The Good Life (11 page)

I quietly walked up the carpeted staircase to his room, gently turned the knob and pushed the door open softly.

Then I screamed.

Skank Queen herself was in MY boyfriend’s bed, tangled up in his sheets with mascara all over her slutty, ugly face and a major case of bed head in her ratty-ass, over-processed, yellow hair. They both sat up when they heard me screaming, and she didn’t even attempt to cover herself up. She just sat there in his bed, boobs hanging out in the open, and smirked at me. Not just at me, but also at both of his parents, who had come running upstairs when they heard the commotion and now stood there horrified.

“HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!” I yelled as I dropped the balloons before running down the stairs and out the door.

Not only was she a ho-bag, but she had a big mouth as well. My phone was flooded with phone calls almost immediately. People were willing to get out of bed early to hear that kind of gossip. I ignored the calls. It was too embarrassing. I couldn’t face anyone from school, but there was no way I was going to sit home and sulk while everyone I knew was celebrating that bastard’s birthday at his party later. So I packed an overnight bag and headed to Mount Pleasant.

Mount Pleasant is a city a few hours from Ann Arbor and home of Central Michigan University, where both Adam and Jake were sophomores. Adam decided on Central because they offered him a full scholarship to play for the basketball team. He wasn’t really into the sport anymore, but he was good at it and figured it was the best and cheapest way to get his Bachelor’s degree so he could move on to med school.

Jake had decided on Central simply because he didn’t have the grades, the ambitions or the money to go to a more scholastic school, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Jake was all about the party scene and made no attempt to hide it. He joined a fraternity right away and had been telling me how great their parties were. When he was home on winter break he told me to come hang out and party with him whenever I wanted and I thought a college party was a good way to celebrate my newfound freedom. A one-night-stand would be the best revenge I could get. My goal was to meet a guy who would fuck me senseless and make me forget all about Winnie-the-Pooh and his stupid, skanky honey pot.

I didn’t even think to call first. I just got in my mom’s car and drove off. When I arrived at the campus a few hours later I used my cell phone, my very first cell phone that I had gotten for Christmas a month before, and called my brother’s phone for directions to his apartment.

“Shit,” he said when he answered, “I’ve got a game in Buffalo tonight. I won’t be back on campus until tomorrow.”

I gulped in embarrassment as my heart raced with anxiety. Had I driven all this way just to turn around and drive right back?

“Do you know the number to Jake’s room?” Adam asked.

Jake didn’t have a cell phone yet. It took a few phone calls back and forth with Adam and a few calls to Jake’s frat brothers, but I was finally able to reach him. Once I told him where I was he said he’d be there to get me in a minute, no questions asked.

As I sat in my car trying to stay warm, I saw him walking towards the visitor’s parking lot. He wore a burgundy baseball cap with a gold letter “C” on it, a navy blue zip-up hoodie with some white Greek letters sewn across the front and loose fitting jeans. He looked like a typical college frat guy. To a high school senior whose boyfriend was just caught fucking the town tramp, there wasn’t a whole lot more enticing than a typical college frat guy. My heart raced again, but it wasn’t embarrassment or anxiety this time. I turned the heat off and fanned my face to stop the blush I felt creeping onto my cheeks.
When did Jake get so hot? And why didn’t anyone tell me?

I stepped out of the car when he approached.

“Where’s your coat?” he asked.

I shrugged and rubbed my hands up the arms of my wool sweater to keep warm. “I left in a hurry,” I explained.

He unzipped his hoodie. “Get in here,” he said as he held his jacket open for me.

I put my arms inside the hoodie and wrapped them around his waist. He pulled the jacket around the back of me and held tight. I didn’t mean to lose it, but with that one move, he made me feel safe and protected and loved, and I can’t explain why, but it made me cry.

He rested his chin on the top of my head and held me tighter. “What did he do to you, Little Girl?” he asked.

I shook my head inside his jacket. If I talked about it, I would cry even harder.

He rubbed his hands up and down my back on the outside of his hoodie, and I let him hold me for a minute (and enjoyed every second immensely, by the way) before I let go of him.

He pulled off his coat. “Here, take this,” he said. “I’ll get you one for yourself when we get to the house, but wear mine for now.”

All he had on underneath was a long sleeve white t-shirt that said Central Michigan Basketball on the front. Aww, he supported his friend. And took care of his friend’s little sister, too.

I felt bad taking the hoodie from him but it was so soft and warm and I really was cold; plus, looking at the size of the campus, I had a feeling we were in for a long walk.

He told me there was a visitor’s lot closer to his house so we drove there first and then Jake carried my overnight bag on our walk to the frat house. He also took my hand since there was some snow and ice on the ground. It seemed perfectly normal that we would walk across his campus holding hands.

What if?
I wondered. I had never before thought of Jake in any romantic kind of way. But what if I did? And what if he thought of me the same way? What if Jake and I were more than just friends? What if I came to Central next year? Would he be this sweet to me then? In case you haven’t figured this out yet, I have a tendency to get a little ahead of myself. For a minute I had a montage of images flash through my mind: Jake and I walking to class together hand in hand; Jake and I studying in the library and sneaking kisses in the empty aisles; Jake and I cheering for Adam at a basketball game; Jake and I cuddling on the bed in my dorm room and watching movies; Jake and I doing lots of other things in my dorm room; Jake doing lots of other things with some skanky blonde who wore too much eyeliner and whispering to her, “Please don’t tell my girlfriend about this …”

Insert sound of screeching record – this fantasy was over. I let go of his hand and put it to my chest, trying to comfort the heart that had broken for the second time that day. Just the idea of Jake being another Riley was enough for me to know that I could not survive heartbreak like that in real life. Because Jake wasn’t Riley. Riley was a fun guy with a good future ahead of him, but I’d never been delusional enough to think I was a part of that future. I’d always known in the back of my mind that Riley was just a high school boyfriend. I was devastated by what he had done, but I knew I could live without him. Jake, on the other hand, was way more important. He wasn’t something or someone I was willing to lose.

I gave him a quick glance and tried not to look angry. I wasn’t crazy enough to be mad at him for something I’d only imagined him doing. But I wasn’t dumb enough to let it ever happen either. There were a lot of other guys in this world and a lot of other guys at this school. Jake was off-limits. Not just for tonight. Forever.

My cell phone rang. It was my mom calling. I flipped the phone open, pulled up the antenna (yeah, this was a long time ago) and put the phone to my ear.

“I just talked to Adam,” she said hurriedly. “He said he’s in Buffalo!”

“Don’t panic, Mom,” I said, “Jake’s here.”

“Is he there right now?”

“Yes.”

I heard her exhale the breath she’d probably been holding for awhile. “Put him on.”

I handed Jake the phone. “Hey, Mom,” he said. He’d been calling my mom “Mom” for as long as I could remember. “Yeah, don’t worry about a thing. I’ve got this.”

His fraternity was having a party that night called Get Leid. It was a summer-in-winter themed party where they intended to crank up the heat and give everyone a flower lei at the door … but that was it. Theme parties were definitely my forte and those boys clearly needed help. I pushed my cheating boyfriend to the back of my mind and made it my personal goal to make sure this was the best party of the year.

Jake and I went to the party store and bought drink umbrellas and frozen daiquiri mix. We got a few beach balls and an abundance of cheap grass skirts and coconut bras for the guys. I made an excellent summer playlist for the DJ including DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime” and “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper. I convinced the guys to uncover the gas grill on the back porch and cook up some hot dogs. I dug out a few tiki torches from the shed and lit them in the snow. I even put up the volleyball net in the backyard hoping a few people might drink enough to play. I was right. They did play.

It turned out to be a great night for everyone. Everyone except me! Jake was so worried I’d end up hooking up with one of his fraternity brothers he never let me out of his sight. He knew if that happened he’d have to deal with the wrath of my brother. He followed me around the whole night. Every time I tried to dance with someone, he’d pull me away. Every time I grabbed a drink, he’d dump it out. He even escorted me to the bathroom and stood outside the door to make sure no one came in after me. It wasn’t until after 2am when the guests had left and everyone was cleaning up that I was able to sneak in a few drinks.

When we were done cleaning he took me upstairs to his room and locked the door behind us.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna put the baby gate up?” I asked sarcastically.

“Huh?”

“You know, since you’re my father, and I’m just a child?”

“You’re kinda acting like one,” he said in an arrogant, unapologetic tone of voice that I immediately hated.

“Well you’re
kind of
an asshole!” I said loudly. I looked at his roommate’s bed to make sure I didn’t wake him and saw that it was empty. Jake must have asked him to stay somewhere else, probably because he was worried the guy would try to have sex with me in the middle of the night. Because apparently every single guy within a ten mile radius was trying to get into my pants, and it was his duty to ward them off.

“What’s gotten into
you
?” he asked like he had no idea.

“Nothing, Jake!” I yelled. “Nothing has gotten into me or even near me! Why did you keep telling me to come hang out with you at school if you weren’t going to let me have any fun?”

He sat down on his bed and started untying his tennis shoes. “I know how you are. You think everyone is filled with rainbows and glitter. But people around here can be pretty shady. You’ve seen the after-school specials about frat guys, right? And the Lifetime movies?”

I rolled my eyes at his lame attempt to be funny. “If these people are so bad, why did you tell me to come visit you? What did you think I would do here? Tour the library?”

“I thought you’d have some friends or your boyfriend with you, and I thought your brother would be here. I couldn’t send you out there alone. You would have ended up in one of these beds, outside throwing up in the snow or, in the worst case, passed out somewhere with guys jacking off on you.”

Okay, that was a gross visual
.
“Ending up in someone’s bed might not have been
that
bad,” I said after a moment. “Maybe it’s what I wanted.” I sat down in his desk chair, crossed my arms and tried to make a mad face.

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“The look on your face. It’s so funny when you try to look mad. And would you want to be in one of these beds if I told you no one in this house has washed their sheets since September, and there’s a different girl’s DNA left on them pretty much every week?”

Eww. Maybe not. These people are sick!

“Whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes again.

“Is ‘whatever’ what you say when you know you’ve lost an argument?”

I didn’t answer. He had me. I couldn’t very well tell him I would love to contribute my DNA to his dirty friends’ bed sheets. That was just sick.

“My roommate is staying at his girlfriend’s tonight. He said you could sleep in his bed.”

“Ew! Not after what you told me!”

He laughed again. “You can sleep in mine then. I’ll even change the sheets for you.”

He went over to his dresser where he pulled out a folded sheet from the bottom drawer. “Your mom washed these for me over Christmas break,” he told me. “I can still smell the Tide.”

My mom was very motherly towards Jake. She always had been. She felt bad for him because his own mom wasn’t very, well, motherly. She was a bit of a party animal. She was the kind of person who started drinking as soon as she woke up in the afternoon. She didn’t do a lot of laundry.

Jake’s parents were teenagers when he was born. They broke up when he was a few months old and had been fighting over him ever since. They didn’t fight over him the way most separated parents fought over their kids, though. Most of the time the parents both wanted
more
time with the kids, but in this case, they both wanted
less
time. The fights went like this:

“What do you mean you can’t take him this weekend? You promised you’d be here! I have plans!”

“Oh give me a break! I had to keep him two extra days last month and still had to pay you child support! Unless you want to give me some of my money back, you can keep him this weekend.”

The reason why I knew about these arguments was because they would often have them in front of other people, including my brother and even Jake.

Jake always acted like such a tough guy and pretended it didn’t bother him, but I knew the truth. I’d never forget the first and only time I’d seen him cry. It was Father’s Day. I was about eight, which would have made Jake about ten. He had spent both Friday and Saturday nights at our house which was pretty normal, especially during the summer. His dad, who had gotten married by this time and had two more children that he actually seemed to love, was supposed to pick Jake up from our house on Sunday afternoon to take him to the zoo with his brother and sister. But he never showed up. My mom tried calling him for hours and kept getting his machine. She finally called his mom to come pick him up. I’m not sure what Jake’s mom said on the other end, but we could all hear what my mom said on our end, and we knew Jake’s mom wasn’t coming to pick him up either. It wouldn’t have surprised me any if his mom said something along the lines of, “This is Father’s Day, the one day a year I’m guaranteed my freedom.”