Back To You (20 page)

I
saw Bryant at the strawberry festival.  He went to middle school with me.  He wasn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box, but he was a nice guy.  And had filled out quite nicely since eighth grade.  And without a doubt, he thought I looked pretty good too.  Could be promising.

C
hapter 16

“Bryant who?”  Jack was surprised when Randy told him about Suzy’s new boyfriend.

“He went to middle school with us.  Grew into a big guy.  He is nuts over her.”  Randy popped a couple more French fries in his mouth.

“Huh.”  Jack wanted to ask more, but he didn’t have the right.  Maybe Randy would just keep talking.

“He saw her at the festival a few weeks ago and asked her out on the spot.”

“What about her?  Does she like him?”  Jack couldn’t resist.  Curiosity killed the cat, right?

“Seems to.”

Jack had nothing to say.  He just played with the straw in his Coke.  He wasn’t hungry anymore.

“So what about you, man?  Who is the flavor of the week with you?”  Randy grinned.

“Ouch.”  Jack cringed at the comment.

“Call it like I see it.  Seems like you have gone out with
a different girl every week or two.  What’s up?”

“Bored, I guess.  Why are girls so worried about things like their hair and what others think about them?  And why do they have to be wearing so many layers of clothes
?  It’s like Fort Knox to even cop a feel.”  Jack was totally lost when it came to the mysteries of the female brain.  “They can’t carry on a complete conversation without bringing up money, make-up or looking to see who can see them.”

Randy laughed.  “Dude, don’t count on EVER unde
rstanding women!  My dad still is perplexed by every woman he meets.”

“Great.  Long life to look forward to.”  Jack sighed.  “Suzy was so different.”  He muttered under his breath.

Randy hesitated before responding.  He knew that Suzy was very special.  She was like a lot of girls in a lot of ways, but in the ways that counted the most, she was so different.  His middle school crush on her had dissolved into a good friendship that he hadn’t expected.  He knew that she suffered a lot from the break up with Jack, and she was trying hard to move on.  There was no way he would tell Jack that she still felt numb inside.  Numb, until she saw Jack with someone else, then her emotions went everywhere.  And there was NO WAY he was going to tell Jack that to Suzy, Bryant was just a distraction.  He promised Suzy he wouldn’t say anything.

“Well, Suzy
’s different.”  Randy said finally.

“I thought Sara would be different too, but she just wanted me to buy her stuff before she would put out.”  J
ack sighed.  “So far, I have dated the ‘kiss and tell’ girl, the ‘giggle way too much’ girl, the ‘just fuck me and leave me’ girl, and ‘the money grubber’.  Maybe I should give up for a while.”

“Don’t give up.  Just don’t go looking for the perfect girl.  Date and have fun.  That’s what you wanted right?”

“Yeah.  That’s what I wanted.”

“So quit complaining.”  Randy
elbowed Jack’s arm lightly.  “Thought about who you are taking to junior prom?”

“Don’t remind me.”  Jack put his head down on his arm.  “I don’t think I want to go.”

“Why?”  Randy looked a little shocked.

“Because there isn’t anyone that I want to spend that much money on to get dressed up in a suffocating tux to parade around the other idiots dressed up in tux’s.  Thanks but no thanks.”

“Wow.  What a pessimist.”  Randy laughed.  “I am still trying to figure out where to take Paulette to eat that night.  I was thinking maybe Jacmel’s.”

And the conversation went from there.  Jack was liste
ning to Randy, but he was also lost in thought. 

*****

“So are we set for prom night?”  Bryant asked for the four hundredth time on the phone.

I
rolled my eyes.  “Of course, silly.  Stop asking!”  He was sweet, but he certainly wasn’t much for intellectual thought.  He was adorable, cute, tall, super sweet, but I just couldn’t get excited about dating him.  I think I finally figured out the problem.  He told me all of the time how awesome and beautiful I was, like he was admiring one of his treasured Mustangs.  It made me feel like he had put me on this stupid pedestal and at any moment I was going to come crashing down. 

H
e lived way out in the middle of nowhere, went to high school at one of the smallest schools in the area, and lived a simple life.  His parents were still together, no real drama in his life.  He fixed up old Mustangs in his spare time.  He wasn’t stupid, but he wasn’t interested in a lot of the things I was, so he talked about the only thing he knew more about than I did.  Cars.  We had too many conversations about cam shafts.  I thought I might just pull out my hair if I had to deal with much more.

I hated that
it made me feel like such a bitch!  I didn’t want to be “one of those girls”, I really really didn’t.  But...I couldn’t  help how I felt.  Most of the time, we got along great.  We hung out with one of his friends, Stan, who was dating another girl from my high school.  Michelle was shy and sweet, and I hadn’t talked to her all that much until we starting dating Bryant and Stan.  At least with four of us, we could keep the conversation going.  Deep down inside, I still really missed hanging out as a big group with Lee and Lindsey, Randy and Paulette, and, um, well, I try not to think about that as much.  He still crept into my thoughts too much.  I just had to turn off the emotion.  It was way better to not feel anything at all than to dwell on the hurt. 

“P” day!!!!  That is, it was Prom Night for Hammond High.  I took my time working on my crazy hair by curling it with a tiny curling iron.  I figured if it was going to be full and crazy, I would rather tame it with
real curls.  Mom almost had a heart attack when I bought my prom dress.  But since I tried not to ask for tons of stuff, she indulged me, grumbling about it.  It was a pretty dress, strapless black satin with a long, full skirt and a wide black and white band around the waist. 

The
guys were going to pick me up at my house after they picked up Michelle.  Then back over to Bryant’s house for more picture taking.  Then off to a teeny tiny restaurant that served mostly fried food (there goes the perfume) and on to the prom itself.  After prom, we were going back to Bryant’s house, where his mom planned to make us “breakfast” at two am, and we would all crash.  I was happy that we weren’t getting a hotel room like so many of the others were doing.  The prom was at the nicest hotel in town, so of course there were plenty of couples who planned to take advantage of the close proximity of tempting private rooms to do whatever they pleased.  I couldn’t even think about sex with Bryant.  I had totally turned that part of me off.  Maybe I wasn’t being fair, but I just couldn’t do it.

When the guys got to my house, we took like a hundred
pictures.  Of course we were all pretty goofy and acted like fools for some of the pictures.  I think that was my favorite part of the night.  Back at Bryant’s house, his mom just fussed over us all until I was ready to scream.  She was really nice, but my smile was definitely in pain by the time she was done.  Then we headed to the restaurant.  I had envisioned my junior prom meal to be one that didn’t require ketchup, but the food was pretty good. 

The dance was fun.  We danced until my shoes had to come off
, then we danced some more.  I saw everyone there.  People I didn’t want to see and people I was happy to see, but more than once, I caught myself looking for the one person I did want to see.  Actually I wanted to see him in a tux, but I didn’t want to see who he was going to be there with.  Disappointment and relief hit me as we walked to the car after the dance, when I accepted the fact that he wasn’t showing up.

To be perfectly honest, I was happy that Bryant was driving his mom’s car.  I could hear Stan trying to cop a feel with Michelle in the back seat.  I was really glad that wasn’t me.  Bryant was busy driving, although he made an excellent attempt to get me to scoot over on the bench seat next to him.  I was an adamant seatbelt wea
rer, so I stayed put.  Besides, my dress took up the rest of the front seat.  When we got to Bryant’s house, Michelle and I went to a back bedroom to change into normal clothes and wash off the caked on, sweaty makeup and brush the curls from our hair.  When we were done, we came out to a deluxe breakfast.  Waffles, eggs, sausage, bacon, sweet rolls, yummmmm.

Bryant and Stan tried very hard to get us to spend the night, but Michelle’s parents were very strict so we had them take us to my house.  We got there close to dawn.  Michelle looked like she had a great time and was floating everywhere.  I guess I wasn’t feeling much of anything except relief that the night was over.  I was tired, but I spent another good
thirty minutes thinking about how I had a nice time, but it just wasn’t how I expected to spend my prom night.  For a moment, I allowed my true feelings to come out as I drifted off to sleep.  Thinking about being held in his arms, feeling his hand hold my chin as he looked deeply in my eyes, and feeling his kiss make my body tingle all over.  It was a fantasy that would never come true, but I indulged myself that one fantasy of the perfect prom night with Jack.  Hopeless, I know.

*****

Everyone went to prom.  Jack was torn as to whether he should have gone.  He had no date.  And he didn’t want to see everyone all dressed up like performing monkeys.  Especially one monkey in particular that would have been on the arm of Suzy
who, no doubt, looked amazing
.  Nope, denial was best for the night.  Jack knew a little liquor store who would sell him whatever he wanted.  It was on the way to one of his favorite places in the world.  A little spot on the lakefront that wasn’t heavily populated.  He could sit there, looking at the water lapping against the dam, and think about everything and nothing.  It was a hot and muggy night, no surprise for southern Louisiana in May, but at least here at the lakefront there was a tiny breeze that stirred the air.

Jack sat there almost all night.  Drank a six pack of Bud, dozed off for a little bit, tried not to think about the one thing he wanted to avoid (failed miserably).  He tried drinking a little bit of whiskey too, but he didn’t like the burning in his throat.  The beer was cold, felt good going down.  When he finally woke up, the sky was just beginning to show a tiny bit of light.  His favo
rite time of day.  Although his head was feeling a bit fuzzy, he got in his car and headed home.  On the way, he stopped to get a Mountain Dew to help clear his head and a bag of Doritos to munch on in the car.  He drove fast, with the top down.  It felt amazing.  He was home before the sun had risen.

*****

School’s Out For Summer!  It didn’t matter that the song was almost as old as I was, I still sang it on the last day of school.  Driving away from the school after cleaning out all of that crap in my locker was a feeling that can’t be topped by too much else.  Countdown the days until I flew out to California.  My favorite place to be.  A chance to get away from everything in Hammond. Especially the heat.  Swimsuits, beach, pool, parties, oh yeah.

I just had to get from now
until then.  I was still dating Bryant.  He was just too nice for me to break his heart.  I was a wimp.  We had fun together, but I felt like a real jerk for not being able to commit myself to the relationship like he wanted me to.  I put up a good front most days.  But I found myself avoiding his calls some nights (thank God for caller ID), making excuses to not see him and finding reasons to say no to sex.  I kept telling him to keep it simple and fun.  That we were too young to get that serious.  To him, marriage was the most likely step to take after graduation, which was just the small town way of thinking.  I still had my senior year ahead of me.  And a summer that promised great things (thanks to the letters I had been getting from Leah).

I didn’t want to feel tied down that summer.  I was just too chicken to break things off completely with Bryant.
I told him I couldn’t see him the night before I left, so he came by a couple of days before that.  And brought me a gold necklace.  To remember him.  To come back to him.  Greeeeaaatttttt.  At some point I was going to have to call things off or I would end up married to the guy, have ten kids and have to live in the house next door to his parent’s.  No thank you.  I wished I wasn’t so damn NICE, that I wouldn’t feel so damned guilty.  Where was my inner bitch? 

Of course during the month I had to wait to go to Cali, I found lots of time to spend with other friends too.  Megan was
so much fun.  Michelle and I stayed friends, even though she broke things off with Stan.  Randy, Paulette, Lee and Lindsey all spent time with me too.  Occasionally Jack would be out and about when we were.  There was an underlying tension between us, but we were friendly to each other.  We did have a lot of the same friends after all.

It always seemed like Jack wanted us to be friends. 
That confused me.  It was harder for me to go to being just friends after all we had been through.  Most of the time when our friends broke up with people, being friends after the break up was not really an option.  Usually they hated each other, did things to get back at each other.  They didn’t hang out together.

I worried a little about Jack.  I knew he was drinking a lot.  Like he was determined to be a rebel.  I didn’t understand that very much either, but boys were goofy.  For some reason, showing your independence meant that you had to rebel, drink, fight with your pa
rents and break laws.  For me, I just kept doing the same things I always had.  Mom didn’t have any rules for me because I wouldn’t break them.  She was the one who acted like a problem child.  She and Richard were still going strong.  But they both drank entirely too much.  Stupid.  I didn’t think drinking like a fool was going to get rid of my problems.  Maybe just make them worse.  But hey, nobody asked me, right?