Embracing You, Embracing Me (9 page)

I’m plagued with wondering if I’m doing the
right thing by maintaining this vigilant silence but somehow I can’t form the
right words to bring it up.

Now I just hope that maybe some of my
friend’s inner anxiety might ease up and maybe she will begin the process of
healing. All I can do is be there to help her.

GABRIEL:
Roshell’s ramrod posture and obvious nervous response to my
presence makes me realize that I still can’t quite figure her out.

I assume that she might like me but I can’t
say for sure because she hasn’t really flirted or even talked to me much for
that matter. She appears outgoing and fearless when interacting with the others
but clams up anytime I interject myself into the situation.

I keep trying to decide if that is a negative
or positive reaction, but obviously I’ll have to take a more direct approach so
that I can find out once and for all. No more of this cat and mouse game.

It was a Thursday afternoon. All three of
us, Sabrina, Amber and I remained after school to watch the wrestling meet.
Sabrina’s best guy friend, Wyatt, had a tough match that day and she wanted to
offer support.

Wyatt and Sabrina had been friends since
she moved to the area and everyone, except her of course, seemed to know that
he had a painful crush on her. She insisted that it wasn’t that way between
them and Wyatt quietly accepted that response, wanting to maintain their tight
friendship.

Amber of course wanted to sit with Darren
so naturally we joined them and his bawdy crowd of upperclassmen. Amber seemed
to blend right in with the older students just fine, while Sabrina and I still
felt awkward, ridiculous and silly around them. We put on our best game faces
and tried to hold our own.

I sat to the right of Amber, who leaned
back against Darren in the vee of his legs. Gabriel was on the other side of
Darren.

Shortly after the meet started, Gabriel
hopped up and headed out of the gym. I frowned and hoped that he wasn’t leaving
for good. He didn’t speak to me directly very often but I still couldn’t help
the way my heart fluttered anytime we were in the same room together. Sometimes
I would catch him looking my direction in the hallway and would find myself
wondering and hoping that maybe, just maybe… then I would snap back to reality,
silently chiding my habit of senseless dreaming. If anyone knew better than to
give in to delusions of romance and love, it was me. I knew that my biggest and
most fatal fault had always been the fact that I was a closet hopeless romantic.
It was not abnormal to find me with my nose tucked into a novel filled with
faraway places and where every ending consisted of the handsome hero whisking
the heroine off of her feet. I was notorious for staring off into space during
class, or while my friends and family were speaking to me. Everyone was used to
me taking these dreamy vacations, in fact they expected it, but no one ever
really knew exactly where I went during them. I never let on, even to my
closest friends, that I was always imagining the wonderful journey of falling
in love.  

But reality had slapped me in the face and
shown me how the real world truly operated. Dreaming of fanciful love scenes
and unrealistic happily-ever-after endings had left me naïve and vulnerable to
the seamier sides of lust and I vowed that I would never allow myself to forget
it.

Still, I was disappointed when Gabriel
sauntered off and I slumped in the bleachers. Sabrina sprang up, heading
towards the soda machine.

I leaned back against the bleacher behind
me and turned at an angle, with my back to the exit. When I felt something
brush against my back I figured that Sabrina had returned.

“Who won that last weight class?” asked a
familiar, masculine voice. I recognized Gabriel’s softly spoken words and
straightened my back briskly. He was sitting right next to me. I sat up and
faced forward, trying to keep my cool as Darren relayed the last match,
imitating a sports newscaster’s delivery.

I glanced sideways toward Gabriel and
noticed that he was chuckling with everyone else at Darren’s interpretation,
but was looking directly at me. I averted my eyes and tried to sit up even
straighter making a deliberate effort to concentrate on the current match.

He addressed me casually, “I’m surprised
that you’re here at the meet. Don’t you have dance class or something?”

I was taken back, surprised he knew that I
was a dancer. Before I could answer, he replied, “I saw the article that the
Yearbook did. I thought it was good, but the picture was better! Ouch! That
looked like it hurt.”

That’s right. I recalled the article he was
referring to. Last year’s Yearbook had run a feature on students with atypical
extra-curricular activities. They covered a senior who helped his dad restore
classic muscle cars, and one covering my ballet achievements. Right next to the
small article was a picture of me standing with my right leg in my right hand
pulled straight up over my head.

I blushed. “Oh, yeah, well I’ve been doing
it long enough that it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s just that I’m pretty flexible
now.”

“Why are you embarrassed?” he asked,
smirking. “You’re blushing.”

I put both hands to my cheeks
self-consciously. “I’m not blushing!” But I knew that I absolutely was burning
a nice hot pink.

It was a relief when Gabriel chose not to
tease me any further, but rather continued to ask about why I wasn’t in class
and about how I got into dancing in the first place. I answered his questions
and with each answer he had more questions. He seemed truly interested and
before I knew it, I was relaxing and blathering on about training and my
upcoming auditions for the winter program.

Twirling my hair, I spoke fervently about
my passion and gradually I began to look at him more often during our
conversation. Then I realized that I had been carrying on and paused, suddenly
self-conscious again.
He must desperately wish that I would shut up,
I
thought with a pang of insecurity. I stopped twirling my hair, clasped my hands
together in my lap and looked directly at his face. He was not only acutely
paying attention but his gaze locked with mine.

For a moment, there wasn’t a gym full of
people. There weren’t people cheering at the two meaty wrestlers tangled up on
the blue mat. There was just me and Gabriel silently acknowledging one another.
Neither one knew exactly what was going on or what to make of it. But neither
could we deny the vibration of energy flowing between us. It was electric.

Sabrina broke into our quiet space,
offering me a drink of her coke. “Did I miss Wyatt’s match?”

We focused on the last three matches, the
excitement in the gym growing as they were the higher weight classes.

Wyatt defeated his opponent after many
sweaty rounds and Sabrina wanted to hang around after the meet to congratulate
him. She, Amber and I hung out with Darren and Gabriel at the bottom of the
bleachers, close to the boys’ dressing room and discussed the heinous fashion
crime that the wrestlers’ singlet uniforms were.

Wyatt and a few of his teammates sauntered
out freshly showered, strongly scented of Drakkar cologne. They joined us,
eager to receive accolades for their wrestling skills. The conversation segued
from the meet that they just wrapped up to the meet that they had the previous
Saturday at the school on the other side of the lake.

During the conversation Wyatt spoke up
suddenly and looked toward me. “Hey, I didn’t know that you and Erin Jamison
had a thing going?”

My smile faded and I felt the blood drain
from face. “What are you talking about? I don’t know anyone by that name.”

Neither Sabrina nor I had known Erin’s last name, but we both knew immediately who Wyatt was talking about.

Wyatt stammered a little, suddenly wary of
the instant change in our mood, except for Amber, who had no idea what was
going on. There was no way that he could have known the dangerous territory
that he was about to embark upon.

“Oh, well I’m pretty sure that he was
talking about you.” He said slowly. “At least, I thought he was.”

I narrowed my eyes. My voice was stone
cold. “What did this Erin have to say about me? If it even is me.”

It was obvious to everyone in the room that
Wyatt was wishing he hadn’t brought the subject up. His face grew pensive.

“Oh, nothing to worry about, you know, just
guy stuff.” He hesitated. “You know. Locker-room talk.”

I said through gritted teeth, “No, I don’t
know. Why don’t you tell me? Please elaborate, Wyatt.”

“Look, he said that you two hooked up
sometime this last summer. He was bragging about how hot you are and how much
fun you two had! I didn’t even know that you knew each other so I was kind of
surprised. It sounded like you must have really hit it off by the way he was
going on about it. Anyway, it’s no big deal! Just forget that I said anything.”

Everything inside of me was thrumming and
flexing to the rhythm of my anger. Gabriel must have recognized my distress and
came to the rescue. He wrapped his large bicep around Wyatt’s neck, placed him
in a classic headlock, and gave him a hard time about going so many rounds in
his last match. Darren jumped in and before you knew it they had their own
wrestling matches going on.

I took the diversion as an opportunity to
spin on my heel and hightail it out of there. I wasn’t even aware of where I
was going. I was blind with rage: I slammed through the exit and cut around the
corner of the gym. The air was brisk and my breath came out in quick puffs of
fog, as I marched into the nearby patch of forest behind the school.

Sabrina and Amber were hot on my heels.

Amber caught up first. “What in the hell
was all that about?” she demanded briskly, from confusion rather than anger.

But I didn’t acknowledge her question.
Rushing forward, I punched the nearest tree as hard as I could. My knuckles
made a sick cracking sound but I was numb to the first wave of pain. Then a
deep throb began in my fist and filtered up to the wrist. The fire in my hand
was nothing compared to the fire burning in my gut, and rather than shirk away
from the pain, I grasped my fist to my heaving chest and thrived on it,
cherishing the distraction.

Rejuvenated, I lunged forward and pounded
on the tree again and again. Silent tears trickled down my face.

Both Sabrina and Amber snatched me away
from the tree, shocked by my violent display. I stumbled back, brushing them
off, and sank onto the soft ground covered in pine needles and moss, oblivious
to Amber’s flabbergasted stares. Sabrina looked heartsick. They were both
helpless as they watched me deal with my agony.

Both girls sat and wrapped their arms
around me as I rocked and cried, my heart breaking with bitterness and shame.

Then my emotions jack-knifed and I sat
upright, wiping my face and runny nose. “
No
, damn it—I am not going to
do this crying bullshit. I am just so
mad!
It’s bad enough that it
happened but he has to go around bragging about it, acting like he’s some kind
of stud or something and I am just supposed to do what? Go along with it? He
knows that I’m not going to make anything of it. So yeah, I have to just go
along with it.”

I glanced at Amber, and picked up on the
concern on her face. Taking a deep breath I prepared to tell someone out loud
about that night with Erin.

AMBER:
How could I have known? How could I have not known? So many
thoughts ran through my head all at once and it was seriously hard not to ask a
barrage of questions.

I so badly wanted to enquire as to why she
hadn’t told me before but I quickly shoved that aside. She had obviously been
trying to forget the whole thing. I imagine that if I were in her shoes I might
have tried to do the same. None of it was simple. It wasn’t something you would
want hashed out.

But none of that really even matters. We
know now and we will help her get through it.

Calmer, I opened my eyes. The important
thing to remember was that it was over and I had my two best friends by my
side. Despite the sick hollow feeling in my core, I knew that I could get
through it with them backing me up.

As we walked out of the trees, Amber asked,
“What are you going to do?’

I hooked an arm through each of their arms.
“Forget about him and live my life.”

I was surprised by the steady, calm
confidence that reverberated in my voice. They tightened their grip around me
and accepted my simple answer as we continued to walk forward, one unit.

GABRIEL:
I love this time of year when autumn is in its full throes, except
that it gets dark so early. The light was fading fast as dusk gave way to night
while we waited for the girls.

Darren had volunteered to take all three of
them home after the meet so he and I waited patiently in his cherry red Mustang
while listening to the Wayne’s World soundtrack. We were both engaged in full
head-bang madness as the peak of Bohemian Rhapsody engulfed the confines of the
car, and didn’t notice that the girls had finally approached, until they were
right next to us.