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.
There's lots of other guys out there that might be, uh, better, isn't there?"
I quite simply didn't know what to say to her.
When I came home from work that night my Mom was sitting on the couch watching television and working on some sort of project for work. I gave her a perfunctory greeting and started to head for my room.
"Bill?" She asked, "Are you doing okay?"
I stopped, turning towards her. "Sure Mom." I answered. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Dad told me about you and Nina breaking up." She said. "I just wanted to know how you were handling it."
I didn't even bother explaining to her that Nina and I hadn't had a relationship to break up from. By now it was starting to sound like a lie even to me. "I'm okay Mom." I assured her. "It'll work out."
"I certainly hope so." She told me sympathetically. "I really like her a lot you know. I thought you two made a cute couple."
I smiled weakly.
"I'm not trying to tell you how to run your life or anything Bill." She said. "But I think you had a good thing with her. If I were you, I'd do whatever I had to to get her back. Sincerely."
"Thanks Mom." I muttered, unsure what I was thanking her for. Why in the hell hadn't anyone told me this stuff a month ago, or a year ago, or even twenty-four hours ago?
Of course I was deluding myself because they had. Tracy in the most direct way, although I'd refused to hear her, Mom and Dad in more indirect ways. How many times had they referred to Nina as my girlfriend, either to me or when talking about her to someone else? And how many times had I reproached them for this, angrily even on occasion? Too many to count.
"Well that's my motherly advice for the day." She said. "If you're feeling down maybe this will help." She picked up an envelope from the table and handed it to me. On the front I recognized my sister's handwriting.
"From Tracy?" I asked. Since leaving for California Tracy had not exactly been an open line of communication. Two phone calls, one of which had just been to tell us she'd arrived safely, and this one letter. Since she lived in the dorms it was almost impossible to get hold of her.
"Yes." Mom nodded. "And about time too. I swear, you send them to college and they forget you exist."
I opened the envelope and sat down on the couch, pulling the single handwritten sheet of paper out and unfolding it.
Dear Mom, Dad, and Bill, it started. It was mostly to let us know she was alive and well and doing fine. She chattered on about how much she was enjoying her classes and the California weather, how much she liked living in the dorms, about her job at the campus book store which would help supplement her living expenses. And then towards the end she told us that she'd met a boy and had been dating him fairly frequently. His name was Darren Maxwell.
Darren Maxwell. I'd never heard that name before in my life, before or after recycling. But for some reason that name gave me a twinge of fear. I continued to read her decidedly unfeminine handwriting, becoming more nervous in a much more identifiable way. He was a junior at the school attending on a baseball scholarship. A baseball player. He was a sports figure, just like the guy who had been scheduled to cause her death. It should have felt stupid that I was worrying about her just because she was dating a baseball player but it didn't. It made me very uncomfortable. I found myself wondering what kind of car he drove and if he liked to drink at parties.
Troubled, I put the letter back into the envelope and put it back on the table.
"What's the matter Bill?" Mom asked me. "You look kind of pale."