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When it was all said and done, I knew that there wasn’t anything that I could do to change anyone’s mind or heart, and in the end that is really all that matters. It had been a long month and a half, and the main thing to do was try to find another place to live, or shack up at until the summer ended. Its funny because exactly forty-three days ago I was in the same situation, I just didn’t realize that things came full circle in that short of time. Luckily, the living situation problem didn’t last too long, and in a few days I would spend the next thirty living on a couple of friend’s couch until we could find a bigger place.
In May of 2002, the school semester was coming to a end, and the four other people that I was living with were going their separate ways. I have learned in twenty-seven years of living that even though it might sound like a good idea, friends should never live together, because in the end, the friendship dies. Anyways, it simply broke down like this: one guy had already graduated in December and was tired of living with the college guys, one guy was going to Mexico for a few months, one guy was moving home for the summer, and the last guy…well I really don’t know what exactly happened to him. Long story short, I needed a place to live.
As if things couldn’t get any more shitty, my car was broke down and I had to walk to work every day, and if I couldn’t bum a ride from someone then I had to walk wherever I needed to go. At least the city I lived in wasn’t a really big one and walking wasn’t a problem, work was only about a twenty minute or so walk, and I could always get a ride back.
I knew a few guys that lived in a big house, and they had a room that was open for someone to live in, if you could call it a room. The closet that soon would become my room was tiny, not saying that it was a prison cell, but it wasn’t much bigger than that. I had one window in there, and enough room to fit a full sized bed, one dresser and one small desk to fit my computer on, the rest of my stuff was stolen from Mexican workers who were cleaning out the old house during my transition, but I could never really prove that it was them.
There were three guys living there, the forth was in Mexico with my previous roommate, and he would be arriving in a few weeks. The weeks that soon followed after his return were some of the most great, unexpected, intoxicating and brutally tradegic times I experienced in such a short period of time. The story begins now.

~

Harry was due to arrive anytime from Mexico, and I really didn’t know how he would react to me living with him because I didn’t know if any of the other guys had informed him of my moving in. It had been a few weeks since I had moved in and I was still in the process of getting situated, not that you could in the house that I was now living at. It was two story, older house a few miles from the heart of the city, five points, in a neighborhood that varied from street to street. You had a fraternity house a block away, elderly people who have lived there as long as anyone could remember, young couples starting their lives, and houses that looked so shitty they could pass for a house in South America.
There were two dogs, David’s and mine, and Harry would be bringing his dog from his parents house when he arrived. There were five of us staying there, and my room was the smallest. The air conditioning barely worked right upstairs, where of course my room was, and in the middle of a South Carolina summer, any cool air is gladly accepted.
It was nine p.m. on a Thursday when Harry showed up. I had just got off of work from the restaurant I was waiting tables at about a half hour before he came up stairs to see me. I could see that he was very tan and eager to talk about his journey.
“Holt,” he shouted as he opened the door, “What the fuck is up man, or should I say roomie?”
“Nothing man,” I replied getting up from my chair, “Just got off of work and chilling out.”
“Its going to be awesome man.”
“What is?”
“The rest of this fucking summer,” he said as he gave me a hug, “The rest of this fucking summer.”
“Good, cause things have been slow around these parts, thank god you and Ryan are back, looking forward to the good times.”
“Excellent!”
He turned around and walked out of my room, five steps later he was in his. He quickly grabbed his guitar as he sat on his bed. I followed him in.
“So tell me,” he said as he strummed gently on his guitar, “How ya been?”
“Bored, all I do is work and hang out here.”
“Girlfriend? No Girlfriend? What’s the deal?”
“Talking to this one girl, you know, the preacher’s daughter. Talked to her a little bit on New Years, but then the next day she was on a plane for New Zealand, been keeping up with her through emails, and she got home a few weeks ago, a few dates and that’s about it.”
“Sounds fucking lame,” he said laughing, “Naw, just kidding with you, she’s cute…wanna beer?”
“Sure.”
Harry had a fridge right next to his bed, one that could easily hold a case or two of beer, and that is all that he had in there. He reached in a grabbed two Bud Lights and threw one my way, I was in his doorway leaning to the side. I opened my beer and little foam shot out and got on me and the floor.
“Got a towel?”
“Just leave it there man,” he said, “Its just a small taste of what the futures going to be like this summer, so what’s the deal, are you staying here all summer or for the rest of your tenure at school?”
“Not sure, I know that Josh and Dave said it was cool to stay here as long as I wanted, but not to sure how Chris is about it.”
“Fuck him anyways,” Harry replied, “He can be kind of a dick anyways, thinks that he is so cool with his job and his money, fucker will probably never finish school, don’t get me wrong I don’t mind living with him, but he’s a dick.”
“That sums it up,” I said as I raised my beer to him, “Welcome home buddy, cheers.”
“Cheers.”
I turned away and walked back to my room. The others had gone out to eat and I wanted to give Harry some space because I knew that they would be all over him when they returned. I guess that I should’ve seen it then, but that was the way the house would be for the next four weeks. Two cliques that would divide the house, the three of them and Harry and I, but I guess I wasn’t the sharpest knife back then.
I was only sitting down at my desk for a minute when Harry came into my room and threw a CD on my lap.
“You like the Crows right?”
“Oh yeah,” I replied.
“Good, then you will love that CD,” he said, “It’s a bootleg copy of their new album coming out in a few weeks, listen to that shit man.”
He went back to his room and I played the CD on my computer not knowing that this album would be the soundtrack of the summer for my life. It did change me a little and the songs I felt were speaking to me. The others arrived a few hours later, and we all hung out in the living room for a little bit listening to Harry tell his stories, a few hours later I went to bed.

~

That Monday was the same routine as the previous days. I woke up around nine in the morning, took the dog for a walk in the park a few blocks away, returned home, took a shower and figured out what to do with my day. Most of the time I would spend the day with Hudson’s sister, hanging out at her place and letting our dogs run around the open fields that her house was one. I wouldn’t say that we were dating, we had gone out a few times and kissed a few times but that was as far as it would go.
Before the shower, I would always take a shit, cleaning my system out before I cleaned myself off. I had to always make sure two doors were shut before doing anything in that nasty bathroom because Dave’s room had access to it, and then there was the hallway door. The irony is that Dave really never cared. The door wouldn’t lock and he didn’t care if you were shitting or showering or jacking off, he would simply walk in and do what he needed to do, and then leave.
Besides the random visit from Dave, the bathroom was horrible. There was no ventalation in the room, so if the water was too hot you had to deal with all the steam. The shower itself was a small, stand up shower not made for big people at all. I am over six feet tall and I had to bend my knees a little every time just to get my hair wet. There were some black mold spots here and there, and it just had that nasty feeling.
I finished my shower and walked out with the towel wrapped around my waist. Harry whistled at me as I walked by his room and I gave him a little pose.
“Fag,” he shouted jokingly.
“Fuck you, you whistled at me.”
“What’s the plan man?” he asked.
I could tell he was just waking up. It was almost noon and he was just rolling out of bed.
“What plan?”
“Whatca got going on today?”
“Dunno, not doing anything with the girl, I know that?”
“Why?” he asked as he put a t-shirt on.
“Doing some church stuff with her dad.”
“Sounds fucking lame to me,” he was now scratching himself.
“Well her dad is the preacher,” I said, “Tell me about it.”
I walked out of his room and went to mine. I grabbed another towel that was on the back of my chair and started drying off my hair. I really didn’t think that it was lame that her dad was a preacher and that she was kind of a good girl, I really just wanted to know that the hell was going on with us. Are we dating or not dating? Its been close to a month since her return and I wanted to ask her, but then again I didn’t want any pressure to be but on her either, she was just engaged four months prior.
“Dude you are fucking lame!” Harry shouted from his room.
“Why’s that?” I asked laughing at him.
“I didn’t sweat my balls off and not drink any water in Mexico to come home and not have any fun.”
“Then what’s your big plan?”
“I dunno, what time to you work tonight?”
“I don’t.”
“Good, then you are mine.”
Harry proceeded to take a shower and I checked my email. Bunch of fucking forwards. I began to wonder what my friends really do with their time. Always some email about how if you send it off to ten people you will receive good luck forever, but he has to be done within ten minutes, or some story on how Bill Gates wants to share his money with you if you fill out some kind of gay form. Yeah, right, like the richest dude on this planet wants to waste his money on some dumb redneck in South Carolina. Or, and this was the best one, a questionnaire that would be forwarded to people asking you to fill out the questions, like what’s the last book you read, favorite color and shit like that…as I always read them I laughed noticing on how my friend’s questions hadn’t changed from the last one.
I called the preacher’s daughter around one, and talked to her for a little bit. She said that she was going to spend some time with her family tonight which was perfect since, according to him, I was Harry’s bitch tonight.
“Lets go,” Harry said as he came into my room, “Fucking hungry man.”
“Alright, where to?”
“Wholesale.”
I got up and let the dogs outside, Harry followed behind me and I made sure the gate was locked, then hopped into his Jeep. Wholesale was a small market place back in the seventies that was turned into a bar. It was the melting pot of the city. A place where lawyers where hanging out with hippies, where a black and white people hung out, rich or poor it didn’t matter. During the day they served the best lunch in town, and at night they always had a band playing or something going on. It was a hangout of mine for many years, still to this day I can go there and know at least ten or so people there. Not only was it a good place to hang out at, Harry also worked there.
“So what’s going on with you and the preacher’s daughter?” Harry quickly asked before I could even sit down.
“Just hanging out, dating maybe, not really sure. Why do you care?”
“Just trying to figure it all out.”
“She was engaged, got out of that, saw me working New Years Eve, started a long internet and email discussion between us, hadn’t slept with her, and now that I think about hadn’t really even kissed her much. Now she is here and we don’t have a washer and dryer so it works out good.” I replied trying to be as funny as possible.
“Such a liar,” Harry said signaling for one of the waiters.
“Uh,” I replied.
“There is more than that going on.”
“Not really,” I said, “We have been having fun since she has gotten back and she is hot and she is the…”
“It’s the same thing that has been going on since I left the country.”
“Ha ha, and how many senoritas did you fornicate with?” I asked, knowing exactly what he was getting at, “She is fun to be with and I have spent a lot of time with her in the old house, but right now I got a lot going on and she’s got a lot going on,”
“Sounds boring to me,” Harry replied, “You know exactly what you are doing and you are doing it fine so don’t let me to be the one to second guess you.”
“And what in the fuck am I’m doing, Dr. Phil?”
“You hadn’t been with anyone seriously since the great break up and she is the first girl that you hadn’t fucked that has been beautiful enough to be considered your girlfriend.”
I sat there shocked that someone like Harry, a hippie in his own right who hasn’t shaved since returning from Mexico and for that fact, probably hasn’t showered either could probably sum it up so perfectly, but I couldn’t let him know that he was right.
“…And?”
“And what,” he said, “You know its true, you know that deep down you are still thinking that you can just walk around and not forget about all this shit that has happened since she left, and you are just praying that she, the preacher’s daughter is the one, you just fall in love too fast.”
The best thing about this place is that the staff knew exactly what you wanted and at what time you wanted it. Since it was before happy hour, Nikki knew that we were drinking sweet tea. I took a huge gulp of the tea and looked over at Harry.
“Dude,” he replied, “I am just being right and you know it.”
I began to think about what this relationship was coming to, not the one that Harry and I had, but the one that I was having with the preacher’s daughter and it was becoming clear to me that Harry might be right. When you have been with someone as long as I was, the first relationship you jump into looks so great from the beginning.
“I am really not even dating her.”
“Doesn’t matter,” taking a sip of his tea, “Want a shot?”
“Yeah, a buca would be great.”
He got up and walked to the other side of the building to the bar. As he was gone I began to think about what he was saying, and for the first time in about three months I began to think about the last relationship.
The last encounter that I had with my ex-girlfriend, and for this story I guess I will call her Maggie, but it did not end well to say the least. We had broke up, she graduated on time and I took my time in college and she decided that after graduation it was time for her to move on. Not necessarily move on from us, but away from the city we currently going to school in. I guess in the end it was all my fault, and after we had gone are separate ways it wasn’t good for me to decide to fuck her sorority sister, but I did a few months after the break, and I keep thinking about the time she confronted me about it.

~

I guess it was a typical night for me to be working the door at the bar, I knew that she was going to be in town, but I really didn’t sweat it until I saw both of them at the bar together. Maggie and I had been broken up for almost five months and even though it was over, she did move to my hometown, and occasionally, on several occasions we still had a relationship going on. One girl I had dated for three years, my college love and the other one was one girl that I had fucked a few months after we had broken up. Once I saw them talking at the bar I knew that I was in for a treat.
I left the bar like I always did, tired and with a slight buzz, and since my car was still in the shop I bummed a ride home. I walked the dog and made myself a Captain and Coke, and settled into my bed. I started watching UEFA soccer when I heard the front door slam, I was still living with the other guys so I didn’t think anything of it until I heard those words.
“You wait here, it won’t be long,” a female voice said.
Instantly my bedroom door flung open and there was Maggie, it was four am and she was very drunk.
“I ran into her tonight,”
“Ran into whom,” I replied taking the sheets off of me and getting out of bed.
“The fucking whore you decided to sleep with while you were sleeping with me.”
“Baby,”
“Don’t you fucking baby me,” she yelled, getting right in my face.
“It’s a form of expression,” I replied, “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re an asshole,” she yelled, at this point I was glad that all my roomies were passed out, “Your and complete asshole, I don’t even know how I ever loved you.”
She had a Miller Lite can in her hand and she was spilling it all over the hardwood floors as she told me her opinion.
“I always thought that you had fucked her, and now I know that it is true.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I said, “Honestly, it late.”
“Honestly, what the in the fuck have you ever known about the word honest?”
I could see where exactly this was going to go, so instantly I began to barter with her.
“Maggie, can’t we talk about this tomorrow when you are less drunk?”
“Fuck you asshole, you fucked my good friends, didn’t you? Isn’t that why you dumped me in the first place, was to get as much action as you could? Because, unlike you, I had some fun in high school and after that I fell in love with you, but now you think that you are such a bad ass and you had no love life back then you think that you can dump me?”
That was never the reason, and we both knew that it wasn’t, but in this fit of rage I could never let her know the reason why.
“I think that you should just go Maggie,” I said, “I would love to talk to you about this later on, but for right now I think that you should just go.”
What happened after that is something that I will never forget because it was the first time that it had happened to me. She reared back that Miller Lite can that was in her hand and slapped it across my face. I remember it because it was the first time that a girl had ever hit me, and I remember it because I realized the hurt that I had instilled in another person. She had been right all night, I did fuck another girl a few weeks after we had broken up, and sadly it was the same girl that she was talking about, her sorority sister.
The thing that kills me is that they weren’t even that close, they really weren’t even friends, but I guess that I had stepped across the line, and I guess that I deserved the beer across my face.
“Like I said,” Harry replied as he sat the shots down on the table, “You ain’t been right since,”
“I know what I am doing.” I said feeling the liquorice flavor burn down my throat.

~

After lunch we went back home and did the things that we normally do. Harry went into his room to try and write songs that were in his mind, and I was downloading new music on my computer. It was such a beautiful day that I decided to walk my dog again and when I got home David told me that the preacher’s daughter had called, so I walked upstairs to call her back.
“You remember that lovely dinner that you cooked for me on the first week I got home?” she asked me.
“How could I forget?”
“Well, my sister and her husband were wanting to do something tonight, the four of us, you wouldn’t mind cooking that again at their house would you?”
“Sounds good to me, what time to you want to meet up?”
“I can be at your place around 8, if that is ok?”
“That’s cool, I guess I will see you around then.”
We got off the phone and I looked up to see Harry standing in the doorway.
“Be careful, I am telling you.”
I just shook my head and went back to downloading music for free. Like I said before, in a way he was right, I hadn’t been in a serious relationship since the last, and that had been almost a year ago, and maybe I was rushing it, but it just felt good, and when it feels good sometimes you just got to go with it. I decided to take a nap.
A few hours later I woke up and took a shower, a shower into the nastiness that was our bathroom. I fed the dog and waited for the preacher’s daughter to show up.
I could hear Chris’s bullshit coming from downstairs, you know the guy, with the fake cackling laugh so loud its almost like he is insuring himself that the joke was funny, and with the commotion of the upstairs dwellers running downstairs I knew that she had arrived. So I made my journey downstairs to see if it was her.
There she was, standing there, dealing with Chris’s shit. She was wearing a tee-shirt and shorts, with her long tan legs and blonde hair. She was a little on the skinny side, but she had a smile that lit the room.
“You ready? She asked, “We gotta go to the store to get the stuff, I wanted to go with you to make sure we got everything.”
“Yeah,” I said, “These guys treating you ok?”
“Not too bad, but I am ready.”
We left the house and got into her car and proceeded to head to the grocery store.
“Your room mates seem fun,” she said.
“They are ok, Chris kinda gets on my nerves but the others aren’t so bad,” I replied, “I guess that he is just so cocky it gets under my skin.”
“I understand,” she said rubbing her hand on my leg, “Just don’t worry about it, lets just have some fun tonight.”
After shopping at the store, getting the stuff that we needed, we went to her sisters house and I prepared dinner. The food was good, the conversation was ok, and before I knew it we were back in the car heading back to my house. We sat there in the drive way for a few minutes, and by noticing that there wasn’t a lot of cars in the yard or driveway, I asked her if she wanted to come inside.
We were walking up the stairs to my room.
“So, do you want to watch a movie or something?” I asked, trying to be cool, but still being assertive.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” she replied.
We got up to my room and I shut the door behind her. Nobody was home and my room was decently cleaned, so I thought that at the very least, I could get some making out action going.
“I am not really feeling the movie thing,” she said as she sat down on my bed, “Why don’t you play that CD you have been talking about the last few days.”
I was hoping that this was going where I wanted it to be going, and I walked over to my computer and began playing the Counting Crows CD. I walked over to the bed and took a seat right next to her, hoping that there would be a little less talking.
“You are a nice guy,” she said, “I kinda have been knowing that for awhile, and you have made my homecoming so much fun.”
I rolled my eyes, without really rolling my eyes because I knew that the nice guys tend to always get fucked over in the long run.
“Well, I am glad that I could help.”
She began to lay down on the bed with her back facing me, I took this as an opportunity to slowly massage her back,
“Mmm,” she gently moaned, “I have been under so much stress lately.”
I straddled her back and slowly lifted her shirt up a little bit, rubbing her lower back. I didn’t know what to say because anything would probably come out of my mouth a little tacky or corny, so I just sat there on top of her rubbing her back. A couple of minutes had passed and I rolled her shirt up a little more, exposing more of her back, getting closer to the bra.
Now here was my problem, should I proceed to un strap her bra, or should I just keep going? I sat there for a little bit thinking on far this would really go, and I decided to finally go for it, and see what would happen. I placed my fingers around the clasp of her bra and that is when she rolled over. She was laying there, beautiful, with her long blonde hair spread out over my pillow. She smiled at me and I was thinking about apologizing when she placed her hands around my neck and pulled me towards her face.
And, bang…that’s when it started happening. After these weeks turning into a month that’s when I started to feel the passion. She was kissing me hard and I could feel the emotion that I had been yearning for. I was on top of her, kissing her and gliding my fingers through her hair. I began to kiss her neck as she rubbed her hands on my back un tucking my shirt and sliding her fingers up and down my back gently. I had a million thoughts running through my head, mainly if this was going to go all the way, would I make love to her right now?
I slid my head down her body and began kissing her firm stomach, she slightly giggled and I was fully aroused. The problem was her being a preacher’s daughter, I never knew how to fully put the moves on her, would she be willing to go all the way with me only after a few weeks of “dating”? I was hoping now that this would be the time, the second thought on my mind was did I have any protection in this room?
I pulled my head back up to her face and began kissing her on the lips again. Goddamn, she was a great kisser. I slid my hand up her shirt and began to massage her breasts when I felt her hand get on top of mine.
“Mmmm,” she said, “Not tonight.”
Shot down, I guess I could’ve for seen this happening, so I took my hand off of her breast.
“Let’s just kiss and massage each other,” she said looking into my eyes.
I had my head directly above hers and I had nothing to say to try and sway her opinion, usually, with girls in the pass I would say some cheesy line and begin to kiss again and with about an half of hours time would be having sex, but looking into her deep blue eyes, I had nothing to say, so I just started kissing her again. She rolled over and told me that she wanted to give me a back rub, so I laid on my back and her let do her thing, I would have to admit, it felt great.
About thirty minutes had gone by, and the CD was close to being over, so I was wondering if I should try and make one last move to try to get her to make love to me, or at least something towards that. And that is when the downstairs door slammed shut. I knew then that any chances of me and her making love were out of the question. She proceeded to rub my back and twenty minutes later I was walking her downstairs and to her car. She told me she would call me tomorrow and then she drove off. I walked into the living room to see Harry and another guy I knew watching TV.
“Anything?” he asked tuning his guitar.
“Nothing,” I said and walked upstairs.

~

A few days had gone by, and I was mostly doing the same thing that I have always done, work a few nights here and there and spending most of the day with Harry. I would talk to the preacher’s daughter every now and again, my laundry was piling up so I knew that I would have to go over there sometime. One of the cocktail waitresses that worked with me had been talking about giving me a new kind of styled haircut for me, I really didn’t give a shit as long as it wasn’t spiky and gay looking, so I told her one night working that she could come over and give me a haircut.
She called my cell phone and told me she was on her way. She had always been pretty in my eyes, she was from a small town outside of ours, dated one of my fraternity brothers, and had been in a sorority, but quit it when too many people were talking about her and John’s break up. Seemed like the girls sided more with him than they did with her, and they talk about the great sisterhood they have. When I opened the door to let her in I noticed that she had her little bag with the sheers and the clippers, then I also noticed she had two decent bottles of Cabernet, so I asked her what was up with the wine.
“Hell of a day,” she said, “Just a hell of a day so I figured why not have a few drinks while I cut your hair.”
“I am not sure if that is a good idea,” I said kinda jokingly, “You drunk and cutting my hair…umm…nope.”
“I won’t get drunk, and I won’t mess up your hair, I can promise you that.”
I always trusted her, she gave great advice and she could always tell me if a girl that I had my eye on at the bar was a genuinely nice person, or some skank that would probably give me an STD, since I trusted her with that I might as well trust to cut my hair.
“Fuck it,” I said, “Go ahead.”
She walked into the kitchen to grab a few glasses and I sat down in the dining room for her to give me a new look, she filled up the glasses with wine, and I took a healthy sip out of mine.
“Isn’t it too early for drinking?” I said to make conversation as she began to spray water on my hair.
“Like you and Harry do nothing but drink,” she replied.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said shaking my head, “You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”
“No, just people talk and people have been saying that you and Harry just go out every night and get drunk over at Wholesale.”
“Well, just for the record I didn’t go out at all a few nights ago.”
“What, was the preachers daughter over here or something?”
Damn, she was good. I guess she could tell everything that I have been up too just by looking at me. She was rubbing her fingers in my hair trying to get all the shagginess wet before she began to cut it.
“Yeah,” she replied, “That is what I thought.”
I took a huge gulp of my red wine.
“This is pretty good stuff,” I said trying to change the subject.
“It should be, its fifty bucks a bottle.”
Now, you have to understand where I am coming from, I didn’t think anything about this but believe me I had tried. She was that girl that I had always worked with, but never got anywhere with, I guess you could always say that she was my younger/older sister and that was the thing, I really never knew how old she was.
My hair was pretty wet by the time and she began to take the shears out, she began to cut my hair, and it seemed that with every cut she made, she would almost massage my head. Here I was, young and not understanding to wine, and I was drinking top notch stuff and not feeling a thing. It took her about twenty minutes or so to get through the scruffiness that was my hair, after that, I couldn’t help but think that she was flirting with me.
In a situation like this, I had to keep my cool. What I might’ve viewed as flirting could just been her trying to find the best angle to cut my bangs, so I didn’t want to mess it up. But, here I am, kind of dating someone and I don’t want to mess up any positive vibes that I might’ve been feeling, what the fuck is going on?
“Need a refill?” she asked, grabbing the bottle of Cab.
“Sure,” I said, reaching my glass up to the bottle she was waving at me.
I honestly did not know how to read this. I mean, she was there New Years Eve when preacher’s daughter and I had exchanged phone numbers and emails. And she was there when I needed chick advice on how to handle the long, very long distance relationship that was developing between me and the daughter and she was also there when I first took her up to the bar for her first fine dining experience back from New Zealand. So, she knew how I felt and she knew that I was into something that might one turn into something serious, so why did I feel like she was flirting with me?
Then again I could have been reading it all wrong, maybe she was just one of those touchy-feely kind of people. As all of this was running through my mind, and she was cutting my hair, I began to notice that my knee was directly between her legs, and that is when I noticed how short her skirt was. Damn, she had some nice legs, you could tell that back in the day she was an athlete of some kind. As I was checking out her legs, she slowly sat down on my left leg and began trimming my bangs. I was staring into her eyes and I wasn’t sure if I should try something or not. Not only that, but why was I even concerned about trying, I mean I was dating someone, so what in the hell is going on? She brushed the bangs out of my eyes and that is when she kissed me.
She was kissing me hard, she threw her other leg over me, so now she was straddling me as we kept kissing. I grabbed her backside and began squeezing her tight, I then picked her up and carried her towards the stairs. We were still kissing as I carried her up the stairs to my room. I sat her down on the bed and she took her shirt off. I slammed the door and took my shirt off. She grabbed my belt and pulled me towards her, what in the hell am I doing? I took her bra off and sat next to her on the bed, she pushed me down on the bed and took my shorts off.
The thought of the preacher’s daughter was running in my head, I couldn’t shake the picture of her beautiful smile out, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the other night. But what was especially getting to me was the fact that I wasn’t stopping this, or that she wasn’t stopping it either, because she did know what was going on in my life. She kept her skirt on as I got inside of her, she stayed on top of me and took control. One of the first times that a woman as actually taken control of the situation. The next half hour was one of the passionate thirty minutes of my life, and when she was done she rolled over and laid her head on my chest.
“I need to finish cutting your hair,” she said laughing.
“Yeah, I know.”
I got up and put my clothes back on. She put her shirt back on and we walked downstairs so she could finish cutting my hair. We didn’t talk a lot as she cut my hair, we did however finish the two bottles of wine and I walked her to her car after she was done.
“You were everything I expected you would be,” she said smiling.
“What?” I asked startled.
“If you ever want me to come over again, just call me.”
She got in her car and pulled out of the driveway, and I just stood there thinking about what had just happened. Five minutes later Harry came home.
“Whatca doing out here?” he asked me.
“Not sure, but we need to go out tonight.”
“Whys that?”
“Because I just got used,” I replied, “It was good, but I just got used.”

~

It seemed to me that Harry always dressed the same, no matter what the occasion was. A simple T-Shirt, jeans with holes in them and a mesh baseball hat was what is was always dawning. We planned once again to go to wholesale for the night. It wasn’t that Wholesale was the only place that we could go but it was the only place were we just felt comfortable. The other bars were simply not our taste. A few were alright, but in the end, in this town bars usually open up and in a few years all the white trash and thugs would find their way in there, and that was the end of their business.
We left the house around nine, before that we were drinking beers and letting the dogs relieve themselves, didn’t make it to the driveway when Chris pulled up in his gay looking Sentra.
“What’s up?” he said getting out of his car with his fake Costa del Mar sunglasses on.
“Going to Wholesale,” I replied as we hopped in Harry’s jeep, “Want to go?”
“Can’t, I got my real-estate final tomorrow, got to study.”
“And, your point?”
“Sorry if I don’t want to waste my life and get drunk every night, I actually take my professional life seriously.”
What professional life? He couldn’t handle college and after numerous times of him getting kicked out and failing out he kissed someone’s ass the right way and got a job part time selling real-estate, now he was trying to become a realtor.
“At least I haven’t failed out of school, douche bag.” I said as Harry started up the Jeep, “And by the way, I have helped you study before and that test is a fucking joke.”
“Yeah, maybe but at least I am making money,” he said laughing at me.
“Yeah, but at least I am graduating.”
I guess Harry had enough and drove off to the bar.
“Goddamn I hate that son of a bitch, little fat fucker thinks that he is the shit, I’d love to slap the shit out of him.”
“Easy there Tito,” Harry replied, “We all know that he is full of shit. All he is to me is a rent check. He is a loser man, don’t let him get to you. We are all twenty-two years old and he is twenty-seven and hanging out with us, just remind yourself of that, that he just can’t let go and grow the fuck up.”
“Your right, your right.”
And with that, we arrived at the bar. Walking in there reminds me of the scene in Dazed and Confused, when they walk into the pool hall. You know everyone in there, and if you don’t know them you have seen them enough times to recognize their face. We immediately saw Crabtree and another one of our friends Brandon sitting on the deli side.
“What’s up fucker?” Crabtree asked me giving me a hug.
“Nothing much, glad you are home.”
“Good to be back, stayed a few weeks in Columbia after Mexico, hell of a time man, you would score good down there.”
“Drugs or girls?” I asked laughing.
“Well I meant girls but shit since you brought it up, both.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because of those baby blues baby, Latino women love that shit, its like Spanish Fly or some shit.”
“That works, when we going?”
I was interrupted by the waitress asking what Harry and I wanted, I ordered a Corona and a round of shots, Harry ordered a Bud Light, and that is how the night started officially. We sat at that table for hours and hours drinking, occasionally getting up the bathroom brakes and getting around to talk to people. It seemed to be a good night to be there, the jukebox was playing good tunes and everyone that we liked was either working up there or just getting off of work somewhere else. Halfway through the binge that was going on we decided to walk over to the bar side and see what was going on over there.
“Want to shoot some pool?” Crabtree asked me.
“Naw,” I replied, “Play with Brandon.”
“Sweet.”
As Crabtree and Brandon were playing pool and Harry and I were talking to some friends, I noticed that the barber had just walked in with her boyfriend. I almost didn’t see them until Harry pointed it out, and that’s when I almost choked on my beer. I knew that running into her tonight might be an option, but less that six hours ago she was having her way with me, and I was hoping that her boyfriend wouldn’t be there with her. The thing that really sucks is that he really isn’t that bad of a guy, I wouldn’t call him a friend but he was alright to hang out with sometimes.
I was just trying to play it cool and hope that she wouldn’t see me but the bar is so fucking small she was bound to run into me sometime throughout the night, or me run into her. I knew that Harry wouldn’t be ready to go even though it was already getting close to one a.m. The last few weeks of us living together I don’t think either of us decided on heading home till at least four or later. There were many nights when the sun was already beginning to rise when we pulled into the driveway.
The cover was blown though when Crabtree yelled my name from the bar.
“Beer and shots?” he asked after he yelled my name loud enough to get everyone’s attention.
And that’s when I noticed that she saw me. She smiled and waved my way, I was wondering if this was the night when all of my fucking around would finally catch up to me, eventually I knew that some girl’s current or ex-boyfriend would find out that we had hooked up and that he would somehow kick my ass. I nodded back at her and gave Crabtree a thumbs up to answer his question, still wondering how this would all pan out for me.
“Just be cool and don’t worry about anything,” Harry whispered to me, “If she did tell him and he wants to be a cowboy then you got enough of us here to help, shit man Brandon counts as two people.”
I nodded as he spoke to me and took another sip of my beer. Crabtree came up with the drinks and we took the Jager shot as I chased it down with Corona. Might as well get fucked up incase something does happen tonight. We stayed on that side a little longer and decided to go back to the deli side because it was beginning to get crowded. Walking to the other side required me walking past her, and I wasn’t sure if I should say anything to her or not. I got closer to her and her boyfriend and walked past them, I thought I was in the clear until I felt him grab me by my arm, fuck here we go.
“Your going to walk past me and not let me check out your new haircut?” he asked as I turned to face him. Thank Christ he is only worried about the hair.
“Aw shit Jason,” I replied, “Didn’t really even see you there man, how ya been bra?”
“Good, just wanted to see what kinda work my girl did on ya today,” he said, “Looks like she did a hell of a job.”
I could hear Harry choking on his beer ten feet behind me.
“Yea man, she did a hell of a job, but you already knew her talents.”
“Yeah, hopefully one day she can open a place of her own to do business, that’s were the money is at.”
If six hours before this conversation I hadn’t had fucked his girlfriend, then I might’ve not taken all of this conversation literally, but Jesus I was biting my lip so hard to not laugh in his face it was ridiculous. I could see that she was smiling at the conversation too.
“Yeah, Jason,” I said, “She is defiantly top notch, a real keeper bra, well we are going to be over there, so ya’ll come join us later if you want to.”
“Cool.”
I turned around and walked with Harry to the deli side.
“Man, that was wrong in so many ways,” he said putting his arm around my neck, “So fucking many ways man.”
“I know…I know, but he is the one that wanted to talk, and not only talk, but talk about all of his girlfriends many talents, I was simply agreeing with him.”
“You’re a shallow man my friend, but I still love ya.”
The four of us sat down and stayed out for another hour or so, after Brandon left it didn’t take long for Crabtree to leave and soon after that Harry and I followed.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Starving, anything to eat at the house?”
“Chris has some eggs in the fridge.”
“Lets eat then.”
We got home and had a few beers with some scrambled eggs. It was four-thirty and I walked upstairs to lie down and go to sleep. I contemplated on calling the preacher’s daughter or not, fuck it I said, hadn’t heard from her all day…fuck it.

~

I woke up the next day with my head pounding thanks to all the Jager shots Crabtree had to buy last night. I rolled over and grabbed my cell phone off of the night stand, no missed calls. I got up and walked over to my desk and checked the caller ID on the house phone. No preacher’s daughter phone number anywhere on the call list. I guess that I was beginning to worry now, wondering if she had not been getting any of my messages. I knew her dad was a dick, but I thought that he would at least have the decenty to let her know that I had been trying to reach her. I grabbed my cell phone and called her house. Nothing but the voicemail so I left her a message to call me, I was at the very least hoping that maybe I could get one more load of laundry done at her house and save a trip to the ghetto laundry mat down the street.
Through all the drama I didn’t even notice that it was almost noon, I wouldn’t call living here a bender but I did begin noticing that I was getting slack in my day to day activities. I opened the door and walked over to the bathroom to get my morning bathroom session out of me. After that I walked downstairs to let my dog out so that he could take care of his morning bathroom session. I noticed that Chris was watching TV wearing a shirt and tie.
“How did you do on your test?” I asked to begin the small talk to show that I might be interested in his life.
“Good I guess,” he replied, “This house is a fucking wreck though.”
“Yeah,” I said hoping to cut the conversation short, “Was going to clean up a little bit today, hopefully whenever Harry wakes up he could help me.”
“Yeah,” he said rolling his eyes over, I could since the sarcasism in his voice.
“Well what does that mean?”
“Just that ya’ll really don’t do shit to help out around here. That’s it.”
“Well, we do pay the bills on time and I do pick up after myself.”
“Not trying to get in to it with you, man. Just saying a little more effort might help. I mean I am working all day, trying to pass this test, Dave works full time and Josh is taking a lot of hours during the summer. Just a little more help from the two of you would be great.”
I could feel the anger building up inside of me, I just wanted to go over there and slap the shit out of his acne-scarred face.
“Well, I am not your fucking maid Christopher. Just because your older than all of us and still decide to live with a bunch of college kids doesn’t mean I am going to keep the house nice and tidy when half of the fucking mess around here isn’t mine.”
He quickly interrupted me.
“I wasn’t saying that man.”
I could tell by the tone in his voice that he assumed I would just roll over with this, just tell him that he was right and I should be his little bitch. But he picked a wrong day to start anything with me. My head was pounding from all of the alcohol I consumed last night, fuck it was taking so much out of me right now from not throwing up, but I could not let him just push me over like he was trying to do.
“It is not our fault that you are doing what you are doing,” my voice yelled at him, “First off this is a fucking rental, and I am not doing anything extra for this house than was already here when I moved in a few weeks ago. Second, if you want a maid then maybe you should finally find someone who will put up with your fucking arrogance and your horrible looks and then maybe she will cater to your every need. But the last time I fucking checked, it’s the summer time, and as long as I pick up after myself and pay the bills on time, then you have nothing to bitch about you lazy asshole. And before you ever lecture me on shit how about you go walk in what you call a bedroom and pick up after yourself you fat son of a bitch.”
He began to get up off the couch, I really don’t know what he said to me after that but I was in my room before I even knew what I had said to him. I knew as I sat down on my bed that it might’ve been a bad idea to move in here. I love living with the other three guys, but living with him I knew would be hell. I had known him for three years and he was always the cocky, arrogant fuck that had no right to be that way. He was a dick when I was a pledge in the fraternity and he was a dick now. I knew that Harry couldn’t stand him and I knew that the only way he was nice to the other two was the fact that the kissed his ass and fed his ego. Other than that I am sure that they really didn’t care for him either.
I sat there on the bed wondering what was going on in my life. I was infactuated with a girl who I really wasn’t even sure cared about me. Sure we had our fun times and we had our make out sessions, but I guess Harry might’ve been right in saying that I was falling for her before I even knew if she cared about me. Hell its been almost three days and I hadn’t even heard a peep from her. I understand the fact that she has been gone for months and she has a lot of catching up to do, but shit, is it that hard to pick up the phone and call someone back?
On top of that I was living with the one person I really couldn’t stand to live with. There is that saying that desperate times call for desperate actions, did I make a desperate action in deciding to live here? Was I blind or caught up in the fact that I had three days to find somewhere to live or go home to Columbia? Was I so desperate to need a place to live that forgot how much of a prick Chris was? Or was I just so desperate in the fact of all the fun I would have living with Josh, Dave and Harry that I forgot about the hermit that lived downstairs from us?
Harry came into the room a few minutes later, curious about what had just happened downstairs.
“Heard the little feascal downstairs,” he said opening the door to my bedroom.
“Rather not even talk about it right now,” I said, “Not talking about his ass anymore.”
“He isn’t here,” he said sitting at my desk, “What the fuck happened man?”
“Lazy ass downstairs thinks that we are his maid. Since he has the real job and we don’t he thinks that we need to clean everyday and make sure everything is nice and tidy for his majesty.”
“Fuck that,” Harry replied, “It’s summer time and I ain’t doing shit.”
“That’s how I feel. I busted my ass this past year in school and I really don’t feel like doing anything, like I told him its not our fault that he flunked out of school and had to find something else to do.”
“He’s just trying to act like a hard ass because he doesn’t have the balls to tell Dave or Josh to do anything,” he said putting his long hair into a ponytail, “He kisses their ass, even though they are so much younger than he is, for some reason he just kisses their ass. All the friends that he did have here are graduating and moving and he just feels like he can boss you around because you got in after he did.”
“He talks to me like that again and I swear I will slap the shit out of him.”
As I said that my phone began vibrating on the nightstand, it was the preacher’s daughter.
“I got to take this Harry,” I said grabbing my phone, “It’s been a few days.”
“I gotcha.”
I flipped the phone open.
“Hello?”
“Hey you, how ya been?” the voice on the other line asked.
“Just been hanging out, where have you been?” I wasn’t sure if I should ask that, but it has been a few days now and I had been wondering and worrying why I haven’t spoken to her.
“Just been busy baby,” she said, “I am sorry that I haven’t returned your phone calls, but I have been moving my furniture from my parent’s house to my house and its been a hassle.”
“I understand,” I said not really sure because I didn’t understand, I mean how hard is it to pick up the phone and call somebody back?
“I’m sorry. How about I make it up to you?”
Her voice sounded so sweet, almost seductive and I really wasn’t sure on how to respond to it. I must say that it was turning me on over the phone, I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me like that cause she wanted something or if she was being sincere.
“And how are you going to do that?” I asked curiously.
“How about you come over here and I will cook you dinner, spaghetti sound good?”
“Yeah, sure it does. What time do you want me to come over?”
“Around seven would be great, and you are more than welcome to bring any dirty laundry that might be accumulating around your tiny room right now.”
“Cool, see you then.”
I hung up the phone and could feel the emotion begin to sit in. How come I can never say what I really feel to someone. I had always had this problem and I thought I had gotten over it my few years in school. It wasn’t ok that she hadn’t called me in three days, it wasn’t ok that Chris thought he could punk me out like that. It wasn’t ok that I was beginning to care about this girl and she thought that I would be here waiting for her to call me whenever she wanted. It wasn’t ok that all of this was going on in the span of a few weeks, but why was I allowing it to happen?
It almost felt like the walls were caving in. Why do I allow myself to care about people so fast, so quick? I laid down on the bed and tried to gather my thoughts. It had only been a few weeks since I had really began to “date” or whatever its called that I am doing this girl. But I had known her for a few years. So it wasn’t like I was really rushing into things. Maybe I shouldn’t read into this to much I kept trying to tell myself. Honestly, I get so busy sometimes that I forget to call people back, so maybe I should just let this go…I will just let this go.
I woke up with my dog barking in the back yard. I rolled over and looked over at my alarm clock. It was five thirty. I walked downstairs and grabbed his leash that was on the kitchen counter. I hooked him on the leash and took him for a quick walk around the block. When I got home I packed up my dirty laundry, took a quick shower and got ready to go to her house. I loaded up the clothes in the car and grabbed the dog as well. I was on my way to her house for some home-made spaghetti.

~

I arrived at her house around six thirty, a little early but better early than late. I let the dog out of the car and walked over to the gate, letting him play with her husky. I walked back to the car and grabbed my clothes and went over to the door. She was waiting for me with the door open.
“Hey stranger,” she said smiling at me.
“Not by choice,” I replied laughing.
I put the clothes down in the living room and she grabbed me and gave me a hug and a kiss.
“I missed you,” she said smiling, kissing me again.
“I missed you too,” I replied wondering where all of this affection was coming from.
“Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, why don’t you go ahead and start a load while we are waiting, that way you can go ahead and put them in the dryer while we eat.”
“Cool deal.”
I put the clothes in the washer and turned it on. I walked back to the kitchen and there were two glasses of wine waiting for me.
“I hope you don’t mind a little wine,” she said smiling, “I thought that we might be able to get a little romantic.”
“Romance is fine with me,” I said taking a sip of the wine, “We really hadn’t done anything romantic since the first week you were back.”
“I know, I have just been so busy.”
I took another sip of the wine and sat down at the kitchen table. As I sat down I couldn’t help but think of the red wine incident that had happened a few days ago.
“Your hair cut looks good,” she said, “Its so short now.”
She walked over to me and played with my hair a little bit and kissed my forehead. Great I said to myself, as if I couldn’t feel any worse about hooking up with the other girl.
“Yeah, she did a good job,” I replied, “Came over a few days ago, didn’t take her long at all to cut it.”
“Well it looks good.”
I finished off the glass of wine and poured some more into my glass. I began to feel like shit, here I am giving her hell in my mind and I am the one that fucked another girl a few days ago. But all she has to do is just let me in, just give me a chance and I could treat her the way that she deserves to be treated.
She placed my plate in front of me, fixed hers and sat down across from me at the table.
“So what’s new?” she said.
I stuck my fork in the noodles and began twirling around.
“Nothing much really, might be trying to find a new job,” I said, “Just something more steady, just working three nights a week isn’t cutting it sometimes.”
“Why don’t you try waiting tables in the resturaunt that way you can still work the door on the weekends?”
“Hal’s a dick,” I said laughing, “He just thinks that I am a doorman and that’s it, that I have no abilities to wait tables and besides that, the other side is just as dead as the bar right now.”
“Where are you thinking about working?”
“I dunno, Josh’s grandmother owns a restaurant, maybe she can hire me. But let’s not waste time talking about that, how have you been?”
“Been good, just trying to get my life organized right now. Being out of the country for a semester has put a little strain on my life. Seeing all my family and what not.”
“Yeah.”
I just wanted to ask her where we were, but like all things in my life I just sat there and made small talk with her, eating the spaghetti. I guess looking back at it now I was a little scared to open up to her. Not knowing how she felt placed pressure on me, placed pressure on the whole situation, it was like walking the girl back to her door after the first date. Do you kiss her or not? Do you reach in for the hug and see where it would go from that, or do you simply just tell her goodnight? All of this was just like that first date all over again, simply not knowing what to do and not manning up to do what needs to be done.
After dinner I went to check on my clothes, I put the wet ones in the dryer and started a new load. I walked back into the living room and she was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table putting together a puzzle.
“Wanna help me?” she asked.
“Sure.”
I sat down behind her on the couch, her back was between my legs. I helped her find a pieces to the puzzle and then I decided to see where she stood on the physical part of this relationship. I began to massage her shoulders, I could feel how tense she was, it was almost like she was too nervous to let down her guard with me. I started kissing the back of her neck and rubbing her lower back, trying to see if she would just turn around and start kissing me hard and passionately. I wanted to feel her passion so bad; deep, hard, dark passion.
“Mmm,” she moaned, “Are you trying to distract me?”
“Yeah, just a little bit.” I replied.
“But baby I just want to but this puzzle together.”
And, there it was. I continued to rub her back a little bit, I simply did not want to be a brat and stop everything all together, but with that sentence I knew where I stood with her. I sat there and watched TV while she put her puzzle together, I was hoping that it was the hardest fucking puzzle ever in the world to put together and that she would never finish it.
Through out the next few hours I simply let her do her thing and I watched TV while folding my clothes every twenty minutes or so. When the laundry was done I took it out to my car and started the car up.
“I think I am going to take off.” I said to her as I walked back in the house.
“Your not going to stay any longer?” she asked me not even looking up from her gay puzzle.
“Naw,” I replied, “You look really busy right now and I don’t want to bother you anymore. Dinner was great, thanks for letting me borrow your washer and dryer.”
She finally looked up at me as I walked to the back door to get my dog.
“You really don’t have to go, do you have plans or something?”
“No plans, its just getting late and I got a long day tomorrow, want to go ahead and get these clothes put up and maybe pick up my room a little bit.”
“Well I don’t want you to go.”
I didn’t want to stay here anymore, but I really didn’t have the balls to tell her that. I could see that this relationship of ours wasn’t really going to go anywhere and it would just probably be best if we were just friends, and kept it that way. I walked back out to my car and opened the door for the dog to get in the back. He hopped in the car and she was standing there outside looking at me.
“Why do I feel like you have an attitude towards me?” she asked standing on the porch.
“I don’t have an attitude towards you, I just feel like I have been put off for the last few hours.”
“How have I put you off?”
“Well it’s a little insulting when a fucking jigsaw puzzle has more of your fucking attention than I do.”
And there it was. I guess all the frustration finally came out with that and it was finally said.
“I mean, Jesus Christ Becky, what are we doing?” I asked putting my arms out in front of me. “Seriously, what are we doing?”
She just stood there, on the porch with a puzzled look on her face.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Are we dating or not? Are we friends or is there something more to this than just friendship? Are you over your past relationship and too scared to let me in, because I don’t know where you are with this, and I really don’t know what I have or haven’t done to know where you stand?”
I could feel all the blood rushing in my body. My heart was sinking deep inside of me as it beat a million times a second.
“Just tell me what is going on? We sent emails back and forth to each other while you were gone. When you first came back home we spent everyday together, went to movies and hung out, now you go three or four days without returning my phone calls and it bothers me. It bothers me because I don’t know what I should do or how you are feeling.”
Again, she didn’t say anything. The nervous look on her face said it all though. Five minutes went by of me standing next to the car and her on the porch. Her silence sealed the deal for me.
“I guess its just better for us to be friends,” I finally said.
“Guess so,” she replied.
I got into the Explorer and backed the car around and left. It was a long ride home and when I got back it looked like someone at the house was having a few people over. I didn’t see Harry’s Jeep so I assumed that he was working. I opened the back door and let the dog run inside the house as I grabbed my clothes.
Josh was in the living room with a few girls over.
“Hey, man.” He said to me as I walked in.
“What’s up?”
“Just having a few people over before we go out, how was dinner?”
“Sucked.”
With that I walked right past Chris who was by the steps. I went up stairs, whistled for my dog and then crashed hard on my bed.

~

The next few days went on the ones before them. Didn’t really think much of the preacher’s daughter after the conversation we had, in actuality I didn’t think much of anything. I went through the motions of life. Waking up, walking the dog or working out, then going to work if I had to work and going out and getting shit faced. I mean, it was the summer time and I wanted to make sure that the fall would be well worth it.
It was a Thursday, around day twenty-five or so of Harry’s return. I thought it would just be a normal day, like all the others had been since the “break”. I woke up, let the dog out for a few hours and then I went to take a shower. Rubbed one off after the shower and went to check my email. I had to take a double look at the email, make sure she hadn’t sent it to the wrong person or what not. She was coming in town this weekend and she wanted to see me.
I really didn’t know how to take all of this, I mean Christ I just ended everything with one girl, fucked another on the side of that relationship and now the girl that I had dated the longest was trying to let me know that she was coming in town…God works in evil ways sometimes. I laid back down on the bed to try and figure everything out. Should I respond to the email? Should I go see my parents this weekend to avoid seeing her? Couldn’t do that, had to work this weekend. I got up, cut my computer off and proceeded to go downstairs.
I opened the fridge and tried to find anything to eat. There was some milk, it hadn’t expired yet so I poured myself a glass of milk and went into the living room. I sat down to watch some TV when Chris got of the shower. Harry was nowhere to be found and I really wasn’t sure where Dave and Chris were. I really hadn’t spoken to him much in the last few days or weeks, however long it had been since he told me that I needed to be his maid while he struggled to grasp the real-estate business. He came walking into the living room, chest out like he had the body an Italian artist might sculpt.
“So I heard about your little break-up.” He said sitting down in the other couch.
“Wouldn’t really call it a break-up, since I don’t think that we were really dating anyway.”
“Is that my milk or did you buy some of your own?”
“It’s yours, I will buy a new gallon when I get off of work.”
“K, just making sure.”
What a fucking dick I thought to myself.
“Anyways,” he said, “I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry to hear about it, she was a cool girl and I thought things might work out for you, but sorry to hear about it.”
With that he got up and went back into his room and I went back to watching TV. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on him, I began to think. But it’s hard to be polite to anyone when they had made it perfectly clear that they didn’t want you to live here anymore. I was glad that Ryan was back in town, I knew that he had been living with a few girls and I was hoping that he would get sick of it and maybe we could move in together. It was a slight chance because I knew that if I was living with four college girls I wouldn’t be in a big hurry to pack up and go either.
I chugged the milk down and decided to walk the dog down to the park. Anything to keep busy until it was time to go to work. That was another downside to working at a bar, you don’t have to be there until late, too much time to get into too much trouble. As I opened the front door and put the leash around his neck, I noticed that Kristin was pulling up to her apartment across the street. She got out of the car and waved at me.
“Where are you going?” she yelled across the street.
“Just down to the park,” I replied.
“Mind if I go with you?”
“Come on.”
She walked across the street and met up with me. Kristin was a cool chick to hang out with, she was extremely beautiful and so down to earth. She would go to the race track with us, come over for football games and could probably out drink any guy I knew.
“So what’s new?” she asked as we walked down to the park.
“Nothing really, just got a bunch on my mind…too much to bore you with.”
“Try me.”
“Alright, hope you got awhile.”
I began to talk to her about the preacher’s daughter situation, and how betrayed I felt by her, but then again how I didn’t feel betrayed because we were really never dating. I then switched the topics on how I didn’t like living with Chris because of his cockiness and how I knew that he didn’t want me there. By that time we were at the park and we decided to take the dog down to the water and let him run around in it.
“And now the thing is that Maggie is coming back in town this weekend, and I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“Do you still care about her?” she asked me.
“I don’t know if I do or not, the last time that I had actually spent time with her was on my birthday, and we hooked up that night. Then we would talk to each other by email after that, I saw her again when my grandfather passed away. But last time I checked she was dating some guy that she met at Mardi Gras.”
“Well then I probably wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Kristin replied, “She probably just wants to hang out while she is here. I mean, ya’ll had been through so much together, she probably just misses the friendship part more than anything.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, women can be a little weird.” She put her hair in a ponytail, “Ya’ll dated for three years and then it ended, how did it all end?”
“I dunno, it just kind of all did. She graduated and then she decided that she was moving to Columbia, and I guess that is how I felt betrayed by her. I was like she didn’t even want my opinion on rather or not she should move. I wasn’t going to move with her, I am stuck here until at least I graduate, and not only that I didn’t want to move.”
“So in all of that, that’s how it ended?”
“Yeah, after all of that…I just felt hurt I guess, but it’s weird because we have been intimate with each other a few times after the breakup so I don’t have a clear read on anything. Maybe she is coming here for a booty call, maybe she is just bored and wants to have a few drinks one night, whatever it is I don’t know what she wants to do.”
“Well I wouldn’t say anything to her right now,” Kristin said.
“Really?”
“No, chances are that she will show up tonight at work, then if she does you can figure it out then, if not then you read too much into her email.”
“Alright, I guess we will see.”
We go the dog and then proceeded to walk back to the house, I walked Kristin to her apartment then walked across the street to our house. Chris was getting in his car as I walked down the driveway.
“Don’t forget about my milk.” He said as he drove off to do whatever it was he had to do.
“What a fucking dick,” I said to myself, “What a douche bag.”

~

Work was the same that night. I had got there early to help Amy set up her bar and to see if there were still any weird vibes after our hook up session. Not that I could tell, either that or she was just really good in hiding her feelings. The back door bar was set up and I assumed my position on my bar stool where I would spend most of the night. Occasionally I would get up and get a drink or use the bathroom, other than that it was a cake job because there was an older crowd here and nobody started any trouble.
I bided my time for the inevitable. I knew that eventually she would be here, and it was killing me to see her. I wasn’t wanting to see her, but I was more curious why she would send me the email in the first place. It wasn’t a email that she sent to everybody, I had already checked for that, but it was an email that was sent to me and only me, I was like a child on Christmas Eve waiting to see if Santa had sent me everything that I had been wanting.
A few hours had passed and then she walked in. Just liked I had remembered her. Brown hair gently kissing her shoulders, a few freckles on her cheeks, eyes glowing and then I saw her smile. It was moments like these that made me wonder why we actually broke up, why in fact I let my jealousy take the best of me, but that was life and I had to deal with the cards I am chosen…right?
“Hey you,” she said as she walked in the doors.
I didn’t know whether to hug her or not but she had already decided to hug me and I hugged her back.
“Hey girl,” I replied back to her, “Got your email today, was wondering if you would show up here or not.”
“Yeah, actually I am here for Kelly’s engagement party tomorrow night.”
“Want a beer?” I quickly asked her really not even paying attention to what she had said.
“Sure,” she smiled back at me.
I grabbed a beer from the trough Amy had behind her. She looked disgusted but I really even didn’t care how or what she felt like, for some reason I was too in awe of the moment in front of me. I opened the bottle and handed it to her.
“Thanks.”
“No problem,” I replied, “So…Kelly’s engagement party? Yeah, I think that I had heard that she was getting married, I guess I didn’t realize it would be this soon.”
“Yeah, do you have to work tomorrow night?”
“Afraid so, why what’s going on?”
“Just seeing if you wanted to go.”
“I would because I am sure that I would know a few people there, but I can’t get off on this short of notice.”
She looked a little disappointed and I did feel kind of bad for not being able to go with her, but then again…where was her boyfriend in all of this? The stud that she supposedly met while intoxicated at Mardi Gras? I wanted to ask her that so badly, but then again I didn’t want to piss her off either. She looked around the entrance.
“Anyone here that I would know, I don’t want to hold you up while you are working?”
“There are a few people here that you know, some older sorority girls of yours…I could probably get off a little early tonight if you want to hang out around here.”
“Yeah, there are a few girls that I am going to meet out here later on, but sure if you want to hang out then we can later.”
“Would love too,” I said as she walked off into the bar.
I could feel Amy’s eyes beaming on my back and I turned around to see what kind of expression would be waiting for me. Pure hatred and that was putting it nicely.
“I didn’t know she was going to be here,” I tried to mumble out as Maggie walked into the bar.
“Yeah, bullshit,” Amy replied.
“What in the fuck do you want from me,” I finally snapped back at her, “I mean goddamn, you haven’t even seemed the least bit interested in me since Becky got back in town, then we fucked and since then I haven’t even heard one peep from you…oh yeah and by the way I feel completely terrible about it since Jason decided that he wanted to be my best friend afterwards.”
She just sat there and counted her tip money.
“Here’s for you helping me set up tonight,” she said as she handed me twenty dollars, “But maybe I thought that we could figure all of that out later.”
“Later when Amy?” I snapped back at her.
“You know, whenever I have talked to you here at work…you always seemed to be some guy that was larger than life, a real gentleman sometimes. But I have figured out that all of that stuff you’ve told me, wanting to travel and explore the world…wanting to sit down and write the next greatest novel…wanting to take the world by the balls, all of that is a bunch of bullshit! You are so completely full of bullshit.”
I sat there on the barstool with my mouth open. I reached for my rum and coke and took a huge sip of it.
“How…how am I so completely full of bullshit?” I gently asked her, trying to grasp all that she had just told me.
“Nothing…its just that when me and you talk, and its just us, here…you are so different. You tell me all of your dreams and your hopes, and you tell me all of the things that you want to do. Your so smart, and your so passionate that you made me fall for you. I honestly thought that you want to take me with you…but then I realize that you won’t ever do any of these things because you are too hung up on the past. You want to be the next Hemingway but you are too hung up on her…and with that you won’t ever do what you really want to do, or who you want to do it with.”
I didn’t know what to say of all of this, I really didn’t have a clue. I never realize that I was so passionate that I led a precious girl to fall for me. I never realized that my dreams could inspire someone to go along with it. Amy would be a great girl to do all of this with, friends or more than friends it would be great to do any of these things with her, but I never felt that way about her, I never felt the passion towards her like she did for me, and on top of that I didn’t want to be with her the way she wanted to be with me…just like the preacher’s daughter didn’t want to be with me the way I wanted to be with her…just like Maggie wanted to be with me and I couldn’t be away from her, it was all coming in cycles now.
Needless to say, the rest of the night Amy and I didn’t talk too much to each other. I did my job and she did hers, towards the end of the night Maggie was beginning to leave, I could see her saying all of her goodbye’s to her friends from where I was sitting. She hugged her last friend and came walking up towards me.
“What are you doing after this?” she asked smiling at me.
“Probably nothing much, everything is pretty much closing up now,” I said taking a sip of my drink, “What about you?”
“Probably just heading to Kelly’s house, her and her fiancé are there and they are expecting me. Probably just stay there and do something tomorrow until her party starts.”
“Well,” I said clearing my throat, “Call me tomorrow, let’s hang out before the party starts and I have to go to work. You still go the number right?”
“Yeah, call you around lunch time, k?”
“Sure.”
And, with that she walked out of the bar. A few minutes after that the lights cut on and it was time for me to remind everybody that we were closing up. I went into the bar area and the musty smell of cigarettes and beer floated around the place. Amy never said anything to me that night about anything that had gone on. I guess that she cared for me more than I realized. The thing is, the one thing that really gets to me is that she never even told me. Deep in my heart I always had a soft spot for her, but whenever we talked I could tell that she was in love with Jason, I could never even tell that she had a thing for me…I just simply didn’t know that she cared for me.
I escorted the last few stragglers to the door, locked up and went home. I was wanting to call Maggie, but I didn’t. I just simply went home and went to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

~

I woke up early that morning, for some reason I couldn’t sleep that much. I couldn’t tell if it was anticipation for seeing her again, I couldn’t tell if it was just that my bed sucked and I needed a new one. Whatever the case was I couldn’t sleep for shit that night and I was bored. The clock said nine o’clock, it was late enough for Harry to wake up. I went into his room and there he was, lying halfway naked on his bed snoring away. I kicked him in his leg.
“What?” he asked grumpy.
“Wake up dude,” I shouted, “I am so fucking bored.”
“What the fuck do you want me to do about it?” he shouted back.
“I don’t know, is there anything that we can do?”
“Not at this fucking hour.”

“Come on…lets mess with some of these room mates.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno…we can upload a million files of porn on Chris’s computer, filling up his hard drive and making it mess up all the time.”
“Chris already has a million files of porn dumbass…when’s the last time you’ve seen him get laid?”
“Good point,” I said sitting on his bed, “There is something that we can do to him, I mean I really want to get him back.”
“Is there any baby powder in this house?”
“I believe he has some in the downstairs bathroom.”
That was all that Harry needed to hear. My boredom got an innocent man with a hangover involved in a prank towards a guy that I was really not starting to care about, not after all the bullshit he has tried to put me through. Harry got out of bed and put a tee-shirt on.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He walked out of the door and ran down the stairs. I quickly followed him not to miss a minute of his shenanigans. He burst into the downstairs bathroom and quickly found the baby powder.
“Think I should put gloves on?” he asked me with a puzzled look.
“Why?” I asked back, “What are you planning on doing?”
“Nothing bad, I just don’t want to be caught in all of this…Chris is an asshole and I could see him doing a fingerprint check on his baby powder after all of this.”
“Dude, I have no idea what you have planned right now, but seriously if does do a fingerprint check on all of this, I will gladly take the blame for all of it.”
Harry nodded and proceeded to walk into Chris’s bedroom. He flicked the switch on the wall and cut the lights and the fan off. I had no idea what he was doing right now, but coming from Harry it had to be good. The fan finally stopped turning, and that is when Harry jumped on his bed. He reached for one of the blades on the fan and with the other hand poured some of the powder onto the blade. He slowly rotated each blade to get to the next one and then he poured some more powder on the blade…he did this to all of the blades until each one had a fair share of powder on each blade.
“Genius,” I said to him as he hopped down from the bed.
“Yeah, sometimes I have my moments. When he flicks that switch it will look like he got into a fight with a jelly doughnut here. Our best bet is to stay here until he get home, that way it doesn’t look overly suspicious that we are the one’s who did this.”
“Good call,” I said shaking his hand, “As long as you stay here with me then I am good, but if you leave then I am leaving too because I know that that asshole will accuse only me, needless to say I am going to need your back.”
“I got it all figured out, he comes home around ten each morning from his real-estate class… all we gotta do is go back upstairs and go to sleep, we should be good after that.”
So, we both went upstairs and I actually did fall back asleep until twelve that afternoon when Harry woke me up.
“Haven’t run into him yet,” he said waking me up.
“Maybe he hasn’t came home yet.”
“I’m going to go find out.”
Harry ran out of my room and down the hallway to the stairs, it almost sounded like Harry busted his ass he was running so fast.
“Nope,” he yelled from downstairs, “We are still gold.”
Thank Christ I said to myself, I really didn’t want to listen to his shit anyways, but hell he deserved it anyways. Through all of the drama, I really hadn’t noticed that my phone was vibrating, I looked down and the caller ID showed that it was her. I didn’t answer the phone, I just hit the ignore button and placed the phone down. By this time Harry was back upstairs and came into my room.
“She just called,” I told him and he struggled to get his breath.
“Yeah, and?”
“Didn’t answer it.”
“Why?” he asked with a puzzled look on his face, “I thought ya’ll were going to talk or something today.”
“I dunno,” I said stretching out on the bed, “I will talk to her in a little bit, but for right now I gotta wake up.”
“Sounds like your doubting this whole scenario to me,” he said as he got up to walk out of the room, “If your not sure about it then maybe you should listen to that voice in the back of your head.”
I didn’t say anything in response to his comment, I just laid there in the bed and thought about it for awhile, then I finally got up and did the shower routine. I cleaned the pipes after the shower, it had been awhile since I was intimate with anyone, and if today was going to end up that way, then I would want it to last longer than ten minutes. I got dressed and walked downstairs with the phone in my pocket, wondering how I would approach this. We had been through a lot together and I felt nervous like the first time that I had ever called her.
I opened the fridge and grabbed a Bud Light and took a long sip of the cold beer. My phone began vibrating in my pocket, and I pulled it out to look and see who it was…it was her again. I took another long sip of the beer and answered the phone.
“Hello,” I said into the phone.
“Hey you, thought you might be ignoring me?”
“Uh? What are you talking about?” I asked her trying to play it off.
“Nothing, tried calling you a little bit ago,” she said.
“Yeah, was in the shower. I just got dressed and was about to call you back, honestly, I just walked downstairs.”
“Yeah right,” she said laughing, “So what time did you finally get home last night?”
“Late, around three or so, I can’t remember.”
“Well, can I come over?” she asked.
“Do you really want to come over to this hell hole?”
“Sure, I wouldn’t mind seeing where you live.”
I told her how to get to the house and she said that she would be here in an hour or so, we said our goodbyes and got off the phone. Harry came downstairs to tell me that he was going out, had something to do, I really didn’t even know what he said because I couldn’t stop thinking about her and why she wanted to come over. I began to think about how good she looked last night at the bar. She had lost a few pounds and let her hair grow out a little bit, but she still had that beautiful smile. I finished my beer and went upstairs to make sure the room was straighten out a little bit, then I ran back downstairs to make sure the living room was tidied up, and then laid on the couch watching TV waiting for her to show up.
It didn’t take her long to show up at the house. She arrived a little after two and I was struck at the door when I saw her. She had a tank top on with some cut off jean shorts. If she was trying to play it safe she wasn’t doing a good job because now I was completely turned on. She smiled and gave me a hug. It felt good to feel her in my arms again, she still was wearing the same perfume and I took a large breath of her hair as I hugged her.
I wanted to take her right there. Just grab her and take her upstairs and do all the things we used to do to each other in my bedroom. Even carry her up the stairs, being as romantic as I could to make love to her again, I wanted to see her on top of me, slowly going up and down as she took me deep.
“Alright,” she said, “Good hug.”
She pulled away from me and looked around the living room.
“So this is the new place uh?”
“Yeah, but not for long,” I replied, “Just something to get me by until I land something else.”
“You don’t want to stay here?”
“Not really, its cool living with Harry, and the other two are alright, but living with Chris is an absolute hell. Just thinks that Harry and I should be his bitches or something like that.”
“You’ll figure it out,” she said smiling at me, “You always seem to land on your feet after something happens, I am sure you will figure it out.”
“I could just leave Florence and move in with you,” I said jokingly, “I heard that you had been having room mate problems.”
“Oh have you?” she asked, “I see people still do nothing but talk in this town.”
“What else do why have to do but talk about other people’s problems and get drunk everynight?”
She laughed and walked around the lower level of the house.
“So where is your room?”
“Upstairs,” I replied, “If you could call it a room, its mainly a walk in closet converted into a room.”
I took her hand and walked her up the stairs. I should her Dave’s room and then I showed her Harry’s room, saving my piece of shit closet for last.
“Its not that bad,” she said.
“Quit lying,” I said back, “Your just trying to make me feel better about it.”
“Yeah, your right,” she broke out laughing, “It’s the worst room I have ever seen, I hope that they are not charging you the full rent for this shit.”
I laughed and told her no, but then as I thought about it, the fuckers were charging me the same amount as they paid and that pissed me off.
“Mind if check my email?” she asked.
I told her that I didn’t mind and I laid on the bed as she sat in front of the computer. I laid there and looked at her, wondering why I broke up everything with her, wondering why I still wanted her back. I wanted to grab her and tell her all the thoughts that were racing in my head. Telling her that I loved her and everything was my fault, telling her that I never wanted to lose her in the first place, telling her that I was sorry for ever hurting her. She smiled and laughed as she read her emails and I was completely in trance of her, her chest raising up and down and she breathed. She got up and walked over to the bed.
She laid now next to me, her head resting on my chest. I knew that now I had to find out, find out if anything was still there. Fuck her boyfriend in Omaha or wherever he lived, I knew that if I wanted to I could get her right now, and that is what I was going to do. I reached my hand underneath her chin and raised her mouth up to mine, and that is when it happened. I started kissing her passionately, and in turn she was kissing me like she never had before.
I reached my hand down to her chest and she didn’t stop me. I raised her shirt over her head and took it off. She straddled over me just like I was thinking of before. She reached her hands to her back and took off her bra. She un tucked my shirt and pulled it off of me, then she loosed my belt and unbuttoned my shorts. I did the same to hers and slid them off of her. She took off my shorts and there we were, both naked and looking at each other.
We started to make love. Her on top of me, me then on top of her, both of us releasing the bottled up emotion that we had always had for each other, both of us remembering why we had loved the other for so long. She had done things to me that day that she had never done before, it almost made me wonder how she learned these new positions but then I didn’t care, there was no point to start getting jealous now. I came inside of her when I was finished and she laid back down with her head on my chest.
We didn’t say anything after that, just laid there and held each other for what seemed to be years, my hand gently rubbing up and down her back and she caught her breath while resting next to me. Thousands of thoughts running through my head, I really didn’t even know where I was, wondering if she was feeling the same way, or if we both just knew that we needed this. I had such a fucked up relationship with the preacher’s daughter that I desperately needed a girl to take me deep inside of her and I was wondering if she was feeling the same way with her relationship that she needed me.
“Fucking shit!” a voice yelled from downstairs.
I had been so caught up in the moment that I forgot what we had done to Chris’s room a few short hours ago.
“What the fuck is that?” she asked me waking up from the trance that we both were in.
“Long story,” I said, “I will tell it to you later, but you might just want to go ahead and get your clothes on.”
We both got up and got dressed. Leave it to my shenanigans and Chris being himself to ruin a great time I was having. I knew that it wouldn’t be long before he brought his fat ass upstairs to start questioning me. A few minutes later and there was the knock on the door I was waiting for.
“Yeah,” I said as I opened the door a little bit.
“Who in the hell did that to my room?”
“Did what?” I asked trying my hardest not to laugh in his face. He was completely covered in powder.
“You know mother fucker,” he shouted, “Someone put baby powder on the fan blades and when I went to cut it on the powder flew everywhere. So tell me asshole, was it you or Harry.”
“Dude, it was not me,” I replied.
“And how do I know that?”
“Guess your just going to have and trust me on that one.”
“Yeah, ok asshole,” he snapped back.
I didn’t know how I was going to get out of this one, I knew that he wouldn’t believe me and hell I didn’t blame him, I wouldn’t believe me either.
“He was with me all morning Chris,” Maggie said from the bed.
I opened the door a little bit more so that he could see that she was with me.
“I have been here all morning, I could tell you what we have been doing all morning but then I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Oh,” he said, “Sorry Maggie I didn’t see you in there.”
He looked over at me and apologized. He turned around and walked back down the stairs. Thank Christ she said something, I honestly didn’t know how else I would get out of that one. I shut the door and went back to the bed.
“Thanks,” I said as I laid back next to her, “I owe you one.”
“You owe me more than just one,” she said smiling, “So who did it?”
“Both of us.”
“Figured that much, but I guess that Harry can handle it a little better than you could.”
I just smiled at her and began to rub her back a little more as she put her head back on my chest. For the next few hours we just laid there holding each other, reminding both of us of the good times that we had.
A few hours had gone by and I was awoken by her typing on my computer, she was sitting there checking her email and even though I could see what she was doing, I still felt the need to ask her what she was doing.
“I am checking my email,” she replied.
“I can see that,” I replied, “Did he send you anything?”
“Who?” she asked surprisingly, “You mean Russell?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t even know is name, but thanks for letting me know.”
“Yeah, I am replying to him.”
“You have to do it while you are with me?” I asked her rolling over and getting up from the bed.
“Well, I have to,” she said turning around to look at me, “I don’t want him to start blowing up my cell phone and I don’t want him to worry about me.”
“Worry about what?” I asked putting my shirt on, “That you just fucked your ex-boyfriend.”
I could tell that the last comment got to her, but I really didn’t care. I had no idea what was going on, had no idea what to feel and had really no idea on what was going on in my heart right now, I just felt numb and cold and at the same time kinda happy, but I couldn’t let her now that I wanted to be with her.
“I had no idea what was going to happen when I came here,” she said closing up her email, “Its not like master plan that I came up with.”
“You had to some idea,” I said, “Why did you email me to let me know that you were coming here?”
“Because I wanted to fucking see you,” she yelled at me, “Because I was beginning to miss you and I am trying to figure out how and why everything ended between us. You said that you loved me and you said that you wanted to be with me and fuck you even said that you wanted to marry me, so why in the hell were you so fucking quick to let me go?”
This isn’t what I wanted to happen, I didn’t want to get into all of this right now, but she had me cornered like Ali and I knew that there was no way for me to get out.
“Because you were leaving me,” I snapped back, “You were leaving me and I knew what would happen, long distance relationships don’t fucking work Maggie.”
“Long distance relationship?” she came right in my face, “I was moving an hour away dumb ass, so explain that theory to me.”
“You know what I mean,” I was back peddling now, “I couldn’t handle you being there and me being here.”
“There is something else, something else that you are not telling me.”
“You want to hear it?” I yelled at her, “You really want to know why I was so willing to throw away three years for nothing, is that what you really want to know?”
“I asked you didn’t I?”
“The temptation Maggie,” I said putting my head down, “The temptation to be with other women with you gone would have been too much. Not saying that I would or even had the chance to fuck anything that I wanted, but the temptation to cheat on you with you not here would’ve been too much.”
She didn’t say anything and I was wondering what in the hell I was trying to say, I know that it didn’t make sense but I knew that was the truth. I had cheated on her before, I had lived in Columbia before when we were dating and I had a field day when I was working at the bar to make money. I had been with more women that year that I had before I had met her, and I didn’t want to live through that anymore. She was leaving me and I couldn’t bear to hurt her, so I simply chose to end the relationship.
She grabbed her purse and left out the room. I didn’t know who was home or who had heard the conversation, but I didn’t feel like chasing after her. I sat on the edge of my bed and felt the pain shoot through my body to my heart. I felt rage and betrayal, I felt compassion and hurt all at the same time, I sat there for what felt like hours but then I decided to run after her. I ran down the stairs and headed towards the back door where the driveway ended, I swung the door open and she was already gone. I walked to where the driveway headed towards the street, and she was already making the turn to the street. She was gone again, and again I was left wondering why I keep hurting the one girl that I always wanted to be with, why I keep breaking her heart.

~

I didn’t do much the next few days. I mainly just hung around the house and dealt with life from time to time. I didn’t think about much, but I did do a lot of thinking about the two girls that had came into my life and the one that came back into it. I thought a lot about where it had got me, or whether where it didn’t get me. I had always made fun of some of my friends, the guys that I knew that had always fallen in love too quickly with a girl, maybe not fall in love with them too fast but had always been hopeless romantics. I used to make fun of those guys, always giving them shit for planning their wedding as they got a girls phone number, but as I thought about it I am no different from these guys, because I did the same thing with the preacher’s daughter and I kept holding on for things to work out with Maggie and I, but they never did.
So there I was…in between jobs, my heart broken a few times and one heart that I had misled and it was getting close to July. My car was sometimes still on the fritz and I was pondering if I should go back to school for the fall semester or take a break and save some money up for the spring time. I had about a million things going on, not to mention I was still trying to find a place to live because Chris was getting on my last nerve. He had given me his opinion about Maggie, like I had ever even asked for it or wanted to hear it. I really don’t think that he ever understood what I was going through because I really don’t think that he had ever loved anyone as much as he loved himself.
I did go out a few times with Harry through those days. Typical kind of nights, we would party all night, usually follow that up with breakfast somewhere and on one of those nights we made it home after everyone else had gone to work. It was fun, but the void in my heart wasn’t being mended because I was beginning to miss Maggie bad. And all of that typical post-argument shit begins to start running through your head. Should I call her? Why isn’t she calling me? All of those questions that you think that you can answer by going on a bender, but the hangover the next day doesn’t answer any of the questions, just makes you miss them even more. I was lost and I was beginning to wonder what was going on with me.
I had cotton-mouth and I could feel the blood begin to swell in my eyes as I got out of bed that Thursday morning. I didn’t know how I got home, didn’t remember the night before and was sure glad that I didn’t wake up next to someone who I didn’t know. My head was pounding, feeling all the late night debauchery finally catching up with me. I had gone out more in the last forty-two days than I probably had thus far in my life and I wasn’t sure if it was catching up to me finally or if I just needed a Gatorade to get me through this day, then the phone rang.
I didn’t feel like answering it, I knew who it was before I even looked at the caller ID, it was Maggie. I just hit the ignore button on my phone and laid back down on the bed. The turmoil was getting to me, either that or it was the thirteen Jack and waters I had last night, either way I was feeling too many emotions at that moment to talk to her. What would I say? What could I say? It just seemed like when everything was going right, everything seemed to end up wrong, and I just didn’t feel like dealing with her, just didn’t feel like getting into it again with her.
The dog was whining to go out so I walked him downstairs and let him out to the backyard, I could tell that Harry was up because his dog was already outside. I walked to the kitchen and grabbed a Bud Light, I knew that the only way that I would get over half of my pain would be to chug the cold beer, or at least that is what I always heard. It didn’t take long to finish the beer and when I burped it felt like it was going to come back up. I grabbed three more, two for me and one for Harry and walked upstairs to see what he was doing.
Harry was lying on his bed with nothing more than his boxer shorts on and he didn’t even flinch when I slammed his door shut.
“Yo, douche bag, wake up,” I yelled as he finally came back to reality.
“Jeez, man,” he moaned moving the hair out of his eyes, “What time is it?”
“Bout eleven or so, have a beer with me.”
“Why in the hell would I do that?”
“Cause you gotta feel worse than I do, and I needed one…or two, but whatever last night was the worse that I have ever seen you get. Fuck man I had to drive home and I was worse than you.”
“Better you than me,” he finally sat up and opened his beer, “So what’s on your mind?”
“Not really sure, a lot of shit is running wild right about now,” I opened one of my beers and took a long sip of it, “Just a lot of shit man, trying to figure out where I might be living at in the next few weeks, trying to figure out if I want to go back to school or not, Maggie and that is about it, so like I said, a lot of shit.”
“What did we do last night?”
“Just the usual, went to Whole Sale and drank a lot.”
“Might as well finish this beer, its going to be another long night tonight…Hippo is playing up there tonight.”
“Oh yeah,” I said as I finished the second beer and opened the third, “Forgot about that, I think Box and Crabtree wanted to do something before that and then go and see them. Ever since Box moved in with B. Martin he has been on this “jam band” kick.”
“Well, why don’t you figure out what they want to do and wake me up an hour before we go, I gotta sleep this off.”
“I hear ya, wake you up in five or so hours.”
I got up and walked back downstairs to watch some TV. I sat down and took another sip of my beer when Chris came home. As usual I didn’t say anything to him as he walked in and he did the usual and didn’t say anything to me. I was wondering if he had passed his real-estate test or not, I was leaning on the side that said not, but I didn’t want to provoke the highness. So I just sat back and took another sip of my beer. He sat down in the dining room to eat his lunch and the silence was unbearable so I just got up and went upstairs, with my beer.
I grabbed my phone and noticed that I had two more missed calls, both of them were from her. I had to get my mind off of her so I just went to the computer and played the CD and then crashed on the bed. I cut my phone off and just laid there, thinking about what to do next. I fell asleep and woke up happy. Chris was back at work and for some reason I didn’t wake up and think of Maggie, maybe this would be a good night after all.

~

I got off the phone with Box, he told me that he was going to Crabtree’s house to drink there before the band started playing, and then he was going up there to watch them. I told him that I would meet him up there and pre-game with them, then go to the show and we both agreed that we would get shitty tonight. I hadn’t seen Box in awhile, he was taking summer classes and working full time, Maymester finally ended and he was ready to go out. I went and told Harry the good news. Getting back into my room I turned my phone back on and saw that I had four new voicemails, I figured that they were all from her so I decided to call her back finally, I didn’t want to have to worry about it tonight so I might as well get it over with and get it out of the way. The phone rang four times before she finally answered.

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Thursday, October 9, 2008

Lost College Boy 4

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Lost College Boy 2

Lost College Boy 1

Another Unfinished...This Time From 2006