In Too Deep (17 page)

“Why did you buy her flowers?” My words came out sounding like my last breath. Everything in my body threatened to stop working. My breathing was shallow, I didn’t blink, the tears continued to stream down my cheeks, but the muscles that were controlling my face had given up I couldn’t hide the effects of his crushing blow. I felt fifty pounds heavier, and I realized my knees could give out at any minute. I reached for the door knob to steady myself as I awaited his final swing. He took two steps closer so he was right in my face and smiled from ear to ear. I braced myself.

He spoke slowly. I could feel his hot breath on my wet cheeks. “I invited her to a function the other night, and I thought it would be a sweet gesture to get her some flowers for when she got here.”

I stopped breathing.

He scoffed and walked away.

“What function?” My words were barely a whisper.

He spun around, bent a little at the waist and in a deep revolting shout said, “I don’t want. To. Be. Married!” And with that he turned back around, walked over to his radio, pushed a button and his iPod came to life. He spun the volume to max. He looked over his shoulder and smirked.

There was no way he could hear me so I mouthed the words, “
You
are the idiot. We are done.”

His face was stone.

I left. But I stood against the cold plaster wall to catch my breath.

The Toadies were still blaring. I could feel the bass vibrate against my back and was sure it was the only thing beating in my chest.

Twenty-Eight

His arms around me were strong and they kept me warm. Being wrapped in his body made me feel protected. His chest moved in and out against my back, and his breath was warm on my neck. His lips were right near my ear and he made quiet noises while he slept. I wondered what he was dreaming. I squeezed his arms tighter to me, closed my eyes, and went back to sleep.

I woke with a jolt that broke his hold on me. I sat straight up and searched the room for the clock. The blankets fell to my waist, and the chill from the room made me shiver. When I realized it was only dinner time and I wasn’t late for class, I pulled the covers up over my head and fell backwards onto the pillows. My head still pounded from all the crying I had done before I climbed into bed.

Jake pulled the covers back, revealing my face, brushed the loose strands of hair from my face, and kissed my forehead.

“You okay?”

“Oh, Jake, I just want this to be a bad dream. I am losing my mind.”

He snuggled in closer and wrapped me in his signature bear hug. He had no words and once again I found my mind playing “what if?” What if I had fallen for someone like Jake instead of Noah? We’d probably be rolling in the sheets instead of him trying to hold me together.

Jake and I had a lot in common lately. We both missed someone, and having someone you trust physically close to you seemed somewhat healing. The fact that there were no expectations was a bonus. All of our friends started to think it was more than what it truly was. “What friends nap together?” they questioned sarcastically. It didn’t matter what they thought. Jake and I needed each other. It was really just that simple.

“Love you, Gracie.”

“Love you, Jake. It was a nice nap.”

I left his apartment, and before I got to the stairwell, I heard Sam badgering him about his new bed partner. I smiled to myself. Jessica wouldn’t love this set up, but Jake wasn’t cheating on her. He was just being there for me. Under no circumstances would I lure a loyal boyfriend into a cheating situation. I knew all too well what that felt like from the girlfriend’s side. I would never cross that line with a guy who was in a committed relationship.

When I reached my apartment, Stacy was on the phone. I was thrilled. I could sneak in, grab some clothes, and hop in the shower without having to explain my smeared make up and bed head. She was hard to deal with lately. She was sick of me being with Noah, and her grades were slipping. Not a good combo.

She looked up. “Oh, wait, she just walked in.”

This time, I didn’t even hope it was Noah. I knew it wasn’t. Nor would it be again.

Stacy handed me my cell phone.

I looked at the screen. Mom.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, honey. Where were you? Stacy had no idea how to get a hold of you. I was worried.”

“I was taking a nap with Jake. Upstairs. I plugged my phone in before I went up there.” I knew as soon as it was out of my mouth that it was a mistake. Even Stacy winced.

“A nap with Jake? Could you explain that, please?”

My mother thought I was Daughter Theresa, and I had just stumbled into the “bed linens equal sex” conversation. I was in no mood to justify my actions, and I just wanted to spill my guts to her and tell her about all of the sex acts Noah introduced me to so she could stop making me feel guilty for not being a virgin anymore, which she thought I was. But even if I was brave enough to do that, I didn’t have the energy.

“Honest, Mom. It was just a nap. Jessica is away and Jake and I were talking and fell asleep.”

“Well, don’t you think Noah would have something to say about that?”

“No.” That whispered word was all I could muster.

We talked about my classes and how all my projects were going. She told me how work was and how Dad had been traveling a lot more lately so she was enjoying the one-on-one time with Hannah, but couldn’t wait until I came home again.

“Spring Break is only six weeks away, can you believe it?” I could see her grinning through the phone.

No, I couldn’t believe it. I wondered what my heart would be doing in six week. I had no idea. This horrible rollercoaster I climbed onto the night of the Sigma Chi formal was not the ride I signed up for almost two years ago in the kitchen of Murphy’s, and it was barreling at a speed I couldn’t keep up with. If I had known what the risks were, I may never have climbed aboard.

Noah and I hadn’t even talked about Spring Break plans. Noah lived ten minutes outside of McKenzie, and Jake was staying at school for the break instead of heading back again to his hometown in Wyoming. He would be almost five hours away. Who would be my rock? Could I really go all break without seeing Noah or would I cave? I couldn’t even think of telling the girls any of this. They would hunt him down and kill him. So, I would swallow all that happened, put on a happy face, and stay numb. We broke up. That’s all. It was the safest way to exist right now. I hung up with my mom and got in the shower.

I was walking from the bathroom to our bedroom wrapped in a towel and in a complete daze from my scalding hot shower. “Um, mixed company, Gracie. Put some clothes on.” Stacy’s voice brought me around. Jake and Sam were both eyeing me and grinning from ear to ear. I squealed and ran into our room and shut the door.

When I came out dressed, I found out they came down to see if Stacy and I wanted to go out for a little while. They couldn’t have had better timing. She was stressed over one of her classes and I just wanted to get out of the place where this whole nightmare started. I was starting to hate being in my own apartment.

My spirit lifted and my sides ached. We laughed hard as we sat in the front window of Café Best, a little artsy place we sort of made our second home. We had just completed our very own impromptu “Food Tour.” Translation—we ate our way down College Avenue. All of our friends were turning twenty-one or counting down the days to their own Bar Tour. We were still twenty. I only had to wait until Spring Break to be the big two-one and Stacy, Sam and Jake’s birthdays were all in the summer, but we wanted some kind of “tour” tonight. People went all out for their celebratory drunk fest. Some coined a name for the event and some even had shirts made. It was fun walking down the sidewalk and seeing groups of people all dressed alike with a creative slogan on their brightly colored t-shirts. My big birthday would happen in McKenzie. Fun.

I thought about Noah’s twenty-first birthday that was in a couple days. I wondered how many Valentine-less girls he would sleep with that night. Twenty-one? Yuck. I couldn’t believe we were over. Really over.

“Hey. No sad faces at this table.” Jake reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

“Wait? Why are you sad?” Stacy looked hurt that she was finding this out from Jake and not me.

Sam looked up from his coffee.

“Noah and I broke up. He took that Lily girl to a function I didn’t even know about. But I’m okay,” I lied.

“You guys always work things out, maybe this is just a bump in the road.” Sam didn’t know much of what had really been going on. He just knew we had broken up a couple times this year.

“These last few weeks have been more like a rumble strip than a bump in the road. But I’ve had it. We are done.”

Stacy had no reaction. She just kept eating. She was obviously sick of my drama.

“I’m proud of you,” Jake whispered and winked then squeezed my hand again.

I breathed in a sharp breath and realized three little words had been the first step in breaking the pattern.

We. Are. Done.

Everything in me screamed for surrender. I was confused. Why did my body think I had a choice in this slow drowning? I didn’t have a choice. If I did, I would have swum to the surface long ago. “Just let go,” it begged. Let go of what? I got a burst of energy and frantically looked around. My eyes stung. I could barely hold them open in the salty water, but I strained to see what my mind insisted was holding me under. My lungs screamed for air. I was close to death and this was my last chance to save myself. The rolling of the waves above sent shards of light to the bottom in flashes. One of those flashes revealed something I couldn’t believe. A white-knuckled hand wrapped around an old corroded anchor that had obviously plunged into the ocean floor many decades before. The urge to gasp was strong when panic set in. Whose hand was that? Had someone else come to the depths with me? I waited for the clouds of sand to settle from my body’s movements. That’s when my view became even clearer. On the next flash of light, I set my eyes on that hand and followed it back to a wrist and then to an arm. My eyes traveled up the pale lifeless arm…to my own shoulder. I was the reason I was drowning. My aching fingers sprung open and my body lifted off the ocean floor and slowly started floating up. Up. I was headed up.

Twenty-Nine

Early February, Spring Semester, Junior Year

Jake said he was proud of me yesterday at Café Best. I wasn’t very proud of myself. I was faking strength. I wasn’t strong at all. Flashes of all the things I had let Noah do to my body came flooding back and made me sick, proving my weakness. Maybe Jake wouldn’t hold me so tightly during our naps if he knew all of that. I wished I could take it all back. Noah said we were just trying new things, but some of those things left me feeling like a blowup doll with a beating heart. We were never getting back together, so the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach would never go away. He was now my ex-boyfriend. I no longer shared those intimate memories with someone who loved me. I walked away from him and all the pain he caused, but I couldn’t take back those firsts. I had experiences with him that would no longer be “new” to me. I’d done them. That made me feel cheap. Along with my heart, he stole my good-girl status. That made me feel used. All that was left was damaged goods. And that made me feel dirty.

The best distraction for a healing soul was one of Jake and Sam’s kick-ass parties. It was Friday night and there was no question we’d be spending the evening with the two hotties upstairs. Stacy and I drank while we got ready. It was awesome that we didn’t have to brave the chilled winter air to get to a party.

“So, what now?”

“Um, I’m going to shave my legs,” I answered from the shower.

“No, jerk, I mean what’s your plan for being a free woman on a college campus of thousands of boys?” She giggled knowing I knew exactly what she was asking the first time.

I had no idea what I was going to do. Could I move on to another boyfriend? I was uncomfortable being alone. I stood under the hot water and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be single. It had been a long time since I wasn’t someone’s girlfriend. I didn’t remember what that felt like or how I was supposed to act. I worried I was addicted to the feeling of being with someone. My psychology professor mentioned “love addiction” in class not too long ago. He didn’t say much about it, just coined the phrase to make a point. I doubted there really was such a thing, but curiosity got the best of me, and after I was dressed, I looked up the term while I waited for Stacy to get out of the shower.

“Like other addictions (drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, work, and the list goes on), the dependency to a person (their object—drug of choice) allows love addicts to feel alive—a sense of purpose—and to gain a sense of meaning and self-worth in the world: they are driven by a fantasy hope that the drug of choice—a person—will complete them.” —Schaeffer, p. 61

The definition hit me like a freight train.

“You never answered my question,” Stacy called from the bathroom and knocked me from my daze.

“I am just going to focus on school and my friends, that’s my plan.”

“You mean school and Jake.” She walked out of the bathroom with a sly grin.

“Stacy! Not you, too. Jake and I are just friends.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

I walked around the corner, grabbed her towel and ran. She squealed, pissed that I made her run naked around our apartment, but it changed the subject, and I would laugh over that moment for years to come.

We could hear the bass pumping as soon as we opened the door to the stairwell. That nervous party energy started at my toes and reached my buzzed brain cells just as we opened Jake and Sam’s door. The heat that poured out of the room could have supplied ample warmth to every apartment on their whole floor. When you packed a hundred and fifty people in a small living room, it got hot. And that was exactly why I wore shorts and a light button-up top.

Jake and Sam rounded the corner from the kitchen with big smiles and cold beer.

“Your libation, my ladies.” Sam spoke like he was a jester and we were royalty. Jester, yes. Royalty, not quite. He handed a beer to Stacy and Jake handed a beer to me still smiling at Sam’s drunken humor.

“So, loser has to accompany Sam for refills.” Jake elbowed me knowing I was no stranger to pounding a beer. And, truthfully Stacy sucked at it. I looked at Stacy, winked and Jake yelled, “Chug!”

Stacy gave it a good effort but she was still gulping when I slammed my red cup onto the table. “It would help if you guys challenged me when you were drinking something I actually liked.” She huffed and threw her dark curls over her shoulder then linked arms with Sam and they headed to fill mine and Jake’s cups. Jake walked over and wiped the dripping suds from my top lip with his thumb. I glanced over Jake’s shoulder at Stacy peeking around some really tall guy. She lifted her eyebrows and mimicked Jake wiping my mouth. I shot her a glare and looked away. Jake was too sweet to be a rebound guy, even if I wanted a rebound guy…which I didn’t.

We played a great game of Jack Ass at the kitchen table as the other party-goers drank and danced and drank and danced. I didn’t know the rules to Jack Ass so Jake and I were a team. We laughed more than we drank, and we beat the pants off everyone. It was a good thing we hadn’t been playing strip poker or it would have turned into a much different kind of party. I giggled at that thought. Then I realized there was no one there I would like to see naked. Ew.

“What was that?” Jake looked at me quite puzzled as the drunken card players left us alone at the table.

“What was what?”

“You just smiled and then made a face like you sucked a lemon.”

“Oh.” I pulled his head closer so I wouldn’t have to scream over the music. “I was thinking it would have been funny if we had been playing strip poker but then I looked around at him and him and her.” I shook my head again.

“You’ve never played strip poker.” Jake’s voice was hopeful.

“No. Of course not. Really?”

“Yeah, I didn’t think that was a ‘good girl’ game. I’m going to go grab our beers.” He winked, stood and headed for the kitchen.

I was surprised the bathroom was not occupied, but I needed to get away from the chaos for a second and think. I didn’t know what to do with the “good girl” comment. I was still struggling with how to categorize myself. In my heart, I still felt like a good girl but I guess I really had ruined myself for any other guy that came after Noah. I locked the door, put the toilet seat down, and sat with my head in my hands. Maybe I was “addicted” to our relationship because Noah was the first for everything that was sexual in nature. Part of the beauty of our relationship was being the innocent one that was nervous to try new things and sometimes didn’t know how to
do
those things. There was sweetness to him teaching me, guiding me. My mind flashed back to one of our firsts.

Mid-August, Summer before Sophomore Year

We lay on my bed at home. The bed I had since my family moved into this house when I was four. The bed my parents lulled me back to sleep in after a bad dream. That bed. And
we
were lying on it. Noah drove me home to an empty house after the movies. My parents were away again and I actually worked up enough nerve to tell my grandfather I’d be sleeping at a friend’s which was what Hannah was doing that night. My house was empty except for me and the hottest, most dangerous guy I’d ever been alone with. I shivered at that thought.

“What’s wrong?” We were facing each other.

I shook my head. “I’m just not used to doing things like this.”

“We’re not
doing
anything.”

“Well, my parents would kill me if they knew you were even in our house while they were away.” Wow. Just saying the words sent a piercing stab through my chest. It would break their hearts if they knew what I was doing. But, Noah was right, we weren’t even doing anything.

For the last four hours, we had just been lying on my bed talking. Sure, we were making out like crazy—he even got to second base—but we weren’t doing anything I hadn’t done before.