Socially Awkward (14 page)

“In the way of what?” I tried not to laugh too hard. Did she think I had a secret nightlife I’d never mentioned before
?
“I offered to let you stay here, remember? Tomorrow, I’ll go get some more of your stuff and move it over here. But tonight, just eat your dinner like a good girl, okay?”

She nodded, silently, and picked up her fork. “Is this t
ofu, Jen? It is!
Will wonders never cease?”

So my sister had now become my roommate,
during
the very
week
that I’d lied about
having
a roommate
who
didn’t exist… but had a Facebook
profile. I don’t know
what
was
happening in my head to
convinc
e me
it
was a good idea at the time, but there I was. Living a lie.

“So
aside from the obvious male detour,
how is th
e rest of the
project going, Jen
? What
have
your findings
been so far
?” I knew she wasn’t trying to mock me, but the way Claire talked about my research sometimes made me seem a little ridiculous. Like I was goofing around in the backyard with a bottle of Diet Coke and some Mentos.

“Pretty mu
ch what I expected,” I shrugged
, content to keep things as abbreviated as possible on the topic, just in case she started getting any ideas about certain individuals I might h
ave run into on Boston Common that
day. It was bad enough that I was judging myself; I didn’t need Claire jumping on board as well. “Guys like the hot chick, normal girls like the normal-looking girl.”

“I enjoy that you classify yourself as ‘normal-looking.’ “

“Am I weird-looking?”

“No, of course not. It was just a funny thing to say.”

“
Yeah… h
ilarious,” I rolled my eyes at her. “Anyway, the only thing that amazes me about this experience so far is how incredibly shallow guys can be. You wouldn’t believe how many of them just send me message a
fter
message because they think I have big boobs and an easy button on the middle of my forehead.”

“I’m pretty sure
if there was a
big, red
button
in the middle of your forehead
, you wouldn’t be getting any dates.”

“Yeah, but an easy button, Claire? That’s gold to these guys.”

She sighed deeply and settled into the cushions of my couch.  For a few moments, we just
sat together and
ate in silence like we used to when we were kids. Back then, I would wait for her to talk first, always taking the lead from my older sister.
Today, I decided to be brave and shift us to uncertain territory.

“How
are
things with Tom?
Any better?
” I’d seen the way they left and drawn my own conclusions, but I was eager to
learn
her feelings were on the matter.
Besides, what happened during and after that trip to the hospital anyway?

“Well, it’s hard to
say. We were a little distracted
by the potentially broken joint, you know.”

“No reason to be snippy,” I pointed a fork at her, then ate the tofu square off of it.
This stuff was definitely an acquired t
a
st
e
, which I had just barely begun to acquire.
If only I could fry it in butter or something…
“I am merely curious about whether you two had a chance to talk or to, ahem,
talk
things out at all. I mean, he
carried
you to the car like you were a little girl. It was freaking adorable.”

“And kind of sexy,” she grinned, blushing.

“Noah said he usually just calls the ambulance
when stuff
like that happens
. But you got first class escort service, Claire. That’s got to mean something, doesn’t it?”

“I guess…” Claire thought for a minute, chewing slowly. “Did Noah really say that?”

I nodded, staring at her. I watched her processing the information, each emotion passing slowly
behind her eyes
. She really did care about
Tom
—
although
Lord knows what she saw in him—but I could see it all over her
face
. Tom was more than just another guy, another plaything to Claire.  She’d been beating men away with a stick
since
long before Olivia had been deleting online messages from them and yet, Tom had done something right to capture her
jaded
heart.

Whether or not Tom wanted to capture it remained to be seen. I had my thoughts on the subject, but it wasn’t my place to share them with Claire. Not now; not given how little I knew about him, or how little I’d observed the two of them together as anything more than trainer and patron.
And there hadn’t been even a peep from him in Olivia’s message box in weeks, so I prayed that was over and done with.

“I finally asked him to dinner… so I guess that’s something.” Claire said it to the open space in my living room, as though this were an afterthought to an ended conversation.  I jumped at this tidbit right away.

“That’s great! What did he say? Are you going out soon?
W
here?” Some people have told me that I have a tendency to be overly eager at times.

“He said he’d look at his schedule.” Her face fell as she said the words, again to the empty space in the living room. Depending on the guy, and his lifestyle in general, this could be a good or a bad statement. Time would tell with Tom.

But I swore to myself then that if he did anything to hurt my sister—anything at all—I’d rip his stupid muscles apart, one by one. With my bare hands. Because that’s what sisters are for
.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It didn’t take very long at all for Sean to take advantage of the open door I’d left him on Boston Common. By the following morning, there was a lengthy note sitting in Olivia’s message inbox and I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. I printed it out and brought it to class with me, hoping to have a little time to read through the three pages
during a boring lecture or two
.

It was
him pouring his heart out
, basically, and I was completely and utterly at a loss.

Dear Olivia -

It started off innocently and normally enough, but things went quickly downhill.

I ran into your roommate on Boston Common yesterday and it reminded me how
disappointed I was that you couldn’t stay very long at the party this weekend
. I was really
hoping to take some time to get reacquainted.

Anyway, I’ve been
enjoying having a pen pal of sorts on the internet and I’ve missed it in these past few days. I hope that you find this note when you’re back safe and sound from your modeling shoot. Would it be too forward of me to ask for pictures from some of your shoots?  I’d love to
see some of your work for myself, I bet they’re all gorgeous
.
They’d have to be if they’re of you!

O
f course,
if
you’d
prefer to
meet me somewhere in person
, that would be even better
.
You can b
ring your roommate along with you, if you like. She seems nice enough, so I wouldn’t mind having her around if that would make you more comfortable.

I just can’t stop thinking about you lately, and I don’t want to miss out on a chance to find a real connection with you. I understand you’re busy, so I am willing to wait for you and work around whatever you have going on. I just want the chance to talk.

Yours,

Sean

I slid the printout into my notebook and tapped my fingers thoughtlessly through the rest of Dr. Chase’s lecture. I had no idea what she was talking about. As my eyes wandered around the classroom, Lyla caught my attention. We’d been working as study partners all semester, and getting to know one another a little bit better, but we weren’t exactly friends. She mouthed something about getting a coffee together after class and I nodded. I guess it couldn’t hurt to talk to someone other than Claire for a change.

So we met up in the school’s coffee house, stretching out onto a pair of leather love seats positioned conveniently in front of the fireplace. I let myself unwind a little as I passed Sean’s message to Lyla and let her read. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see her reactions, which were no doubt animated at the very least.

“What the hell are you supposed to do with this bullshit?” She all but shrieked when she finished reading. “This is super sappy, Jen. I don’t even know what to make of it.”

“I think he’s got it pretty bad for a fictional character,” I shrugged. “I don’t even know how that happened. We’ve just been talking on Facebook, that’s all.”

“Yeah, but about what?” Lyla did little to hide the accusatory tone from her question.

“We’re not having chat sex or anything, for crying out loud. We just talk about stuff… I let him talk about his family, work, his goals, that kind of stuff. He just tells me—er, Olivia—things. And I answer him.”

“See, that’s your problem,” said Lyla, handing the page back to me. “Hot girls don’t let guys just talk and talk like that.”

“They don’t?”

She sighed deeply, cupping her hand around her forehead. “No offense, but for someone mastering in sociology, you’ve got no clue how basic social interactions work.”

Lyla
had a point. I could analyze entire cultures across oceans, centuries, and foreign languages. But when it came to how the real world operated, I was at a total loss.

“Yes, this is becoming more and more evident with every passing day,” I said dejectedly. “So how do I get myself out of this?”

“Well, if you’re determined to try to convince this guy that you’re a better catch than Olivia…” Her voice dropped off, leaving her opinions on the matter fairly evident. “And Claire won’t help you turn Olivia into a super bitch diva with a cold, cold heart, then I guess you just have one option.”

“Which is?” I leaned forward, nearly spilling my coffee down the front of my new shirt.

“Keep Olivia out of the way, friend him yourself, and fill the void that Olivia’s absence leaves
. And if worse comes to worse, you can
play
Olivia online as an evil demon whore
,” she finished matter-of-factly. Then her eyes darkened and she squinted at me. “But I think you should just forget about him altogether. What’s so special about this particular guy anyway?”

I hesitated for a moment, not sure how to answer. Had my friendship with Lyla evolved to a place where we could share heartbreak stories and secret past shames? Again, since I was so clueless about real social interaction, I couldn’t say for sure. I had to give her something, though, at the very least.

“When we were in school, I had the biggest crush on him. I used to take the same classes as him and sit way in the back, just waiting for that one magical day that he would turn around and notice me sitting there. I had this fantasy that he would get tired of the popular girls one day and find me waiting there. I’d been there all along—just a normal girl who would love him like no one else could. All I wanted was for him to notice me
.
I was obsessed
.”

“Well that’s not creepy at all…”

“It’s not when you’re thirteen. And remember, we didn’t have the internet yet, so my stalking stayed in the classroom. I knew almost nothing about him outside of the persona he had.”

“And you still don’t,” she said pointedly. I stared at her while she took a sip of coffee, nonplussed by my frustration. “I’m just saying…”

“But he was Sean O’Dwyer and he was handsome and smart and popular and athletic. He had all of these things, but no one who really loved him for who he was inside. I knew who he was, better than anyone else.”

“How?”

“I found his journal one day, underneath his desk in geometry class. He didn’t see it fall out of his bag, but I did, and I grabbed it on my way by. At first, I tried chasing him down the hallway to give it back to him. I thought it was finally my chance to talk to him… but he didn’t hear me. All day, I couldn’t get his attention and he didn’t even know the notebook was missing. So, I… I took it home.”

“And you read it?” Lyla nearly shouted, mocking me. “Jennifer Smith! That’s dishonest.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” I offered with a shrug. “But after I read it, cover
to cover, I couldn’t help but fall
in love with him. He was so sensitive and so honest in that journal. There were poems and drawings. And he talked a lot about being lonely and how people saw him for what he seemed, not what he was. I knew I was better than that, that I could see Sean for himself. To know that he wanted that from someone, it really moved me…”

“Oh my God, are you gonna cry?” Lyla sounded shocked, but offered me a travel pack of Kleenex from her handbag all the same. I waved them away, forcing a smile onto my face to fight off my sentimental tears.

“Anyway, I had to leave it in the front office in an envelope to get it back to him, because I just couldn’t get his attention. I don’t know if I was just too shy or he was just that ignorant, but we never spoke. Not for years,” I said, lost in thought. “Not until…”

“Until?” Lyla was hanging on my every word now, sitting on the edge of her seat. But I couldn’t go on, I couldn’t finish the story. Not in a coffee house, not right now.

“Hey, I’ve really gotta get going,” I lied, checking the time on my cell phone. “I’m supposed to meet Claire.”

Lyla groaned loudly, collapsing back into the love seat’s plush cushions. “Come on!”

“Another time, I promise,” I said, zipping my messenger bag closed. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll see you next class, okay? We’ll do this again sometime.”

“Fine, fine,” she growled, waving me away. “But whatever he did to you, I hope it’s not so bad that chasing him makes you an idiot. If it is, I’m out, girl.”

Yeah, I thought,
you probably will be.
Especially when I told her who all that poetry was written about…

****

That night, I took Lyla’s advice and commenced a plan of playing double agent against Sean. On one end, I replied to his email as Olivia and told him I was
really swamped, out of town for at least a week, and with limited internet access.
Genius. He wouldn’t be expecting her to answer him back any time soon.

On the other end, I logged in as myself and sent a friend request along with a message:

Hi Sean,

Nice to see you on the Common
yesterday
. In case you forgot again—haha—this is Jennifer, Olivia’s roommate. We went to school together too, so I thought we could reconnect.

Jennifer

Short, sweet, and to the point. If he bit, great. If not, I’d learn how to live my life without pursuing Sean. Somehow.

It took another day to hear back from him, but I was filled with glee at the words of his response to my friend request note. Not only did he accept as my new friend, but he had some surprising things to say.

Hi Jennifer
–

Of course I remember you! Sorry about the other day—running into you out of context really threw me off. I’d love to reconnect and maybe even meet up sometime. With Olivia out of town, I’m sure you’re in need of some company—haha. Let me know if you want to get together.

Sean

I stared at the screen for a long, long time, unsure how to proceed.
This was unexpected. And really easy, way too easy. Either Sean really wanted to be friends with me now or he remembered me from our school days finally. Did he remember that journal? And the note that I left for him?

Dear Sean,

I understand how you feel completely.

You do have a friend who knows you for yourself.

Jennifer Smith

I’d had those words emblazoned into my head for years. I’d fretted over them for days before leaving the journal at the front desk and for days after. He never replied, never said anything. I always thought I’d embarrassed him when he realized I’d read his journal. For that, I was sorry. But the insight it had given me was incomparable and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

I wanted to go see him.
Even if I had to confess that I was a huge liar.

If he got to know the real me, would that change things for him? Would he forgive me meeting him under false pretenses if he knew I were a good person in my heart? I wasn’t trying to be deceitful, just trying to perform an experiment. Things escalated too quickly, before I knew what was happening. Surely, any normal human being would be able to understand how something like this could happen. But in order to get the truth to him and have him not walk out, Sean needed to get to know Jennifer first. And maybe fall for her the way I
had long ago fallen for him
.

If Sean finally
saw Olivia
wasn’t everything he thought she was, would it be enough? I could be there, ready to pick up the pieces of him and save the day. He’d learn that I was the one he’d
been interested in
all along, not some Photo Shopped picture that I was pretty sure was disproportionate.

Determined,
I answered him back right away:
Sounds great, Sean. When and where do you want to get together? - J