The Blueprint (17 page)

Lily turned to face him
, her cheeks wet.  Her sad, pleading eyes pierced him to his core.  “Jimmy, I don’t want to remember anymore,” she whispered.   “It hurts too much.  Please… help me forget.”  She clung to him, desperate for relief. 

Rolling
her on her back, he tasted her tears and stroked her sensitive skin until she moved in rhythm with his touch.  He hoped the passion they shared was fierce enough chase her pain away.

12

“And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t also thank my wonderful assistant, Lily, for all of her priceless tutelage in the arts of love.”  Simon flashed
a wicked grin at his audience.  “Without her help, I wouldn’t have made it to first base with Judith, let alone the end zone.”  Gums unveiled, teeth bulging, he laughed at his bawdy joke like a man impersonating a donkey.    “Please, join me in a toast to Lily.”  Simon raised his glass of champagne in salute.

Lily hid
behind Jimmy as the banquet hall full of colleagues searched the room to give her a nod of recognition.  He tried keeping a straight face as his girlfriend burrowed herself deep into his back.   Kim, who was drunk---very drunk, slapped the table in hysterics repeating the phrase “the arts of love." 

Before they’d even left for Simon’s wedding, Kim
started drinking.  She planned to fortify herself against all the mushy love sludge that she’d be inundated with during the ceremony and reception.  Not only was the evening’s entertainment going to include witnessing Simon marry the love of his life (while she had in desperation needed Jimmy to find her a date, because her gay boyfriend was busy enjoying time with his gay boyfriend), but also, watching the man she loved and her best friend make googley eyes at each other all night. 

S
omething had changed between Jimmy and Lily during their trip to Chicago. Some might argue it was a change for the better.  Kim would argue that the change only made her feelings for Jimmy more pitiful and her chances with him more remote.

Lily returned looking the happiest Kim had ever seen her.  It only took a couple of days before Kim identified the reason and accurately labeled her roommate’s condition.   Lily had caught a bad case of the ‘love
stupids,’ and Kim was experiencing enough symptoms of nausea for both of them.  First, Kim noticed her roommate mindlessly humming over chores, an unprecedented behavior.   Next, she observed Lily sprinting to the phone when it rang rather than letting the machine get it, again unprecedented.  The last and most decidedly sure sign that Jimmy had indeed broken through her roommate’s defenses and won Lily’s heart were the satisfied grins she wore while daydreaming.  

Kim bore this breakthrough surprisingly well, but only when she didn’t have to see them together. 
It was Jimmy’s presence that drove her to hiding or drinking, usually both.  She couldn’t help but want him and she couldn’t stop herself from wanting him to want her back.  However, tonight she thought she might have stumbled upon a solution to this unrequited love.  Jimmy had brought his brother, Tom, along as her date, and if nothing else, they looked alike.  Both brothers had dark hair that set off their dreamy blue eyes.  Both were nicely muscled from long days of manual labor.  And both pulsed with a sex appeal that made her want to get naked; but maybe that was the alcohol.  Nevertheless, she planned to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Tom liked his women fast and easy and although he’d been threatened with “the
beatin’ of a lifetime” by his brother if he laid a finger on Kim tonight, she was making it hard for him to behave. He’d checked her out at Christmas when she arrived with his cousin, Brian, whom everyone knew preferred guys.   For whatever reason, she’d put on a good show, pretending to be his cousin’s girlfriend that night, so he resisted making a move.  She met his standards exactly:  blonde, petite, pretty, spunky.  Minimally attractive and drunk were usually his only criteria for approaching a woman in a bar, but real dates required higher standards.  And her pawing at him in obvious desperation made Kim that much harder to resist.  

Kim danced every dance gyrating provocatively for Tom or whoever cared to notice.   The reception’s South American theme included sultry music with seductive overtones
, which only egged her on. 

To the best of her knowledge, Lily wasn’t aware that Kim had taken lessons in Latin American
dance styles, but she had admit her roommate was faking it quite well.   Surprised, confused, often embarrassed, Lily watched her from the vantage of their table, wondering what the hell had possessed her roommate to drink so much and flaunt herself so outrageously.

Jimmy was
also uncomfortable with Kim’s behavior on and off the dance floor.  She was his best friend and watching his brother and other men salivate over her was making him crazy.  After witnessing Kim ride Tom’s back around the room with her dress hiked up around her thighs, yelling “‘Andele!  ‘Andele!”, he decided it was time to intervene.  He asked Lily to supervise his brother, who was also grossly over-served, while he danced with Kim and talked some sense into her.

“Are you havi
ng fun?” Jimmy asked, taking Kim in his arms without her permission.

Her eyes were heavy with drink, her body damp with perspiration, and her shoulder
- length hair wild from exertion.  She didn’t care.  She knew exactly what she was doing.  “I’m having a great time.”

“I’m starting to think, sweetheart, that maybe you’re having too much fun.”

“There’s no such thing.  And if you can’t keep up, Mr. Party Pooper,” she said, spraying spit on his face, “maybe you should go sit down with your fragile flower and leave me alone.” Kim tried pulling away and nearly stumbled into another couple. 

Steadying
her before disaster struck, he squeezed her shoulders and commanded under his breath, “You’re coming with me.”  With a smile for the crowd, Jimmy dragged her from the dance floor and led her to the farthest unoccupied table.

She slumped into a chair, avoiding Jimmy’s angry glare, and sulked.  Kim was sober enough to know Jimmy was m
ad, but not sober enough to know that it mattered.

Jimmy checked his temper and pulled a chair up next to her.  As he searched for words, he realized that his conversations with Kim were always about somebody other than Kim.  His time with her was either spent as buddy or advisee.  He’d never asked her about herself, because it had never occurred to him to do so.  If Kim was smiling, which she usually was, she must be okay---right?  But how well did he rea
lly know her?  His anger fizzled as he recognized himself as the jerk in this one-sided friendship.  “Tell me what’s going on.  What’s the deal with the Charo routine?”

She ignored his question and waved to a nearby waiter, miming for him to bring her a glass of wine. 
Jimmy canceled the order.  Kim snapped, “Damn it!  Mind your own business, all right?  I need a drink.” She crossed her arms and sank lower in her chair.

“I’ll get you water and then we’ll talk.  Stay here.”
He stood, towering over her, and added, “If you’re not here when I return, I’ll drag you back kickin' and screamin' if I have to.  Got it?”

She moaned and nodded her consent.  Her sweat
was starting to dry and her cold, clammy skin was not helping her maintain the state of oblivion she had hoped for tonight.  And she knew she needed to be drunk in order to stick with her plan to sleep with Tom.  Even loopy with drink, she predicted it probably wouldn’t help her get over Jimmy, but she believed the guilt from doing something stupid would at least distract her from another sleepless night mooning over him.   Her professional voice told her to look up the clinical term for the dumb stunt she was about to pull, but that would have to wait until tomorrow.

Jimmy returned with a glass of water which Kim guzzled in an instant.  He watched her, waiting for an explanation as she watched Simon trample his new bride while attempting to Salsa.  He noticed the goose bumps covering her arms and placed his sports jacket over her shoulders.
 

She winced like the jacket was lined with thorns. 
She hated it when he was nice.  It just made it worse.  With the dance floor so far away and the object of her seduction nearly asleep at Lily’s side, her mood shifted from careless to introspective, stage two in her inebriation.

“Start
talkin’,” Jimmy ordered.

Kim rested her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, and let out a sigh of frustration. “Jimmy, have you ever wanted something you couldn’t have?”

“Sure, everybody has.”

“What did you want that you didn’t get?”

Loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar, he answered, “Well, when I was ten I wanted a pellet gun.  But my mother informed me that it would be a cold day in hell before she got me a weapon to shoot my brothers and cousins with.  So that was that.”

Kim rolled her eyes.  “It sounds to me like your mom kept you out of jail.  But that’s not really what I meant.  Something you want that you can’t buy or make.”

“My parents taught us that you can have whatever you want, if you work hard enough for it.  And I’ve found that to be true.”

She smirked at Jimmy’s pr
edictable response.  She spotted Simon picking Judith up where he’d dropped her on the dance floor during an elaborate maneuver gone wrong.  Kim leaned back in her chair, watched the show, and chose not to look at her companion.  “I think I’ve worked hard.  I’ve stayed out of trouble, got good grades, won a scholarship.  I’ve always followed all the rules and done everything I was supposed to, but your working hard theory hasn’t worked for me.”

He turned in his chair so he could
better see her.  Kim was a woman with lots of energy whose emotions oozed from her pores.  If she was happy, her whole body echoed her joy.  If she was mad, she vibrated with anger.  For a lady without a poker face, her prevailing calm was unsettling.  “Why don’t you tell me what we’re talkin' about, Kim?  What is it that you want and can’t have?”

She hugged Jimmy’s jacket
around herself and his musky scent enveloped her. 
What's the harm in pretending just for a minute that he cares?
“As far back as I can remember, I thought, if I was good and worked hard, like you said, that I could earn myself a family.  I’m not sure what happened to my birth parents, and since I never knew them, I wasn’t stuck on getting them back.  As far as I was concerned, anyone would do.  I thought maybe a teacher or a friend of some adult from school would see me or hear about me and think, ‘That Kim is a great kid.  Let’s find her some parents, or even better, I’ll keep her for myself.’  When I turned twelve, I gave up on that fantasy.  I wasn’t so naive that I thought a family would want me at that age.  Even then, I knew preteen girls were a pain.  So I shifted my attention to boys.  If I couldn’t have parents who loved me, then I’d get myself a boyfriend who loved me.   I watched the older girls at school flirt and I learned every trick.  Those games worked like a dream in high school.  I got the boys’ attention sure enough, but the problem was that boys from town only wanted one thing from the girls from the home, which I found out the hard way as did lots of my friends.  So I gave up on the romance part and focused on friendships.  I wanted guys to love me for more than just my body.  I thought if they cared about me as a friend then they wouldn’t use me and throw me away like before.  Well, it turned out that I was so good at being friends with the guys that I was cursed to be treated like a pet instead of someone they’d like to date.  And when I took the initiative with a guy to change from friend to more, they inevitably freaked out.   Apparently, men like a woman who is a touch aloof.   They like a challenge, and I’m too quick to make my intention for an eternal commitment known.”  She tried to chuckle, pretending her failures were funny somehow, but the alcohol had silenced her usual self-deprecating laugh.  

“So working hard hasn’t gotten me what I w
ant.  And being fun hasn’t gotten me what I want either.  I’m starting to believe that it might just be time to stop wanting.”  Kim turned to Jimmy who sat staring ahead, pensive.  She attempted to lighten the mood, “If Lily heard me talking like this I bet she’d say, ‘I told you so.’”   

His glare turned on her at the mention of his girlfriend and Kim wished she’d omitted that last remark.  With hard eyes that contradicted his soft tone, he said, “I’m so sorry, Kim.  I really am.”   They
sat looking at each other as the noise and activity around them fell away.  For the first time, he was aware of the disconnect between his behavior and feelings.  Lily was his girlfriend, but Kim was his best friend.  And he'd failed them both.  One wanted to be left alone and the other wanted to be loved.  Maybe he’d made a mistake that hard work couldn’t fix, and now he wasn’t going to get what he wanted either.

She
shook herself from their trance and broke the silence.  “Hey, looks like the bride and groom are on their way out, so let’s gather the gang and head out too, okay?  I think I agree with you.  I’ve done enough damage for one night.”  She tried to stand, but was overcome with dizziness. 

Jimmy reached for her before
she stumbled and held her in his arms while she regained her balance.  Brushing the hair from her eyes and smiling down at her, he again held her gaze for longer than he should.  “Let’s get out of here.”

Lily, concerned that the “talking to” Jimmy had threatened to give Kim would turn nasty
, had adjusted her chair so she could keep an eye on their conversation in case it needed a referee. Often the three of them had spent time together, but until tonight she’d never really watched them together.  Never had she met two people who were so comfortable in their own skins.  She witnessed so much bad dancing during the reception, she wondered with a grin if Kim and Jimmy could move as effortlessly together on the dance floor as they did through a crowd.  She watched as Jimmy offered his jacket and settled himself close to Kim to listen.  Although he looked distant while Kim talked, she knew he was listening to every word as his face registered the emotions those words were stirring.  She also knew that his face wasn’t displaying anger as some might think, but probably regret.  She watched as Jimmy caught a woozy Kim and held her close, smoothing her hair from her eyes.  Anyone who didn’t know better would think Jimmy and Kim were the couple.