I didn't know why Tiffany caring for her brother made me so upset. She was in an awkward position, but the girl code trumped the genetic one, didn't it? Maybe it was because it made me jealous that she and I weren't in the same position. She could speak so confidently about Roman, all this great stuff that she knew he would never do. I used to be in that place, too, and I didn't know when I would ever be able to go back.
We headed out to lunch. Tiff wanted Italian, and I could already feel that big plate of pasta sitting in my stomach like a rock. The applesauce snack had taken the edge off my hunger, but now my gut felt like it was burning. I felt anxious and a little sick. I was grateful that I had Tiffany who was always ready to talk, but I wasn't that happy about what we tended to talk about most of the time, especially lately.
Was this making Roman as nervous? What was I thinking, of course not. It was just like last time. It was still his life that was taking him away from me somehow, and it was still just me who had to find a way to deal. He was, once again, the one who would make the decision about what would happen whether he talked to me about it first or not.
"Didn't you have Beckett for Western Civilization?" Tiffany asked me from across the table. She was slicing her fork through an unctuous, cheesy slice of lasagna. I had thought about getting the same, but I didn't get away with food like that the same way she could. It was a lot more of a balancing act for me. I'd have to move up a dress size if I ate the way she did for a week.
"Yeah. Why?" I asked, eating a soft, drenched crouton. Soup was all I could imagine stomaching with the way I had been feeling since leaving Tiff's place.
"He was the one you said you got weird vibes from?" she continued. I froze with my spoon halfway to my mouth.
"What did he do?"
"It's just these comments he makes sometimes," she said lightly. "He's a good teacher, and he doesn't seem like the predatory type, but I don't know how he gets away with being that flirty with his female students."
I laughed a little. College wasn't high school; everyone there was an adult, students and faculty. Sometimes wires crossed. Professor Beckett was in at least his fifties and looked like he had lived every minute of those fifty plus years. He wore a wedding ring, so there was that; with the tweed jackets and thick glasses he wore, too, he came off goofier than anything else. He’d make the comments so flippantly, like this one time I had been in an admittedly lower cut top than usual and when he had greeted me when I came into the classroom, he asked whether all that was for him.
"Has
he said anything to you?"
"He pointed out how nice it was to see my beautiful smile this beautiful morning when I went to his office today," she said. That didn't sound that bad, if maybe he was her dad and she was eight years old instead of twenty-one. He was so geeky, maybe that was why he hadn’t gotten hit with any sexual harassment complaints.
She asked me for tips on how I reviewed the course content when I took his class. For me, it had helped to study with a friend. Since we had had the class together, that friend at the time had happened to be Roman. He was so good at popping up right when I least wanted him to.
Not bringing him up was a challenge, but I didn't want him to be the subject of all the conversations the two of us had together. I never even used to think about him as often as this when we were together. It was embarrassing. Tiffany was asking me whether I had any of my old notes from that class, and I was wondering what would happen if Roman did so well at the combine that someone recruited him into a team.
He was a good player, I had watched him. He was the reason I knew anything at all about football – enough to know it wasn't a secret that he was on his way to the pros before his football career was interrupted by his deployment.
Because there was part of me that had never stopped loving him or being his friend, I wanted that for him, so much – but what would it mean for us? I could support his ambition. I remembered that being one of the things that I admired most about him, it still was, but how the hell was I supposed to support something that would take him away from me again?
Did he know he was doing two opposite things at the same time? Why was he trying to be with me and get into a team that would force him to leave me all at once? Did he even realize that was what he was doing? If he did, what was his next move? He had said yesterday that he wanted to talk about it, but now I didn't know I really wanted to hear it.
Tiffany and I split up after lunch, and I went straight home after running a couple errands. All my thoughts had been bringing me back to the same conclusion: don't do it again. Don't let him do it to you again. Stop it because it's going to happen again.
I typed a text message, meaning to send it to him before I deleted it. He deserved more than a text, I'd give him that. What kind of bitch blows someone off with a text? I didn't even want to reschedule, I just wanted to cancel. I tried again, scrolling down to his name in my contact list. I had the slight hope that he wasn't using the same number anymore, but it quickly faded when I remembered just how much I needed to talk to him.
I laughed a little to myself, realizing this was the first time that I was calling his number after a year. It sucked that the first time I was calling was to cancel on him. This time, it was me, not him. If he was another guy, I wouldn't care that he was a soldier and could disappear at any second, or that he was going to the combine where it was very likely that he would get picked up by a team based somewhere that wasn't here.
This was Roman, though. I’d had elaborate fantasies of a life that we could have together. I hadn't just loved him, I had loved our relationship, too. I had loved that the two of us knew each other so well and how solid I thought the two of us were as a couple. Honestly, I loved how much other people seemed to admire our partnership, too. I had felt so secure in what the two of us had and then he had just dropped me one day with no warning.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...and I deserve it that time. I didn't deserve it the first time, and I didn't now. I didn't want to be in a position where I gave him that power again. I used to love that I could be so vulnerable with him, but things were different now. I couldn't count on him for support. When he was gone again, guess who would be alone? Who wouldn't have any help picking up the pieces again and who would be the one thinking back, wondering why she didn't protect her neck?
"Hello?" I said when he picked up.
"Babe, hey. I was just thinking about you."
It slipped off his tongue so easily. He always called me that, but right then it disarmed me a little. Our date and the night we spent together had been so easy and natural until the doubt had crept in and I started to feel guarded again. We were talking now. He was being honest with me about what he wanted and that I was one of those things.
"No, you weren't," I said to him.
"I swear," he said back. "What's up?"
"It's about dinner," I said.
"What about it?" he asked. I took a deep breath. I should have prepared better to talk about this. I didn't want to get emotional. I wanted to say what I had to say without crying. Taking control of what happened between us should have made me feel better, but it wasn't. I didn't want to stop seeing him again, but the risk wasn't worth going through a repeat of last year's summer when he dumped me. I wanted to think the right thing, but I didn't know that it was. All I did know was it was what I had to do – right or not.
"I can't make it tomorrow night."