Undeclared (12 page)

My inability to sit still didn’t go unnoticed. Mike looked at me impatiently and moved away, as if I was adversely affecting his enjoyment. I clenched my hands in my lap and closed my eyes, which only made it worse, because now all I could hear were sounds of the rustling sheets, the fall of the cloth onto the floor, and the crescendo of sounds, both human and instrumental. The air felt thick and heavy around us, like I was breathing underwater. Each breath felt labored and sounded harsh to my own ears, and I wanted to stop altogether.

At the moment I thought I would explode out of my seat and flee the theater, I felt a large, warm hand cover mine. Noah’s touch was completely unexpected, and I froze. But instead of this causing me more anxiety, Noah’s hand soothed me. I unclenched my hands. The block in my throat dissolved, and I was able to take a few deep, calming breaths. Each muscle that had tensed up seemed to unknot and relax.

The movie went on, but I noticed little of it. Instead, I focused on the tendrils of warmth that curled outward from the hand in my lap like vines on wall. The hand never moved, not throughout the entire movie. I glanced to see if Mike had noticed, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me.

The heat, the dark, the sudden cessation of panic—it all made me drowsy. Noah shifted and I felt his shoulder close to my head like an invitation. I looked at him, but his eyes were focused straight ahead. It was like his arm was detached from his body. Perhaps it was mine now.

I rested my head tentatively against the shoulder that was in my space. No one moved. I stopped worrying about what Mike would think and allowed my eyes to drift closed and my thoughts to wander into nothingness.

The noise of dozens of spring-loaded seats being snapped back in place woke me up. I jerked upright. Noah’s hand was no longer in my lap. I straightened and tried to look like I hadn’t spent the last half of the movie sleeping and holding hands with him. Too late, though, as Mike was standing up and looking down at me with a puzzled expression.

At least he didn’t look angry that he’d found his“ date” asleep on the shoulder of another guy. I wiped the sides of my mouth as surreptitiously as possible and stood up. To Mike I said, “So do you want to go to the CoffeeHouse?”

Mike looked surprised, and I heard a choked-off noise behind me. I ignored both reactions and smiled as widely as I could. Having not practiced this in front of the mirror, though, it could have looked like the joker’s grimace.

“Sure.” Mike was either baffled by my behavior or intrigued. Either way, he was willing to place himself in my company for at least another hour.

“Great,” I heard from behind me. “I’d like a coffee.”

I turned then and looked at Noah. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I was deeply embarrassed by my actions tonight. I needed to make things right with Mike and then figure out what I was going to do with Noah.

I turned back to Mike and motioned for him to exit the theater. When he didn’t move right away, I pushed him slightly and his inertia dropped away.

I don’t know where Noah and Bo went, but when Mike and I exited the small theater, they weren’t behind us. We began the twenty-minute walk through the heart of the campus to get to the coffee house on the other side.

Summer was refusing to release its hold, and the night air was sultry instead of cool. Tall, wrought iron lampposts lit our way, interspersed with emergency call boxes.

“That’s probably the weirdest date I’ve ever been on,” Mike broke the silence as we wandered down the sidewalk bisecting the east and west sides of the campus. “Did you ask me out to make that other guy jealous?”

“No!” I exclaimed and then confessed, “I might have said I thought you were cute, and he thought he was trying to help me out.”

“So what was with the hand-holding and snuggling during the movie?”

Had I really been snuggling? “I was having a panic attack, and Noah must have known it. He was just trying to calm me down. I wasn’t snuggling. Honest.”

Mike shrugged. “I didn’t think you were interested, so you kind of surprised me.”

It was now or never. I placed a hand on Mike’s arm and stopped him. “The situation kind of got out of hand. Noah and I go way back. But I do think you are missing out on someone. Just not me.”

“No?” Mike looked adorably confused now.

He hadn’t been whipping his hair out of his face for at least ten minutes, which seemed like a new record. When he wasn’t in a group, he wasn’t insufferably trying to make himself seem more attractive by hitting on every female in a twenty-foot radius. Maybe Sarah spent a lot of time alone with Mike and this was the guy she was attracted to.

“Why aren’t you dating anyone, Mike?”

This question clearly caught him off guard, because he stammered before he defensively replied, “I’ve had hookups.”

Ugh, classic Mike response. “So are you only interested in hookups?” I needed to feel him out without throwing Sarah under the bus.

“No,” he replied slowly and then swung his hair out of his eyes. “I asked a girl out a few times in my first year, but it didn’t go anywhere. Hookups are easier, you know. Less pressure.”

I did know. My few college experiences had been drunken make-out sessions with guys equally drunk, but I didn’t think anyone truly enjoyed those experiences.

“What about Sarah?” I offered up in what I hoped was nonchalance.

“Who do you think I asked out in my first year?” He laughed but it wasn’t a funny sound.

“Really?” I was completely surprised by this. Sarah looked at him so longingly but maybe it was with regret, not unrequited love?

“Wait.” Mike caught my arm. “This isn’t a bad idea.”

“What isn’t?” I hadn’t proposed anything yet so I wasn’t sure what idea he was talking about.

“We can pretend to be interested in each other, and can make Noah and Sarah jealous at the same time,” Mike sounded enthused by this.

“That never actually works out in real life,” I pointed out.

“It was just an idea,” Mike muttered. We walked a little farther and then he asked, “So what’s the story with you and Noah?”

“I haven’t had nearly enough to drink to divulge that. How about you and Sarah?”

“She seems to only like me when other girls are into me. If I’m not dating or hooking up with someone, she has zero interest,” he said, bummed.

“Sounds like a mess.” Was I really thinking I could play Cupid or something? That wasn’t in my skill set. This night was officially a disaster. I’d fallen asleep on Noah’s shoulder, possibly drooled, and now made Mike go from enthused to sad in five seconds. I was the opposite of Cupid. Instead of shooting love arrows, I shot depression arrows.

“I thought she might have put you up to this,” Mike confessed, sounding almost hopeful.

“I wished she had,” I replied sullenly, “but instead she gave me the evil eye, so you might want to go to the library tomorrow and strike while the jealousy-iron is hot.”

“See, we should carry this on for a while. It’d be good for both of us.”

Mike was trying to be encouraging, but I had seen the light. “I have enough dysfunction in my life,” I told him.

We were closing in on the CoffeeHouse, but I wasn’t in the mood to go there anymore. I wasn’t going to orchestrate any big love connection between Mike and Sarah. I wanted to go home. “Do you mind if bail on you?”

“Nah, I might as well go home anyway.” We changed course and Mike walked me to my front door, just two blocks away from the CoffeeHouse. He gave me a big hug. “Thanks for the effort tonight, Sullivan.”

After saying goodnight, I slipped inside. It was early yet and the apartment seemed huge and empty. Lana was at her sorority house and might not be back anytime soon. I pulled out my laptop and crawled into bed. Only nineteen and I was already staying home, alone, on a Saturday night. I might as well start my cat collection.

Noah

I’m not sure how being around Grace managed to fuck up my decision-making process so much. I felt like I was pushing the shoot button on my Xbox controller every time I wanted to jump, resulting in stupid, self-inflicted casualties.

Bo had to physically restrain me from following Grace out of the theater. I fought back the urge to tackle her, throw her over my shoulder, and escape through the back exit. I’d take her to my truck and we’d drive to San Diego. Or maybe South Carolina. There had to be someplace within the 8,000 acres of Marine property on Parris Island where I could stash her.

“I think you’re supposed to take your girlfriend to an erotic film, not your best male friend,” Bo commented. “Unless you’re trying to tell me something, in which case I have to tell you that I’m flattered, but I play for the other team.”

My only response was to bare my teeth at him. I thrummed my fingers on my jeans while staring after the empty space left by Grace and her“ friend” Mike.

“You don’t really think she’s interested in him, do you?” I turned to Bo.

“Nah. Chick doesn’t hold your hand during the entire movie while being into the other guy,” Bo assured me.

“But she left with him.” Self-doubt was creeping in. Success had no room for self-doubt. I checked myself. Was I starting to sound like a creepy motivational poster?

“I’m thinking you got hit too many times in the head last night,” Bo said, gently knocking me in the back of the head and pushing me forward at the same time. “This is Grace. She sent you a care package every month for four years.”

That was the mantra I had held onto since getting out. After reading
The Odyssey
, I had convinced myself that Grace was Penelope and would wait for me until I had finished my battles and returned home victorious. Why else would she send me that book?

“It’s early yet. Let’s go down to Mick’s,” Bo suggested. Mick’s was a seedy bar on the South Side that was frequented by angry townies. It was a good place to get drunk and get in a fight, something Bo enjoyed doing on an all-too-regular basis.

The transition from Marine to civilian hadn’t been easy for either of us, but Bo seemed to particularly miss the adrenaline rush of always being in danger. While going to a bar populated by guys hopped up on steroids and nursing a hard-on for Central college kids wasn’t exactly the same as being on patrol, it was something.

“You should go put on a polo shirt,” I told him, nodding my acceptance of his offer. The T-shirts we had on weren’t quite the right look to incite the type of antagonism that would rid us both of pent-up frustration.

“Nah, we’ll just hit on one of the girls there, and that should be enough.”

Bo was right. Three beers and five numbers later, we were thrown out of the bar for breaking a bar stool and roughing up some town toughs.

“I shouldn’t have let the last guy land that blow to my face.” I looked in the truck’s rear view mirror. My lip had been cut by a punch to the mouth. No mouth guard meant my inner lip was lacerated too.

“No kissing for you tomorrow,” Bo said, checking out the bruise that was forming under his right eye.

“I’ll tell her that I had to fend off your advances after the movie.”

“You wish.” He turned and grinned at me.

It wasn’t the way that I wanted the night to end, but it was better than sitting in my truck all night behind Grace’s apartment.

Bo blew a kiss to the bartender as we peeled away.

Chapter Seven

Dear Grace,

I didn’t realize it was the anniversary of your father’s death. That had to be hard. My mom died when I was born. I have no memories of her. I guess she was a saint because my father is a jackass. Only a saint could ever spend time with him willingly.

You have to wonder what shitty thing I did in a past life to have my mother die while that mean-ass son of bitch lives. The good really do die young. You certainly see it here all the time. The most rancid, lazy, selfish motherfuckers live through it all, while the guys who care most about their unit step on an IED and die. Sorry for cursing.

We’re always told that when they die, they go to a better place. I hope so for all our sakes.

Yours,

Noah

Grace

Every Sunday I worked a six-hour shift at the library. The library was situated in the middle of campus and was one of the more stately buildings, with its wide-tiered steps framed by large, two-story pillars. Its brick facade looked like it had been standing there for at least a century.

Every student at Central had to work 10 hours a week somewhere on campus. Nearly all the student jobs allowed you to read or study, so I wasn’t sure if this system was designed to create a more egalitarian environment or just force us to study.

During the first hour of my shift, I kept worrying that Noah would show up. I hadn’t called like I had promised because I hadn’t come to any conclusion on what to do. Noah wanted something with me and I wasn’t so stupid to know it was just friendship, but I hadn’t dated anyone before. My feelings for Noah were too strong for a casual relationship, and I had scared him away once before.

Finally too antsy to sit, and hating myself for keeping one eye on the entrance, I asked permission to shelve the returned books. I hadn’t even unpacked my camera tonight. My confusion over Noah was becoming all-consuming, and I liked that least of all.