"What you do is your business." She told me and I saw that a tear was now running from her left eye. "It's never been any of mine and I've never pretended that it was. You've been screwing everything with a vagina for the last two years and I've never tried to convince myself that you have any feelings for me. To you I'm just Nina."
"No Nina." I protested. "That's not true at all."
"It is." She said. "But do you know what? I've always had feelings for you. Ever since you first started talking to me in the lunchroom I've had strong feelings for you. Over the past two years they've never been returned but I've always had them and I've always hoped that some day…" She sniffed a little, more tears coming down now. "Time and time again I've started to feel like maybe there was some hope. Even though I've heard all of the stories about you, about how you'll screw anyone. Even though girls are always coming up to me and asking about you, trying to get me to introduce them to you, I still had some hope. I kept deluding myself, telling myself that you really were a nice guy. That you really weren't doing all of these things that I was hearing."
"I am a nice guy." I protested. "It's just…"
"Time and time again I would see what you were doing and try to tell myself I wasn't really seeing it. I would try to tell myself that someday…" She took a deep breath. "Anyway, when you told me that Julie and you were just going to ride together I felt, well, jealous, threatened at first. I know we're not going together or anything but still, I feel these things Bill. I can't help it. I've got these fucking feelings for you. But then I thought about it and decided I'd overreacted a little. I told myself that there was no way Bill would ever do anything with an engaged girl. I convinced myself that I'd let my feelings come out a little too much this time." She snorted in disgust. "I was afraid you'd be mad at me. So I came over here to tell you I was sorry about that.
"When I got here and saw Julie's car out front it suddenly came home to me. Everything that I'd always heard about you was true. All of the times I'd convinced myself that people were just talking about you, all of the times I saw with my own eyes what you were doing and convinced myself it was something else, all of that just fell apart when I saw her car. You really are an asshole Bill, and the worst kind. You're an asshole that can pretend not to be one."
"Nina," I said, "Let me explain…"
"There's nothing to explain." She said. "I've got to get away from you. I've got to stay away from you, do you understand? You're not good for me and you give me too many bad feelings. I just came up here to let you know that you're going to have to find another way to get to school." Tears were now running freely down her cheeks and her voice was breaking as she held off sobs.
"Nina, let's talk about this." I said.
"No." She cried, turning away from me. "Goodbye Bill." She started down the walk.
"Nina!" I yelled, starting after her.
"Leave me alone." She sobbed. "Just stay away from me here, now, and forever. Don't call me anymore, don't talk to me anymore. Please."
She continued down the walkway and turned left at the sidewalk, heading for home. Less than ten seconds later she was out of my sight. But she wasn't out of my mind.
Despite what she'd said to me I tried to call her several times that day. I needed to talk to her, to tell her that I wasn't really an asshole. I needed to try to get her to change her mind. Each time her mother answered the phone and told me that Nina was not there. Her mother's voice, which usually lit up when she was talking to me, was emotionless and flat, with no hint of the previous warmth that had been in it. Finally she told me that her daughter did not wish to speak to me and asked that I refrain from calling anymore. I put down the phone feeling defeated.
The next morning Dad saw me bundling up and preparing to walk to school. He gave me a puzzled look.
"Isn't Nina coming to pick you up today?" He asked.
"No." I told him. "She's kind of, well, mad at me. She's not going to give me a ride anymore."
"You guys broke up?" He asked, his voice soft with sympathy.
"She was never my girlfriend Dad." I told him, irritated. "She's just mad at me and doesn't want to give me a ride anymore."
He stared levelly at me. "Bill." He told me. "I hate to tell you this but Nina WAS your girlfriend, whether you realized it or not."
I shook my head. "No Dad." I said. "We were just friends. We never…, well you know?"
"Is that what you think a girlfriend is?" He asked. "Someone to, 'you know' with? You and Nina might not have ever done that with each other but you were boyfriend and girlfriend all the same. You liked being around each other, you liked to talk together. You were friends. You loved each other.
Isn't friendship the most important part of a relationship, any relationship? Why do people disregard such things?"
Had it been so obvious that even my Dad had seen it? How could I have not seen it all this time? And how could fate have been so cruel to allow me to realize it on the very day, at the very minute that it's destruction was being engineered.
"I don't know Dad." I said with complete honesty. "Maybe they're just assholes."
He gave me a meaningful look. "Maybe they are." He replied. "And maybe they need to take a good look at what is making them an asshole, don't you think? Maybe they can change that little something?"
I gave him a sharp look. What was he saying? What did he know? Was he talking about my social activities? Surely he didn't know about that did he? But then I'd assumed Nina hadn't known about that either, an assumption that, now that it had been proven wrong, seemed painfully naive. Was my assumption that Dad or even, I shuddered, Mom, didn't know as flawed as that about Nina?
Dad had hidden his face back behind the paper, offering me no more insights into what he was thinking. Troubled, I picked up my backpack and headed out the door. I wasn't surprised to find that it was raining as I headed, on foot, to school. It was that kind of day.
My attempts to talk to Nina at school were met with stony silence. By the time lunch came around I knew better than to even try anymore. As I ate my lunch in the lunchroom I looked over to where Nina sat and dread covered me like a blanket. She was sitting alone at a table, eating from her tray, a book open before her. Just like she'd been doing the first day I'd approached her. Just like it.
Julie picked me up once more for ROP. As we drove to the hospital together I was disquieted by the freeness of her affection towards me. She would put her hand on my leg as we talked, or brush my hair from my eyes for me. Once she even kissed her finger and put it to my lips gently. She told me how great of a time she'd had yesterday.
"Do you think maybe we could study together again after school?" She asked brightly.
"Uh…, not today." I told her. "I have to work." In truth I could have easily arranged a little meeting before work but I simply wasn't up to it. I'd never felt less like having sex in my life.
She pouted a little. "Well maybe next week." She said. "I really need to bone up on certain things."
As we worked side by side I noticed again how much she went out of her way to bump into me or to rub her breasts against my shoulder. Since I was quieter than usual she decided to talk more than usual. I winced when she mentioned her fiance.
"Sometimes I wonder if I really made the right decision when I said I'd marry him." She told me.
I looked over at her, perhaps a little sharper than I'd intended to. "What do you mean?"
"Well," She beamed, her eyes shining. "I'm still young, ain't I? Maybe he's not the right one. Maybe I just jumped because he was the first one to ask.