by Joey Bush
But all through the day there was no sign of him at all; I waited at one of our normal meeting spots for a couple of minutes, thinking that maybe he was running late—but when he didn’t show at all, I just went on to class. That day and the next I didn’t catch sight of him even once, which seemed odd to me. I told myself that with the semester hitting full swing, midterms only days away, it shouldn’t be surprising that Jaxon was busy, but it was a little strange to me nonetheless. I shook it off as best as I could and went about my life the way I would normally, hanging out with the guys from the frat and waiting for practice near the end of the week. I’d get a chance to talk to Jaxon then—he would be going around, helping all of the people on the team, and I’d take my chance to talk to him then.
When I got to practice, I waited to see where Jaxon would go first; depending on how many people were working, everyone split into groups to either do specific skill work, or run over the practice track, or do other exercises on the balance box or the trampoline. I wanted the best possible chance to talk to Jaxon, so I watched to make sure I broke off into the same group as he did. I was feeling worried that I hadn’t seen him since we’d had sex—but I figured, initially, that it was just one of those things; that he had been preoccupied. And it was what I wanted—for things to mostly not change between us, except that we could have sex on a regular basis. He went to do practice runs and I followed with a couple of other members of the team, strapping on my gear and my helmet.
Jaxon went through once or twice and then stood aside, watching the rest of the people who’d opted for that section of the practice facility. I deliberately tried some of the harder tricks I was still mastering, thinking that I’d get some feedback from him and at least get a chance to talk about studying together or hanging out after practice. I flubbed a landing and barely managed not to injure myself, continuing through the rest of the track with my confidence a little shaken. When I got to the end I looked up to where Jaxon was standing, and he was talking to someone, completely oblivious to me. He hadn’t even seen the flubbed landing—he would have called something out to me if he had.
I went onto something else, thinking that he might follow me to another exercise; he’d done it often enough before that I was pretty confident. But it became clear that he was completely and totally ignoring me, not even looking at me, busy talking to anyone else on the team except for me. The realization that he wasn’t just treating it as a casual fling—that he was actually avoiding me—hit me all at once with a wrenching pain that I didn’t expect. I slipped on the balance box and cussed, more frustrated with my distraction than with the fall. How was it possible that only a couple of nights before, Jaxon couldn’t get enough of me—he’d gone down on me with enough enthusiasm that he couldn’t have possibly faked it, and the sex had been so good I hadn’t wanted it to end—and now, for whatever reason, he didn’t want anything to do with me, didn’t even seem to want to look at me?
I got through practice with my mind in a flurry, barely avoiding injury again and again until I made myself stop, fifteen minutes before the team quit for the day. I climbed into my car, grateful that I had driven myself, and tried to shake off my feelings of anger and frustration—but I couldn’t do it. What the hell was going on in Jaxon’s head? Why couldn’t he just tell me whatever it was? I could understand if he wanted to keep things casual—I wasn’t looking for a serious lovey-dovey relationship. I could even understand if he wanted more than a casual relationship. I wouldn’t be really into it, but I could deal with that. But to completely ignore me when he’d spent months flirting with me all the time, hanging out and talking, and then having sex with me—that made no sense at all.
There was a party at Phi Kappa that night and I decided that I would go. Jaxon would be busy, but it wouldn’t be hard to get him to talk to me. Even though he was the leader of the frat, he could go upstairs for a little while and at least talk—and no one would think anything of it at all. I dressed the way that I always did, not even putting on makeup; I didn’t want him to think I was one of the clingy girls who tried to muscle her way into a relationship—I just wanted to figure out what was going on.
I found him while he was moving through the frat house, his toga draped around him, a cup in hand. I’d gotten my first drink into me and I was feeling just a little tiny buzz—enough to work up my courage to ask him to talk to me. At first, I could have sworn that he was avoiding me again, that he was determined to ignore me just as he had at practice. I raised my voice a little bit as I called out to him, knowing that if I was loud enough, one of the brothers would get his attention on my behalf. Jaxon glanced at me and I could see in his expression that he was irritated—but he moved off to the side and I followed him. The kitchen was weirdly deserted—everyone was in the living room, the den, outside enjoying the last of the reasonable weather before the first real snows of the late fall. “What?” he asked me, scowling.
“What the hell, Jaxon?” I asked him, looking up into his bright eyes. “You flirt with me for months and then screw me and now you can’t stand to be around me?” Jaxon crushed his Solo cup in his hand and tossed it aside, turning away from me. I saw him take a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm—and wondered how it was possible for him to get so angry.
“Look, nothing happened,” he said, turning back to face me.
I felt shock wash over me. “Something did happen, Jaxon—now what the hell is wrong with you?” Jaxon slammed his hand against the frame of the kitchen door, breathing in deeply again.
“Nothing happened. Just forget it, Mia. Nothing happened between us, so let’s just go on with our lives.” I frowned.
“I didn’t want to do anything other than that!” I said, trying to keep my voice down so it wouldn’t carry. “But you’re the one making everything weird. Ignoring me, avoiding me. That isn’t the way it was before.”
“I don’t care. Forget it and move on.” I felt my eyes stinging—I was shocked to realize that I was on the point of crying. I couldn’t understand why Jaxon would change so completely overnight. Even when I’d seen him play it out with other girls, I’d never seen him go from being flirty and fun and friendly to completely shunning them; normally he just kept things casual and let whatever situation fade. I shook my head. He couldn’t just say nothing had happened—something had. I clenched my teeth, trying to keep my feelings under control even as my anger started to get more and more intense. He hadn’t even considered me one of the guys—he’d just been trying to get into my pants the whole time. I shoved him on the shoulder hard, knocking him into the wall.
“You fucking loser, I should have known.” I spun away from him, throwing my half-empty second drink over my shoulder in his direction and walking out of the frat house as fast as I could without calling attention to myself. I fumed the whole way back to the dorms, thinking of how low and dirty it was that Jaxon could use me that way. He was nothing more than an asshole, plain and simple. If he had even given me half the respect he gave the rest of his frat, he would have told me he wanted things to be the way they were before we’d had sex, and I would have been okay with that. But to pretend like it was nothing, to avoid me and ignore me completely instead of even telling me what the hell was wrong—I wanted to go back and find him and punch him for it. It would just make it worse. I ran up the stairs to my dorm, not even bothering to use the elevator, and I threw myself into my bed, crying until I fell asleep.
CHAPTER 8
I spent the next few days staying close to the dorm. I couldn’t know if any of the guys at the party overheard my conversation with Jaxon and I was regretting it already. It had made Jaxon’s feelings clear, that was certain; he didn’t want to have anything to do with me at all. To him I’d just been another sorority bunny to screw and then move on from—not even someone he liked enough to stay friends with. I was paranoid enough to imagine that Jaxon had told everyone about what a pathetic crazy fool I had been—that he told them all he’d nailed me and then I’d trie
d to hook him, which wasn’t true, but it was the exact kind of gossip that flew around the frat house.
I was regretting the whole situation, stuck with my boring roommates who didn’t seem to want to do anything other than watch Real Housewives or Golden Girls, or studying alone in my room with the game on. It was okay, but I hated watching games alone when I knew the guys in Phi Kappa were probably watching the same game, drinking beers and making fun of the players, talking about classes, midterms, and everything else. I was thoroughly sick of being by myself, and I didn’t even feel entirely comfortable going down to the courts and playing a few games—there might be Phi Kappa guys there, and I’d just have to see their faces when they noticed me and started laughing. I shouldn’t have done anything at all with Jaxon; when he put his arm around me I should have just pushed it away and kept watching the game. Or I should have not flirted with him in the first place, just treated him like I would treat anyone else in the frat who flirted with me.
After a few days of my self-imposed exile, there was a knock at the dorm room door and since I was the only one in, I answered it. Jeremy was there; he looked relieved that it was me and not one of my roommates. “Hey, you been sick or something?” he asked, coming into the room and throwing himself onto the couch. I shrugged.
“Just busy,” I said, feeling defensive. “What’s up?” Jeremy shrugged and rummaged through the snacks on the coffee table, trying to find something he wanted to eat.
“You haven’t been around at all, and I thought maybe you’d come down with something. You missed a great game the other night—Notre Dame versus Duke.” I thought about it. If Jeremy had thought that I was sick, he clearly didn’t know the real reason I’d been staying away—which meant that he probably didn’t know about what had happened between Jaxon and me.
“I’m just burned out on midterms studying, that’s all. I caught the game in my room.”
“So come by tomorrow night—there’s a Preds-Maple Leafs game, we got Molson to celebrate.” I laughed. If Jeremy didn’t know then maybe no one in the frat knew about it—Jaxon had definitely been clear that he didn’t want to talk about it to me, so he probably hadn’t talked to anyone else either. I thought about Jeremy’s offer. I’d had more than enough of hanging out in the dorms; all of my laundry was clean, all of my studying was up to date, I had nothing to do with myself other than tool around on the Internet or watch the Predators game. I liked hanging out with the guys; I had from the very beginning. If Jaxon wasn’t going to make things weird, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t keep hanging out with my own friends, even if they did belong to his frat.
“I won’t miss it, man,” I said.
When I got to the Phi Kappa house the next night, I’d decided that I was just going to strictly hang out with my friends. I wasn’t going to look for Jaxon, I wasn’t going to try and make him acknowledge me in any way. Two could play the ignoring game, I thought to myself as I went in behind Jeremy. Everyone hanging out in the living room cheered; one guy proclaimed that the good luck charm was back, and he was sure to clear the betting pool with me there. Someone made room for me on the couch and for a little while it was exactly the way it had always been before things had gotten complicated with Jaxon; the chatter flowed around me and I put in my own two cents, dissing players, shouting at the refs, offering up my opinion on different girls on campus that the guys wanted to get in bed.
Jaxon came in after a while and I made myself not look at him. If he wanted space, I would give it to him; I couldn’t help but notice that while he tried to act normal, he didn’t talk to me even once, not even when someone asked him outright to dispute something I’d said about the Preds. He was determined to ignore me—and it hurt a little bit, but I told myself that if he was going to be petty, I wasn’t going to talk to him either. I kept myself occupied watching the game, talking to the guys in the frat who actually enjoyed my company, making sure that I didn’t seem like I was there for Jaxon at all—I was there to hang out with guys I liked, with people who were my friends. I would have been open to talking to Jaxon, at least on the normal level we’d had before we’d had sex, but if he didn’t want to I wasn’t going to force him. I would just enjoy myself, drink some beer, kick some cash into the alcohol fund before I left, and move on with my life, just like he said. He couldn’t possibly take offense to that, could he?
It got easier for me after the first night, and after a few weeks I stopped even trying to get Jaxon to notice me. I managed to get through midterms without help from him on Biology; I returned to the Tau Delta boys, who were more than happy to give me a hand and scraped by with a B on the test. I would need to get another B on the next test and at least a C on the final, but my grade would at least be good enough for my mom.
I carried on as best as I could, going to classes and hanging out at the frat house as much as I could. I felt awkward the first few times I dropped by, thinking that soon everyone would know—that the truth of the situation would come out and then everything would get weird. But no one seemed to have any clue that anything had changed, and I was once more one of the guys, hanging out, drinking, partying and watching games. I helped one of the first-year members with an English essay, one of the seniors on his History take-home test, and everything seemed to be smoothing out all around me. I could almost forget that anything had happened with Jaxon at all; before he had started flirting with me he hadn’t paid me that much attention, and now he was avoiding me altogether. What a damn baby, I thought when I saw him skulk through a room I was in, heading for his bedroom or the kitchen.
My lonely walks to my morning classes were a little bit of a loss, but I had walked to class alone before anything had happened with Jaxon, so it wasn’t as though it was a huge change in my life. I worked out in the gym, I played pickup games, and I went to snowboarding practice. When it came time for us to start hitting the slopes for real, I caught a ride with one of the girls, not even hoping to ride up with Jaxon. We carpooled to the mountains and I got to break out my winter wear, and got to really enjoy the snow. If it weren’t for the tension whenever Jaxon and I happened to be in the same area, I wouldn’t have ever even known he was there. I made better friends with some of the other members of the team and did my own thing, practicing hard, getting in as much training as I possibly could.
It would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact that Jaxon didn’t just ignore me. Everywhere we ran into each other—whenever I was in the frat house and he came into the room, or whenever we had practice together, the few odd times we ended up in the gym at the same time—there was an awkwardness, a tension—almost anger from Jaxon. It was exhausting, and part of me was tempted to have it out with him, to tell him he was being a giant baby and point out that I was doing my part—I had totally moved on with my life. So why was he acting like an asshole and making a point of ignoring me? If he really wanted to act like nothing had happened, he should at least pretend like I existed; he should at least say hi to me, or respond when I made a comment about something he liked.
It surprised me that no one in the frat seemed to have any clue. They were totally oblivious to the tension between Jaxon and me, they didn’t even notice the ways he snubbed me over and over again. He couldn’t make them not invite me to parties—he would have to tell them why. He couldn’t even say anything to me in front of them about what was going on. But he seethed and glared at me when he thought no one was looking, and I could definitely get the message that he would rather I didn’t come around at all—that I should not just move on like nothing had happened between us but instead move on from hanging out at the frat altogether. I was tired of his pettiness. I wasn’t going to ruin my life just because he couldn’t deal with me being friends with his frat brothers.
I tried my best to just stay out of Jaxon’s way whenever I was in the Phi Kappa house, but no one in the frat seemed to think anything of the situation—they didn’t even know that there was one. As long as Jaxon didn’t explode and tell them all
that he’d nailed me and now didn’t want me around, things would probably remain that way. No one questioned my right to be there, no one said anything about the tension I could feel like a physical substance between me and Jaxon, and as far as I could tell they were all dense enough not to have even noticed it. The rest of the team didn’t say anything about it either and I didn’t know if that was because they didn’t want to start a fight or if they just didn’t know there was anything going on. I didn’t care—I would rather not talk about it myself, and would rather just keep things on as even a keel as possible. It wasn’t hard to avoid Jaxon, it wasn’t hard to give him space, and in spite of the lingering resentment and hurt I felt, I told myself I didn’t really care. I was having too good a time with everyone else to miss him.
CHAPTER 9
It was a few days before Thanksgiving break and I had just gotten back to my dorm room after a game at the Phi Kappa house. The semester would be coming to an end just a little over a week after the break; we’d come back, it would be reading week, and then there would be finals in all of my classes. I was still struggling to keep up in Biology, but if I finished with a C or higher in the class at least I wouldn’t have to take it again—I could move on to another requirement. I hadn’t entirely settled on a major yet; I thought I might go into political science or anthropology, something that wasn’t quite as useless as English but was more fun than something math and science heavy. It wouldn’t really matter until the end of the year—or next year at the latest—since as a Freshman I had to get all of the general education requirements out of the way first no matter what. Finals week would also be when registration for the next semester would start, and I knew that I’d have to just take more of the same kinds of classes; maybe for spring I’d take some art classes and get my electives out of the way, take it easy on myself.
