The sound of Whit’s seatbelt fastening fills up t
he confined space and I sigh, planting my forehead on the top of the steering wheel. “What if he’s there, Whit? What if Drake is there? Did you even add that into the equation?” I turn my head to the side and peek up at Whit, but she isn’t looking at me. She’s staring, eyes wide, out the windshield. “Whit, what is it?”
“Bobby Coulsen,” she mumbles, transfixed in a trance-like state.
“Bobby Coulsen?” I scrunch my eyebrows together, confused. “That was random. What about him?”
Whit nods at the windshield and drops her gaze, playing with her fingers.
I look out the windshield, and observe a guy and a girl. The guy is tan with spiked, chocolate brown hair and caramel colored eyes. He’s bulky, but not in a chubby way. He’s bulky from being packed with muscle. He smiles and pulls the blonde that he’s with close. They both laugh and before I know it, Whit is sobbing so hard that she’s gasping in between her cries. She lifts her head slowly, sucks back her tears and the look of pain that flashes in her eyes breaks me. “Whit,” I say softly and pull her close. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.”
The guy outside is Bobby Coulsen, a kid we’d gone to high school with. Well, he was more like a God at our high school. Every girl wanted him at one point during their high school career.
But Whit…
Whit had him. She’d dated Bobby Coulsen for six months our junior year and was envied by every girl in our entire school, me included.
She’d once said, “I don’t why he likes me.”
She might have not known, but I did. Not only was Whit beautiful with her long, strawberry blonde locks, flawless ivory skin, and child-like blue eyes, but she was fun, kind, and sweet. I’ll never forget the day Bobby Coulsen strolled up to our cafeteria table to talk to her. Whit was hardcore blushing (which is rare for her) and I almost choked on my turkey on wheat.
Sadly, ‘The Bobby and Whitney Show’ didn’t last too long.
And what was even worse was that he was her undoing. He’d cheated with some bitch on the cheerleading squad and Whit was devastated. She lost it after that. A lot of drunken benders. A lot of one night stands.
“Did you know?” she asks with a trembling voice.
“Did I know what?”
“Did you know that he vacations here?”
“No.” My eyes widen. “I’ve never seen him here before and I’ve been vacationing here practically my whole life.”
And that’s the truth. Honestly though, it doesn’t surprise me that we’d seen someone we know here. It’s only hours away from our home town and a lot of people come here randomly in the summer.
Whit and I are looking at each other and the sound of Bobby and the girl he’s with laughing echoes through the air and wafts toward us and Whit’s chest sinks and she starts sobbing again. In a flash, desperate to make the laughter disappear, I turn the car on and hit the power windows button. But the laughter doesn’t disappear. It presses on the glass and gets louder and louder and I think Whit might be sobbing harder purposely to drown it out.
For a while I just hold her. I let her cry on my shoulder and run fingers through her hair, trying to comfort her. Part of me thought that Whit was over Bobby. He’d dumped her the summer before our senior year and every time I’d ask her if she was okay, she’d huff and say, “Okay, I’m great. That tool did me a favor.”
Even though she said those things I knew that wasn’t true. She put up a good front, but I’d catch her staring at him all the time; in school, or at the mall, or at Friday night footballs games because he was the captain of the team.
She’d always check his Facebook status to see where he was or what he was doing. And sometimes, she’d purposely jog past his house in the mornings just to get glimpse of him, getting ready for school in his bedroom window.
You see Whit lost her virginity to Bobby, and it wasn’t long after he took that part of her that he cheated then dumped her for Jennifer Berger, the co-captain of the cheerleading squad. I’d kept a watchful eye on Whit during that time because every time she’d look at Bobby, I’d see the longing in her eyes. I’d see the pain in her eyes and I would have done anything to take it away.
Eventually, even though it took some time she returned to her normal self, but I’d still see her give Bobby those longing looks and apparently I thought she was over him and she really isn’t. “Don’t you see,” she sniffles and digs her fists into her eyes. “Don’t you see why I’ve been so insistent about the whole “Drake” thing?”
“What? Are you saying it’s because of Bobby?”
Whit slouches in her seat, blows out some air and places her head against the window. “I don’t want you to end up like me.” She stares at me intensely. “Look at me.”
“I am.”
“No I mean really look at me,” she raises her voice. “I’m a wreck! A stupid, pathetic blubbering mess over a guy who cheated on me and dumped me over a year ago!”
I shake my head. “You shouldn’t be blaming yourself.” I grab her hand and squeeze. “Nobody would have ever thought that Bobby would have turned out to be such a mega douche. He was very charming and deceiving.”
“That’s exactly my point!”