The Girl He Used to Know

by Tracey Garvis Graves

  “Condoms. But my roommate Janice thinks I’m ready for the pill.”

  “Do you?”

  “I think so.”

  The doctor explained the importance of taking the pills regularly, preferably at the same time of day. “You’ll have to take these for thirty days before you’re fully protected. If you miss a pill, be sure to use a backup method of contraception until you’ve finished the pack.” Janice kept her pill pack on her nightstand and took one first thing every morning, but I decided I would keep mine in my purse. I spent many nights at Jonathan’s, but sometimes he spent the night at my place. If I kept the pills in my purse, I would always have them with me no matter where we decided to sleep.

  We talked about safe sex and that I could protect myself by making sure anyone I was intimate with had been tested for sexually transmitted diseases. The doctor asked if I had any questions, but I didn’t. I felt so grown-up and responsible. Janice had been on the pill since her senior year of high school, but all of this was uncharted territory for me. I’d been granted entry into a special girls’ club, and I was proud of my membership because I was tired of being behind on everything all the time.

  So far, my senior year of college had been the best year of my life. I had a steady boyfriend, I’d attended a chess tournament, and while I hadn’t contributed directly to the team’s victory, my skill level had earned me the right to be a part of it. I was exhibiting a level of responsibility for my sexual health that gave me immense personal satisfaction, and every day I was one step closer to the career I’d coveted for so long.

  Life was on an upswing, and I was starting to believe that my future was every bit as bright as Janice always promised it would be.

  * * *

  Later that day, Jonathan picked me up to walk to class. “I went to the student health center this morning,” I said as I grabbed my jacket and backpack and locked the door behind us.

  “Are you sick?”

  “I went there so I could get on the pill.”

  He stopped walking. “The birth control pill?”

  “Is there another kind of pill they call the pill?”

  “No. I mean, not that I know of. Really? You went on the pill?”

  “It’s what women who are in monogamous relationships do. Janice said it would make things easier and that you would probably like it.”

  “Well, yeah. I like it a lot.”

  “It won’t be safe until I’ve taken them for thirty days. And the doctor said you have to get tested. I got tested. I can’t have sex without a condom unless I know you’re free of sexually transmitted diseases.”

  “I assure you that I don’t have any STDs.”

  “The doctor said you might say that.”

  “Annika, I will get tested. I promise.” He squeezed my hand and kissed me. “This is going to be really great.”

  26

  Annika

  THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

  AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

  A friend of Jonathan’s was having a party, and he wanted us to go. He’d mentioned it that morning while we were eating breakfast, but I hadn’t committed the details to memory, because I really wasn’t interested. I felt tired and crampy and my back ached, and the gloomy weather wasn’t helping things. It was much colder than usual for early April and had been raining all day, the cold drizzly kind of rain that falls during that in-between time when winter is over but spring hasn’t fully arrived. I’d spent the day curled up in Jonathan’s bed with him and a book, and spending the evening that way sounded much more appealing than anything we would encounter beyond the four walls of his bedroom.

  “I’m going stir-crazy,” he said after we ate dinner. “We don’t have to stay for a long time, but I really want to introduce you to some more of my friends.”

  Janice said that Jonathan always seemed proud to be with me. That made me feel good, because until I met him, I never thought I would be the type of girl anyone would be proud to be seen with. And Janice was always reminding me that relationships were all about compromise.

  “Like when you said Joe wasn’t a great kisser but had a bigger than average penis?”

  “I said that?”

  “You did. After seven wine coolers.” Joe had been replaced a few weeks ago by a graduate student who rode a bicycle everywhere and whose penis according to Janice was merely average. “But his hands are magical,” she said.

  Jonathan made lots of concessions for me, and I didn’t need Janice to tell me that. He kept me away from loud noises before they could overwhelm me. He was always kind—to people, to animals, to strangers. He made me feel special and smart.

  Jonathan wanted to go to the party, and I wanted to be the kind of girlfriend who compromised, who made concessions. So at nine thirty we put on our jackets and we headed out into the rain and we went to the party.

  * * *

  I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The host’s name was Lincoln and I only spoke to him briefly, when Jonathan introduced us. For some reason, Lincoln’s girlfriend took a shine to me when she found me sitting at the end of the hallway playing with the fattest cat I had ever seen. Her name was Lily and the cat—whose name was Tiger despite it not having one single stripe—belonged to her. It turned out she liked cats almost as much as I did. I told her about Mr. Bojangles and suggested she get Tiger one of those balls with the bell inside. “But take out the bell because you will hate the noise it makes and it will drive you crazy,” I said.

  “Tiger hates balls, but he loves string.” She left abruptly, and when she returned a moment later, she had a stick with a piece of string tied to the end. Tiger went nuts, and we took turns holding the stick and dragging it along for him to chase.

  I didn’t know if her kindness was genuine. I still struggled with that, because I’d learned that sometimes people were kind only because they wanted something. “Don’t you like parties?” I finally asked. If her boyfriend was the host, it surprised me that she’d want to spend time sitting in the hallway with a stranger.

  “I like them, but I don’t drink and Linc and his friends have a tendency to get loud after a few beers.”

  “I don’t drink much either. I mean I will drink, but it’s an acquired taste and I haven’t finished acquiring it yet.”

  Jonathan poked his head into the hall. “Hey, there you are,” he said. He crouched down beside Lily and me. “Looks like you’ve made a friend.”

  “Do you mean Lily or the cat?” I asked.

  “Both,” Lily said. Jonathan smiled really big when she said that.

  “You doing okay?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, because I wanted to show him he could take me to parties, and that I could fit in. It didn’t matter to me that so far, my only interaction had been with a girl and her cat.

  Lily was right, though, because later it did get loud. Tiger disappeared around eleven thirty when the hallway became crowded with people going in and out of the bedrooms and bathroom. I found a small spot near the laundry room off the kitchen, and I hung out there for a while by myself. The living room was packed, and I didn’t really want to fight my way through the crowd to look for Jonathan. Instead he found me fifteen minutes later.

  “Where’d you go? I’ve been looking all over for you. I was worried.”

  “There are so many people in the living room. I thought I would hide out here until it was time to go.”

  “Let’s go now. I’m ready to climb back in bed. I just want to say good-bye to Lincoln real quick.”

  Jonathan clasped my hand firmly in his and led me through the crowd. Lincoln was sitting on the couch with Lily on his lap. There were several guys seated next to him and a few standing in front of it talking to them.

  “This is my girlfriend, Annika,” Jonathan said.

  “Hey, Annika,” they said. Everyone smiled at me, and I was so glad we came.

  “So, we’re taking off,” Jonathan said. “Thanks for the party. It was great.”

  “It was ni
ce talking to you, Annika,” Lily said. I felt so tongue-tied that all I could do was nod and smile.

  A super tall guy with blond hair and a patchy beard winked at me. “When you get tired of Jonathan, give me a call. I may not be as smart, or as handsome, or a chess wunderkind, but I’ll treat you right.”

  Everyone looked at me, but no one said anything. I didn’t say anything either, because I loved Jonathan and wasn’t ever going to get tired of him, and I certainly wasn’t going to call up this guy who I’d just met for the first time and barely knew. Lily, though, seemed like someone I might actually want to get together with sometime. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at making those kinds of things happen.

  “I wouldn’t wait by the phone if I were you,” Jonathan said, slinging his arm over my shoulder. Everyone laughed and then Jonathan pulled me closer and asked if I was ready to go.

  I said yes because Lily was right. It was really loud. Besides, I hadn’t seen Tiger for a while and my back was hurting again.

  * * *

  On the way home, I watched the windshield wipers sweep the rain away, enjoying their rhythmic motion and the silence inside the truck. I found it very soothing. I tried to tell Jonathan about Lily and her cat, but he kept his eyes straight forward and only answered when I asked a direct question. I knew I’d done something wrong but didn’t know what it was.

  I got ready for bed and slipped beneath the covers, but Jonathan didn’t join me. I read for a while and then went into the living room to see what he was doing. He was flipping through the TV channels, a beer on the coffee table in front of him.

  “Aren’t you coming to bed?”

  He clicked through the channels on the TV. “Eventually.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re mad at me.” I wanted to know what I’d done so I wouldn’t do it again.

  “I’m not mad,” he said. But he was, and I wasn’t so dense that I couldn’t hear it in his voice.

  “Yes, you are. I don’t understand why you’re upset. I don’t know what I did!”

  He set down the remote. “You’ve got to give me something to hold on to, Annika. You’ve turned me into this … this lovesick fool, and all I get in return for my romantic gestures is a blank look. When someone hits on you, especially when they come right out and reference your current boyfriend, it would be nice to hear you say that you’d never be interested in that person because you already have someone. Someone you claim to love. So, help me out here. Throw me some kind of bone once in a while.”

  I didn’t get the bone thing at all, but I finally figured out that everyone had been waiting for me to make some kind of proclamation about how I felt about Jonathan. I squeezed my eyes shut, angry, so angry at myself. My eyes filled with frustrated tears.

  “I did think that! I thought it in my head, but I was afraid if I said it out loud, I’d mess it up somehow and then everyone would think I was stupid. I’ve never been in love before, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. What I’m supposed to say. But when you walk into the room my whole body relaxes because I think ‘Jonathan is here.’ And I never want you to leave, even when it’s just to go to class or work or the pool. I want you to be with me. So when we go places or you introduce me to people, I’m so happy to have someone like you holding my hand or standing by my side that I don’t think of those things. I just see you, and I think ‘Jonathan wants to be with me.’ I love you more than I’ve loved anything in my whole life except maybe Mr. Bojangles but that’s because not a lot of people love him. Probably just me and my mom and maybe the vet, which isn’t very many and that makes me so sad.”

  I was really bawling by then and Jonathan pulled me onto his lap and put his arms around me. “I’m sorry, Annika. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I know you love me. You show me all the time in your own special way. I’m being an asshole.” He pressed his forehead to mine and we stayed like that, our eyes closed, until I stopped crying.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I was curled up in a little ball on his lap, and I never wanted to leave. “Yes.”

  “I love you, Annika Rose.” He wiped away my tears and kissed my forehead, my cheek, my lips.

  “I love you, Jonathan Hoffman.”

  He started laughing. “You put me in the same category of love as your cat.”

  “But I love Mr. Bojangles!”

  “I know you do. You love him as much as you love me. And that’s funny because you make no attempt to hide it.”

  “But why is it funny?”

  “Because most people like their boyfriends a little bit more than they like their pets. And if they don’t, they probably don’t say it out loud.”

  “You can love both.”

  “Yes, you can.” Jonathan kissed me again and soon we weren’t doing much talking at all. Janice had mentioned having more make-up sex with Joe than any other guy she’d dated. She told me it made the arguments worth it, and the way I felt that night, as we made up right on Jonathan’s couch, I would have to agree even though the couch wasn’t nearly as comfortable as his bed.

  “I want to stay together after we graduate,” Jonathan said afterward. “There are plenty of libraries in New York. We’ll both get jobs and we can go to grad school at night. We’ll probably have to live in a crappy apartment even smaller than this one, but someday I’ll make enough for us to live anywhere we want. Say you’ll come with me, Annika.”

  I told him I loved him again, and then I told him I would.

  27

  Jonathan

  CHICAGO

  AUGUST 2001

  Nate and his new girlfriend are waiting at the bar when Annika and I arrive at the restaurant. The woman is completely Nate’s type, or at least the type he’s been dating since the divorce: late twenties, club attire, pretty. I won’t know until we’re seated and having a conversation if she’s an improvement over the last one, who talked incessantly about the TV show Survivor and drank several frozen strawberry daiquiris that gave her “the most awful brain freeze.”

  Nate and I shake hands. “This is Sherry,” he says.

  “Jonathan,” I say. “Nice to meet you. This is Annika.”

  Annika smiles, shakes hands, and maintains brief eye contact with both of them. She’s wearing a long, full skirt, which is in direct contrast to Sherry’s super short dress and skyscraper high heels, but Annika’s top clings slightly in all the right places, and I’ve been glancing appreciatively down its deep-vee neckline since I arrived at her apartment. Nate appraises her and shoots me a quick, approving look, which I ignore because we’re not twenty-two anymore. Also, he can’t read my mind, so he doesn’t know my thoughts about the cleavage.

  Our table is ready and once we’re seated, I take a look at the drink menu. Nate asks Sherry what she’d like to drink and she says “Chardonnay” as if she’d had the kind of day only wine could fix.

  “Would you like a glass of wine or would you prefer this?” I ask Annika, pointing to the one nonalcoholic option the restaurant offers, a mix of mango, cranberry, and orange juice with a splash of ginger ale.

  “I’ll have the Chardonnay,” Annika says.

  “Jonathan tells me you’re a librarian,” Nate says.

  “Yes.”

  Nate waits for Annika to provide details, but he’s greeted with silence. “Where?” he finally asks.

  “The Harold Washington Library.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Six years, three months, and thirteen days. How long have you been at your job?”

  Nate laughs. “I’m not sure I can answer that as thoroughly as you have. You’ve put me on the spot.”

  Annika shoots me a quick look as she tries to decipher whether he’s kidding, so I smile at her. “Don’t listen to him. I bet he can tell you the exact date of his retirement, right down to the minute.”

  “You got me,” Nate says.

  “What do you do, Sherry?” I ask.

  “I’m a scientist.”<
br />
  Okay. Did not see that coming.

  Nate doesn’t even bother to hide his smirk and was probably near bursting from holding that little detail inside. The daiquiri girl was between jobs and seemed vastly uninterested in remedying the situation anytime soon. Nate broke up with her a short time later.

  The waitress brings our drinks and Annika takes a tentative sip of her wine. “Do you like it?” I ask her.

  “It’s very good.” She puckers her lips a little, because it’s probably a bit drier than she expected.

  “I need to use the restroom,” Sherry says. She looks at Annika. “Would you like to come with me?”

  “No,” Annika says, grimacing and using the same tone you’d use to turn down an elective root canal.

  Sherry looks at her in confusion. “No?”

  Annika pauses. Removes the napkin from her lap and smiles. “Actually, yes. I should probably go now, too.”

  I keep my expression blank, but inside I’m laughing. Annika’s honest response to what is essentially one of the most common female conventions is priceless, but she says it so sweetly—without a trace of sarcasm—that I may be the only one who realizes she didn’t arbitrarily change her mind. It just took her a few extra seconds to shuffle through her brain for the appropriate social response. No wonder she was so tired after I took her to my company dinner. It must be exhausting, and it makes me feel extra protective of her.

  “Does she always say what she means?” Nate asks after they’ve left the table.

  I take a sip of my drink. “Always. What you see is what you get with her. If Annika likes you, she’ll let you know.” I laugh. “And she’ll also let you know if she doesn’t.”

  “No games, no bullshit. I bet it’s nice. And you were right. She’s beautiful.”

  “On the inside, too.” Even with her bluntness, I can’t imagine Annika ever saying an unkind word about anyone. She’s been on the receiving end of too much bullying and abuse to ever make someone feel bad on purpose.