here he was with a girl that was throwing herself at him while he was watching his ex with his former best friend. He knew that they were a real couple and that we were just a cheap imitation. Well, I was just cheap. I should never have...

  I should have been there for him, instead of trying to prove to somebody else that we were a couple. It’s just that Steve and Brittany looked so happy. And Brittany looked absolutely stunning. They looked like more of a couple together than Jack and Brittany or Steve and I ever did.

  They had planned their appearance at this party a lot more than Jack and I had. We just looked stupid. I probably looked more stupid than he did. After it clicked that he wasn’t responding to me nibbling on his ear, I apologized for making him come to the party.

  He then looked at me and was quiet for a few seconds. He was searching my eyes, and then he started to kiss me. He wasn’t making out with me. I mean, it was a make out session, but it wasn’t just about the physical pleasure. He was kissing something more to me than just me.

  I was kind of taken aback by this, but I was enjoying it a little bit too much to really question it. It probably lasted a minute or so. I just know that when he stopped, I was left there, on his lap, with my eyes closed, and totally speechless.

  When I finally opened my eyes, which was a noticeably delayed reaction, I saw Jack smiling at me. He was just enjoying the look on my face. Dave and Chris were just staring at me and Jack in disbelief. Jack finally broke the silence by saying, “Don’t look now, but I think we’ve pissed off Steve and Brittany.”

  “So how long are we going to be avoiding them?”

  “Are we avoiding them? That’s a little rude, don’t you think? We should go over there and show them that we are mature adults.”

  So Jack and I got up and walked over to Steve and Brittany. I was a bit giddy and enjoyed holding hands with him on the way over there. And he was a gentleman- happy, but not really showing what he was feeling. I think he was feeling more for me than for Brittany, which is all I really cared about at this time. That’s enough for me.

  I’ve been drunk at parties before, but I have never been love drunk before. I couldn’t imagine being any happier than I was at that moment. In many ways, it was like the first time that I had ever fallen in love, but it was more intense. I was more alive, and it seemed more real.

  And somehow in the following blur of events, Jack and I ended up competing against Steve and Brittany in a game of beer pong. I think Jack and I were winning. I wasn’t really paying attention to the game. I was kind of enjoying the fact that Jack was so amazing and that it was pissing Brittany off so much.

  And that is when I received a sobering bitch slap. Brittany noticed that I was wearing Jack’s ring. Well, it was Brittany’s ring, but Jack gave it to me. Anyway, she still felt that she had some sort claim to the ring, even though she turned him down.

  The game just sort of stopped as Jack and Brittany went back and forth over the true ownership of the ring. Jack was firm but civil in his responses to her. But Brittany had it in for me. The last thing I remember her saying was something like, “My God, Jack. You don’t just give a diamond ring to the first slut that will fuck you.” I don’t know what his response to that was. I sort of ran off to the bathroom and started to cry.

  Whatever his response was, he must have finished the argument with it because he was knocking on the bathroom door to see if I was alright. I wanted to be alone, but I couldn’t exactly leave him out there either. So I opened the door and without talking to him, I sat on the side of the bath tub.

  Jack, seeing that I wasn’t going to talk to him about what was wrong, closed the bathroom door and locked it. He then sat next to me on the tub and put his arm around me.

  You can tell a lot about a guy by what he does when you’re crying. Some don’t know what to say, so they just sit there in silence and hope that they are able to be comforting enough when you are willing to start talking about it. Others ask you if you want to talk about it and then say that they are there for you when you do want to talk about it. And then there’s Jack.

  Jack is the type of guy who sits there quietly for a minute, holds you while you cry, and doesn’t ask if you want to talk about it. Instead he breaks the awkward silence with, “Do you know the other night when I said you were beautiful? You become more beautiful the more time I spend with you.”

  And as I started to cry even more at words that I didn’t exactly want to hear at that moment, he continued, “The night I gave you that ring, I was lost, hurt, and lonely. My world had come to an end. You were there for me,
opened your home up to me, and kept me from doing things I would later regret. And it may not seem like much to you, but your simple acts of kindness probably saved my life that night and for the next few days after.”

  Hearing him admit that he was suicidal made my being called a slut seem not so important, so I looked at him as he went on, “You may not believe it, but I think I gave that ring to the right girl.”

  He then kissed me on the forehead and held me just a little tighter. And I wanted to say something, but I didn’t quite know what to say. We ended up looking in each other’s eyes. And there was that moment where you think you’re going to kiss each other. It would have been a kiss that would have meant something.

  But before we could maneuver into the kiss, there was a knock at the door. Some drunk guy had to pee. He just kept knocking and yelling, “Come on. Hurry up in there. I’ve got to piss like a mother fucker.”

  I looked at Jack and was horrified. I couldn’t go out there and have everybody know that I was crying, but I didn’t know how to tell Jack that. Anyway, there was no way to stop him. Before I could say anything, Jack was up next to the door and pounding against it as if he was having sex. “Just a minute, Dude. I’ve got a girl in here, and I can’t stop now.”

  Before I could bust out laughing, Jack motioned for me to be quiet. He then just continued to bang up next to the door and fake an orgasm. But the drunk guy wouldn’t be deterred. “Couldn’t you just take her to one of the bedrooms?”

  “Good God, Man! Do you want get blue balls? Piss outside if you have to. Oh, fuck, yes, there. Shiiiiit. Fuck.”

  Jack then looked at me and motioned if I was ready to go. I whispered that I couldn’t go out there when it looked like I had been crying.

  So Jack continued to fake an orgasm as he moved away from the door. “Oh, you dirty bitch. Yes”, and then he turned on the water on the bathtub. And when the water was warm enough, he turned on the shower and motioned for me to get in. I looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Get in. Nobody will know that you were crying. They will just think we had sex in the shower” was his response to me. And it was so crazy, that I wanted to go along with it. So I stepped inside the shower with one of my favorite outfits on.

  Jack then got in with me and greeted me with, “You know you could show some signs of pleasure yourself. Right now it’s not looking very good for me.”

  So there we were in the shower with our clothes on faking orgasms. It was quite possibly the most fun I have ever had. It was just crazy and funny. And Jack was wonderful. When he faked his climax, he fell into me as if he were exhausted. He then fake apologized, “I’m sorry if I came before you did. I hope you still enjoyed it.”

  “It was the best I’ve never had”, I said finally laughing.

  And thinking that we were now good to go outside and rejoin the party, I started to turn the water off. Jack then stopped me. “Before we get out of the shower, I have a sort of odd request.”

  “You’re going to ask me to do something while we’re in the shower with our clothes on”, was all I could think of to say.

  “I know. I’m insane, but I’ve always wanted to kiss a girl in the rain. It’s on my virginity list.”

  “Your virginity list?”

  “It’s what I call my bucket list. And I know that it sounds really bad after just faking an orgasm in the shower with our clothes on, but I just thought that, if you were willing, we could...”

  And since he wouldn’t shut up, I started to kiss him. And I mean that I kissed him. I kissed the boy I was falling in love with and hoped he would know that with that kiss I was giving him my heart.

  And as the water was coming down on us, he put his arms around my waist and seemed to be enjoying the kiss. He was at least kissing me back as somebody that had some sort of feelings for me. It was loving and passionate, but not dirty or raw. It was beautiful.

  And when I left him wanting more, I asked him, “Was it good for you?”

  He slowly opened his eyes and in a drawn out way said, “Yeah. That’s something I’m definitely going to be doing again.” He then turned off the water and said, “We had better be going now.”

  And with our wet clothes on, we exited the bathroom. The drunk guy looked at us in amazement. Everybody else just looked at us as we left the party hand in hand. As I walked by Brittany, I held up my hand to show her the ring on my finger. I then flipped her off, which made me feel a whole lot better.

  And then Jack and I walked home. It was a nice late summer evening. It was a perfect romantic evening where the stars were shining above and I was taking a leisurely stroll hand in hand with a guy that I liked. And we just talked as we made our way home.

  He wouldn’t tell me what other stuff was on his virginity list, but he did explain why he called it a virginity list. He said that if anything is worth doing once before you die, it should be amazing enough to want to do more than once. Plus, he said that you should have a list that you can mark off stuff with with some of the most important people in your life. He said that it makes it more special than just doing something because you want to. His list is stuff that he would like to do with other people.

  So I took his kissing in the rain virginity. Although it was really his kissing in the shower virginity, I told him that I would officially pop his cherry the next time that it rained. He seemed to like that idea, so I must have been pretty good in conveying that I was starting to have feelings for him. I can’t tell for sure.

  When we got home, there was the question as to who should get in the shower first. He was going to be a gentleman and let me go first. I was going to be my typically slutty self and suggested that we should shower together again, except without clothes this time.

  And he was nice about turning me down. He made sure that he was rejecting the idea and not actually rejecting me. He did it in such a way that I didn’t feel like a slut, which I have been having problems with lately.

  I’m going to have to remember that Jack just came out of a very long relationship. Having sex with a girl that he isn’t actually dating probably isn’t high on his list of priorities right now. Plus I have to be careful not to come off too strong in my feelings for him.

  Anyway, we showered separately. Afterwards, we just hung out on the sofa watching TV. We did more talking than anything else. My guilty conscience got the better of me, and I asked him if he thought I was a slut.

  The wisdom of asking a guy that you are interested in if he thinks you’re a slut is probably not a good thing. I just wanted to get it out there for us to discuss. And in one of the more stupid things I have ever done with a guy, I ended up discussing almost my entire sexual history with him.

  It was easy to do. Jack just held me, listened to me, and didn’t judge me. I just wish I knew what he was thinking or feeling. It is making being in love with him hard for me. I don’t want to ruin this, but I don’t exactly know how to have a relationship with a guy that isn’t ready for a relationship yet.

  The Reasonable Woman Standard

  By

  Jack Webber

  There are times in your life when the various sectors of your life come together to teach you important life lessons. This happened to me the other day at work as I was taking sexual harassment training. With a large portion of the sexual harassment taking place against women, the courts have decided to have a “reasonable woman standard” where a reasonable woman would determine whether something would be harassment or not.

  Not to be offensive, but I have never found women to be very reasonable. This past weekend, I went to a party that I didn’t really want to go to. I knew that I would be running into an ex-girlfriend that is currently dating my ex-best friend.

  My date for the evening was a girl that knew everybody was going to be watching us as a couple, even though we aren’t a real couple. Everybody knew that we weren’t a real couple, and yet we still went to the party with the intent of putting on the greatest show on the earth.

&nb
sp; A reasonable woman would have known that this would have turned out badly, which it did if you consider locking yourself in the bathroom and crying a bad thing. I think most reasonable women would define that as a disaster of the original plan of going to a party to make your ex jealous.

  Of course, the reasonable man standard is not much better. I agreed to go to this predestined debacle with the full knowledge that it was going to be horrific. The difference between the reasonable man and the reasonable woman is that the reasonable man will agree to something that he knows he shouldn’t do because a woman wants him to do it.

  My reasons for going were that she wanted me to go, and I wanted to make her happy. Despite my objections and fears of impending doom, a reasonable man decided to just go with it. This was not done so that later I could say, “I told you so.” My being right never entered into the equation. Somehow spending time with her and doing something with her that she wanted to do were my deciding factors. These are thoughts that any person would find reasonable.

  The jury is still out on her reasons for wanting to go. Her argument was that we should get out of the house. Considering that we have spent most of our time together after the breakup of our previous relationship inside, going out to a party would be reasonable.

  It would also be reasonable that she would want me to go to a party where I would get to see some of my male friends. I haven’t seen them since this whole breakup thing happened. I have been rather isolated with my... girl that I’m spending my nights with and not having a real relationship with.

  Okay. The jury just came back from deliberations. They have decided that she was a reasonable woman. This verdict was based on the facts that the man was found to be reasonable in agreeing to go to the party when he did so out of respect for and a desire to make the woman happy. Since both parties were thinking about somebody other than themselves, they are both deemed to be reasonable.