Something Had to Give (25 page)

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The ride back to Wilmington was just as tiring as it was getting to Tennessee. It was early afternoon when I arrived back at campus but the line to pick up keys to my apartment was still pretty long. It was at least twenty minutes before I got to the desk to get my keys and by that time I was hot, tired, and hungry. I was glad that I was the first one to the apartment since I was in no mood for introductions and small talk. The first room in the small apartment was mine. I sat at the desk eating my cold Bo jangles trying to figure out how I was going to fit my stuff in the tiny room. Just the thought of going back out in the heat, getting my stuff out of the storage room, and having to get it all in my room was overwhelming. The only thing that kept me from lying down in the bed and taking a nap was that I had no Lysol or sheets for the bed. It took a lot to get up from the desk after I finished eating. I had to remind myself that the faster I got done, the faster I could really take a nap.

The storage place was extremely crowded by the time I got there as more students were returning back to campus. The wait just to drive down the driveway to my room made me so irritated that I was determined to get all my belongings in one trip. By the time I got it all in the car, I was literally dripping sweat and my car was so packed that I couldn’t see out of my back window. While I was gone, all three of my roommates had arrived. Brianna, Deanna, and Angie were all on the volleyball team and seemed to be really good friends. It became obvious almost immediately that I was the outsider and it was pretty awkward. They all sat in the living room chatting about their summer while I unloaded my car and unpacked. Hearing them laugh and joke made me miss my friendship with April. I needed girlfriends, but then again maybe I didn’t. My track record with friends was always in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to fail anyone else.

It was after 8pm when I got my room together and was finally able to take a shower. By that time, I was starving without a single thing to eat in the apartment. Angie invited me to go and eat with the rest of the roommates, but I declined. I didn’t want them to feel obligated to invite me places with them. It was only after they left that I felt like an idiot since hanging out with them was a way to get to know them and make new friends. Next time, I told myself. The thought of eating more fast food was sickening to me, but luckily, the campus convenient store was still open. I was glad to find that they sold Red Baron deep-dish pizzas. We had no table to eat at, so I once again ate at my desk when it hit me that I had not called anyone to let them know that I made it back. I called home to Charlotte and Mommy answered and by her voice it was obvious that she had been asleep. Daddy was out of town, so we kept the conversation short. I knew Shanna didn’t care if I had made it back or not but surely Jason would want to hear from me. He was working the late shift so I knew he wouldn’t be home yet. After settling into bed, I turned on the TV and put the phone in the bed in with me. I hoped the TV being on would be enough to keep me awake so that I could call Jason.

Deanna’s room was right beside mine. Through the thin walls, I could hear pretty much everything she did. It was her coughing early the next morning that woke me up. My TV was still on and the phone was sitting right on my pillow where I had put it the night before. I only wanted to wait thirty minutes before calling Jason but apparently, I had fallen asleep almost immediately after laying down. It was just before 8am and even though I didn’t know what shift Jason was working, I decided to call him anyway. At first there was a little hesitation as I thought about the phone tag I played with Eric over the summer, but I quickly had to remember that they were totally different people. It wasn’t likely to be the same result. I gave myself this pep talk yet I still found myself holding my breath as the phone rang. Jason picked up on the third ring and sounded happy to hear from me. I explained that I had intentions of calling him the night before and he understood. When we hung up I found myself wondering how such a great guy was single. How could the women in Chattanooga not realize what a good catch he was?

It was the last free day before classes began and a Wal-Mart trip was in order for me. As I was leaving Deanna stopped me.

“Hey where are you off to so early this morning?”

“I’ve gotta make a Wal-Mart run. I’m hoping that I can beat the crowds.” I didn’t really like that she was questioning me, but I answered anyway not to seem rude.

“Ah, well we were all planning to go to Wal-Mart too together to get food and a table for the apartment. We try to go together and share the food.”

In theory that sounded like a good idea, but Angie and Brianna weren’t even awake, which meant waiting on them would put us going at a time that probably everyone else on campus was also going. I didn’t want to seem standoffish though, so I gave a simple, “OK, that’s cool.”

“Sweet! Let me wake these other lazy bums up. We’ll go get breakfast and be on our way.”

I went back to my room feeling annoyed. Not only would we have to wait on them to shower and get dressed, but I had to have breakfast with them too. I didn’t want to wait or have breakfast. I wanted to stick to my plan of getting what I needed from Wal-Mart and then come back to make my breakfast and spending the rest of the day at the beach relaxing. My plans were ruined and it made me angry. I wanted to make friends, but times like this made me think that it was just may be better for me to stay to myself. It was less aggravation that way. To try and occupy myself I turned on my computer to check my email. I was tempted to close it back out when I saw the thousands of unread emails that went unchecked over the summer, but I decided to go through them to kill time. As I was clicking through the mounds of spam, it was surprised to see that an email had come through the night before from Shanna. There was no subject and I immediately thought that either she got hacked or she was emailing me a nasty message. After much hesitation I opened it:

Just seeing if you made it back to Wilmington. Later.

That was it. There was no apology or explanation for how she had treated me, but at least she was showing some concern for my well-being. Either she was feeling guilty or she didn’t want it on her conscious if something had happened to me. I wanted to ignore her, to simply close the message and delete it but I knew that wouldn’t help to solve anything. So instead I sent back a message just as cut and dry as hers:

Made it back. Thanks.

I hoped this meant she was over her temper tantrum. The fact that she was willing to send me an email made my morning so much better. It also didn’t hurt that it didn’t take Brianna or Angie long to get ready. Along with her boyish demeanor, Brianna drove a huge Ford SUV that reminded me of the truck Craig drove. My guess was that it hadn’t been washed in years. I wish the filth building up on the outside was the worst part, but the inside was absolutely disgusting. There was a mound of trash from fast food and it smelled like a sweaty gym locker. I was disgusted. Deanna and Angie seemed used to it, but the smell went straight to my empty stomach and I wanted to walk to the dining hall and meet them at Wal-Mart in my own car. I wasn’t even sure how the things we were planning to get would fit.

I had a headache just from the short ride to the dining hall and to make matters worse it was jam packed with students who had family eating with them. It seemed like a miracle that we were able to find space at a table for all four of us to fit, but Angie was able to work it out. Eating with them wasn’t as uncomfortable as I thought it was going to be. It was so loud in the room that trying to talk to the person beside you seemed pointless unless you felt like shouting. The only good thing was that it sped up the process of us eating and we were able to get out there and on to Wal-Mart pretty quickly. The ride there was pretty miserable for me. Brianna had very little gas and could not run the air. Even with the windows down, the heat seemed to intensify the smell of old food and dirty clothes. It was awful and it made me wonder how her room was going to look in a few days. Despite my nausea and pounding headache, I survived the shopping trip. The store was overly crowded like I expected for early afternoon. The food wasn’t hard to agree on and we were able to find a card table for the living room that was reasonably priced. We were out in an hour and unloading things was easy since Brianna decided to drive up on the grass so we would be right at the front door. After getting everything unloaded it was my intention to head to the beach but I felt so drained from loading and unloading the truck on top of the heat that a nap was in order.

I awoke to the smell of food cooking and it smelled wonderful. Brianna, despite her boyish ways, was apparently a really good cook. She made baked spaghetti for us all and had invited over two other teammates that lived in the apartment upstairs. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about having people come over that they all knew and I didn’t but what choice did I have? I wanted to eat and the spaghetti was a much better option than the dining hall. The girls that came over turned out to be really nice. They all were courteous enough to include me in their conversations as much as possible though there were a lot of inside jokes that went way over my head that I could only listen and smile about. After dinner we all watched
American Pie
, before we all decided to go off and do our own thing to get ready for classes the next day. Jason called right as I was getting settled into bed and I talked with him until my eyes were too heavy to keep open. I went to bed that evening feeling content, like I just knew it was going to be a really good school year.

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My sophomore year started out great. I was breezing through my classes and had also started an internship at New Hanover Hospital that I went to 3 days a week. My roommates had all turned out to be cool people. They were busy with classes and practice so I didn’t see much of them, but on the weekends we looked forward to dinners that Brianna would cook. It had taken two weeks from when I got back to school, but Shanna eventually called. She wasn’t calling to exactly apologize, but to explain that she was just really frustrated with Craig and had taken it out on me. An apology would have set in much better with me since she wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. I knew she had never been good with apologies, so I accepted what she explained and let it go. I found it so much easier that way than to keep harboring ill feelings towards her. It was definitely a lesson learned though. The next time she was venting about Craig, I knew to just listen and not say a word. Jason and I were still talking regularly and he surprised me with a plane ticket to visit for the few days that I would be out for fall break.

The day before I was to fly to Chattanooga, my roommates invited me to go out to Hammerjax nightclub with them. My flight was early the next morning and it was my first instinct to stay home. I had not been out at all since being back at school and I felt like it would be good to get out for the night. Apparently, the majority of the campus had the same idea to go out because the club was packed wall to wall with familiar faces from campus. At first it was a manageable crowd but as the night went on, it was to the point that you couldn’t even move. When I finally had enough of getting bumped, I decided to go to the front of the club just so I could breathe in smoke free air. There were a handful of people already up there with the same idea, but I was able to find a seat on the benches up front across from the bathrooms. I sat there drinking my water when I saw a guy stumbling out the bathroom. I wouldn’t have paid it much attention but something about this guy looked familiar. I stared at him for several seconds trying to put a name to his face when I saw Daniel coming out the bathroom behind him to help him get outside. When I realized that the stumbling drunk was Eric, I felt my stomach drop. He had gained between 10 and 15 pounds and let his facial hair grow, which was why I didn’t recognize him. I watched him make a fool out of himself stumbling out of the club and felt so disappointed that he had followed in the ways he had sworn to stay far away from. Still, I felt sorry for him and wondered what happened for him to get to that point.

It wasn’t long before my roommates made their way to the front and were ready to leave. Being outside was such a relief from the smoke, music, and smell of sweaty bodies everywhere. As we made a way to the car I heard someone yelling my name.

“Cheryl! Cheryl, is it really you? When I turned around it was Eric making a pitiful attempt to run to catch up to me. I turned back around to keep walking and he kept calling my name. “Hey Cheryl wait up a minute will ya?”

“Hey, I’ve gotta keep going, my friends are ready to go.” I was pretty sure they would’ve waited on me if I asked, but I had no desire to talk to him while he was like that.

“Well, what’s your room number, I’ll call you tomorrow?” Same old Eric; just as persistent as ever.

“I won’t be there, I’m leaving early.”

“Ahhh, you headed back to Tennessee to visit your new boyfriend? You wasted no time you know.” His statement hit me like a gut punch. Was he just talking or did he really know what he was talking about? I wanted to know, but I wasn’t willing to stick around to find out.

“Have a good night Eric.”

I left it at that and kept walking. As Daniel and another guy stopped him from following me more, I could hear him saying other things, but I couldn’t make it out. I was the last one to get to the car and I felt annoyed and confused at the same time. I was annoyed that Eric would just let himself go and that it happened so quickly. He had so much potential and he was drowning it all away in beer bottles. Was it all over a summer that he chose to spend doing nothing with himself? It also really bothered me that he had made the statement about “my new boyfriend.” I didn’t know if he somehow had tabs on me over the summer or if he was just assuming things. Things were going so well, I didn’t understand why I had to run into him and why it had to be right before I was going to see Jason. I was deep in my thoughts when I was hit with the dreaded questions from Deanna.