Beware of Love in Technicolor (33 page)

             
I knew it took thirteen minutes to get back to Cloud 9. I knew he did not have to work. I assumed he was going home. And so I had to wait. Thirteen minutes, plus an extra few just to be sure.

I was steaming mad. Red hot angry. How dare he? After everything he had said. After everything I had been doing. All for him. All for nothing.

“Oh, no,” I laughed wickedly to myself aloud as I paced back and forth in my little room. “He’s not doing this to me.”

The longer I waited, the angrier I got. I dressed, down to my boots, even though I had no plans to go anywhere. Finally, after twenty minutes had passed since he had sped out of the parking lot in front of Hadley, I called Cloud 9.

“Hello?” Jared’s voice answered.

“Hey, Jared,” I started, without any intention of making small talk. “Can I talk to John?”

“Uh, hold on,” he said. Even though he tried to block the mouthpiece, I could hear the muffled voices discussing the call. Finally, Jared came back.

“Uh, Greer, he’s not here,” he said, but I could hear the lie in his voice.

“I need to talk to John, Jared,” I returned impatiently.

“He’s not here,” he said again quietly. The background noise behind him had completely faded.

“I know he’s there,” I said firmly, surprised by my determination.

“I’ll tell him you called, Greer. When I see him.” And then he hung up..

Oh, the anger. The blind, spinning rage.

***

I needed to speak to him. He needed to see me, to face the consequences of his actions. How dare he weasel his way out of a breakup when it did not agree with him, and not give me the same respect when the tables were turned? How dare he make a decision like that on his own, and then walk out the door? I deserved more than that. I was going to get more than that.

Without thinking any kind of plan through, I grabbed my red winter coat and wallet, and walked out the door into the cold night outside.

I rounded the corner at the top of the hill behind Hadley, and out onto the road that led from campus to Cloud 9. It was probably just over five miles to John’s house, by bumpy, dark, and narrow back roads that wound over the hilly landscape. It was early March, the night was very crisp and very cold. I was glad when I found my gloves in the pockets of my coat, but thankful for the frigid air to calm the heat of my anger.

I must have walked about half a mile, maybe slightly more, before I started to realize just how long it was going to take to get me to John’s house. Behind me in the distance, I could make out the glare of approaching headlights on the treetops and telephone wires above my head. Still not thinking with anything resembling a stable brain, I quickly trotted across the street, and waited for the approaching vehicle. When its headlights hit my coat, I stuck out my thumb, and watched as the pickup truck came to a slow stop on the gravelly shoulder just in front of me.

“Where do you need to go?” the man at the wheel asked me as I opened the passenger side door.

“Rutland,” I told him. “Cloud Court.”

“Hop in,” he said.” I’m heading to Exeter. I can drop you on the way.”

I climbed into the front seat, and closed the door. He pulled the truck slowly back onto the road, as I kept one hand on the door handle at all times.

“What has you out on a cold night like this?” he asked me.

“I had a late study group,” I lied. “My ride thought I had already gone home, I guess. Nobody at my house has a working car right now, so I had no other way home tonight.” I was chatting away to fill the empty space between us.

We rode along, my heart beating like a bass drum.
What the hell am I doing?
I kept asking myself.
I’m going to be that girl on the news, aren’t I?   

But I was lucky, on that night and on that particular occasion, to be in the company of a good man, who was just on his way home to his wife and teenage daughter. A man who was taking a photography class at the university
, “just for the fun of it.” A man whose only intention was to get me where I needed to be, in the safety and warmth he was able to provide.

“You can drop me right at the top of the street,” I told him as he slowed the truck down at the approach of Cloud Court.

“Thank you so much,” I said with a relieved smile when I was standing safely with both feet on the ground. “I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,“
he said with a wink and an understanding look on his middle-aged face. “You get that car of yours fixed.” And he drove away.

***

So there I was. Standing in the driveway of Cloud 9, staring at the little silver car with the Jane’s Addiction sticker I had placed on the back window. His bedroom light was on.

At the back door, I knocked a couple of times, until somebody yelled to come in.

“Greer?” Jared questioned with surprise when he saw me standing just inside the living room. “What are you doing here?”

I had to smile a small, satisfied smirk when I gazed around the room. Not just Jared, but Wayne and Aaron were frozen in their spots, each one not knowing just how to react to the crazy girl with the wind blown hair standing in their living room. I felt a quick flash of relief that Ben was not there.

“Where’s John?” I asked, ignoring Jared’s question.

“Uh, downstairs,” he answered. The others nodded as back up.

“Thank you,” I quipped quickly, and made my way past them to my final destination.

At the bottom of the stairs, I knocked quietly on John’s door.

“Enter!” he called out, completely oblivious to what was about to come.

I stepped into his room and waited for him to look up from the sci-fi novel he was reading. I’m sure my face flushed from the cold, and my hair made me look certifiable.

He didn’t say anything at first. He just sat there, propped up against a mountain of pillows on the bed, hole in the big toe of his black sock. He cocked his head to the side, trying to piece together what was occurring in front of him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked slowly, rising to stand.

“Oh, don’t get up,” I said icily. “I just had a few things to say, and didn’t feel like waiting for you to come out of your hole. God knows when that will be.”

“How did you get here?”

“I hitched.”

“You did
what
?” he demanded quickly.

Aha. Emotion.

“I told you, I have a few things to say,” I said, ignoring his question.

“Well then, take off your coat and let’s have it,” he said. His face fell back into its expressionless demeanor, and he made a big show of sitting down at his desk in preparation for a big discussion.

“Oh, this won’t take long enough for that,” I volleyed back.

We met each other’s stare,
each of us challenging the other.

“How dare you jerk me around like this?” I started, scrambling in my mind to remember the illustrious speech I had prepared on the walking part of my journey here.

“Like what?” he asked coldly.

“Like we have no history. Like you don’t owe me anything better.”

“I didn’t realize we were keeping a tab. What exactly do I owe you?”

“Some fucking respect,” I spat out, shaken by his complete lack of emotion.

“I think I was pretty clear and to the point earlier. I think that shows respect.”

“That shows nothing. Two weeks ago, when it was me breaking up with you, you wouldn’t let me,” I started a new line of argument.

“You could have thrown me out. If you had really wanted to, you could have gotten rid of me. Don’t blame me for your decisions.”

“Well, I guess that’s the difference between us. I was willing to make an effort. You obviously weren’t.”

“I never said I was going to. Again, don’t blame me for your decisions.”

“You are a total asshole, you know that?” I was faltering, grabbing onto childish insults to try and pull something, anything, out of him other than the icy glare.

“Are we done here? Have you said what you needed to say? I’m an asshole. Got it. Is it all off your chest now?”

I realized at that moment, that very second in time and space, that we were done. It was over. We were breaking up. And looking at that shell of the once vibrant and interesting and endearing boy/man now sitting in front of me, I felt ready to say good-bye. This new person, this emotionally vacant zombie, was not somebody I had ever chosen to allow into my life. It had all just happened so gradually, I har
dly noticed I was holding onto love for a ghost of a person who had exited my life many months ago.

“Yeah,” I finally answered, biting my bottom lip and nodding my head slowly. “I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

My resignation actually got his attention, and I saw him flinch a small bit. But I paid no heed.

“Sorry to barge in like this,” I continued. I turned to leave. When I reached the door, I looked back at him. He was hunched over at his desk, head in his hands, eyes cast toward the floor.

Obviously, I hadn't really thought my plan through. I was terrified of hitchhiking again, scared that my luck may not be so good the next time I stuck out my thumb. The night already sucked enough without ending up in little pieces in a garbage bag on the side of some dark and vacant road. But I was far too stubborn to ask anyone in the house for a ride back to campus. I pulled on my gloves and resigned myself to a long, cold walk home on which to reflect on my life. It would be good for me, right?

It didn’t matter. John pulled his car up alongside me about fifteen minutes into my walk, and demanded that I at
least let him drive me home. Either that or he was going to trail me the entire way. I thought about my frozen little ears, and consented. The ride back to Hadley was silent, and sad.

***

The two weeks following the breakup are a bit hazy. I spent a lot of time in my room by myself, reading anything I could get my hands on just to keep my mind busy. In a strange turn of events, I actually went to all my classes instead of falling back into the pattern of skipping. I think I knew that I needed to stay connected to the world outside in some way, even if I didn’t speak to anyone. John was noticeably absent from our shared interpersonal communications class. Topher checked in on me regularly, but gave me the space I seemed to need. At the end of those two weeks was spring break. My family was staying put that year, though I would have welcomed a getaway on the beach somewhere. But a quiet week at home where I didn’t have to feel like a loser for not having anything to do on a Friday night was an escape, nonetheless. I thought it would help that Penny had the same week off as me. But it didn’t.

She and Tim were in one of those couple places where everything is lovey-dovey and magical and all that crap. Which I found surprising, because Tim was supposed to be in Florida with his buddies that week, had it not been for Penny’s demands that he not go. Funny what regular sex does to some guys.

              We went out to dinner once, the three of us, which was awkward and seemed to drag on forever at a depressing Applebee’s in Nashua. It was all I saw of her that week.

Chapter Twenty

              I arrived back at school the following Sunday, ready for the second half of second semester of my second year of college. I had a new attitude and a new hair color. I had made the decision one lonely, late night spent in the rec room of my parent’s house. I was tired of me. I wanted to shed my old self, and spring break seemed to be the perfect time to do so. I thought maybe being a redhead instead of a brunette would help lighten me up. It was a great, copper penny color, which really brought out my green eyes. I felt like a better, fresher, version of myself. But the real test would be the next few weeks, and I knew it.

             
I missed John, and still thought about him a lot. For three weeks I poured through all my memories, trying to find the point where things started to turn. I wondered what he was doing with himself and his new freedom that he had always wanted so badly. I wondered if we ever really had anything solid, or if it had all been in my head. I thought about the names we had picked out for our children, and the plans we had made for our first apartment in some fantastic city as soon as we were finished in New Hampshire.

             
But as the days went by, I found myself thinking about the scowl he constantly wore. About his breath after eating a cheeseburger loaded with onions, and his annoying video game habit. My brain started to balance the good memories with the bad, and it was becoming easier and easier to interact with the outside world without falling apart like some kind of mess.