‘Playing with my hand. Doing it again. This shouldn’t be. Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it. Evan evan evan evan. This should be Evan. Not Alec. No, no, no.’
Marissa’s conversation with her boyfriend barely registers in my mind. Lauren is talking to her boyfriend as well, but that doesn’t matter either.
‘Wonder what Marissa thinks of this. Seeing this. Again. I know she won’t be happy. Wonder what Lauren will say to me. She always likes to tease me when something like this happens. God, I wish he’d stop.’
“Call Evan.” Marissa’s talking to me.
“No. Phones are bad. And he’s not even home.” The words spill from my mouth effortlessly. For the Nth time tonight. Allison has been trying to get me to call him too.
Alec’s still playing with my hand. I keep thinking about that Saturday night, a month and a half ago. About the conversation Kerry and I had. “He likes you. You hurt him. Marissa hurt him when their relationship ended, he thought he could start a new one with you, you rejected him, and you hurt him.” ‘But why didn’t he just ask? That’s all he had to do…’
Later.
Marissa. Complaining about what a bad boyfriend Evan is. About what a bad relationship Evan and I have. I would later describe Evan with these words:
“In my mind, he’s perfect. We’ve got absolutely everything a good relationship should have: communication, trust, respect, love… Except, we don’t actually see each other that often. This allows for boys such as Alec to make attempts at interception. But right now, I truly believe I love Evan. We’ve been going out for about a year. We started going out last April, but we broke up for about four months this winter. For some reason or other, he decided he still loved me. I’m still trying to figure out why he wanted to go out with me in the first place. He’s very sweet, playful, and funny. But my friends don’t really like him.”
“Why dont they like him?”
“Because in their eyes, he’s immature, not too intelligent, a druggie, annoying, and (apparently…) looks like some sort of small rodent. Actually, that comes from just my very best friend, Marissa. But she hasn’t talked to him in quite some time, and he’s changed A LOT since then.”
“Wow…you two sound perfect for each other.”
“Yeah, I think we are. We’re similar enough to say we have stuff in common, but we’re dissimilar enough to say ‘opposites attract’, and get that benefit of, ‘where one lacks, the other provides.'”
Marissa says he’s an asshole because he didn’t attend the event. I later discovered I neglected to tell Evan when it was. My fault. His fault for not asking, I guess, but still my fault.
Later.
“So. This.” Me again.
“So. This.” Alec.
“What about this?”
“What about this?”
“‘Tis not nice to answer a question with a question.”
Small talk.
“I really did want an answer to that question.”
“That was not a question.”
“What about this?”
“What about it?”
Long pause. He’s staring into my eyes.
“You know this could never work between us.”
A disappointed look tries to capture his face. In the battle of the century between Alec’s emotions and Alec’s logic, his emotions capture part of his face before his defense mechanism can gain control.
I must save this. “Not necessarily because of you and I” ‘should be “you and me”‘ “but because of outside forces.”
Pause. More pause.
Alec. “It’s your decision.”
‘Great. Leave it to me to lead you on. Well, you’re leading yourself on. You know we can’t do this. Evan, Evan, Evan.’
Alec again. “I have to leave.”
Long hug. Don’t want to let him go.
‘MARISSA!’ She’s walking toward me.
I let go of Alec like he’s a deadly plague. “Rissa…”
“Rissa.”
Later.
Let go of defense mechanism. Become weak. Cry on Marissa’s shoulder. Have never let her see me cry before. Never want to do it again.
Evan calls. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“When was that football thing tonight? You never told me. I would have gone with you. I wanted to go with you.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you knew what time it was.”
“No, I never know those things. Is there something next week?”
Glance to Rissa. “Hey, is there a game next week?”
Rissa. “Yeah.”
To Evan. “Yeah, there’s a game.”
“Okay. I’ll come to that with you.”
Love that boy. He’s so wonderful.