by Daryl Banner
“Friends,” I echo.
“Friends,” she affirms, then looks away again.
And that’s when it hits me: my drunk text message. Horny, half-thought-out words. The nonsense I typed about wanting her and not caring about anyone or anything else. All of that blathering about hating myself and hating where things have gone and blah, blah, blah.
I didn’t ask her about it. What if she’s been waiting this whole time for me to acknowledge my stupidity?
“Um … Sam.”
“Friends,” she repeats, a touch harder.
“I know, but—”
“Please, Dmitri.”
“But that text message I sent …”
She turns to me suddenly, her brow furrowed as she stares into my eyes confusedly.
Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. I should have left it alone. Maybe …
“I just …” I clear my throat and try again. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for what I said in it. The text I sent a little while ago. I … I was totally drunk and lonely and … angry …” I swallow hard. “Just please ignore it, okay? I didn’t mean any of it. Really.”
“Okay,” she murmurs flatly, still keeping her gaze locked on mine.
And right on time, the lobby doors open and the audience spills over us like an ocean, the second act having concluded. Sam and I sit in silence, drowning in a sea of chirping people, wondering what’s in store for us when our own little act three comes around.
Chapter 13
Sam
Text message?
What text message?
I’m sitting in my dorm room scrolling through my phone and I see nothing at all.
Did I delete it by accident when I was clearing out all of Amy’s pics and texts? Did I completely overlook Dmitri’s name and just delete his message without thinking?
What did he say? Did he send me a text confessing his love for me, or was it a text filled with anger and resentment and blame?
I drop onto my pillow, curl up with it, and grip my phone so tightly that I might fold it in half. I clench my teeth as an army of tears start to poke my eyes with their little pointy swords.
I haven’t cried yet with contacts on, so I’m not sure how this works. I sit up in bed at once and will myself to stop being so emotional. Friends, I remind myself, determined. Just friends. That’s what we decided and that’s what will happen. It’s best for everyone, yourself included.
I only just now got back from the theater. I didn’t see Dessie after the show, not with all the commotion in the lobby over her parents being there. After Dmitri and I (rather abruptly) parted ways, I cut a quick path across campus to my dorm where I could safely tuck my tail between my legs and regret all the words I ever said to Dmitri—but more painfully, the ones I didn’t.
Am I doing the right thing here? Or am I just running away the way my dad did?
My dorm phone rings.
The sound is so alien, I almost think the fire alarm has gone off for a moment. I scurry to the other end of my bed and grab the receiver off of my desk. “Hello. Sam and Dessie’s residence,” I answer.
“Hi.”
I slump against the windowpane. It isn’t Dmitri. It isn’t Dessie. I have no idea who it is.
“Hi?” I return uncertainly.
“It’s me.”
I blink. I still have no idea who it is.
“Um, so …” He clears his throat, my mystery caller. “I know we, like, weren’t a thing. Or aren’t a thing. I know we’re just friends and just met, but, like, I’m just curious. Was that your boyfriend at the theater? Or, like, some other guy at the Music school who you’re interested in? It’s no big deal. I just, um …”
Tomas. It’s Tomas.
I don’t remember giving him my dorm number.
“He’s a friend,” I say, cutting him off. “He’s just a … a friend.”
Tomas doesn’t say anything for a moment. I hear the shuffling of clothes—or bed sheets, or paper, or something—and then he says, “Do you kiss all your friends? I’m asking, uh, literally. Like, I don’t know. Europeans do it.”
I stare at the wall on the opposite side of the room. I’m so used to sarcasm and playful banter and wittiness that I’m left stuck in a mental loop of wondering whether he’s being funny with me, or is literally comparing my kiss with Dmitri to Europeans greeting one another.
“He was …” I chase an urge to come completely clean with Tomas, even if we still sort of don’t know each other. “He was sort of an ex. Except not really. We had a messy, confusing thing freshman year. But our friends are dating now, so I told him we need to be just … friends. Nothing is happening between us. He’s just a friend.”
I clench shut my eyes. Never did I ever think I’d find myself caught in this weird, unfamiliar, confusing situation between two guys. I don’t even know if I did anything wrong, yet I feel like everything’s wrong.
“Just friends,” Tomas echoes sullenly.
His words sound so hollow. I could bring an ear up to them and hear the ocean.
“I didn’t mean to make things weird tonight,” I mumble miserably. “I wanted to go to the play to support my roommate. And then I didn’t know he’d be there. And then—”
“I overreacted. I’m kind of sensitive like that.”
I bite my lip thoughtfully. Maybe there’s more to Tomas than I gave him credit for. “I might’ve done the same thing if I was in your shoes.”
“You’d drown in my shoes. They’re big. Like, freakish big.”
“You are a pretty tall guy,” I point out.
Tomas chuckles lightly into the phone. I can see his cute face if I close my eyes. I can even smell him sitting next to me on a piano bench at the Music school.
Then I see Dmitri. He’s outside that practice room and he has a violin pressed to his chin. He doesn’t even play, but there he is behind my eyelids, playing me a sweet melody.
I fall back on my bed with a huff, pressing the phone to my face and snapping open my eyes to rid myself of the images. My stomach is a Rubik’s Cube of uncertainty.
“Can we meet somewhere?” he asks softly.
“Come to my dorm,” I tell him, the words coming out faster than I can think them. “I … can tell you how the play ended. And we can—”
“I’d like that,” he says before hearing what we can do.
But I imagine he has an idea or two.
After he hangs up, I check myself in the bathroom mirror over the noise of our suitemates playing some really loud Britney Spears. My hips start to move to the music as I reapply some light lipstick and wipe a smudge from my eyes. You read that right: I’m dolling myself up while dancing lightly to the rhythm of “Toxic” humming through the bathroom walls.
After double checking my room, I pull out my phone and decide to shoot my roommate a text. She’s probably busy hanging out with her friends after the show, and I didn’t really get a chance to see her, so I should at least let her know I was there with the tickets she got me.
ME
sorry i didn’t see you
after the show.
we waited around for a bit
but you were with your family.
thank you for the tickets.
tomas is cool, i guess.
we are at the dorm.
please knock if you come back.
i think he might kiss me.
i dunno.
No, I don’t mention Tomas left after the first act, nor that I missed the second. I give Dessie the full, untainted impression that I was there for every minute of her stardom and definitely didn’t miss out on her character’s wedding. Besides, when you’re being told a story about two lovesick people who pursue each other despite life constantly standing in the way, you’re pretty sure they’ll end up together in the end.
There’s a knock at the door. When I open it, Tomas is standing there wearing the same crisp dress shirt from before and a loose pair of khakis. His hair is freshly parted, and his e
yes reflect a nervousness that makes them shimmer like two wind-stirred pools.
“The truth is,” says Tomas right away, “I’m an old-fashioned sort of guy. My momma taught me that if you want to respect a girl, you take her out on a proper date. Not to a piano practice room. Not to the crowded campus cafeteria. Not to your, um …” He gives a little nod at my dorm room, which he still hasn’t stepped inside.
The door, which I have to hold open, grows heavier by the second.
“So the question is,” Tomas goes on, not a muscle in his body moving except for his face, which works very hard not to betray the fear he’s clearly experiencing, “do you want to go on a date with me?”
This dance in the doorway I find myself engaging in feels so much more significant than it appears. I feel like taking a step through it will end one chapter in my life and begin another.
But what if I stay here?
With a breath, I could say no. I could call Dmitri right now, change my mind, and chase that tour bus across the country—just like Dad. I could abandon what I know, not care whose heart I break, and race into the dark, cold unknown with a warm set of lips and a bright set of eyes upon me.
What am I so scared of?
“Sam?” Tomas presses me like a machine awaiting input, his voice relaying just a hint of his nerves, of his doubt, of his terror that I might reject him yet again. “D-Do … Do you want to go out with me?”
And that’s how I’m left: staring at him, holding open a heavy, heavy door, and facing a very important decision I must make.
Chapter 14
Dmitri
Spring semester comes, and it’s Valentine’s Day: the day when all the grassy knolls are filled with couples, when every tree extends its generous shade over a cuddling pair of lovers, when every restaurant from here to Venus is booked up for the night and taking no more reservations.
Even for two lonely singles like Brant and I. “But it’s the middle of the afternoon,” complains Brant when the hostess denies us a table at the front of Jesse Romano’s. “Who the hell’s taking their date out when the sun’s still beating over our heads?”
“The wait is still three hours. I’m sorry,” she says tiredly, sounding anything but sorry.
An hour and twenty minutes later, Brant and I are chilling together on the stoop of our apartment with an opened box of pizza and a tiny basket of lemon garlic wings between us. A limp slice of Hawaiian pizza hangs from his hand as he chews loudly and stares into the yard, which slowly burns orange and red under the setting sun.
I’m licking off my garlic-butter-drenched fingers and imagining all the miserable people out on dates tonight, sitting in silence at tables with their sullen faces lit by candlelight and pretending this card-and-rose-exploiting holiday still means something to them.
I wonder how many couples won’t even have sex. They’ll just pay the bill, drive home, and get ready for bed. After all, February 15th is on its way, and like today, it’s just another day at the office.
I wonder if Sam and her musician-boy are one of those couples.
I close my eyes, still sucking on my index finger, as I try to picture Sam sitting at one of those restaurants. I picture the beautiful flame throwing light at her and making her eyes sparkle. I see her quirky, pinched lips and her dark, wild hair. I watch as she smiles at her date, assuming he is her date, and I imagine her lips moving as she says something really cute and full of personality, though I don’t know what she says.
The words aren’t meant for me anymore.
Maybe they never were.
“Fuck, I need to write something.”
Brant jerks from his own thoughts at the sound of my voice. “What you gonna write about?”
I’m absently sucking on the tip of my garlicky middle finger as I imagine my story. It almost writes itself, really. “Someone ran away with my heart. I gotta get it back. But I don’t know who has it.”
“The girl, obviously,” Brant throws in, talking around his mouthful of pineapple and ham and stringy cheese.
“No, no … that’s the thing,” I say, squinting into the sunlight and figuring it out. “Someone stole it.”
“Uh …”
“Like, literally, actually stole it.” I put a greasy hand to my chest without thinking, dirtying up my shirt as I’m caught in the moment of inspiration. Maybe I’m checking to see if I still have my heart. “While I was asleep. Or while I was daydreaming. Or something—I don’t know yet. Someone came up and took it right out of my chest.”
“Damn. That’s a bitch of a thing to have stolen. But, like, not in the romantic Valentiney sort of way.” Brant grabs another can of beer, pops it open, kicks it back for a mouthful, then lets out an oddly tiny belch. “Y’know, I actually like Valentine’s Day.”
I smirk. “Nah. You just like to chase all the broken hearts you find the next day moping around campus. Easy targets for a guy like you.”
Brant snorts at me. “You really think so low of me, huh?”
“Well? Am I wrong?”
Brant smirks, sucking on his tongue, then apparently decides not to answer, kicking back his beer again. I go for another garlic wing, even after having taken all the time in the world to lick my fingers clean. I guess that’s so me, to dive back in after declaring myself satisfied.
Maybe I’m never satisfied.
“Your story will touch hearts everywhere,” Brant decides. “You’ve … always got these deep, interesting ideas. You’re kinda ‘that guy I know’ who’s going places. I mean, Clayton I’ve known my whole life, so he doesn’t count. That bastard’s gonna be working on shows in New York before I know it.”
“For real,” I mumble. His work on the second fall production after Our Town was pretty remarkable, and I hear the spring musical he’s doing with Dessie is stellar.
“But you?” Brant goes on. “You, my friend, have got so much dang imagination in that twisted-ass head of yours. I seriously don’t know how you come up with that shit. Obviously not by kicking back on your front steps drinking beer all day long.”
I give him an appreciative, lopsided grin, then extend my half-eaten wing in a toast gesture. “Getting fucked up now and then is an artist’s necessity.”
“Shit. If that’s the truth, then I’m goddamn Picasso.”
“Everyone’s got a vision, man. Just some don’t have the means yet to realize it, whether it’s words or photographs or …” My eyes flicker with a pang of bitterness. “Or music.”
“Photographs. Hmm.” Brant bites his lip and squints into a breeze that rushes past us like a score of unsupervised children.
Brant’s looking especially dour suddenly. Maybe it’s getting to him, this whole Clayton-and-Dessie thing. He looks uncharacteristically off and lonely. “You … wanna bowl in a bit or something?”
“Yeah?” he grunts distractedly, still staring off.
“Yeah. Maybe they have some Valentine’s special or some shit we can take advantage of. Be my date, Brant Rudawski,” I tease him with a greasy punch to his arm.
He barely flinches, but when he turns to face me, the smile he gives is sweet. For a second, I feel a flutter of attraction, drawn by his charm and classic good looks, just like the countless women he’s turned over in his messy bed. Maybe I’ve been wrong about who Brant really is. Maybe somewhere beneath the skin, we’re all just vulnerable human beings waiting for the next person to come by and hurt us—or save us.
Then, as if suddenly inspired by the idea (or forcing himself to accept the distraction), he jumps up and announces, “I’ll get my lucky gloves!” before dashing into the apartment.
And until the sun’s long been down and the midnight moon is pouring its pale white melancholy over our heads, Brant and I share lane twenty at Tricky-10 Lanes, which is just a convenient handful of blocks from the apartment complex. When I’ve thoroughly had enough and want to head back to put this day to a merciful end, Brant tells me to go on without him, that he wants to knock over a few more pins before
calling it quits. I take that to be his way of asking for space, so I grant him that wish, give him half a hug, then make my way back to the apartment.
I’m halfway there when my phone buzzes. I pull it out and, after blinking away some of the alcohol in my system, I read:
ERIC
OMG where r u??
I’m knoooocking. lemme iiiiin
I smirk. Great. All I need is a drunken brat to babysit to make this day perfect. I ignore the text, seeing as I’m already headed home, and keep my eyes trained to the path.
In minutes, I’m standing in front of my door with Eric at my back moaning about something to do with marshmallows. I have no idea what he’s talking about. The key is stubborn, making the act of getting into my own home problematic, and also inspiring Eric to press up against my back impatiently, wanting in.
“C’mon,” he breathes at the back of my neck, annoyed.
“I’m working with the key, dude. Chill. It’s sticking.”
“You always have problems putting things in,” he groans.
The words don’t come out as sexy or suggestive as they may seem. In fact, they’re downright insulting, and I don’t even quite know what he means by them. I just roll my eyes and twist the key as best as I can without breaking the damn thing.
Finally, it gives way, and the pair of us enter my apartment.
“I fucking hate guys,” Eric blurts out the moment we’re inside, pushing past me to make himself at home on the couch. “Why, just when you think you’re about to get to the good stuff, do they have to slam on the brakes and shove you into the friend zone? I’m sexy, damn it. I have the goods. Why are guys fickle and always shopping for the next best thing? I caught the bastard looking out the window, like, nine times while I was trying to turn him on with my hot chocolate.”
