In This Moment(45)
The emptiness inside my room Friday night is like a sucker punch straight to the gut. I’ve gotten accustomed to Cole showing up at the townhouse after practice with his cocky smile and his bag slung over his shoulder. The realization of how miserable and lonely my life was before he came into it makes me feel even more ridiculous. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I know that I’m already clinging to moments spent with him—struggling to keep ahold of something that I’m not even sure is mine to begin with.
Without Cole around, everything drags. Jodi wants me to go out with her and Kyle but the only thing worse than being me right now, is being me as a third wheel. I decide to stay home and organize my closet instead. It’s scintillating stuff.
By Saturday morning, I’m completely sick of myself. I’ve been reduced to refreshing the browser on my computer every three minutes so that I can track his Twitter feed. I’m becoming a real-to-life stalker.
Mara comes into my room at ten, takes one look at my face and the screen of my laptop and says, “Let’s go.”
I don’t even ask her where we’re going. I just find my sandals and step into them because there comes a point when all that matters is that you’re moving.
Cole
I protest, but only half-heartedly when the guys want me to go out with them Saturday night. The race is over and after two days of living inside my head, I need a way out.
“There’s this bar on University Avenue,” Brady tells us after he’s given the cab driver instructions to drop us off in Midtown. I’m in the backseat wedged in between Nate and Quentin. “It’s a complete shithole but the drinks are cheap and there will be girls.”
Girls. I don’t want to, but I automatically check my phone. I sent Aimee a text after my race this morning but she still hasn’t responded. A memory of my dad waiting on my mom years ago when she was supposed to meet us at the movies flickers in my brain and it’s the fucking slap over the head that I need. Here I’ve been consumed with the damn idea of Aimee Spencer for days and she can’t even bother to text me back. She doesn’t see me the way that I see her.
The bar is as shitty as Brady promised and by round three, Nate and Quentin are ready to give up and head back to the hotel. Not me. I’m half-lit at this point and there’s a girl. She’s been hovering around me all night and she’s got nice tits and a cute smile. When she asks me back to her place, I find myself following before I can think too hard about it.
Her name is Christine and she’s from New Hampshire. According to the pictures in her room, she’s a big fan of Nietzsche, and I can’t decide if I find that cool or pretentious. Christine has brown eyes and curly hair the color of wet sand. As she’s pulling off her shirt and her lacy black bra, I try to keep my gaze focused on her body so that my brain doesn’t keep pumping out images of long dark hair and blue eyes so wide and sad that I could swim inside of them.
The sex with Christine is fine but as soon as it’s over and I’m lying in her bed staring at a poster filled with Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, I feel a pain in my chest like I can’t breathe. Being with girls has always been my go-to, but now everything feels… wrong. Christine runs her hands over my abs and asks me to stay for the night. She’s hinting at round two, but I’m not into it. I know that I’m defeated in ten million ways but really, only one way that counts. So I tell her that we’re heading back early in the morning and I say it like this is something that I’ve just remembered.
Like a sitcom bimbo, Christine completely buys what I’m selling, which only makes things worse. She even drives me back to the hotel and asks me to wait while she punches her number into my phone and sends herself a text from me.
“So we’ll be able to stay in touch,” she says.
When she leans in to kiss me goodbye, I can tell that she’s still pretending that this might be going somewhere and I hate myself just a little bit more.
As I’m riding the elevator up to the hotel room that the four of us are sharing, my brain is sluggish with alcohol, but I’m clear enough to know that I need to delete Christine’s number from my contacts. I pull my phone out of my back pocket and thumb the display screen to life. That’s when I see the fucking missed texts from Aimee and my stomach falls about eleven floors.
Sorry. Mara and I went home for the day and I left my phone behind. I’m so proud of you!
And then, a second message sent two minutes after the first.
BTW, I’ve got one. The Two Owers. The epic story of two hobbits complaining about how their feet hurt the whole way to Mordor. Now you’re it.