Beware of Love in Technicolor (20 page)

             
“Where are you keeping those quarters?” I asked coyly, walking behind him. I thought maybe I could persuade him to leave. I stood right up against him, and slid my right hand into the right pocket of his jeans. He kept playing pinball. I slid my left hand into his left pocket. He kept playing.

             
“Meet me next door,” I said, giving up on him. I removed my hands, turned, and walked out into the glare.

             
There were a few bistro tables set up on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop on Main Street. Sitting there soaking up the sun were Topher and Patrick. They were an odd couple, but somehow, their friendship seemed to work. The two made regular visits now to The Pit, where they would arrive unannounced, and demand that I join them for a “study break” in the woodsy area near the university hotel. We would pass Patrick’s brass pipe around a few times, crack a few jokes, and head back to my room where they would play my CDs, drink my sodas, and tease Molly in a good-natured, friendly sort of way, while she let them play games on her PC.

             
I pulled up a seat at their table, and sat down.

             
“Hey,” I said heavily as I parked myself in the white metal chair. John had never ignored me like that, and I didn’t like it.

             
“Hey Greer,” Topher said, straightening up. Patrick asked if he could get me an ice cream.

             
“A Diet Coke would be great,” I said.

             
“That’s it? On a day like this?” He looked at me hopefully. “My treat.”

             
“No, thanks though,” I smiled at him. He was a nice guy.

             
“Where’s John?” Topher asked.

             
“In the arcade, hunched over a pinball game,” I replied. “I seriously think he is allergic to the sun.”

             
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he laughed.

             
“Where’s Stephanie?”

             
He shrugged, and played with the empty straw wrapper on the table. Patrick returned with my soda, and sat down with us.

             
“Where’s John?” he asked. I rolled my eyes and pointed to the arcade.

             
The funny thing about Topher and Patrick was how badly they wanted to be let into John’s world. They wanted to be part of “The Guys.” But John did not normally mix those two groups of friends. I, of course, was the exception. I knew it was part of the reason they hung out with me so often, but I didn’t really care. It was nice to have something of a life when John wasn’t around, and I was getting worse and worse at connecting with other girls. Or were we women? I wasn’t really sure.

             
I was halfway done with my Diet Coke when John joined us at the table. He dragged a metal chair over, swung it around, and sat in it backwards. He planted a perfunctory kiss on my cheek.

             
“What are we talking about?” He took a sip of my soda and made a face. “Diet,” he muttered.

             
At that moment, a girl (or was it woman?) named Lauren approached the table. I sat back firmly in my chair and clenched my teeth. Lauren was a friend of the guys who lived in the double room next door to John. Every boy I knew, John included, got a goofy smile and an urge to be chivalrous when she was around. She was tall, thin, and had curly copper-red hair that hung in perfectly formed ringlets down her back. It wasn’t just that she was pretty that I didn’t like her, I just didn’t understand girls like her. I worked hard at my image, knowing which lipstick shade was hot for that season, or what length dress was a must have. Lauren looked like she rolled out of bed looking like an Irish princess. Soft, feminine, and immensely fuckable. I saw it, even as naive as I was. She was a part-time model as she attended school, and as we all learned on this particular afternoon, full-time crazy.

             
“Hi guys,” she said in her sweet little voice that belied her stature. “Hi, John.” I hated how she singled him out.

             
“Hi Lauren,” John replied, smiling and suddenly social. I glared at him. He smiled smartly back at me.

             
“Hi Lauren,” Topher and Patrick chirped in unison, a beat behind my boyfriend. I smiled a tight-lipped smile, and did not remove my sunglasses.

             
I hated this feeling of never being able to relax. Always on the lookout for the person who would tug on the string that would unravel my whole relationship. Would she be a redhead, like this freak of nature, so perfectly curved and angled, standing in front of me? Or would she be some ghastly creature from the shadows, like his previous girlfriend, poised to steal him away with the musky allure of being able to come at the drop of a hat? I started arranging girls we encountered by their threat level. Lauren was Code Red.

             
John, seeing that no other chair was available, jumped up, turned his seat back around, and motioned to Lauren with a large swoop of his arm that the chair was for her. Topher and Patrick actually started cleaning up the littered table, those traitors. They were supposed to be my puppies.

             
Lauren sat down. John stood slightly behind me, slightly behind her, a hand on each of our chairs.

             
“I’m sorry,” she said to me. “I’ve forgotten your name.”

             
Now, maybe it was the sour mood I was in, but I took that comment as a direct challenge. She remembered John’s name, didn’t she?

             
“Greer,” I said, finally.

             
“That’s right! I should have remembered a name like that,” she laughed. The guys laughed with her. I looked up at John and rolled my eyes. He wasn’t even looking at me.

             
“I love your hair,” she continued to me. “Short hair always looks so cool on warm days like these.” She absently touched the cascading curls spilling down her back. The boys swooned as the curls shimmied back into place. “Mine gets so hot on my neck.”

             
“You should cut it,” I said bluntly.

             
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, again fingering the red curls. “I wouldn’t have the nerve.”

             
“It’s just hair. It’ll grow back,” I smiled, warmly now, and leaned into the table. “And with your cheek bones and blue eyes, I bet it would look really good short.”

             
“You think so?”

             
“Absolutely. I bet you’d get more modeling jobs.” And with a just small flinch and lick of her lips, I could see that I had found her currency. I continued.

“Did you see all the models from the Jean Paul Gaultier show in Vogue? They all looked like Sinead O’Connor.”

“I don’t think you should cut it,” Patrick finally stood up for the guy’s point of view.

“Don’t listen to him,” I said quickly. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Look at his shoes, for Christ’s sake.” I laughed. “Go see Sonya, at Bellagio’s in the mall. She’ll do a great job.”

I turned my attention back to John. Both he and Topher seemed to be studying me. “It’s time for your biology class,” I said, looking at my watch. He finally met my eyes. “Do you want me to walk with you?”

“No, I can find it on my own,” he replied curtly, slinging his pack over his left shoulder. He said good-bye to the group, and walked off, leaving me at the table, dumbstruck that he could be so cold.

***

Later that night, while I was sitting on my bed trying to come up with some way to write five pages about feminism and Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
, John burst into my room, unannounced.

“You think you’re pretty fucking clever, don’t you?” he demanded, putting me on the defensive. We hadn’t had a fight since the mall at Christmas. I suppose tension had been building.

“What on earth are you talking about?” I demanded back, standing up on the bed so that he could not look down on me. My bare feet wobbled on the cushy softness of the many mattress pads layered beneath the sheets. My short denim skirt was stuck in its crinkled, sitting position, showing off my legs up to the top of my thighs.

“Lauren shaved her head.”

“What?” I had to hold back a fit of nervous laughter. “She actually did it? Is she crazy? Her hair was gorgeous!”

“Not anymore,” he answered.

I covered my mouth with my hands to keep from giggling. I was shocked, but amused that my careless words had carried weight with the would-be boyfriend stealer. John glared at me, and I remembered that we were fighting.

“Wait a minute,” I said, my own anger from the afternoon still bubbling just below the surface. “What the hell do you care what she does with her hair? Maybe if you were a little more subtle in making moony eyes at...,”

“What are you gonna do?” he interrupted, pacing the length of the room in long strides. “Convince every girl who talks to me to shave her head?”

“Just the pretty ones,” I replied dryly. He shot me a quick look. “What? You are allowed to hover over any guy who looks at me, but I can’t react when some chippie starts singling you out of a crowd?”

“That has nothing to do with it,” he said, obviously frustrated. Obviously guilty as charged.

It was still quite warm outside, and his face was flushed from his angry walk to The Pit. His hair clung in damp, loose curls to his head. Since I was his girlfriend, his floormates had come down hard on him when they heard the story from Topher and Patrick. Apparently, Lauren’s bald head was causing quite a crisis of faith over on Holt, second-long.

“You still haven’t answered me,” I said to him, still standing on the bed. He stopped, mid-stride by the door, and looked at me.

“What the hell do you care what she does with her hair? Why are you so concerned about her, that you would march over here and start bitching at me like some psycho?”

“I’m not bitching at you,” he growled. “The guys next door are pissed at you. Lauren’s their friend, and apparently she has some meeting this weekend in New York with a modeling agency.”

“And so they think I’ve ruined her?”

“She shaved her head, Greer, to look like a
Vogue
model. And you told her to do it.”

“Like you, or any of the other guys now in mourning over at Holt actually care about her career. Give me a fucking break. You think I’m goddamn stupid? They’re pissed at me for taking away their shower masturbation material, and that’s about all.” He had never seen me like this. He actually shut up, and acquiesced the argument to me. He sat on the bed, next to my feet.

“Wow,” he said. “Is Greer Bennett actually starting to thaw? You better be careful, Sweetness, because your emotions are showing.”

“Fuck you,” I said quietly, giving his shoulder a shove with my right foot. He grabbed my ankle, causing me to buckle and land on my knees next to him. I gathered my composure, got off the bed, and sat down in my desk chair. I stretched my legs out on the bed, knowing from that angle, he could just barely look up my skirt.

“I made you pretty mad,” I said quietly. My mind was racing to figure out a way to turn his anger around. I could not let him leave my room angry. It was too close to summer, when I would have to rely on phone conversations and promises. If there was tension, I had to break it now.

“You did,” he stated, his face softening, though he did not smile.

“So I guess now, I have to make you un-angry,” I said, getting out of my chair and walking back to where he was sitting.

“Un-angry?” he asked, a small grin escaping his lips. “That’s not a word.”

“If Shakespeare could make up words to suit his needs, so can I,” I replied smartly, straddling him on the bed. My skirt found a comfortable resting spot around my hips, and I began unbuttoning his shirt. I had never been this aggressive with him, and I could tell he was enjoying it.

“Where’s your roommate?”
he asked, his hands sliding up my bare legs.

“Don’t know,” I said, kissing him. “Don’t care.”

“I’m all sweaty,” he said, kissing me back. His shirt still clung to his skin in a damp circle on his back.

“Do you want me?” I asked, stealing a glance at the clock. I knew Molly had planned an all-nighter at the library. With finals approaching,
The Pit was quiet. If I was going to change things up, and rekindle his interest in me, I was going to have to be dramatic. I was going to have to do something new. I was going to have to step outside my comfort zone, and give up a little bit of control.

“I always want you,” he whispered hoarsely.

I stood up, grabbed a couple of clean towels, and led him silently down the hall. In the bathroom, I moved directly to the showers, and started the water. My heart was beating and my mind racing as I pulled the curtain around us, stripped, and stepped into the water. He did the same.